Hello, and welcome to today's webcast presentation with I-Tech, where we have the CEO, Markus Jönsson, and the CFO and Director of Operations, Magnus Henell, presenting. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A, so if you have any questions, please feel free to use the form located to the right. With that said, please go ahead with your presentation.
Thank you very much, Martin. It is a sunny and crisp winter morning here in Mölndal today, and Magnus and I will look forward to presenting you the highlights from the year-end report that was published earlier today. The first picture we have for you is this development of the sales and the profitability of the company. As we choose to title the year-end report, it was a top-line sales sprint in the last quarter that crowned this successful year. We will come back to the details on this in the presentation. As you see, I-Tech is a growth company, and we are in a very interesting phase at the moment. Of course, great accomplishments start with great people, and this is actually the entirety of the company.
I-Tech today is consisting of 16 highly professional team members with, I would say, a very good diversity, both in terms of gender, ethnicity, languages, and of course, competencies and key skills. You can see that we have a strong R&D team, a strong marketing and sales team, and also then a support team, you could say, backing this up with regulatory affairs and production and synthesis and operations management. If there are new people in the audience today, just a short recap then of what I-Tech is focusing on. We are in the maritime shipping industry, and we have developed solutions to prevent fouling or growth of species on the underwater part of ships. We are, with our solutions, then targeting a subset of selected challenges that are facing the maritime industry.
If we start with the big and very important one, it is the emissions to air. The shipping industry is representing about 3% of the world's release of CO2 gases to the atmosphere. There is a strong drive, you could say, between nations and also the international bodies to reduce the carbon emissions from shipping. There is a number of initiatives that are launched in that direction, and we will come back to that. Fouling then, or growth of species underwater, is a major drag for the ships trying to run through water, right? It is something that would increase the fuel consumption if you want to maintain the same speed of your ship. Another important topic is the transfer of invasive species, where traditionally or historically marine shipping has played a key role.
Essentially, that is the transfer of different species from different places around the world to local coastal areas, right? With the risk, of course, of damaging the natural diversity that is present sort of in the local environments. Here you could say ballast water and the growth on the ship's hull have been the key for this historically. Another important challenge is the emissions to water of various chemical substances. Of course, then biocides are a part of that, you could say. That is a challenge that we want to minimize, of course. Selektope, which is the main product of I-Tech then, is a Swedish invention from Gothenburg University and from Chalmers. It is essentially then a substance that targets mainly hard fouling, what we call barnacles.
It is a substance that does not kill or harm the organisms, but it actually repels them from settling on the surface. That has a clear advantage in terms of reducing the drag and thereby the fuel consumption of the ship. It is also a key to have a clean hull, right? If you want to protect the marine ecosystems from invasive species. At the same time, Selektope is very, very much more effective and efficient than previous technologies. The dosage that you need in a paint formulation to reach the desired effect is very low compared to traditional technologies. It also represents a really huge step forward in terms of reduced emissions to our oceans. This passion, you could say, for sustainability is really a key part of the DNA of Selektope and of I-Tech as a whole.
Today we will actually be presenting to you some really fresh data from an in-docking study that we have recently performed in collaboration with the Safina Group. The Safina Group, one of their businesses, is actually coating consultancy, where they are supporting ship owners when they bring their ships into dry dock to have them repainted and refitted. They are there to advise in what type of coating system to select and what type of coating systems to also apply, how and where, etc. You could say that they target really the top quartile of ship owners that are really interested in performance, right? You could say that the data set that we are showing here is also, you could say, among the best cases in the global shipping fleet today because it is from customers that actually care about the performance of their ships.
Previously, I-Tech have demonstrated a number of successful cases on a ship level, etc., where you can see the effect of Selektope. Now today, we are showing some of the first data on the fleet level, so owners and the fleet level. This is really exciting. What we have here is the data is 761 inspected ships. Of course, a small subset of the about 20,000 dry dockings that are happening every year. This is over a period of time as well, we should say. It is probably around five to seven years. Since Selektope has not been around on the market for more than approximately two dry docking cycles, we are now able to find also ships that have been coated with Selektope. That is the data we show here today.
If you start on the left side, this is, you could say, an overview picture of the result of the whole population of around 700 ships there. You see two bars here. One is the flat bottom, so that is the bottom of the ship, the underside. Then you have the vertical sides there. These are two areas that potentially are problematic when you want to avoid fouling, right? Essentially what the data say here, more than 33% of all the inspected ships have more than 10% of animal or barnacle fouling, right? This is really an unacceptable result in terms of fuel consumption because this would sort of result in more than 40% additional fuel use to keep the same speed through water.
Also, you could say the yellow bar is not the completely perfect result, and only 20% approximately of the fleet have a very good performance and prevention of barnacles. Out of these 761 observations, we have found then 12 ships that actually have been using Selektope during this period. That is the data that is represented to the right here. You can see there are clear improvements, right? The number of ships that has absolutely no barnacles has increased more than 50%. Also in general, there is a lower prevalence of barnacle fouling. There is one new observation here, which is orange, which would then signal that you have more than 10% barnacle fouling on the ship's hull. If you go in and study the report in more detail, you can see that at least some of this fouling comes actually from a coating breakdown.
That is the picture you can see on the far right side here, on the bow of the ship, which has been where the coating has been damaged by the anchor. Of course, Selektope does nothing there to prevent the fouling. This is really positive data for us and of course a strong proof that we will use going forward as well to the relevance of the technology of Selektope. We are really happy to be able to share that today. If we look at the market then, around 1,800 new ships were built during last year, and we have approximately 20,000 dry dockings happening each year where the ship comes in for maintenance and usually for a recoat of especially the antifouling coating then underwater.
The majority of the market for us, both for new ships and for dry docks, are in Asia, where China is the leading country, but also then followed by Japan and Korea. These are the key markets for us to target. We estimate that the antifouling technology market opportunity for I-Tech is in sort of gross level around $300 million-$500 million. A lot of growth to go for still. I-Tech today then, we have a unique technology, intellectual property and formulation and process know-how, how to produce and formulate the product. It is one of our key strengths. We are targeting, you could say, the top coating companies of the world that represents sort of more than 90% of all the antifouling coatings. That is essentially nine companies where we have a contact and ongoing dialogue with all of them.
The company is asset-light in the sense that we are outsourcing production then and focusing mainly on the science and the formulation development and the sales and marketing of the product. We today estimate that our penetration is around 3,000 ships out of a global fleet of 110,000 ships. Much more to do. All right, that was short about I-Tech. I will hand over now to Magnus to take you through sort of more detailed highlights of 2024. Please go ahead, Magnus.
Thank you very much. As Markus said in the beginning, we're very happy to stand here in front of you and present this report. When we look on sort of the highlights of the Q4 report, we see that we had a very good growth in Q4, but overall also in 2024, we had almost 50% sales growth, which is a very good accomplishment. One of the more important stuff is that our diversification continues. Today or last year, we had 33% of the sales from other than our main customer, Chugoku. Previous year, it was 80%. I think both the development of going into the further customer base, but also it's worth noting that Chugoku had a 20% increase of sales also last year. It is not that this customer is declining.
Every customer is growing, but the new customers are growing a little bit more, so to speak. That is quite reasonable. They are coming into the market. They are growing their product portfolio, etc. Taking these very nice revenues and the gross margin of the company, which I will come back to, we show a very nice also operating profit, which is growing by 94% up to SEK 45.5 million. Taking the entire year into account, taking the position of the company, the board has decided also this year to propose an ordinary dividend as well as an extra dividend. They are increasing the ordinary dividend from SEK 0.75 per share to SEK 1 and remain with an extra dividend as previous year. All in all, this gives a dividend to the shareholders of SEK 1.75, corresponding to roughly 53% of the net profit for the year.
Going a little bit more into detail, what does this mean? Of course, we have another record year. It is both a record quarter, but also overall a record year with almost SEK 180 million in sales. We have a very nice still gross margin of 53%. It is worth noting also here that it has slightly increased during Q4. I will also come back again, but this is an effect of the investments we have done in enhancing production and also in order to reduce the production cost. That will continue over time. It will not be a step change, but we do see that we will be able to increase with additional percentages over the coming periods. We talk a lot about our extra cost, but of course we have significant operating cost in the company as well.
I think you all know that we have a business model with a lot of leverage in it. Now for the first time, we actually achieve 30% EBITDA margin despite all these extra costs on the EDU situation. That is also indeed very good to see. The cash conversion continues. We were building quite a lot of net working capital over the year, and that is due to prepayments for production, as we have been discussing in previous calls, but also the effect of the significant increase in sales during the last quarter. Coming back to the geographical spread, we clearly see that it is Northeast Asia, just as Markus said before. Northeast Asia is where we really drive the sales. We increased the total sales to Asia to 97% this year.
It's almost 3% in Europe, and it's so little to the rest of the world so far that it actually doesn't show in the graph. When we look into the distribution of these 97%, we see that Korea today, which is the main market to go to in the beginning for all our customers, Chugoku started there. The other customers are starting there as well, that is sort of the main market to start in. That today represents 50% of our total sales. Japan is very strong still. It's 30%, and China up to 13%, and hopefully we can grow that even further over the coming periods. The rest of Asia is going towards Singapore, a small 4%.
It's a really nice picture showing, not showing the growth, but showing the importance of Asia for our products and how well they accept it over there. It's been an eventful year. Sometimes you see the officer and think, well, nothing is happening, but a lot is happening. On the operation side, we have going into new supply agreements and we have new products launched by our customers. On the leadership, it happened a lot. We had our previous CEO, he resigned and went up to being Chairman of the Board. Previous this year, I took over as an interim CEO. Before we're coming in here with Markus, who will lead us in the future. We also increased the additional capabilities in the team, so to speak. Markus, you can have the happy announcement on the right there.
Yeah, exactly. No, it has been an eventful year since I started as well, right? Although I was only here for part of 2024. Also, that was crowned, I think, with the award that we got from the Dagens Industri, naming I-Tech one of the Gazelle companies for 2024, which we duly celebrated, you could say, at the end of the summer, which was very nice. Also, one of the key themes this year has been the renewal of the approval of use of Selektope on the EU market. As the predecessor Philip then announced here a year ago, it was a bumpy road ahead. We see that it has really been a bumpy road, and we will continue for a good part, at least of this year as well.
We will come into that a little bit more in detail, but we won't take the whole background. If you're really interested in that, I would really recommend our Q2 and Q3 announcements last year if you want to dwell into the background of where we are. I will more focus on the here and now, sorry, the here and now, as we say. What happened then in November last year was that we closed what was called the public consultation phase of this regulatory process. This is a standardized process that ECHA and the European Commission is following when they are reassessing approvals of the use of different substances for biocides, etc. It's worth to mention then that all biocides that are used in Europe are under severe regulatory pressure.
I-Tech is only one of the substances, you could say, under scrutiny by our regulators. In the public consultation then, all the general public and all stakeholders had the opportunity to send in input, you could say, arguments for why Selektope should be on the market and argumentations for sort of the case that was presented by ECHA. It was, you could say, a very good response, I think, from the maritime industry as such. We had various organizations, ship owners, shipyards, and of course also our customers, the paint companies submitting comments during the public consultation. I will come back to that in the next slide to give you sort of the highlight and a summary of what we know was sent in as input in this process.
Essentially where we are now is that the European Commission with the DG SANTE, they would take a look at all this material that came in in the public consultation, synthesize this, and then come back with sort of a discussion and recommendation then for the Standing Committee on Biocidal Products. This will happen now in March to the best of our knowledge. Originally, we thought that the voting would take place in June, but due to this process, we now estimate that most likely the voting and the final decisions will be in Q3 this year. We are talking anyhow about the second half 2025 when we hope to get sort of more of a final decision regarding the renewal of I-Tech's use in the EU region.
Coming in then to the input in the public consultation that we know of, we can summarize it sort of in three main buckets here. We start with sort of the industry perspective where a lot of the stakeholders, you could say shipyards, ship owners, and paint companies all pointed out that this decision would actually weaken EU competitiveness. It is a global issue since shipping is a global business, right? Although you could say, you could say that part of the building and servicing of ship is an Asian business, a lot of the industry and sort of the owners are still sitting in Europe. Of course, we still have a lot of ships running in Europe.
This would put severe restrictions on the shipyards and the ship owners and actually make it a tough time for them to be competitive if they cannot use state-of-the-art technology to reduce, for instance, fuel consumption. Another thing is the potential negative impact on the environment of a non-renewal for Selektope. Essentially here what the stakeholders emphasize is there is really a scarcity of viable alternatives. There are not many products that are registered in Europe for use as biocides for marine paint. The ones that are there, you could say that you could really question their viability as suitable alternatives.
Now since the EU and the IMO is driving for really reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of shipping, this would severely hamper that since Selektope is and has proven now to be a key technology in helping to battle and reduce the emissions from the shipping industry. Also not to forget then the invasive species element to this as well since Selektope is so effective to prevent hard fouling and barnacles from settling on the ships. The last point here was actually a socioeconomic study. This is actually also a standard part of this process, right? This is an independent study, but it has been financed from I-Tech, right? We have no influence on the conclusions or the results of this study. It was performed by Ricardo, which is a renowned specialist for making impact assessments of EU policy and regulations.
Essentially, to cut the long story short here, their 100-page report came to the conclusion there would be no benefit at all to society of not renewing Selektope's approval, but there would be substantial costs, you could say, both monetary and environmental costs of a non-renewal. All in all then, we feel sort of strengthened by a lot of the good support and of course hope that this will also shine through when we approach a decision point in this process during the year. On that, also we want to mention again the business development pipeline, right? We started to touch upon that in quarter three. Here we now, I can report that we have actually built a nice opportunity pipeline.
Of course, we're looking to fill it with more ideas, but we are working now structured and with a clear plan of strengthening I-Tech going forward with new complementing products and potentially targeting adjacent marine markets mainly. Complementing technologies is typically other active ingredients or biocides that could sort of complement the product offer we have today to our paint companies. Adjacent markets are other marine markets that sort of also could be interesting except the underbody part of ships. We're also looking into additional business models, but of course with this focus. All right, we come to the outlook part then before we kick off the question Q&A session. We do see that the favorable market conditions continue, and we anticipate new customer product launches also during 2025. Overall, we have a positive sentiment and view of this year as well.
As mentioned then, this EU process will continue to absorb attention and resources for the better part of this year with hopefully then a conclusion sometime in Q3. Also as Magnus mentioned, operational improvements have started to kick in, but I don't know if you want to say a few more words on that.
No, that is of course a continuous work that we are doing, but as we have informed earlier already the year before this year, we have made some investments in going to new producers, looking into enhancing our synthesis, etc. That work is going well, and hopefully we will be able to show that also on the finance side moving forward.
Yeah. That sort of concludes the highlight presentation, and we're eager then to accept and answer your questions.
Thank you very much, Markus and Magnus, for that presentation, and let's dive into the Q&A section here. Starting off with the first question. If the U.S. implements its threats of import duties against the EU, how can it affect I-Tech's expansion in the short and also long term?
Yeah, in the short term, of course it would have no impact, right? As you saw in the sales pit that Magnus showed, unfortunately, we do not have any sales to the U.S. today. As we mentioned in the report, we are in the regulatory process to register Selektope on the U.S. market. However, it is very difficult for us to give a clear timeline here because it really depends on the authorities and the EPA on the U.S. side. We know that we will be conducting additional testing and hopefully submit an updated dossier to them during this year 2025, but it may take up to two years as far as we understand to get an approval of the U.S. market.
By that time, of course, if there is import duty, it may have an impact on the business, but it depends also, I would say, on the relative competitive position of Selektope versus the solutions that then would be available on the U.S. market. We, of course, would have an option to start production locally in the U.S. market if we wanted to, so as a way to mitigate that if it would be a serious barrier in the market.
It is promising to see that your customer base has diversified with CMP now constituting around two-thirds of your sales. However, can we still assume that CMP sales have increased in terms of absolute numbers, or are they somewhat flat?
I think we already gave the answer to that question. As I said during the presentation, the sales of CMP increased by more than 20% also during 2024. No, they have not flattened out. Of course, we cannot anticipate 40-50% growth every year on those, but they are in a positive momentum as well. As I said, during 2024, they grew with more than 20%.
There is significant additional potential still with CMP.
Yeah.
During the quarter, you grew your total share of sales in Asia to 97%. Do you foresee this share staying this high?
We do not have any strong indications that Asia will decline. Of course, when we are up to the level of 97% for the full year, I would say the way down is a little bit easier than the way up because we should take it even more. We have ongoing customers in Europe as well and with good traction on the market, but we have even better traction on the Asian market, so to speak.
I think it also will depend how the EU process pans out, right? If there would be a positive sort of result of that this year, of course, there would be a basis for continuous growth also in Europe, right? If not, then that may have to wait a little bit, right, to finally conclude sort of what is the potential for the EU market going forward.
Can we get an indication of how much the external costs were linked to the regulatory process, and were these in line with other quarters or higher, and what can we expect going forward?
I think for the last part of the question, we should expect that they will continue. We will put in efforts in doing it. It was a slight increase during the Q4, roughly SEK 2 million compared to in average SEK 1.5 million during the previous quarters, but it is no huge change, but a slight increase for the Q4.
What was the board's argument as to why not proposing a dividend on 100% of net profits given that you already hold a significant net cash position?
We are also looking to invest for the future. I think that is one of the key arguments as well.
Very impressive growth in the quarter. Are you seeing any inventory build-up at a customer level, or what's your view on that?
That is really hard to say. Of course, there can be some inventory build-up at the end of the year, but also the main reason for the growth was the eagerness from the customers to have the deliveries. I would not assume that that is a huge build-up. As we have been discussing over and over on the quarterly calls, it will have ups and downs in the quarters over the year, but as Markus said, we still see a very positive momentum at customers.
I mean, as an example, you can see that Q2 2024 was higher than Q3, right? You can see that we bounced back with a higher Q4. You will definitely have the quarterly variations. Of course, their stock build-up and inventory management is part of the reason for that on our customers.
You mentioned that a portfolio of opportunities have been identified. Without being specific, of course, can you reason as to what type of opportunities you are looking towards and how they could be expected to affect the organization?
Yeah, I mean, the real low-hanging fruit, so to speak, would be if we could find complementary active ingredients that would sort of further strengthen the value proposition that we have to the existing customers today, which we believe there is, right? There is something that we are exploring along those lines, right? That is, of course, a key focus, right? Something where we can tap into significant additional opportunity short- term, right? There is also various a little bit more longer-term initiatives. We also need to keep an eye on the future and the horizon to see other upcoming technologies, right? Whether that would be biocides or other complementary things that could help service our customers better.
Can part of the exceptionally strong sales growth in Q4 be explained by any kind of one-off or startup volume demand from a new customer or product?
I think we responded to that question also before, but we can say that it's no startup of new customers that affecting it like this. We have elaborated a little bit about potential effects from stock build-ups and stuff like that. I think that is a good answer to that.
What can you say about the seasonality of sales in this product segment? In a steady state, is it expected for sales to be lumpy over the calendar year, or is it primarily other factors?
It's really hard to say, right? Since we are in a growth phase as well with the company, we are very far from a mature sort of stage of the business, right? There are, of course, seasonalities and variations in the ship maintenance business as such. New build has been the key market for where I-Tech started, which is maybe a little bit more steady over the year. Of course, services and servicing ships also depend on things like seasons and climates and so on, right? It's really hard to say how it affects, but we know that there are quarterly variations in the demand, and that has to do with varying demand at our customer side, but also then inventory management considerations.
Can you talk a little bit about the regulatory approval process in Northeast Asia? You mentioned that Selektope is already approved for usage. Is this a time-limit approval, or how does this approval work in practice?
Yes, it has to be renewed in most markets at a certain time. I cannot recall exactly for Korea now, but I think it is in 2028, 2029 exactly, there is a renewal. I mean, we would have to continuously invest, you could say, in regulatory compliance and sort of staying ahead and in tune with the authorities on a global scale, right? It does vary, for instance, how the different regulatory bodies in the countries view different issues and challenges with chemical substances and with biocides. We have no indication so far we would have faced similar challenges in the Asian markets as we are facing in Europe, for instance.
About the EU process, you present a lot of positive feedback about the public consultation. Was there any negative feedback?
Not really to our knowledge. However, as you know, the public consultation, you could submit your comments either publicly or you could submit them confidentially. We have been able to, of course, take part of the things that have been sort of publicly submitted, but also then where customers and partners have potentially shared with us what they had sort of submitted. To our knowledge and awareness, we have not seen any negative.
Have you given or can you give some kind of rough estimate as to the amount of economic resources that the EU process is currently consuming from I-Tech?
I think I already answered that question as well. We had external costs during the final quarter of roughly SEK 2 million and roughly in average SEK 1.5 million during the other quarters. Of course, it also takes time from the organization, from me, Markus, but mainly Cecilia. In pure external cost, those are the numbers.
You communicated a supply and license last week. How much have you have that customer contributed to sales prior to the agreement?
We cannot comment on that specifically since the customer has asked also to remain anonymous at this stage.
Your gross margin improved in Q4. Do you have any guidance of how many percentage points it can improve from here?
No, of course, we have a view of it, but we do not have any guidance. It will increase a few more percentages over time, but it is also, as I said, it will come over time. No real guidance on where we will end up.
Thank you. Can you give us some more color on what an adjacent area could be? Are you looking for acquisitions or continue to grow in adjacent areas organically?
Both, I would say. Adjacent areas, we mean more sort of other markets within the marine technology sphere, right? Now I-Tech's business is very focused on the antifouling coatings of ships, right? There are other sort of oceanic installations and other marine applications which is adjacent, but I will not comment sort of specifically in detail what the projects are at the moment.
Do you feel that your odds for a derogatory approval are better now after the public consultation phase?
At least we feel strengthened, I would say, by the support of the maritime industry, right? I think what we found also encouraging is that sort of the key arguments that we brought forward to the process, right, of sort of both on the scientific side, you could say, on the classification of Selektope as an ED, but also this analysis of alternatives that the competent authority of Norway conducted, right? That is really, yeah, it's not correct, right? That was echoed again and again, you could say, from the support that was submitted by other stakeholders. We sort of got confirmation, I would say, in our views of the process as such and the conclusions that ECHA has made so far.
Thank you. On the customer pie chart you just showed, does the figure rank their importance by volume?
Can you repeat?
You should see that that's a market share of the paint companies, right? That is actually something we show mainly for illustrative purposes. To assess exactly the shifting market shares of the global antifouling paint manufacturers is a really difficult task, right? We are mentioning these top nine companies as really the ones with the biggest share. You would say out of those, there's probably four as a really significant share of the global market. We are not giving sort of any additional detail there on the relative sizes of our customers.
Okay, thank you. SG&A cost, excluding depreciation, was SEK 41 million in 2024. Can you give us an idea of the expected developments here for 2025? Do you expect to make any major increases in your SG&A cost base?
When we look into the development of the company, of course, we will increase cost over time. We will continue to strengthen the organization. We will make efforts in other areas. I do not have any major shifts that we are planning right now that should increase it significantly, but there will be an increase also next year. I am pretty sure about that. Of course, coming into the business development work, there is, of course, a potential that we will increase the cost over time in that area, both in identification, assessment of opportunities, etc., but also driving the opportunities moving forward.
Do you expect to have a fairly good idea on the outcome in the EU ED process after the discussion in March?
It's really difficult to say. At best case, we will have an indication, right? Nothing is final until you have a voting taken place, right? Sort of the decision, right? That, of course, can still be channeled. Of course, it will be a final in this process that we're in now, but the final say, of course, in EU going forward will not be settled by the closure of this process.
Okay, and we take one final question here. Good growth in China in the quarter, albeit from low levels. What do the prospects in the Chinese market look like going forward?
The potential is really big in China and really huge. We could say that the use of Selektope in new build is not as, sort of, let's say, as needed in the Chinese market as it is in the Korean market. Many of the Chinese shipyards are actually situated in river deltas where you could say the growth from barnacles is not such a big problem as it is in Korea and Japan, etc. That is specifically on the new build market, right? It has been the historical first penetration of I-Tech, right, and Selektope in the Korean and Japanese market. Of course, the relevance for the dry docking and maintenance market is as big for the Chinese market. There is huge potential here. Of course, a focus area for us going forward.
Okay, thank you very much, Markus and Magnus, for presenting today. Thank you to everyone who followed this presentation with I-Tech. I wish you all a great rest of the day. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.