Hello, welcome to today's Finwire Broadcast presentation with KB Components. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session, so if you have any question, you can submit them in English using the form on the right. In case you are following the report at the phone, you can push star 9 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and star 6 to lower the hand. With that said, I'll hand the floor to you. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you very much. This is Magnus Andersson here, CEO of KB Components, and I'm sitting here in Örkelljunga, Sweden, together with Michael Grindborn, who is the CFO of KB Components. Welcome everybody to the presentation of our year-end report, 2025. Today's agenda will be, as you can see in front of you, KB Components, introduction to the group. We will proceed from that into a Quarter four update and an update on the different markets and regions, what we have seen in the last quarter and during 2025. We will present the financials for the quarter and the full year and also split per region we operate in. At the very end, a financial position slide as well as some concluding remarks.
KB Components is a leading global supplier of polymer components. We were founded in 1947, so an old company in this industry, and we are active with sites in many parts of the world. Our vision is to be a world leader in technologically advanced and sustainable polymer products and our overarching goals are growth, profitability, and employee engagement. Our main customer segments are in the automotive field, which is roughly 55%-60% of our turnover, and then electronics and other general industries, and also medical segment is areas we operate in.
We have production facilities, as mentioned, around the world, meaning we can quickly and efficiently deliver products to our customers no matter where they are, and we strive to be close to our customers to provide them with the best possible service. Looking at the group, we are more or less a global company. Employees over 2,000 people, headquartered in Örkelljunga, Sweden, with production sites spread around the world in Canada, USA, Mexico, several countries in Europe, as well as India and China. Our strategy is based on three main pillars: technological leadership, operational excellence, and global presence.
Our financial targets are, as mentioned, profitability, where we strive to be above 10% on EBIT, growth over 10% per year, and job satisfaction and engagement, measured annually, and here we strive to be above 75% on an engagement score. Looking at quarter four and the full year of 2025, we titled this as A Year of Transition in North America with Successful Acquisition-Driven Growth in Other Regions. The full year 2025 was categorized or characterized by somewhat different picture between the regions. Europe and Asia experienced good growth, driven by acquisitions in the regions, and good development of those acquisitions. North America has been in a transition phase.
We have had behind us in 2024 and first half of 2025 a phase where we have one new business and with that had strong sales of tooling, injection molding tooling, which has been a part of the result. From that, we move into a phase where we are preparing ourselves and also our customers are preparing for running production of parts tied to this new business, which will start ramping up in quarter 2 of 2026. This transition has had a somewhat negative impact on our turnover here during Q3 and Q4 of 2025.
Sales in North America has also been affected negatively by currency effects due to the weakening of the US dollar, which is the currency we sell most of our business in North America in. The full year negative impact from this has been 115 million SEK on the sales number during 2025. We should also say that despite the challenging result in 2025 in North America, we have had positive developments in that region as well.
We have strengthened our presence by the acquisition of a new facility in Windsor, Canada, which will be our manufacturing, our main manufacturing hub in North America, and we will create there from 4 present sites, 1 large new site that will encompass all of our production in Canada with more efficiency and with more capacity for the coming years. At group level, we have sales growth of 3%, that is -9% organically for the entire group. The EBITDA have developed from SEK 409 million in 2024 to SEK 370 million in 2025, adjusted for items affecting comparability. Profit before tax has gone from SEK 153 million in 2024 to SEK 122 million in 2025.
That is moving from 5.6% to 4.4% in 2025. Also, recent acquisitions have happened during 2025. With that, we have further broadened our customer portfolio of global key accounts, which is a good opportunity for organic growth for our company. To ensure this value, we have initiated a commercial excellence program in the group in the second half of 2025, which we believe a lot in will help us generate a geographic expansion with these customers that have joined or has a relationship with KB Components due to these acquisitions. Group cash flow from operating activities was strong, landing at SEK 281 million.
In addition, our financial position is further strengthened through a new three-year bank agreement with DNB Bank, providing KB with a credit facility of SEK 1 billion and a global cash pool solution. Looking at the various markets we operate in, North America is in this quarter and full year affected by lower tooling sales, as I mentioned before, compared to the year before. This is especially evident in Q3 and Q4. In Q4 alone, this number was SEK 123 million lower than the same quarter in 2024. That is the tooling sales. This is due to an expected transition from project and tooling sales into running production.
Looking at the market as such, it continues to be affected by a degree of political uncertainty in the USA, meaning some projects are delayed or put on hold. For our business, we maintain a positive outlook of 2026 in the region. Europe developed well for KB Components in the quarter and in the year. It is driven by the acquired businesses in Estonia and Finland that joined the group in January or in December of 2023, actually. Adding sales growth and is developing as per plan in terms of profit improvement for those entities.
In total, 2025 showed sales increase of 400 million SEK, that is +36%, and an EBITDA improvement of 45 million SEK, which is 31% for the region as a whole. In October, 2025, we made a further acquisition in Germany, which adds 13 million EUR of sales, almost 14 million EUR of sales, to the group from three legal entities that were acquired in October of 2025 in Germany. We see the European segment of KB Components increasing also in sales in 2026, driven by acquired volume.
Uh, the, uh, acquired, uh, footprint and the, uh, legacy sites we have, uh, is also, uh, giving us opportunity to, uh, do further structural improvements with a focus on creating larger and well, uh, utilized production sites. Uh, Asia has continued the positive trend from earlier in the year, also in Q4. Uh, sales went from sixteen million in Q4, twenty twenty-four to sixty-one million in the same period in twenty twenty-five. Uh, and for the full year, the corresponding numbers are sixty-one million S- Swedish krona in twenty twenty-four, uh, growing to one eighty-nine million Swedish krona in twenty twenty-five. Uh, this is mainly driven by the acquisition of, uh, JBJ Technologies Limited in India, which is being renamed KB Components India in the near future.
This unit has developed very well, as a part of the KB group, both in terms of profitability and organic growth. The region's EBITDA result has, for the full year, has improved from SEK 17 million to SEK 50 million in 2025, adjusted for items affecting comparability.
Yes, to have a look in more in detail of the quarterly results. Net sales in the fourth quarter amounted to SEK 716 million, down from SEK 818 million last year. Acquired growth was 13%. The currency effect was -4%, organic growth was -21%. In the quarter, as Magnus mentioned before, also North American project tooling sales, went down by SEK 123 million. It also have a big effect of the quarterly sales. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 91 million compared to SEK 94 million the year before, corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 12.7%, up from 11.5% the year before. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 370 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.2%.
Adjusted operating result amounted to SEK 42 million, down from SEK 51 million the year before, corresponding to adjusted operating margin of 5.9% compared to 6.2% the year before. For the full year, operating profit was SEK 181 million with an adjusted operating margin of 6.5%. Our adjusted earnings per share amounted to SEK 0.34 compared to SEK 0.41 the year before, and earnings per share in the quarter amounted to minus SEK 0.19. For the full year, adjusted earnings per share was SEK 1.77, and earnings per share was SEK 1.65, slightly down from SEK 1.77 the year before. Cash flow from operating activities in the quarter amounted to SEK 24 million compared to SEK 55 million the year before.
For the full year, we see a good improvement in cash from operating activities amounting to SEK 291 million compared to SEK 157 the year before. We continue with the regions and start with North America. Here we have net sales amounting to SEK 304 million, down from SEK 537. Of course, the big part is the lost project sales of SEK 123 million. In total, it's corresponding to 42% of our total net sales. We have also a negative currency effect of 5% in the quarter, and the organic growth was minus 38%.
For the full year, we have sales of SEK 1.25 million, down from SEK 1.65 billion last year, and it corresponds to 44% of the total net sales. adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 27 million compared to SEK 64 million the year before, corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 9% compared to 11.9% the year before. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA of SEK 127 million with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 10.1%. adjusted operating results amounted to SEK 5 million in the quarter, compared to SEK 42 million year before. We have an adjusted operating margin of 1.5% compared to 7.8% the year before. For the full year, operating profit of SEK 51 million with an adjusted operating margin of 4.1%.
Looking at Europe, here we see an increase in sales, up in net sales from SEK 265 million up to SEK 360 million, corresponding to 50% of the total net sales. Acquired growth stands for 25%, currency effect -1%, and organic growth 12%. For the full year, SEK 1.4 billion compared to SEK 1 billion last year and 49% of the total net sales. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 47 million compared to SEK 23 million the year before, corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.1% compared to 8.7% the year before. For the full year, EBITDA of SEK 193 million, corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 14.1%.
Our adjusted operating result amounted to SEK 30 million compared to just SEK 4 million last year. Adjusted operating margin of 8.4%. For the full year, operating profit of SEK 110 million, with an adjusted operating margin of 8%. The Asian region, net sales increased to SEK 61 million compared to SEK 16 million the year before, and it corresponds to 8% of the total net sales. Main increase coming from the acquisition in India, because the currency effect was -11%, but also the organic growth in China was 38%+. Good growth also in China. For the full year, net sales amounted to SEK 189 million, corresponding to 7% of the total sales.
adjusted EBITDA amounted to SEK 16 million compared to SEK 7 million the year before, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 26.7%. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA of SEK 50 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 26.2%. Our adjusted operating result amounted to SEK 7 million compared to SEK 4 million the year before, with an adjusted operating margin of 12%. The full year's operating profit was SEK 25 million, with an adjusted operating margin of 11%. Finally, a look at our financial position. Group's total assets amounted to SEK 2.2 billion. As a matter of a decrease of 3% despite the acquisitions we have made. We have tightened a little bit our balance sheet. Equity amounted to SEK 775 million.
With an equity to asset ratio of 26.4% compared to 26.8% the year before, so almost the same. Net debt amounted to SEK 899 million. Our interest-bearing net debt, including lease liabilities in relation to adjusted EBITDA, amounted to 2.5. If we exclude lease liabilities, the interest-bearing net debt in relation to adjusted EBITDA is 2.0. The board of directors proposes to the annual meeting that a dividend of SEK 1.5 per share be paid to the shareholders for the 2025 financial year. It's the same dividend as the year before.
We had good news last Wednesday last week that KB Components and DNB Bank Sweden has entered into a 3-year credit facility agreement of SEK 1 billion with an extension option of an additional 2 years.
Thank you, Michael. Some concluding remarks. We'll say that 2025 is a year of transition, positioning us for growth in 2026. We have a positive view of our market and our prospects for 2026. Year-over-year volume development in the short term is expected to be stable and slightly increasing in the medium term of 2026 and onwards. This is driven by new business ramping up in North America from the later part of Q2 and acquisitions in Europe contributing positively to this volume growth. Asia is also expected to continue growing organically, and our overall underlying market we view as stable. We continue to focus on embracing and integrating acquisitions and capturing synergies between our new and legacy sites.
Our growing footprint provides us with more opportunities to service our global customer base, but as we talked about with our commercial excellence program. It also gives us an opportunity to optimize our production structure and our unit utilization to improve profitabilities. Initiatives are ongoing to this effect, both in North America and in Europe. We are working on production transfers from Canada to Mexico, for instance. Also in Europe, we have, during the last quarter, closed one of the new sites in Germany, the Spectrum site in Lichtenau, which was a small site, and integrated that business into the larger Schliessmeyer site, but also to our Slovakian entity in Žilina in Slovakia. Our group will continue developing with new acquisitions.
Ernst Plastics Group, as I mentioned, in Germany, with the three sites, was acquired during Q4 in October 2025. Adding this type of bolt-on acquisitions will continue to be a natural part of our of KB Components achieving our targeted growth as well as our profit targets over time. Yeah, with that, I thank you, and I think we will move to a Q&A session.
Thank you, Magnus and Michael, for your presentation. We open up for questions. As a reminder, if you are following the report at the phone, you can ask a question by the dialing star nine to raise your hand. The first question come from the number that ends with 3, 5, 7, 6. Please go ahead.
All right. This is Ampersand from Handelsbanken. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Excellent. A couple of questions from my side. Would it be possible for you guys to kind of talk about how you see tooling sales for this year in terms of what you have in your pipeline? Just to get a sense on if it's a major volatility depending on where you are when you ramp up new product lines. I'll take them one by one instead of loading a lot of questions on you, if that's okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think if I heard correctly, the question was around how it will develop in 2026. That is a more normal year when it comes to tooling sales, I would say. We had a period in North America, Canada specifically, with a very high level of tooling sales as we were preparing ourselves for the Rivian R2 model being launched, which is launching here in Q2. The majority of that tooling sale has already taken place during 2024 and 2025, it will be tooling sales to that customer of a much lower level in 2026 and onwards until we start looking at other new business going forward.
That there in North America is where we have the big change in sales related to tooling sales. In our other markets and our other sites, it is more stable year on year, I would say.
Excellent. If I move into, well, in terms of the Plastone acquisition, are that now contributing and in line with the European margins or are they still diluting your margins?
Plastone is still not at the level of the average margin that we have in the group, but they are improving and have improved quite a lot during 2025. There is still a little way to go before it reaches our average margin.
All right. On the German acquisition, should we think, I mean, the same duration as you had on Plastone? It's just when I, when I read the report, it seems like you were moving a little bit ahead of maybe a normal integration with the German acquisition or maybe I'm misinterpreting that?
No, I'm not sure if I captured your question fully there, but the German integration is going to follow the same types of steps as with other acquisitions. What is different in Germany is that we already in the due diligence phase identified that one of the sites is too small to operate effectively. In our industry, larger sites with good utilization level is important. Because of that, it was a quickly made decision based on the due diligence findings that the Spectrum site in Lichtenau should be closed and transferred to Slovakia and to the Schliessmeyer site in Germany.
We are now since October, they have been a part of the KB Group for a few months, and we are in the middle of that integration phase and embracing phase and identifying the steps forward, which will include the same levers as we normally use in terms of working on pricing to customers and working on production efficiency and also production consolidation, and in the aim of generating better utilization of our plants. I hope that answers your question. I'm not sure if.
Yeah.
Actually correct.
No, no. That was spot on. Spot on.
Okay.
The last question from me then. If I look at the Rivian R1 last year, it was around 42,000 sales. Also listen to the guys on the call and reading the results, it seems like if I take like the midrange guidance with the R2 and the R1, around like 63,000-64,000 units, you were under-absorbing fixed costs in the North American business, given that you have no tooling sales and you were planning for the ramp up. On this, on like the midrange guidance on R1 and R2 from Rivian, like 60,000-64,000 units.
Uh.
Would you not be under-absorbing any cost or you would be adding to the profitability of the North American business on that, those volumes? Is that a correct assumption?
Yes. I mean, those volumes that they are indicating to their investor market are lower than the volumes they are indicating to us in our production planning and so on. We have, of course, discussed that with Rivian. We are getting indications of higher levels around 90,000 cars in total for 2026. That is what we're pre-preparing for. At 65,000, there would still be some under-absorption in our plant if those were the levels that they end up selling in 2026.
Super. That was the last question for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much. If there are no more questions at the phone, we go ahead with some written questions. The first one is, would you say that Plastone is now operating close to KB Group average volumes?
As Magnus mentioned, not fully, but they are improving, but they're still a little bit lower than the average in Europe.
Thank you. Next question is, how much more can you, in terms of efficiency improvement on how to drive margins, and how much is that you need volume?
Volume of course, is one part, but we are especially in Europe with the new acquisitions, still working quite a lot with business improvement as well. Have good opportunities to do that. We are also looking in North America with some transfer of some business from Canada to Mexico, where it's man intensive products. Also that we are looking at improvements also due to moving production and have more efficient plants.
Thank you. Next question is, should we interpret the commentary on structural activities in Europe as indications of facility closures, or is it as likely that you, for instance, continue to do M&A in Germany to achieve scale?
I mean, the comment is around doing what we always do. We look at transferring production that is labor intensive, as Michael just mentioned. If we have a labor intensive production in a higher cost country, we look at where can that be produced in our sites that have a lower cost to operate, for instance. It is a combination of that. Also, yes, as we mentioned in this presentation, we also continue to look at further acquisitions that gives good synergies in our group.
What are the terms of the credit facility with DNB and compared with existing loans?
It's better margin. We mentioned in our press release last week that it will give us an improvement of roughly 5 million SEK in financial cost. We get less financial cost of roughly 5 million SEK for the year.
Next question is: What is left to do in order to take Plastone to group margin?
What is left to do is, yeah, it's journeys we've always already started. It is pricing improvements is one of the key things we're working on now when it comes to the Plastone entity. We have also, we had a, like, a satellite site in Estonia in Haapsalu, which has been closed during the later half of 2025, and moved into the bigger site in Tallinn. It is around these structural changes in optimizing the utilization as well as pricing activities, both on the cost side and on the selling price side.
Why did the sales decrease in the fourth quarter compared to last year?
As we mentioned, one big part is this project tooling sales that decreased by SEK 123 million. Of course, also currency have the quite big effect of -4% in total. That was the two main reasons.
Why did profit after tax become negative in Q4 2025?
Yeah, a part of this is, as we mentioned, that we didn't have a full absorption of fixed cost in especially North America. Also of course the volume make that we don't get the same absorption of total depreciations and so on. It gives a negative effect also on EBIT level and then also, of course, on profit after tax.
What is happening in North America, and when do you expect growth to return?
I think that comes back to the answer we gave on an earlier question. What is happening is that we are coming out of a phase where we've had a lot of tooling sales with high values to customers, especially to Rivian, for starting or winning production for their R2 model that is launching here in Q2 of 2026. When they launch that car into the market, we are also starting the production of running production, so to say, of parts. That will gradually ramp up during 2026 to the levels that we were indicating before, of 90,000 co-vehicles in total for Rivian, out of which around 45,000 are coming from this R2 model.
The second half of 2026 is when we will, believe we will see a bigger ramp-up of volume in the Canada site primarily.
How have the recent acquisitions helped the company during 2025?
The recent acquisitions, I mean, we haven't talked a lot about India. If we look at India, we made an acquisition of JBJ Technologies in January of 2025. That has had a very positive impact of our, on our sales in the region Asia. It has improved in profitability. It's actually running at very good profitability compared to the group targets as well, and is growing organically. It is a market as well, India, that we believe a lot in and we see has strong growth potential for us going forward. The Plastone entities we've talked a little bit about, they have developed well.
They have, you know, developed as per plan when it comes to profit improvements, so we are happy with that acquisition as well. Then, when it comes to Germany, it has developed our group in the way that we now have a footprint and a presence in the important German market. Those were businesses that need profit improvement plans, and that is what we're actioning as well. That is also reflected in the purchase price of those companies that was bought at a badwill. That has also positively impacted our group and given us opportunities for the future.
They are still at an early stage of integration and an early stage of their profit improvement plan, so to say.
What is the goal of the new commercial excellence program?
One of the main goals is to better capture the opportunities with global key accounts that we have adopted or acquired through acquisitions around the world. We see that there is big opportunity in expanding with those customers into our other sites around the world. The commercial excellence is around many things, but that is one of the key things to build a model and a process and a structure for doing that activity with these types of customers in a very structured way.
Thank you. We have come to the last and final question, that is: How does the company see the outlook for 2026, especially with the new production starting in the first half of the year?
As we mentioned in the report, we looked positively at 2026. If we look at North America that we talked a lot about here, it is in the later part of Q2 and onwards is when we expect to see a bigger ramp-up of production to the Rivian account, which is an important account for us in Canada. Also our U.S. site has some project-based business that has been won and is supposed to start ramping up here during the end of Q1. In North America, we expect to see volumes improving starting in Q2 and forward.
In Europe and Asia, we see a continuation of these acquisitions helping us to grow in these markets in 2026. We have a fairly positive view of 2026 volumes.
There are no more question at this time. I give the word to you, Magnus and Michael, for some closing remarks.
Okay. We just say thank you to everyone for participating and listening to this year-end report. Yes, that we thank you for your participation.
Yeah. Thank you very much.