Welcome to the Q1 report of 2022. I am Björn Karlsson, CEO of MilDef Group, and I have with me what is probably the best CFO in the world, Daniel Ljunggren. We'll take you through the first quarter in numbers and also in the highlights. What we will talk about today is the following agenda.
We'll take you through the MilDef universe for those of you who don't know MilDef from before, talk a little bit about the dynamics of a new world, of course, related to the recent events, and then we'll go into the Q1 highlights, and then Daniel will give you a financial overview, and we'll end up with a future outlook and a Q&A session in the end.
Just to make sure that we have a nice and smooth ride, we encourage everyone to keep your microphones muted during the presentation, of course, until you have questions to ask when we ask you to unmute them. You can also use the chat features to send in questions during this presentation.
All right. Before we begin with the first quarter, I want to take you through some of the MilDef universe, just some background. The company was founded in 1997, Swedish company founded in Helsingborg in Sweden. It's been almost one year since the IPO on Nasdaq Stockholm on the 4th of June last year when MilDef became a publicly listed company. We're a little bit more than 200 employees in five countries. The latest addition is Finland, which we'll talk more about later.
Our core markets are here in the Nordics, in the EU, and in selected NATO countries. Our customers range from government customers to other global defense companies. The portfolio consists of hardware, software, and services, and we grow this company organically through a partner network and through acquisitions.
What you see on the picture is our flagship headquarters in Helsingborg, code name the Fortress. This is what we do. We digitalize the world. We do so where the stakes are the highest. As you can see on the pictures here, these are situations. If you look at the bottom left, this is a Swedish peacekeeping UN operation in Mali. You see a picture of a field hospital for COVID-19 patients, and we can see pictures from guarding the coasts of Sweden and fighting forest fires.
That is the range of what we do, digitalization, but only where the stakes are the highest and also where the requirements are the toughest, where it's very cold, like in the Arctic, or very hot, like in the desert, with special requirements on the electronics that we produce. Finally, we digitalize when technology has game-changing potential, when it matters.
We do so with our hardware, with our software, and with our services. If we look at this, MilDef offers a multi-domain offering. Our products, tactical IT, which means things that can think, computers, things that can remember, storage solutions, and things that communicate, networking equipment. We do that on land, in air, and on the sea, and also underneath the surface. The cyber domain is enabled by our products and our services, across.
If we look and zoom in on this, you can see what this might look like in the real world. When we take an office like where we're sitting today, and you take all of the IT equipment out in the server room and also from the offices, you will have the users' laptops, you will have all of the rack-mounted equipment in the server room, and everything else related to IT equipment.
On this picture, you can see this has been mounted on the back of a vehicle sitting in a forest, and that is why we call this tactical IT, because it is used in tactical demanding environments. That's the hardware portfolio, everything you can find in IT, but made to withstand the tests of nature.
We also deliver services, everything from systems engineering before you actually start to digitalize all the way to support and training of your users, and also we deliver change management for those who need to use this digitalization. We deliver cyber security, and we deliver IT consultancies.
We're a full-spectrum service provider related to tactical IT. Last but not least, we also deliver software. We have a piece of software called OneCIS that is deployment software used to automatically configure and deploy your tactical IT systems. Everything related to mainstream digitalization in tactical environments is what we deliver in the MilDef portfolio. I will switch now to talk about the dynamics of a new world.
The reason I put myself in the picture there is because three years ago, we were asked to talk about the challenges that could come from a pandemic, from logistical challenges in the world, or even from something like war. We did that in the context of the defense industry's capacity and capability to deliver in such circumstances.
When we did this seminar, we handed out the book you see in the picture. The title says Russian Attack 2023: Sweden at War. Three years ago, this was a hypothetical theoretical exercise. Today it's not so much anymore. This is of course a very serious topic. It's related to the first quarter, not because of our business, but because of our world.
This is the world where we operate because our customers are the Sweden and the Nordics and other EU countries and their security and military functions. If you put this in a MilDef perspective, you can see there on the map, you can see where we operate. As I said, focus on the Nordics, focus on EU and focus on UK and US.
These are selected NATO countries, also a little bit of Australia. It's worth mentioning NATO a little bit extra. For those of you who are listening in to DI TV some minutes ago, you heard a question regarding NATO and the importance of that for a company like MilDef.
I think it's fair to say that a potential NATO membership for Sweden would be a positive for MilDef. I also want to mention, as you can also see on this map, that we already have operations in the U.S., in the U.K., and in Norway, and in Denmark. All of those are already NATO countries.
There is a little bit of a boost effect, of course, Sweden being our home market, if that would happen. That is from a pure market perspective. From the political perspective, we do not comment on that in this forum. This new dynamics, and this started of course with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it started really years ago, but now it took a new turn for the worse. That has led to a number of counter reactions from the world.
These turn into macro factors, and these are important to understand if you want to analyze and understand the business we are in. The big five macro factors for MilDef are that, one, the content related to digitalization grows in the platforms, in vehicles, and on soldiers and on security personnel, which means that our business becomes even more relevant.
Number two is a long-term increase in defense spending. Sweden goes from 1.3% to 2% of GDP and the rest of Europe are doing similar things. That means more money is being spent on modernization and digitalization, and of course, other things related to the capacity to defend democracy and the free world. Number three is a defense industrial focus on their core business. I mention, what does it mean?
It means that everyone needs to look at what they are specialists in delivering. If we look in Sweden, there are companies like Saab, for example, delivering jet fighters and frigates and submarines.
That's probably what they need to focus on to be competitive on this growing market. MilDef stays focused on tactical IT, and we see the importance of that growing. So we will stick to what we already know.
Number four is the supply chain and logistical paradigm shift. From just in time and lean production, we see new warehousing strategies. We see onshoring, nearshoring instead of offshoring, and we see a number of shifts happening that you also need to understand the impact of for our customers and for businesses like ourselves. Number five, there's a fundamentally changed view on defense.
We can see this from an investor interest. We can see this from a media interest, and we can see there's a big shift. It will make a big difference for us going forward when it comes to recruitment, having visibility and also having the kind of discussions that we will have on the following two days when we're here in the capital of Sweden talking to investors such as yourself about this company and our future.
Let's look into the first quarter and some of the highlights, and I'll keep this on a numbers basis. The revenue increases by 177% up to SEK 141.3 million. This is a big, of course, growth. It is not driven by the recent events in the world.
This is driven by the performance of our operations from last year, which is being delivered this year. We have an adjusted EBITDA of SEK 6.3 million, so we are profitable, not so used to being profitable in the first quarter, having a strong hardware revenue component. This is typically end of year heavy, but we have now managed to shift this a little bit and we are profitable and make more than 20 million more than the previous first quarter.
With that comes the EBITDA margin, which is 4.5%, so that comes up a lot from -29%, so we have really improved on that profitability. This is important for us, the order intake of that is 31% up versus the previous period. These are our future revenues, so we follow that very closely.
Finally, which, of course, makes Daniel very happy, we have a positive operating cash flow of SEK 43.4 million. These are growth numbers, these are positive numbers, and they are here for a reason. That reason is visible on the map that you see here. Again, these are our businesses. If we start with the Nordics, we have added Finland to our, the MilDef map.
We started MilDef Finland earlier this year, and that is kind of concluding our Nordic story. We are very strong in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. We intend to be very strong in Finland. That will have a big impact for us in the future as the Nordic collaboration grows. We want to map that and mirror that from an industrial perspective.
The U.K. is now out of their Brexit depression, and the business is going up there. We look forward to see more of that. The U.S. is also looking very strong going forward. That is the biggest defense market in the world by far. We have a presence there through our own company and also an acquisition. We've been there for 20 years, and we expect to be able to grow a little bit more.
I want to mention the acquisitions that we made last year. Two acquisitions, one called Defcon. They are now called MilDef Integration Sweden , and also Sysint in Norway, adding capabilities to our portfolio services and in software. The performance of these companies have been outstanding so far. Very happy about the acquisitions, very happy about the integrations, and also very happy about the performance.
This has changed MilDef into something new, stronger and more interesting than before. The story that we have talked about regarding tactical IT for a couple of years is now also what we deliver in a big way. The performance of these companies is what created the numbers that you saw on the previous slide. Let's talk more about numbers and I'll leave the clicker to Mr. Ljunggren.
Thank you very much, Björn, and hello to everyone joining this conference call. As Björn said, my name is Daniel Ljunggren, and I'm the CFO at MilDef since 2011. I'm very pleased to present the financial update here of the first quarter of 2022. Let's start to have a look at the Q1 2022 versus Q1 2021.
As we said, we can see a very strong net sales increase by 177% to SEK 141.3 million. That means the strongest first quarter in the company's history, so that makes us very happy. What else is very good, that is our important gross margin is continuing to be improved.
Q1 this year is showing 47% gross margin compared to 34% in the Q1 last year, and that's a big improvement for us. I would say the reason behind that is our portfolio has shifted a little bit when we had done the acquisitions back in the previous year. We have more software, we have more services in our customer offering right now.
It's not just hardware, and that's improving the gross margin very much. It also means that we have been able to address the components' increased prices very well as well. The operating expenses adjusted for our acquisition increased by 3% in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter in 2021, which I think also means that we have been able to flatten out the increased OPEX from last year.
All in all, this ends up with an adjusted EBITDA of SEK 6.3 million, which is a record high EBITDA for the first quarter for MilDef. Some of you have been with the company for a long time, and you know that we normally have a big loss in the first quarter, and then we make a profit in the end.
Now we see a really good first quarter put us in a good position. However, I would like to zoom out a little bit in a time perspective and look at this as a longer time period. I'm very pleased to announce that we have on the last twelve months hit an all-time high sales of SEK 560 million.
That's a growth of 35% if we compare to the LTM one year ago, and that's far better than our current growth target, and also better than our CAGR since 2016. I would say that the growth engine is accelerating here at MilDef. We also have been able to recover a bit of the adjusted EBITDA, and on the last twelve months, we ended up on 9.5%.
Instead, we had a little drop down there on 6.9% in the Q4 2021. Net sales, if we zoom out even further in time, so to say, and look at the growth journey since 2016, we can see that we continue to perform a CAGR that is +20%. We have this record high twelve months net sales.
We're also overperforming on our financial current growth target that is at least 15%, so. Order intake, so say our future revenues, we can see that we in the last twelve months here ended up on SEK 614 million, a decrease with 70% compared to how it looked one year ago.
However, I think that you have to keep in mind that we had a major order in Q4 2020, which makes this picture a little bit unfair. If we exclude that order from the UK market in the fourth quarter 2020, the underlying growth shows the growth of order intake of 28% compared to one year ago.
Order backlog, we closed Q1 this year with a record high order backlog at SEK 744 million. That's an improvement of 50% from one year ago. This is a little bit of a new landscape for us. The significantly higher order backlog, if we look back a couple of years ago, gives us a much higher visibility, which is a huge benefit for us going forward.
If we dip a little bit quickly into the balance sheet and our financial position, we can see that we still have a strong and healthy balance sheet. We have a net cash position. We have a very high equity asset ratio. We are debt-free to say. We have a minus when it comes to the net debt to the EBITDA, so to say.
We are in a very healthy position, makes us provide some and do more growth activities going forward, like M&A activities, et cetera. Financial summary, the Q1, if we go through that, we see strong sales versus the Q1 last year. We see +31% in order intake if we compare to the same quarter last year. The gross margin continues to be improved.
That's very important for us. We closed the Q1 with a high number of 47%, and we're not happy there. We would like to go over 50% in time. We see an all-time high when it comes to the net sales the last twelve months. We also see that the CAGR is still a little bit over 20% since 2016.
We see a record high order backlog going forward, means that we have put in some good business, and we can deliver on that going forward. We also see a very strong and healthy financial position and balance sheet going forward. That's the summary of the Q1, and now back to Björn again.
Thank you very much, Daniel. We'll just talk a little bit about the future before we open up for questions and answers. There are a few things that I think we should look out for in the future when it comes to this company. First of all, as already mentioned, we live in a new world now, and the dynamics have changed.
We see a new level of investments. We will see a new kind of competitive landscape. We will see new projects, new investments over the next few years. That means, of course, that we look closely at this. We look at our growth strategy. How do we recalibrate what we do today for the new world? I think we were pretty ambitious in the past.
I think we had good reasons to be so, and I think that we have a good strategic platform that can now be upgraded for a new world. I see that we have a focal point movement where we used to see perhaps half a year into the future. We now look 3-5 years ahead, and the big change is with the dialogue with our customers.
We look at the production planning. We look at having a time horizon where we see what's happening. We see the trends. We have a ballistic trend going forward, not just a near-term focal point, which is changing the way we work, the way we recruit, the way we plan. That is a big change for us as a company, and it's a very positive one.
We have looked for this, and we're happy to see that it's now happening. We want to create even stronger Nordic one-stop shop capabilities, which means that you can go to MilDef t for all your tactical IT needs across these domains, hardware, software, and services.
We want to coordinate the industrial efforts needed to accelerate the pace in which we build a secure society based on technology, which we strongly believe in. That is something that we take seriously, and we think we are well, perhaps uniquely well-positioned to take that position with our strong presence in the Nordics, with being one of the listed companies, in this domain and also perhaps having the guts to go for that scope.
Number four, we need to be a specialist supplier of the larger defense market. This is diversified strategy. We cannot be the same thing. We cannot be the Nordic one-stop shop in the US, which is a defense market of $760 billion. That is aiming for too much. We need to be sharp as a needle, and we need to have this focus, which is why we are a specialist supplier of tactical IT on the largest defense market.
These are our two strategies that we're rolling out. Also requires Made in X capability development. This is part of the national supply chain strategies that are being rolled out, new requirements. We are delivering Made in UK this year based on the MIV project that Daniel talked about before, which we're very happy about.
We know how to do this, and we are well-positioned to continue doing that in other markets. The final thing that I think is important, but I won't mention too much of this, but we see an expanded view on the addressable market segment for what we have. There is an increased appetite for tactical IT.
When defense grows from military defense to total defense, we see that our portfolio can serve a wider audience than today. This is something to look out for in the future. These are the five, and just a quick closing summary before I let you in.
There is a new world order. There is a new set of market dynamics that we need to understand, and probably as an investor, that is something to, yeah, work the numbers on and see what you think about that.
We are delivering the strongest first quarter in Middle East history. I want to be humble about this. It's a great result, a great quarter, but we are not a quarter company. It doesn't mean that we don't want to deliver great quarters. It means that we should do what Daniel did, zoom out a little bit, and we look at the 12-month or 24-month perspective.
When I talk about that, and I talk about looking 3-5 years into the future and having this ballistic view on this company, I think you will find that to be an interesting perspective to take. We're celebrating 25 years as a Swedish defense company.
We spent 20 years building a platform and a technology base that we have used to really stretch and bend that curve upwards and accelerate it into this 23% CAGR growth that you showed. There is another magic number, slightly higher than 23, but I won't mention that in this meeting, or our IR head of IR will probably be ahead of me.
We closely follow the NATO development, and I was asked this question earlier today in the interview, what we think about NATO and what it means for us. We only talk about this in a Middle East perspective, not a political perspective. It will be a boost for Middle East if it happens. If it doesn't happen, we also have NATO presence already in our other companies in the Middle East group.
That's all we have to say about that. I also want to mention finally in the closing summary, as you can see, we do not talk about M&A activities in the highlights because we did not close the transaction. We are very selective in which companies we actually go ahead and close a transaction with.
We work a lot with M&A, and we talk to companies all the time. We do not want to make an acquisition to make an acquisition. We want to make them as great as Defcon and Sysint last year, and we want to make it, if possible, even better than that. Stay tuned for that, but we are working hard on it, but we only deliver transactions when it makes sense to do so.
With that, I want to open up for questions and make sure that you follow us on LinkedIn, of course. Don't miss the fantastic 25-year anniversary movie on YouTube. Don't miss the annual general meeting on May 12th, and of course, soon it's time for another quarter and the Q2 report. Now let's talk more quarter one and bring your tough questions, please. All right. Let's see who we have here. I will try to moderate. Johan Rosenqvist, please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, Björn and Daniel. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes.
Hello, Johan.
Yes. Hi. Johan Rosenqvist with Danske Bank here. I have two questions. Let's start with the first one. With regards to you know the large order you received on the UK market in Q4 2020, I have noted that UK now has decided to exercise their option to purchase an additional 100 units of the Boxer MIV compared to the previously announced 500 units. How should we think about this? I mean, do you expect that this 20% increase should drop through to your order book eventually?
Yes. I'll start to say I think we had 428 vehicles, but maybe there was 500. This additional 100, it is not yet in our order books, and there is no contractual obligation for the customer to award us those.
I think it's fair to say that we have a little bit of an advantage delivering our products into the first 428. I think we're probably in a fairly good position to be part of the following 100. That's all I can say on that one.
Okay.
A good question and a good observation.
Thank you. My second question with regards to the type of warfare that we can see now that's been carried out in Ukraine, with a lot of handheld digital equipment being used, like tablets and remote controllers, et cetera, do you expect that the interest for this type of product category will be particularly strong going forward or for that or any other type of product category?
I think it's fair to say that digitalization and electronic digital advantage is something that has been observed quite a lot, and it's been reported heavily in the media. If you are able to communicate and if you know where your friends are and if you also know where your enemies are, then that is a huge advantage.
We can see that the cyber domain is receiving increased attention, and that means a lot of equipment. It's some of that is handheld, like you said, laptops, tablets, that is part of our portfolio. Some of that is vehicle-based to make sure that you have AI power and you can also analyze all your sensory information and other things.
In general, we see this increase of electronic content, I would say, across the board of digitalization. That is also translated, if you look outside of MilDef into sensor system, robotic system, and other automated systems that are based on technology, more than anything else.
All right. Yeah. That was all for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Johan. Erik Golrang, go ahead.
Thank you. I have three question. First one, a bit technical. The order backlog, you say it's up compared to year-end. How can that be when sales are above orders in the quarter?
That's a good question, Erik. It's down to that the Susient acquisition we did. They have revenues that are not recorded in the order backlog, so to say. We also have some effects in the order backlog. A weaker Swedish krona has impacted the order backlog.
Very good. Thanks.
Yes.
Second question, do I read you correctly that you're not as concerned about supply shortages any longer?
I would say. Should I start on this one?
Yeah. Go ahead.
I mean, the global situation is basically the same. There are longer lead times, and there is price increase, and there is uncertainty in delivery. It's a shifting dynamic, imprecise world, which is troublesome for us, of course, as a production line and a supplier.
On the other hand, we've had one year to learn and train, and we have mitigated some of these effects by changing and upgrading our warehousing strategies, and we have worked with some dual and triple sourcing.
We're putting engineering hours to be able to counter the effects of long lead time. I think we as a company have become a little bit better, but the global situation is the same. It's problematic for semiconductor components. Daniel agrees.
Okay.
Yeah. Agree.
Better or unchanged?
I would say unchanged, but our capabilities are slightly better to manage the situation.
Okay. Third question on the margin, 47% gross margin in the, as you said, seasonally typically slow first quarter, and then you wanna be above 50% longer term. It's starting to make your EBITDA margin target look something that might trick one looking into. Is there any?
I mean, do you see also a very large OPEX increase following that gross margin expansion or how should we think about 50% gross margin in relation to that 10% or above EBITDA target a couple of years out?
I mean, the EBITDA target of course is not set by the business, so I won't comment on that, but I'll talk about the scalability of the business, which is what, really, the question is about in the OPEX. We see that we have reached a stable platform when it comes to the corporate functions we need to be able to scale out.
We don't expect to have a heavy OPEX increase based on these improvements that we see. We see some of the scalability effects happening because of the globalization and the internationalization and the corporate governance model put in place and also the corporate resources.
We are confident that we have a scalable model that will work well. Regarding the targets, I mean, as I said, that's. We don't set those, but we are happy to try and deliver and overperform, of course.
Also note there on the OPEX cost that, as I said, 3% more OPEX cost in Q1 than if we compare to Q4. I think we have flattened out a little bit. Also remember that we have already had our yearly salary review in the figures for the Q1, so to say. 3% increase OPEX cost, I think it's showing that we are on a platform now on the OPEX cost that shouldn't be increased so much going forward.
Sounds like you had a tough salary negotiation this time.
Yeah, I have a tough boss.
Very good. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you, Erik.
Let's see what else we have. You can use the raise your hand feature, or you can write something in the chat, or just raise your voice. The silence speaks.
Well, I mean, for us, we just want to repeat that, and I want to extend our company's thank you to the people investing in our company and believing in our journey and our story and these 200 people working really hard to make a difference.
I think the first quarter showed that we are able to do so. I think the macro effects that we talked about are able to propel us forward as we try to accelerate. We are very happy to have you as part of this journey. We welcome your questions, whether that is during these conference calls or afterwards. We now go out of the silent period, so we are here to take your questions and calls.
You can also contact Olof Engvall, Head of IR & Communications, to set up a meeting if you want to know more, or reach out to us any way you'd like. That you are part of this journey, we believe in the future.
We think that this is a lot of fun, and we also think it's very, very important. It's a serious business, and we are serious people, but we are also allowed to have a little bit of fun. We hope that you do, too, and we hope that you continue to follow the MilDef journey, and we'll hope to see you very soon again. Thank you, Daniel.
Thank you, Björn, and take care, everyone, in this meeting.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
Bye-bye.