Good morning, everyone. We will give additional lovely people another 30 seconds to join this Q2 investor conference call, starting in a few moments. Just bear with me, and we'll make sure that we have everyone on board this lovely July morning in the year of 2023. I'll just kick it off then. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to this investor call with Mildef, with a special focus, naturally, on Mildef's reporting on the second quarter of 2023, and the first six months of the very same year. This call will be presented by Mr. Daniel Ljunggren, President and CEO, Mildef Group, and we expect approximately 45 minutes to be sufficient for the presentation and the Q&A. Maybe shorter, maybe longer, depending on how many questions you have.
A friendly reminder is to help me keep your microphones muted, otherwise, I'll do my best to make that happen, and we'll open up your mics for the Q&A session, or you'll just state your questions in the chat, and I will moderate it. For GDPR reasons and for information, we record this meeting. It will be published on our website around noon today. A very warm welcome to the Mildef second quarter presentation. With no further ado, please take it away, Daniel Ljunggren.
Thank you very much for that, Olof. It's very happy to see that so many people are joining this conference call, even if we are in the middle of the Swedish summer and vacation period. For those of you that have been follow Mildef for a while, you know that I'm normally here in my previous role as CFO, Now it's the first time I'm presenting in the new role as CEO instead. Let us jump into the Q2 report and the presentation. Start with the highlights that we see in the second quarter here in 2023. Number 1, continued strong momentum in sales. We see a sales increase in the second quarter that is up 144%, in which the organic growth is up 104%.
We see sales growth that is on all our geographic markets that we operate on, and we also hit the, I would say, quite a milestone for each company's history. We reached a sales on a rolling 12-month basis that exceeded 1.0 billion Swedish krona for the first time in the company's history. We see a strong momentum when it comes to sales, and that is something, of course, the order intake and the order backlog, 1, 2 year going back, has indicated that we will have a strong sales going forward. What I'm absolutely most happy about is that we now clearly improved our profitability. We see a gross margin in the second quarter that is above 50%, that will give a good boost of also further down into the P&L.
For example, I can say that we see high 16.5% EBITDA margin here in the second quarter. I would say that this proves our scalability and our scalable business model. When we are getting the sales volume and when the gross margin are where we want it to be, we see that there is a big impact on our profitability. That is something I'm super happy to present here for you today. I know that there has been some question marks around our ability to perform this kind of profitability due to the component issues we have had one, two year going back. Now we see that we have good impact on the profitability. If we look a little bit on the market, we can see a gradually more active market. We closed the second quarter with a record high order backlog.
It's close to SEK 1.3 billion. We see an order intake rolling 12 months that exceed SEK 1.2 million. More and more things are happening on the market, but as I said, we're still not yet any material impact due to Russian's invasion. We're still waiting for that kind of so-called ketchup effect, and we're still waiting for the slowness in the systems to be rippling down and impacting our order intake and order backlog. I hope that the major demands from the customer is lying ahead of us. Another input on the market is that we see a high-demand landscape, and we see that it's here to stay. We see now the largest increase in military spending in Europe in 30 years. We, on top of that, also see that there is a great need for digitalization in the defense sector.
I think there is a big debt for many countries to pay when it comes to modernization their defense. Our key markets, EU and NATO countries, they will continue to invest in the, their defense market, and I think that is something that we will see for a long time going forward. It's interesting that it's our key markets where we see the biggest increase in military spending. If we jump over to some key figures, you probably recognize them already. Net sales in the second quarter ended up on SEK 288.8. As I said, it's 144% increase if we compare to Q2 '22. If we zoom out and look the first half of the '23, we see an increase of net sales in 120%. I would say it's a fast-growing pace and continued strong growth in net sales.
Order intake, 11% up. We had a pretty tough year, a pretty tough quarter to compare with in 2022, but I think it's more important to zoom out and see what happened in the first half of 2023, and then we can see an increase in order intake of 74%. I would say it's a strong growth the first half of 2023, and that's despite yet no material impact post the Russia invasion. Of course, the profitability as we measure in here, in this case, in EBITDA, clearly improved if we compare to the second quarter last year. Second quarter last year, we had -9.6 million SEK in EBITDA. This year, in this quarter, it's 47.7 million SEK instead, EBITDA margin of 16.5%.
If we zoom out on a rolling 12-month basis, we can see now in EBITDA, reaching SEK 145 million, corresponding to a EBITDA margin of 13.8%. Clearly improved profitability, and I think that proves our scalable business model going forward. Last bullet in here is something that we keep a close eye to, and we work hard with, and we see now that we have clearly improved our operating cash flow, despite that we see continued high inventory due to our continued growth, so to say so. We predicted that the working capital as a % of a rolling 12-months sales to go back to where we have been back in the history, around something 20 to 25% within 6 to 12 months.
That will give us a good boost of the operating cash flow going forward. We see year to date, first half of 2023, we see a positive operating cash flow of SEK 24.5. If we compare that to the same period last year, it was SEK -5.6. I think the first half of 2023, we have moving forward in a better position when it comes to operating cash flow. Some business headlines here in the second quarter. Some of them have you maybe already said, because some of them has been press released. If we start from the left-hand, you can see extended framework agreement. We made an extension on additional two years with our framework agreement with the Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency.
It's a long partnership we have with the Norwegian Defence Materiel Agency, and we hope that that will continue for a long time going forward. Next is that we recruited a new CFO here in Viveca Johnsson, replacing me, now when I have stepped into my new role. Viveca has a very solid background in finance, and she has the past 10 years spending her time at another listed company here in Helsingborg, Nederman. I think she has a good experience also from operating in a public environment. Next is that we are accelerating our U.S. ambitions, and now we have put a new leadership in place for both our legal entities in the U.S. Jim Rimay, who today is the Handheld's CEO, is now taking over the responsibility for both Mildef and Handheld.
By doing that, I think we secure a more sales and business-oriented leadership in U.S. The U.S. market is by far the largest defense market in the world, and I think there is a huge untapped potential for Mildef. I know that it's a tough competition in U.S. as well, but I think our product portfolio and our company has some keys to be able to be successful on the U.S. market. The next one is that we have won some business related to the framework agreement that we signed with the Swedish FMV in 2022. They are now starting to placing order under that framework agreement, and we saw one contract coming in here on SEK 37 million. Next one is Astronics Corporation in the U.S.
They placed an order on SEK 30 million, it's also showing that we have continued good growth pace in the U.S. The last bullet is something that we announced here in the third quarter. It's showing that we are in top of innovation, showing that we now can win business related to high-tech things, and this was related to drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. We won two orders, and one was actually won by our subsidiary, Handheld, which is a very interesting order, and we see a good growth potential of that deal going forward. Something about the market, if we continue that, we see, the headline is Strong Market Fundamentals. If we start with number one, we see a great need of modernization and digitalization in the defense sector.
If you want to stretch it a little bit, you can say that pens, compasses, and paper maps are replaced by real-time digitalization, information. I think that if we look at the war here, Russia, Ukraine, I think one of the key factors for being successful is to have the right information in the right time. I think that the market has realized that, and this is something that we will hopefully see even more going forward, that they spend more and more money because they know it's one of the success factors in a potential war. The next one is, as I said, increased defense budgets in EU and NATO enables high demand, this is something that we can see for a long time going forward. We see now the largest increase in military spending in Europe in 30 years.
The demand is here, and the market is here to stay for a long time going forward. I also know that many, several countries are now in their defense planning processes. We are not actually seeing all the money putting into the budget and the system. They need to first decide how to move on and decide what they are acquiring. Mildef is quite late in this cycle. It's something to remember. Since the war started last year, 24th of February, our customer has prioritized operational ability, and they have spent more and more money on ammunition and things like that. Now I think they are turning their eyes towards more long-term programs, including modernization and digitalization to build threshold effects.
The last is very much said and written about, is the opportunities with a potential Swedish NATO membership. We see this as a clearly positive thing for the Swedish defense industry in the long run. Let's hope that Sweden will be a member of the NATO and that that can, in the long run, give us a positive effect as well. Something to mention, just if you go back on the market, is the need for smaller and smarter products with more computing power. The need for that is increasing, and we as a company are in a sweet spot, we could say, when it comes to those kind of things, because it's actually what we are doing and what we can do. It's interesting to see where that will take us.
Okay, we jump on over to the more financial summary of this presentation. If we start from the left hand, you can see our net sales on a rolling 12-month basis. You can see that we now are above SEK 1.10 billion. You can see that we have grown the company and the top line with 76% the last 12 months. On the right hand, you can see the development of the gross margin rolling 12 months, and we can see that we are steady around 47%, 48%, just below the 50% we are aiming for. In the second quarter here, isolated, it was above 50%, let's see if we can take that further on and be able to put the rolling 12 months gross margin also above 50%.
As I said, the profitability with the is the all-time high on a rolling 12-month basis, SEK 145 million, which is an EBITDA margin of 13.8%, and we have heavily increased this. If we go 12 months back, it's growing with 215%. It's clearly positive to stand here today and then see that the profitability is back for Mildef. If we look at the order intake, then, and I said also that it's on an all-time high, and we have exceeded SEK 1.2 billion. We can see it's for the fourth quarter in the row, we present an all-time high order intake. Also showing that the activities on the market is steadily growing. Also the order backlog, which is an all-time high, has grown with 41% if we compare with Q2 2022.
We still have a lot to do. We have still a lot in the order backlog, and if we break that down to how the deliveries are planned, we can see that for the rest of the half of 2023, we still have +SEK 500 million to deliver in the second half of 2023. We can also, hopefully add something to that. The, the window of our opportunities to sell and delivering for this year is still open, and we also have some sales that is not in the order backlog. It's more of the consultancy and the software business that is not in that one. Also looking into some of the more balance sheet-related items.
From the left hand, you can see net working capital, as I said, is more or less on the same absolute levels that it has been since we acquired Handheld. We can now see that in term of percentage of a rolling twelve-month sales, it's starting to go down again, and we ended up here with 31% in Q2. As I said before, hopefully, and this is what I predict, is that we will be back in 6 to 12 months, around 20-25% rolling twelve months, if you compare that to the net working capital. Also on the right hand, you see the net debt to EBITDA. There is the dotted line here is our target that says we should not be above 2.5% more than temporarily.
We saw that when we acquired Handheld here in the third quarter 2022, that we went over this 2.5 times EBITDA. We can also see now when we're closing the Q2 here, that it was temporary, and we are now back under the target, closing second quarter with a Net Debt to EBITDA of 1.9 times. I think it's clearly on the right path. We are attacking it from both sides. The EBITDA is going up, and we are repaying the acquisition credits. We're attacking it from both sides, I'd say. Priorities going forward. We started this year by really having a focus on customer delivery, so that will be our absolute number 1 priorities going forward as well. We need to continue to deliver to our customer.
That it was increasing, drives the increase in revenues, it driving the cash flow, etc., that is super important for us. Number two is the Swedish NATO membership and monitoring impact, also put Mildef in the right position for be able to capture the opportunities that we can have from a Swedish NATO membership. We need to be close and watch what's happening, also get Mildef in the right position to be able to capture opportunities. About capture opportunities, our main priority is also to capture opportunities, EU and NATO, our key markets going forward. We will see heavily increase in defense spending in EU and NATO, there is opportunities. It's just that we need to be super focused around that we will win the deal.
The next is improve our net working capital and operating cash flow. When you have a high growth rate, as we have at Mildef, and we are also a manufacturing company, there is a big chance that you're ending up tying more and more capital into inventory and other things. To be able to self-finance our continued growth, we need to work hard with the components you can find in working capital and cash flow. That is something that we will put an extra focus on going forward. Also materialize additional Handheld synergies. We have now reported that in the beginning of the third quarter, we won one deal that has big growth potential going forward. It's a development project together with one big defense company that is based in U.S.
Hopefully, well, after that development process, we can see that the volume orders will follow, and that is something we have ambitions to also take on to other customers and win more deals. This is mainly around selling Mildef or selling Handheld's product portfolio into the military domain, and that is something we spoke about already when we did the acquisition of Handheld. Last is the, as I said, continue to accelerate our U.S. expansion. Huge potential, I think, for our product portfolio. It's by far the largest defense market in the world. I think that we could be able to have some success on the U.S. market if we play this out right. Some in the end, some short outlook for 2023. We see positive expectations going forward here in 2023.
We closed second quarter with a record high order backlog. We have a more active market. We predict continued strong sales, order intake, and profitability in the rest of 2023. By that, I think it's time for the Q&A session, and hopefully you have some good questions for me.
Thank you, Daniel. By the way, congratulations for the inauguration. This is your first quarterly report as Mildef's President and CEO. As the CFO, you've done quite a few. We will commence with Erik Göthlin, Financial Analyst at SEB. Go ahead, Erik.
Thank you, Olof, and thank you, Daniel. I have a couple of questions. Could you give some indications? I mean, Q1 was a strong quarter in terms of larger orders. Q2 was, it wasn't bad, but it was a bit slower on that note. What's the, if you look on the tender backlog now and orders up for potential decision here in the second half, is there increasing activity? What I'm gunning at is your comment and thinking that you're a bit late cyclical, and we haven't seen the pickup in orders related to all the ramp-ups in military spending. I mean, when the timing of that, when could we see that?
The second question on the SEK 500 million or so that you have for planned delivery in the second half here, help us out a bit with the absolute numbers on the software consultant business that isn't in there. Also maybe in a world without supply chain constraints and normal demand, how much in for out business would you expect on top of that? The final question, if I may, on the gross margin, realize it will probably continue to be volatile, but is there anything extraordinary or sort of really out of the ordinary in the mix that would have the Q1 level a bit on the high side compared to the underlying trend? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Erik. I will try to answer all the 3 questions. I think I captured them. We start with order intake, we see 11% up here in Q2 compared to last year. I think last year was quite a tough year to compare with. If we zoom out the first half, it's up 74%. I think it's still showing that there is a good demand for our products. Looking forward a little bit on the second half of 2023, as I said, I see more and more active market. I see that more and more of the big procurements that has been done is starting to rippling down a little bit into Mildef world. As I said, we are a late-cycle company.
They're starting to place orders on other things that they are really in need of, and now we see that more and more discussions and dialogues regarding a business that I would say is coming from increased military spending due to the war in Russia and Ukraine. I'm very hopeful when it comes to order intake in the second quarter, but I won't be able to. The tough thing in our business is to put the timeline on the order intake because it sometimes could be delayed in the discussions or something needs to be sorted out. It's still gonna be volatile, I think, when it's order intake. You need to have a longer perspective on it, but I'm hopeful for the second quarter.
The next question was around the breakdown of the order backlog and the 560 million SEK that is still in there, what we can expect on top of that. If you're a little bit conservative, you could add 50 million SEK related to our subsidiary in Norway, Sysint, and that's related to their software and their consultancy business. 50 million SEK for the second half, you could absolutely add on top of what we already have there. We also have the window is still open for taking orders and deliveries within the second half of 2023, even if we are starting to see that that window is getting smaller and smaller, but there are still opportunities. We also have a little bit change when we acquired Handheld.
They have much, much more finished products already in inventory, so it can be much quicker for them to from order to sales. In the military domain, it's more long cycle, so let's say that we maybe can be open until late September, then we, the window is closed for delivering this year. It depends on what kind of products and projects it is. Then I think the last question was around the gross margin and the volatility there. We see plus 50% there in the second quarter, and it would probably be volatile going forward as well. The underlying trend, I think, is there, and I think that we are now starting to see positive effects from the price adjustments we have done one, two year ago in the pandemic time, in the inflation time.
We were able to increase our prices and make price adjustments. In our business, it takes 6-12 months before we're starting to see any impact in the books on that price adjustment. It's starting to get a positive effect. We're starting to see that the product mix is also getting better and better from a gross margin perspective. More and more of our own product is delivering here in 2023, and less of the third-party product. There is a couple of components that's, is driving the gross margin.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for that, Erik. I think that it also solved Hugo's question regarding the gross margin going forward. We have two other questions in the chat, and I'll start with our good friend up in the West Coast, Benny Dahl. Actually, you saw the press release about Skeldar, the new system for flight controlling. You believe that will have a good future in the Air Force, to be at the forefront, do we have any thoughts to develop a similar system for underwater environment? The Skeldar control controls the UMS Skeldar mini helicopter developed by Saab, if you did not read that press release. What about underwater, Daniel?
I'm not really sure what it will take us. I mean, we are very happy to now closing the deal here with the Skeldar drone and our Remote Pilot Station. Let us put a lot of focus on closing that one, and then we'll see if we can take it underwater as well. Today, it's too unclear to answer that. I mean, we are happy to contribute to all the discussions in potentials business going forward, if that's underwater or overwater, et cetera, let's see if it can be something like that. I'm super happy about the Skeldar project in total, and that Mildef is one of the partners, that they will contribute in this. It's a very interesting deal.
As you might have followed, you guys and girls following Mildef, you also saw the press release, I think, the day ahead, or was it after the Skeldar release, covering the mini drones. The drone, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle domain, is an area where Mildef is accelerating. We'll go to the next question from Niklas: In this positive expansion phase, what is your main bottlenecks to operate according to existing orders and forecasts going forward? Personal cash flow, bottlenecks, and supply chain due to special component needs, monopoly situation. Bottlenecks to go forward, what do you see, Daniel?
Yeah, it's a good question. Thank you for that. I touched base a little bit on the cash flow. That could be a potential bottleneck going forward. When you have a fast-growing company and a manufacturing company working with inventory and things like that, then you need to tie up more capital. We have really put focus on that should not be any bottleneck going forward. On the staff side, I think that we... There are more and more people actively looking into working in the industry, so I think we see a boost from that, and so far, there hasn't been any issues or bottlenecks around that. The last one, I think, is the supply chain. We have now seen. I mean, we're coming from 2, 3 years where it has been a really bad situation.
We have seen that it's a clear better landscape when it comes to getting hold of the components. If it's totally out, in the light again, so to say, I'm not really sure about that. Maybe we can see the supply issues coming back again. Unsure about that one. I would, in the end, I would say we're keeping monitoring closely our cash flow, making sure that that will not be the bottleneck. Supply chain would probably, if we see a problem there again, that would be a bottleneck for us.
Thank you for that. Next question comes from Joachim Hägercrantz: What are the largest challenges for becoming successful in the U.S. competition? Is L3Harris a good peer, and what other companies look the most like Mildef worldwide?
I think it's a good question. As I said, we are a little bit more accelerating our ambitions in U.S. I think there is a couple of components to sort out to being successful in the U.S. I think you have to be more present in the U.S. We need to have more and local capacities in the U.S. Maybe in the long run, we need to be able to manufacturing our products in U.S. You have heard of made in U.S. and all the things like that. That is something that we'll look really closely in to see what are the key components here to be more successful in the U.S. I think we already have a strong product portfolio going into the U.S. I think we need to increase our effort when it comes to marketing in the U.S.
In the U.S., Mildef is a small player. We need to be able to get the brand awareness up. Regarding L3Harris, I mean, let's remember that L3Harris is probably on the at least top 10 list global defense companies in the world. If and even if I want to compare Mildef with L3Harris, remember that L3Harris is, I mean, by far much bigger company than Mildef and doing a lot of other things. We have L3Harris as one of our customers in the U.S. We have that kind of relationship. Otherwise, if you look at other companies that mostly look like Mildef Worldwide, it's not super easy to find. You find some in the U.S.
Curtiss-Wright is one example, for example, that you can look into if you want to see. They are doing a lot of these things that we are producing here in Sweden when it comes to routers, switches, et cetera. That is right. Curtiss-Wright, I would say.
Thank you, Daniel. Before we go to Benny, Joachim has a question. You raised, Mildef raised or our board raised our revenue target, came after the positive NATO. Remembering we raised, the board raised them from 15% to 25%, over 25%. Is Swedish entry into NATO a condition for growth north of 25%?
No, I wouldn't say that. I think that the board of directors, and if we go back to the autumn last year, saw what's happening on the market and saw the increased activities on the market. That was actually before I think we had any success with the Swedish NATO membership. I wouldn't say that that is a condition for growth, for Mildef to being able to grow more than 25% per year. I think there will be enough opportunities anyway, even if Sweden not will be a member.
Well, thank you for many good questions. Joachim, and now, Benny Dahlqvist, if you open your mic, please state your question. Unfortunately, we cannot hear you, Benny. We have a technical issue. Maybe you have to write it in the chat, and we'll do some, as we say in Swedish. We still have some minutes, if there are any other question. Yes, Bernt Sandström is raising his hand. Please, go ahead, Bernt. Make sure to open your mic.
Do you hear me?
Absolutely.
Yes.
Thank you.
Yeah, yeah. I have a question about the, what do we call, after sales, you know, the support, service, spare parts, and so on. How do you work with that and develop that part of the market?
We should remember that the aftermarket is a quite small piece of our business. We, of course, have support on the product side, et cetera. We are looking into more and more working with a service and maintenance agreement to our big customers. That is something we can see going forward, that we will increase the efforts around to put more and more agreements in place. It's otherwise on, in our industry, I think the aftermarket is not that huge. I mean, they are taking care of most of the issues by themselves, et cetera.
We're looking how we can increase the after market, but I think the after market is still, gonna be quite low if we look and compare the total revenue streams, the revenues from after market will, I think, continue to be quite small going forward.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
Thanks, Bernt. Shall we give it a new try, Benny? Okay. Do we have audio, Benny? Okay, we have a question from Benny Dahlqvist. The working capital are normalized in future. Will it take 2 or more quarters?
It's, I mean, it's a good question. Thank you for that. I would say it's pretty tough to be exactly where and when it will be normalized. I have put 6 to 12 months into my CEO letter, and I think that is something that we see. I'm not. In the best world, we are there already within two quarters, but it may take up to 12 months before we are there. I think we will be there. We work hard to be there, and it will have a positive effect on our operating cash flow. That's where we want to be, but I'm not, I'm unsure if it's within six or 12 months, I would say.
Thank you for that question. You still raise your hand, Bernt, but I take it you've finished your question. I have a question for Daniel, while the rest of ladies and gentlemen think of a final question set. Has the M&A strategy to buy a company a year, has it changed? What about the M&A?
I think M&A, again, is still there, still important for us, and we still look very deep into a couple of potential acquisitions. On the other hand, as everyone in this call are aware of, I mean, the macro environment has changed. It's totally different landscape when it comes to interest rate and things like that. We're still looking, and if we really find potential acquisition that fits good into our strategy, we're more than open to make acquisitions. The acquisition is still on the table, we're still actively working with it, but maybe not maybe down one from top priorities.
Okay. I take it, Bernt, that your hand is raised, still, but.
Yeah.
If you have a final question, go ahead.
No. I think I pushed it twice last time, but t hank you very much for a good show here.
Thank you for following-
Thank you for participating.
... for following. Both joining this conference call, but also joining Mildef on our journey. It's very important for us to hear your thoughts and ideas. We feel strongly that you are following the company and our journey.
so another hand, Bernt.
Okay. Well, let's close this call. I see no more questions in the chat. We have an image still in the presentation deck, and I can just give you some exciting dates if you want to travel or come visit Mildef or go deeper into our world. I can disclose that we will launch a new revamped and repolished and elevated brand positioning in September, and we'll do that in conjunction with a huge and very impressive DSEI Defense Technology Convention in London in September, 12th to 15th. If you're in London, shout out to me, and I'll make sure that you can come and visit one of the world's biggest defense conventions. The same for AUSA in Washington, D.C., in October. That's another exciting venue.
Then we have the Q3 report on October 26, and year-end 2023. It's coming fast. Time flies. February 8, next year. In a few moments, we'll be there. But anyways, thank you, everybody for following this Q2 investor call from Mildef. Don't be a stranger. Stay in touch, follow us on LinkedIn, send an email, or make a call. We are here to help you understand the Mildef continuing journey. Stay tuned for more. Have a fine holiday, summer vacation, and stay safe. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.