Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Peter Kruk, CFO, Timothy Benjamin, and Head of Investor Relations, Gunilla Öhman. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and welcome all to our Q4 release. First, a few, a bit of information about NCAB. So we at NCAB, we are a supplier of printed circuit boards, and those are the products that you see to the left on this slide, which basically creates the foundation in any electronic or intelligent product. So our customers are the ones placing components on the boards. That could be either OEM customers, or it can be contract manufacturers. Our focus is on printed circuit board for demanding customers. We are focusing on customers with high demands in terms of quality, technology, and we aim to supply them with zero defect products, produced also sustainably, giving them the most competitive offer by offering an overall lowest total cost.
We are aiming to be the number one PCB supplier wherever we are, and we are already the globally leading producer of printed circuit boards worldwide. We are operating with a local presence in around 19 countries. We are 660 specialists in the group, and we have no in-house manufacturing, but are working with a network of factories and our main factories, most of which are currently around 34, make up around 90% of our total deliveries. Besides looking at highly demanding customers, we're also focused on the high-mix, low-volume segments of the market. So we are not involved in super high-volume applications like, consumer electronics, mobile phones or computers, but more typically industrial products. So products where generally the final product has a significantly higher value.
The printed circuit board is a small part of the bill of material. Demands, however, can be very hard in terms of quality and environmental ability to withstand. Also, even if these, our customers in these segments are very, quite often large, globally leading companies, their spend on printed circuit boards is relatively limited, and therefore they struggle both to have the internal expertise to manage this commodity, but also to even get access to the leading factories. This is an area where we can help them. Also by combining the spend of our portfolio of customers, we can also get very good terms and earn the margin on our business. We have been going through a quite significant volatile market over the last five years.
As you can see, I mean, overall, this is a globally long-term growing PCB market, as you can see in the green bars. We saw a tremendous spike or growth in the market following the pandemic, and we have, for a few years, been living off the backlash of that, where inventories in the supply chain were full of product produced or semi-produced products at our customers and our customers' customers. We are happy to see that in 2025, this is starting to turn around, and we can see that growth in our order intake also for the full year coming through, and even more so in the fourth quarter. We also have a good mix in our portfolio.
We are not biased on any specific segment, but I think we've seen in this year, automotive has been one of the segments where there's still been some challenges, whereas, however, we've seen good continued progress in areas like defense, power, and medical applications. We're also handling the geopolitical risks by an increasingly diverse, diversified supply base. So we've been continuing to expand our sourcing in Asia, outside China, and I think making good progress here, and I think we expect that to continue to grow also in 2026. So coming more closely into Q4, and I think we're very pleased to see that we have good order intake and net sales growth in U.S. dollars.
We trade predominantly in U.S. dollars, and it's also both a market recovery, but also it's sequentially, growth order intake for us during the last three quarters, which is quite positive, not just year-over-year. We can see this as a general recovery across all of our regional segments, and we see accelerated growth in certain areas or industries like defense, MedT ech, and power energy. There is, to the order intake, an impact also here from some early ordering by customers. We've seen as the market is growing and expanding, especially driven globally by data center applications, lead times are extending, and we also see prices going up now at the beginning of 2026, and therefore, we also see customers who have the ability to forecast, to place early order, and that is influencing our order intake growth in the fourth quarter.
We estimate that roughly one-third of that order intake growth is related to these earlier order placements. Very good recovery in our EBITDA versus 2024, where we had a weak ending of the year. And I think we see here a good recovery despite a strong FX headwind. And it's a combination of our gross margin improving sequentially. We are now basically on level where we were in Q4 2024, but really leveraging the growth now to our overhead structures, and with that, driving better performance in financial EBITDA. Also, M&A activities have continued. We were able to sign and close with Multi-Teknik here in fourth quarter. Multi-Teknik Mönsterkort is a Swedish company based in Gothenburg, with a main customer base also in Sweden.
It's a company that has a long history from 1975, which also included manufacturing, which was ended in 2008. They are mainly focused on industrial applications, automotive, telecom, and medical. Revenue in their financial year 2024, 2025 was approximately SEK 110 million, with an EBITDA just below SEK 20 million. And with that comes 50 new employees, of which eight are in Sweden, five in China, and two in Lithuania. And the deal was closed on December 19th.... Looking then at Q4 in the numbers, we can see that our order intake is up a strong 20%, to SEK 1,092 million versus SEK 907 million prior year. That equates to 33% organic growth in U.S. dollars, and a Book-to-Bill of 1.21.
Net sales also grew by 9% in Swedish krona to SEK 902 million versus SEK 830 million prior year, and also here we can see the growth now in organic, in U.S. dollars of more than 20%. And with EBITDA, our EBITDA increased to SEK 98.6 million versus SEK 71.6 million prior year, and now we have an EBITDA margin of 10.9%, versus 8% of last year. And the gross margin, as you can see, is equal to prior year, but having improved sequentially during the year, and you can also see our negative impact from FX in the quarter, which was a full SEK 23 million, and we'll elaborate on that a little bit later. Cash flow was at SEK 22 million versus SEK 45 million prior year.
Our working capital increased a little bit, up versus last year, tied partly to the acquisitions, but also due to some temporary changes that we're doing with implementation of our ERP system. Net profit of SEK 53 million versus SEK 41.5 million, and EPS of SEK 2.28 versus SEK 0.22 last year. After that, I give the word to you, Tim.
Thanks, Peter. So if we take a look at the full year, we saw order intake increasing 10% to just above SEK 4 billion . We saw a positive Book-to-Bill, especially driven by the second half of the year, of 1.09. While sales increased 3.6% to SEK 3.7 billion , versus SEK 3.6 billion the year before, when we look at the organic growth, it was actually 5% in U.S. dollars. The EBITDA margin came out for the year at 10.8% versus 12.4% prior year, mostly impacted by an adverse FX effect that you heard from Peter.
For the full year, SEK 53 million over SEK 20 million in Q4, and that's just a result of FX rates being significantly different in quarter one of 2025. Operating cash flow at SEK 287 million , impacted a little bit by the temporary increase in working capital in quarter four. Then, that all contributed to an earnings per share of SEK 1.1 versus SEK 1.36 in the prior year. The NCAB Board of Directors has proposed a dividend of SEK 1.1 per share. When we take a look a little bit over time at the gross margin, it's nice to see that we're stabilizing at a high level at 35.1% for 2025.
It was a little bit weaker than that in the first part of the year and then developed well in the second half, and it's also nice to see the top line starting to grow as well. So when we take a look at it, we see that order intake increased by 20% in the fourth quarter, but actually, for comparable units in U.S. dollars, up 33%. And that wasn't just driven by one particular segment, that was, we saw a positive development in all segments. Especially so, when you look at it in comparable units in U.S. dollars, which is the typical trading currency in our industry. Net sales followed, but still significantly below where the order intake level is.
So up 21% in USD, a positive Book-to-Bill of SEK 1.2. There's a couple of particular industries to highlight here, with a good positive trend in EV charging, as well as continued positive development in aerospace and defense. When we look at EBITDA, that developed well to SEK 99 million in the fourth quarter, versus SEK 72 million in prior year. The FX was impacted negatively in that quarter by SEK 23 million , which influenced the margin from where it would have otherwise been. Gross margin came in at 35.7%, which is just a hair below where it was in the prior year, but slightly higher than quarter three. Acquired companies did have a slightly dilutive effect on gross margin versus the prior year, though. I should note that.
When we take a look and unpack the FX a little bit, I think it's interesting to look at where the U.S. dollar versus the SEK was, this year versus prior. So this year in quarter four, on average, just a hair below SEK 9.4, versus prior year at SEK 10.8. So what that does for us is that impacts our revenue, with basically SEK -100 million on the top-line side, which travels directly down to the gross profit side at SEK -40 million. There's a small revaluation effect of SEK -3 million, but most of it is just that pure translation effect at SEK -37 million.
Within our SG&A, though, we have a little bit of a negative hedge against that, so that actually boosted the result a little bit with SEK 17 million, but the overall effect you can see is quite strong at SEK -20 million.
Mm-hmm. Thank you, Tim. Moving over a little bit more in detail in the segments, starting with Nordics. We see again a continued strong order intake development here with a growth of 24% in Swedish krona. Here, though, there is some early order placement which kind of further accelerates this growth. The countries with the most significant increases were Denmark, Finland, and Norway. Net sales also grew nicely, even though we had significant FX impact in the markets here, and large drivers here are the defense side, but also the EV charging business, which is resuming after having had a low period during large part of early part of 2025 and latter part of 2024.
EBITDA amounted to SEK 36.3 million versus SEK 31 million in the prior year, and the margin came back up north of 15% - 15.9% versus 15.7%, and really the result of good leverage on the net growth, offsetting the impact of FX in the quarter. Moving over to our largest segment, Europe, the order intake also here increased. It grew by 13% to SEK 483 million versus SEK 428 million. That's an organic growth in the order intake of 5% in Swedish krona, but 21% in U.S. dollars. And it's a little bit of a mixed development here in the European segment, but clear positive trends in markets like Spain, Benelux and Germany, which are recovering from a weak end of 2024.
We can also see net sales growing 10% to SEK 400 million versus SEK 365 million . Organically, the increase is 3% in Swedish krona and 19% in U.S. dollars. And the industry's tide connected to automotive is still weak, and that is impacting primarily for us regions like U.K. and Italy, but we see a recovery in most other areas. The EBITDA increased to SEK 34 million versus almost close to zero in end of Q4 2024, and the margin was now 8.5% versus only 1% in 2024. And still there's also here a negative impact from FX and some product mix on margins. North America, a very strong order intake in the North American business.
We grew 31% over what was also a little bit of a weaker fourth quarter 2024 order intake-wise, but nevertheless, very strong development. We're making good progress with our new product introduction model that we sort of acquired through phase III and are expanding across our U.S. organization. Strong growth also here in defense, but also related to power applications, auxiliary solutions around power data centers. Even if NCAB is not in the high-volume data center market, we can still be participating in parts of the auxiliary systems. Net sales are up 4% to SEK 214 million and 19% in U.S. dollars.
A note here again, as before, tariffs are included in the revenue, but are not registered as part of our order intake, as the tariffs are only known when we bring the goods into the U.S. market. Our share of China source products supplying for the U.S. is continuing to decrease, and it's now in the low 40s%. EBITDA decreased to SEK 26 million versus SEK 33 million, a margin of 12.1% versus 16%. It's a bit of timing of costs and also adjusting a little bit to the higher pace that we're seeing in the order intake that is impacting the margin in the fourth quarter. East also here, a continued positive development. Order intake growing by 32% to SEK 72 million versus SEK 55 million last year.
Order intake in U.S. dollars up a whole 49%, and we are capitalizing on the growth in high tech. We're leveraging our supply base, where customers who may have been buying direct on are struggling to get access, but they can have better access to the market through us. But we're also growing with NCAB global customers growing in China, and there's also here some pre-ordering effect that is also helping the numbers. Net sales grew 7% to SEK 59 million , sorry, decreased 7% versus 63. Also here in U.S. dollars, down, but it's more a timing of business and deliveries in the different quarters.
Our EBITDA is down to SEK 7.5 million versus SEK 11 million, and equivalent to still a healthy margin of 12.7%, versus a very strong margin of 17.3% in the end quarter of the prior year. There is some adverse mix here, as well, in product mix and pricing impacting the margin. Tim?
Yep. So when we, when we look at the, return on equity, we see, about 14.3% this year versus, around 18.3% last year. Equity fairly stable. You heard a, a little bit about the FX impacts, on the earnings, earlier in the call. We just completed, an acquisition of, Multi-Teknik and Mönsterkort, and that drove our net debt to EBITDA up just a little bit, to 1.8 versus 1.5 in the prior quarter, or prior year. Equity to asset ratio at about, 40.9%, versus 42.7% prior year.
Working capital around 9.6% or SEK 376 million , a bit higher than this time last year, but you heard a little bit earlier from Peter that we have a bit higher temporary working capital as a result of some of our ERP lots. Still quite a bit of available liquidity with a little bit over SEK 1.2 billion available, and a proposed dividend of SEK 1.1 per share. Over to you, Peter.
Very good. So as Tim mentioned, we have a good balance sheet and a lot of dry powder to continue our M&A activity, which is part of our strategy. So we are happy with the two acquisitions we did in 2025 and are continuing to work through our pipeline of both long list and shortlists and have a number of good discussions pending or ongoing at this moment.
Our model is that we are the integration process is an important part for us, and B&B and Multi-Teknik are now entering our process, where the initial phase is very much about sort of getting to know our new friends in greater detail, to understand in the areas where they are working differently, to ensure that we welcome the new colleagues to our company in a good way, as well as reassuring our customers of how we will continue to support them in a good way. Following that, we will then start looking more into synergies of cooperation, how can we work closer in terms of our factory base, as well as longer-term integration of systems and finance roles.
So, here we are now in the beginning of the phase, and we are continuing, of course, to ideally add further acquisitions to our portfolio, and historically and, continuously, we're looking to see roughly half of our growth come through acquisitions, over the cycle. And our strategy overall, remains firm. We remain 100% focused on printed circuit boards, and we're also believing strongly in our asset-light model, where we don't invest or own any factories, but look to sort of provide superior service and flexibility for our customers. So we continue to invest, though, in technology, as well as other services, to be able to provide our customers better products and better service, and by that, grow our market shares in the market where we have a presence.
We're also looking continuously to expand geographically, and we believe that M&A is a good way for us to open up new markets. It is very much a relationship business, and, and getting a first foothold in a new market speeds up that process, and then we can add the full value of the NCAB Group to these new markets, as we go forward. And we also have, in predominantly Europe and North America, still a very fragmented market with a large number of smaller trading companies that date back to the 1990s or early 2000s, when a lot of the manufacturing moved to Asia. Many of these companies have remained regional or local, and as they were started in the 1990s, some 20, 30 years ago, many of these companies, there's also now a time where they are approaching a succession dilemma.
That is also a good opportunity where we can sort of help these companies into the family of NCAB and give them also the strength of access to our full factory portfolio and our factory management organization. And with that, we conclude our presentation and open up for questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Jonny Jin from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, Peter and Timothy. I hope you can hear me.
Yeah.
I have a couple of questions. Starting with organic order momentum, seems strong here, which is good. And you mentioned both pre-orders, longer lead times, and increased PCB prices.
Mm.
Starting with the price here, are there any price effect showing in Q4 orders at all? And secondly, what sort of magnitude of the price increase can we expect here at the beginning of 2026?
Yeah, thank you for your question. And, I mean, I think we do see very minor impact of pricing on Q4. I think prices are really coming into effect here in beginning of 2026. So these predominantly earlier ordering, if anything, in the Q4 impact. And the magnitude, I mean, here is a little bit volatile, and it varies quite differently, but between different technologies, because you have some which are very gold heavy, and then you see significant price increases. But and in some areas you see more reduced. But it's a combination right now of both capacity utilization, which is driving price increases, as well as commodities, and it's commodity on gold, metals, but also even the laminate materials. So I think we are estimating that the average price increase is in the order of 10%.
Therefore, we expect probably say in Q4, we're going to see some positive impact of pricing, but then you're going to see the detraction from the pre-ordering. On revenue, we don't expect really to see impact on revenue, more, maybe more pronounced in the second half of 2025, if this continues.
Yes.
Say 2026. Sorry.
Yeah. So 10% on average, did I catch that correctly?
Yeah, in that order of magnitude.
Okay. Yeah, that's clear. And then a question here on the price. I mean, are there any margin impact for you at all from the higher PCB prices? Because as capacity utilization gets up and long-lead times longer, and then your prioritized deliveries get more important. So I suppose your value to customers also becomes more important as well.
Mm.
So do you think you can increase your prices more than the increase of the input prices, or how should I view that on the margin?
I think we believe, and if you look back in our historic history, when we have seen significant price increases in the market, if you go back, say, to 2021 or at that time when we start to see price increases. I think we've been quite good at keeping our gross margins, but I think we're also taking care of our customers in a good way that, for us, I think it's more an opportunity where actually maybe we can see growth. Because I think a number of customers right now with poor lead times or lead times extending, that could actually be an opportunity where we at NCAB sometimes can have better opportunities to have stronger priority with the factories. And maybe more see that as an opportunity of gaining market share, as opposed to sort of driving margins further up.
I think we've been good at managing, keeping margins with that growth.
Yeah, understood. Then moving to lead times there, could you try to please help us understand how much longer lead time we could expect? I mean, if you look at historical patterns on order conversion patterns, for instance, historically here in Q1, it's sort of an average, about 100% conversion on orders. Could that move below 100% now in Q1, or what is a reasonable assumption there?
Yeah, I think, I mean, historically, I think you could... I mean, we have a large variety of orders, and I think in history, we've had kind of on average, you've had almost like a quarter delay from order to revenue. And I think now we're looking more like five, six months, maybe-
Mm
... in some of these areas. So I think it's crept up at least one to two months in terms of lead time from what you would normally see on average. And it's, I guess it's a little bit of a combination of, say, lead times and maybe some large, larger, longer orders as well, which also impact this.
Yeah.
I think it's a large portion of the, say, the excess orders that we've seen in Q4 will spread over several quarters in 2026.
... Okay, understood. And then just one final one from my side, if I may?
Yeah.
That is on the order growth intake. I mean, you mentioned that one-third is pre-buys, and that my question there is: was that driven by a few number of customers only? And then the rest here, two-thirds of the growth, how much would you say is existing customers and inventory normalization versus you taking on new customers? And what sort of is the pipeline visibility here of the new customer entering the new year?
Mm-hmm. I'd say on the pre-ordering side, I mean, you have, you have a few things maybe which is more impacting. I think we also have some cases where we're, we have one larger customer, for instance, where we're making some factory shifts, and that causes them to place bigger orders. But actually, you see that pattern across, where customers have good visibility. We've been working with them to sort of help them understand and understand what, that we, what kind of level of price increase are we seeing, and we've been negotiating with the factories to sort of give our customers room to react as well. So there is a little bit across many of our markets that we have seen this impact.
I'd say, I mean, on the basic order intake, I mean, if you look back in U.S. dollars, our order intake was. We were up 8% in Q2, order intake-wise. We were 14% up organically in Q3, and now we are, say, 33%. So maybe you take around, out around 10%, maybe. So we, we were, maybe we're now north of 20%, organically. So it's a clear progression of the order intake growth. And I think it's, it's a combination of both growth in a couple of segments, but I think it's also the impact of inventory having come out of the system.
I think that is actually something that we can see in some of the segments, like EV charging, where they were very much-- they already actually started to have outbound sales growth during, say, earlier parts of 2025, but we only start to see the orders, started to grow after the summer, really.
Okay, understood. That was all for me. Have a great day.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Jacob Edler from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, Tim and Peter, and thanks for taking my questions. I have just one on, on Nordics to start with. I mean, you've had a pretty significant build-up of, order intake in the Nordics segment since the start of 2024. And I think if you kind of look at it, accumulated, you know, orders relative to, to revenue, there's a kind of a $20 million backlog here.
Mm-hmm.
How much of that mainly, I guess, defense, aerospace, backlog, can you—can we expect you to deliver in 2026 relative to, to further out, so to speak?
I'm not sure if we have a number for that we can give right now, but, I mean, there is a-
No
... significant portion of some of those, say specifically, say, defense orders, which also run into 2027.
Yeah.
So, I think there is a
Okay
... non-insignificant part that actually also belongs in 2027. It's not all going to be in 2027.
Yeah, but lead times tend to be-
No. Okay
... more than 24-month timeline for these.
Sorry, I heard you a bit poorly there, Tim.
No, I was just saying that, lead times tend to be in the 12-24-month timeframe for these.
Yep, yep. Perfect. Okay, just a question on the, on the Europe segment then. I mean, you mentioned that industrial demand is improving in, in some of the core countries here, including, you know, Germany. Even though I guess, you know, PMIs haven't skyrocketed during the quarter, would you say that, the development is, is mainly driven by, you know, inventory replenishment, and that inventory levels have reached, kind of bottom levels or, and are now bouncing a bit, or, or how should we read it?
Yeah, I think that, as you say, I mean, I think German economy is not by any means, say, booming, but I think it's recovering. I think we're starting to see the signs of it recovering. And the effect of, say, inventory reductions diminishing is helping to see our numbers normalize as well, so.
Yep. Perfect. And then just a question, I guess, on automotive and U.K., Italy, you know, also has been a drag for quite a while here.
Mm-hmm.
Would you say the trend is kind of somewhat stabilizing sequentially? And when do we kind of reach the point where we're kind of washing out the comps here, if you get my question?
Yeah, I think to some extent it has been stabilizing over, say, in the second half, say, partly during the second half of 2025 on the automotive side. And then, I mean, if you follow the reporting from the truck manufacturers, I think they start to show some positive order intake numbers now in the U.S. market, so which I think was the initial really big drag on the truck industry. So, I think, I think we've, I, I don't... Right now, we don't see signs of things getting worse, but maybe actually there are some indicators that would indicate that this market will start to recover.
Very good. Then I just have maybe a last question. Just on North America, how much of the how much was related to tariff, you know, offsets, the price increases on tariffs here in Q4? The increase was 19% in U.S. dollars year-over-year. Are you able to add any more flavor there?
We don't give out exact on, on-
Yeah
... tariffs in North America, but, but it was a fair portion.
Okay, perfect. Thank you so much for your answers.
Mm-hmm. Thank you.
The next question comes from Thomas Blikstad, from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just a question on the dividends from my side here. One point one is quite a large payout ratio, and just wondering if you could give some flavor on the rationale behind it in terms of market outlook, visibility, cash flow, M&A possibilities, and so forth. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay, I'm happy to do so. I mean, as you know, our dividend policy is to basically give out available cash. During last year, we decided to pull back on our dividend. Basically, we were approaching our decision or our Q4 release or Q1, we had the Election Day in the U.S., which caused a lot of anxiety. And at that time, we also had B&B in the pipeline, and we actually also expected that maybe we could close Multi-Teknik already before the summer.
Mm.
With that, we saw a payout of dividend that we had originally proposed, plus these two acquisitions, that would put pressure if the market would have declined more than the market actually did. So at that timeframe, we decided to pull back on the dividend. Since then, you could say the market has not done as badly as we could potentially fear. We have also generated quite a bit of cash flow over the period of time, and we have also refinanced the company before the summer of last year, which also gives us more headroom on our covenants. So with that, we exit the year with a very strong balance situation, and we find it's fine that we can actually then maybe give back some of the things that we did not do last year.
Mm. Yeah. Thank you. That's great. And just a quick follow-up on the pre-buying trend. Are you seeing the same development here, here in January, February, or was this more of a the 2025 trend?
I think we could see that the lead times really grew in Q4, so the lead time aspect already started to be sort of impacting then. I think it's not really changed that much in the beginning of the year, and the price pre-buy effect was more related to before the year. We don't see further pre-buy impacts right now. If anything, we probably might see a bit of a backlash on the order intake than in Q1 from the fact that we had pre-ordering-
Mm
... in Q4.
Thank you. That's all from me.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Gustav Berneblad from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, it's Gustav here from Nordea. Just, maybe just to come back here to the early part of the Q&A. Regarding your gross margin guidance that you have sort of given with, you know, stating 35%-36% should still be, you know, something we should expect longer term. Do you see any, you know, or any hesitancy in regards to this margin guidance? I mean, you comment on maybe looking a bit more at growth here, but,
No, not, not really. I mean, I think like Peter said, I mean, if you look at us historically, we've been able to handle both price increases in the market and price decreases in the market in a fairly good way, and in good cooperation with our customers. We try to make these type of partnerships sort of over the long term. There'll always be a quarter or two here or there, a little bit like you saw in early 2025, where we're adapting to new circumstances. But I mean, if you look at it over the medium or long term, no, I, I think that's, it's still ex-, where we expect to be.
That's perfect. And then just one clarification. I mean, when you take these pre-orderings, are there any risk to these orders in terms of cost inflation or that may cause, you know, lower profitability, looking a few quarters out? Just-
When we take the type of pre-ordering, what we're doing is we're lining them up back to back with factory pricing, so it would be unusual. Not impossible, but unusual for there to be a margin impact.
I mean, the only area-
Okay
... the only area where we sometimes can be exposed more is in kind of freight costs-
Mm.
-which are more volatile and can change,
Exactly.
That is where we can sometimes get some volatility, but on product pricing, as you said, Tim, it's back to back with the factory.
Yeah.
So there's a tie between those orders and deliveries.
Okay. That's very clear. And just in terms of these pre-ordering, also a bit of a clarification. Just wondering if there is a risk that you are undermining the market, or if you're underestimating the magnitude of these pre-orderings. Is there a risk to that, or do you have very good visibility of exact what are pre-orderings and what are not?
No, actually, in this case, I think we have a pretty high degree of confidence on the pre-ordering. I think one of the nice things with a lot of the investments that we've been making in our ERP over the past couple of years is that we have quite good visibility into, you know, which customers and which regions this comes from. So no, I think we have a fairly good handle on it.
That's great. Then on your topic there, ERP, I mean, you should have gone live in Sweden and Norway, right, this quarter. Is there, you know, a negative impact from the IT rollout in the Nordic segment this quarter?
No, not particularly a negative impact in the Nordic side. Actually there, even if going live with these ERPs is a little bit of a struggle in the first couple of weeks and months, I think both Norway and Swedish teams handled it in a really good, really professional way. So I think there was actually less business impact than we feared there might be. And at this point now, we're 75% of the way of the company loaded into the new ERP. So all of the large go lives are actually behind us. So now we have three smaller entities in 2026 to go with, which are significantly less risky than the ERP countries that we went live with in 2025.
So actually, it's a comforting feeling going into 2026 with the roadmap that we have. The one disturbance that we did see in the quarter, which Peter commented on a little bit earlier in the call, was on the working capital side. So we just have a few issues to work through with how we use the system to make sure that we're doing invoicing in the most optimal way, so we can collect accounts receivables from our customers at the normal pattern. We expect to recover that in the next one to two quarters.
... Oh, that's very clear. And then just, sorry, one last question here from my side. You also comment, you know, on the lower inventory levels supporting particularly Europe here. What you're hearing in the market is that, you know, that the inventory levels are still, you know, on low levels in general? Or are you seeing that normalization occurring right now, would you say?
I think from our perspective, it's not been that they've been super low. It's more that they were historically always high.
Yeah.
I think now the fact that we are seeing orders pick up is maybe not that they're building up orders, but I think that they need to start ordering again.
Okay.
So, I don't think we see customers gearing up and building inventory right now. I think it's more the fact that actually they are running out of old inventory, and therefore it kind of restarts the cycle of production in a great deal.
Okay, that's very clear. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. There are no more phone questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.
We have two questions written here. The first one is from Johan, and he asks: How do you view the current high demand and price trend within the more advanced PCBs, say, for high density interconnect, HDIs, and other advanced AI application? How is your exposure to these more high-tech segments, and are there spillover effects in terms of factory utilization, price levels, and so forth?
Yeah, this is a good question, and it's very much the case. I think what we see is that even if we are not directly supplying to the high-volume data center applications, it is creating sort of ripple effects through the industry. And a number of the applications where we are also working with these high-tech technologies is seeing that increased workload. Because there is this kind of spillover where those factories who are directly focused on data centers, they are forced to sort of move other production out to the other kind of manufacturers. So this is creating part of what is driving lead times, and also, of course, driving price increases from these factories who are now very fully utilized. But it also creates opportunities, because, I mean, NCAB, we have very strong relationships with our partner factories.
We are generally between 10%-20% of their turnover, and that means that we still have good priority, and it actually becomes an opportunity for customers who are struggling to get access, to find access through NCAB.
Great. And the second question comes from Carlos Moreno, and he's asking: It's amazing that diversification of suppliers means moving from China to Taiwan. Can you find price quality suppliers anywhere else in the world? And what do the defense companies do? Must be a great time to set up a factory in India, et cetera.
Yeah, our activity is of course growing here is not only in Taiwan. Taiwan happens to be our largest non-Chinese region in the market. We are also developing business in Korea, Malaysia, Thailand as well, and I think there is where we see a lot of growth happening as well. India, maybe not so much, for the kind of technologies and qualities that our customers are demanding. But a lot of activity in the whole of Southeast Asia and beyond what we currently see in terms of orders or revenue through these factories in 2025. If you look upon the activity of sampling validation activities, there's a lot of activity outside these markets.
That was the last question we had. I just would like to thank you and remind you that our first quarter report for 2026 is on 23rd of April. Very welcome back, and thank you, Peter and Tim.
Thank you.
Thank you.