Welcome, everyone. My name is Henric Hintze, and I'm an analyst here at ABG. With me now, I have the CFO of I-Tech, Magnus Henell, here to answer some questions about the company, which I have thought about in the past few days. So maybe you could just start by giving us a brief introduction to I-Tech and maybe yourself as well.
I would love to do that. Thank you very much for hosting me here today. It's going to be fun talking about I-Tech. I-Tech, we are a small company in Gothenburg, small in the name of manpower, but large in the sort of the spread around the world. I-Tech is focusing on commercializing fully towards the global paint industry a product called Selektope, which in short repels almost all barnacles of a ship, which then reduces cost of drag, which reduces carbon dioxide. Myself, I'm a CFO by training, I almost say, but no, I'm a professional CFO. I've been doing that role for quite some startups, four startups now, I think. This is the fourth one. Brought two of them into the First North Stock Exchange, and I really love growing companies.
Then this is probably a good company for you at the moment, because as you know, I-Tech had a really good year in 2023. You grew quite a bit. However, before we get into the long-term story and hopefully continued growth there, in Q4, revenue dropped a bit compared to earlier quarters. And I was just wondering if you could comment on that, what drove that, how should investors think about that?
Yeah, that's a very good question, but first of all, I think we should think about what a tremendous year 2023 was, with a 45% increase in top line. Of course, Q4 compared to Q1 to Q3 was a little bit worse. We dropped some in sales, but we had a really nice Q3. We had lovely Q1 and Q2, and you can't have that sort of turnover growth all quarters, all the time. We want to have it, but we can't have it. So we will have growth this year as well, so I think focus on what's coming. That's my advice to the investors, not so much about Q4.
Yeah, well, I guess the question that investors ask themselves, because your growth had been so nice and smooth before Q4, I guess they're wondering if there was anything in particular in Q4 that caused this, or if we can just expect a bit more uneven growth going forward?
I think we can expect uneven growth. It will go up and down, and I think Philip has talked about that in numerous of our quarterly calls, that it will go up and down. But I think we should focus, as I said, we will have growth 2024 as well. Maybe not as tremendous growth as we had 2023, but there will be growth, and we will grow it by profitability, and you mentioned some of the extra cost. Yes, we had some extra cost in. Some of the cost was due to the EU issue that we are discussing, most likely discussing even further later on, but also, we've made quite a good investment into work to start up a new manufacturer down in India.
Yeah, could you maybe tell us a bit more about that? You mentioned in the report that you're looking into potentially increasing the gross margin going forward. What potential do you see that, and how is it going?
I'm not going to talk about exact numbers, but the main reason we are doing this work down in India with the new supplier is that we see that there are potential. When we calculate on the raw material cost, what production should cost, et cetera, we see that there is a potential to further reduce the cost of production for us, which we also have proven with this new supplier. So we are in a situation where we can reduce production cost and increase gross margin in that part. On the other hand, we also know that we as Chugoku already have a good price, but once we grow with our customers, there will be scale effects also on the customer side, which will push down a little bit. But in total, it should have a quite nice positive effect in the long run for the company.
Yeah, well, let's hope so. But looking then at 2024, you expect growth, as you said, but we also expect some interesting events, hopefully, to take place. First, we have the EU regulatory process where we're expecting some kind of announcement during the year. And then also, you have previously mention that there are some potential product launches in the pipeline this year, could you talk about those two things, what's going on there?
If we start with the EU issues that we have, we are now in the phase of stepping into the working group committees of the EU, where you have specialists from all the EU countries that are discussing the different matters. One is toxicity and the current discussion, et cetera, which we are coming back to, so these working groups will have a result during the spring, and hopefully, I say hopefully, because we know they should have a response by May, June to us on their standpoint, and then in May, June, we have then, I think, two ways. Either they say, either they revise their opinion and say, well, this should be approved, then we have the fast line into approval by fall.
But more likely, maybe, I think, I don't know the likelihood of they changing directly now, but then we're going into a socioeconomic analysis, where we have 60 days to produce such a report, and then EU have roughly a year to discuss it and to decide upon if they should think about the socioeconomic impacts as well before they make the final decision. So it might come a positive answer May, June, and then we have a short.
Yeah, well, let's see. It seems at least like there are multiple avenues to get this sorted in I-Tech's favor. However, if the case were that you did not get renewed approval in the EU, I'm just wondering if you could comment on what that would actually mean for I-Tech, considering that around 90% of your sales are in Asia and the European market for your product is really quite small in comparison to Asia?
Yeah, and we shouldn't forget to come back to the other customers, which are more likely we'd like to talk about. But the direct effects would be that we lose 10% of the revenues, of course. What will happen with these? I don't know. It could be the case that all of these repaintings move to Asia as well. So we actually don't lose anything. We don't know that. But to be honest, probably we lose 10% of the revenues, which is, it's bad, but it's not tremendously bad. Then I think we have two paths moving forward. Either we have a situation where almost all the biocides have some issues. There are examples of biocides that are in the kind of phase that I-Tech is in, where they are sort of, the recommendation is to ban them.
But they've been in that phase for seven years now, seven, eight years. And they don't drop anything in revenues. They actually increase because the paint manufacturers realize they need to have it. And that could also be the case with I-Tech. And it's likely if everyone is under pressure, so to speak, it's likely that we continue to sell and continue to grow with it. The more unlikely event is that I-Tech and Selektope will be the only biocide that will sort of get in the crossbar. Then there are more trouble. I can't specify how much more, but that is very unlikely, I would say.
Of course. Yes.
But coming back to the customers, yes, Philip has talked about quite a lot that we have two potential new customers with product launches the coming six to 18 months, something like that. And we are more and more convinced that there will be launches. Most likely, there will be a launch during the spring with the new customer, with the global paint that they will launch. And hopefully, that it will not come up to Shikoku volumes directly, but hopefully, there will be some contribution as well. The second one, let's wait and see. Hopefully, we could announce that as well.
All right.
But I can't promise anything.
I'll keep an eye out for the press release then when it comes, but to dive down a bit deeper in the market and your customers, it's quite a concentrated market. There are a few large players which dominate most of the market here, and your main customer, Shikoku, of course, as you mentioned, they currently contribute a very high portion of your revenues. You do have two other customers with active products on the market, if I'm not misremembering, at the moment. Could you just explain what made Shikoku grow so quickly and what's needed to make other customers start growing at that kind of pace with your product?
I think one of the reasons why Shikoku is such a large part of our sales is that they started very early. They bet on that we would get an approval, so they actually had a product on the market already in 2016 when we received the EU approval. None of the other ones were close to that at that time, and they built the technology around Selektope, so they already from the beginning did a lot of work in including Selektope and take the main benefits of it, i.e., removing barnacle fouling on the ships. So that is one, they have really early betted on it, and the other ones, they are betting on it, and they are developing around it, but things take time, and actually, we do have six of the nine largest customers are customers today.
Yes. There are some different lines between what level of customer they are with you. But yeah. All right. You are positive on the market there, but it takes time.
It takes time.
For customers to really start picking up with you.
Yeah, I really hope that we could start to communicate some real progress during this year, either with the second largest one that are competing a little bit with Shikoku or any of the new ones, hopefully, that are actually picking up volumes, which we actually could see in the P&L as well, not the small ones.
Very interesting. All right. In Q4, you also announced your first dividend.
Yes.
That's probably a welcome, maybe not surprise, but welcome news to investors. But even after paying this dividend, your balance sheet still looks quite strong, I would say. Could you just explain what went into the decision of starting to pay this dividend, what the plan is going forward with dividends, and how you're thinking about the remaining part of your balance sheet? Are there any new avenues you're looking to explore organically with the company, or are there any M&A opportunities you're looking at? What are the thoughts there on capital allocation?
There were a lot of questions in that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I will try to start. First of all, dividends. Dividends or not dividends. That has been the question for quite some time now, actually, because we have a lot of cash in the accounts and have had it for quite some time as well. But I think it's a little bit of showing our belief in the company and the belief of continuous growth with profitability that we actually took the decision to recommend, well, the board took a decision to recommend to the annual meeting that we should have a dividend. I don't anticipate that it won't go through, but I think it is a proof that both management and board really believe that we are on a level with the company where we can start to share directly with our investors, also to attract maybe a different kind of investors as well, the more direct investors.
And then the second part, what will happen in the future, of course, we wouldn't introduce a dividend scheme unless we believe that we can continue. We should never do that as a one-time effort. And that is also the reason why we divided it into two parts now, one with the ordinary dividend and one with the extra dividend. And where I think we should anticipate that the ordinary dividend will be in the range of what we saw, 40%-60% of the annual profit, somewhere there. And if we deem it unnecessary to keep the remaining part, of course, we can take a decision for even further extra dividends because we have too much cash just to run the business. Yes, we do that. But we also are looking into opportunities to actually actively grow, to invest in and grow in the company.
We will use, during this year, with these new suppliers some additional funds in working capital, but nothing that would jeopardize the cash balance in the company.
Yeah. All right. Finally then, your longtime CEO, Philip, has chosen to leave his post as CEO here. Could you just briefly comment on what led to this decision and how the work is going to find a new CEO? What are you looking for there? How do you think it will affect I-Tech going forward?
Yes, once again, a lot of questions. And once again, it's quite a hard question to answer because I can't really pick Philip's brain. Why does he take the decision right now? But I know Philip since many years. We've been working together before I-Tech as well. And he wanted to develop both companies and himself. And right now, it feels that it's a good time. If we're going to do another assignment, well, we're young, but we won't get younger. So he wanted to give some time to yet another assignment during his career. Then it was a good timing. And also everything in combination that he could then stay within I-Tech because I think that is really important for our customers, mainly, that he actually has an active role still in the company because you know Japanese chairmen. They don't like the change.
And he will stay as a chairman. That is actually promotion for him. It is the CEO's boss. And given the recruitment, I don't have all insights into it. I know that we have hired a recruitment firm. They are scanning the market for potential. I think they're halfway through the scanning, I think. Some names are popping up, I guess. But I think in short, what we look upon mainly is we have been discussing this a little bit broader focus of I-Tech, where we're looking into a little bit more about the specialty chemistry business. Can we find yet another substance that we can promote or develop within the marine application areas? And it is what we are looking for in that case is a CEO with the connections into this specialty chemistry area.
Or otherwise, we need to sort of bring that competence into the company and maybe as a business developer or something like that. But that's the main focus.
Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much for that. I think that's all we have time for today. Thank you all for listening.
Thank you. Bye-bye.