Warm welcome, everyone. It is my pleasure of hosting Per Norén, the CEO of Ovzon here today. I always enjoy hosting you and moderating you, Per, so looking forward to doing that today. My name is Simon Granat. I work as an equity analyst at ABG, and there I cover Ovzon. We have 25 minutes to go, which initially will include a presentation from Per, and then we will follow up with some questions. So with that said, Per, please go ahead.
Thank you, Simon. Good morning, everyone. A pleasure to be here. We have a short period of time to try to cover a lot of things that mostly is happening in space. So instead of me telling you what's happening, I brought a video. So we'll start with that to describe Ovzon. Ovzon is a world-leading mobile satellite communications services company offering integrated SATCOM-as-a-Service to customers across the globe. Ovzon was founded in Sweden in 2006. At that time, the company was focused on designing, developing, and delivering the most capable mobile satellite terminals. With mobility, we really mean the smallest, easiest to carry, lightest, and best-performing satellite terminals. Today, Ovzon is the leading solutions provider of fully integrated end-to-end SATCOM-as-a-Service that delivers the highest levels of connectivity. We have customers and end users in the U.S., in Europe, and other parts of the world.
Since 2018, the company has invested heavily in major technology development programs. The most prominent technology platforms are Ovzon 3, the integrated Ovzon Onboard Processor, and the smallest mobile terminal, Ovzon T7. What sets us apart from any other competing satellite communication provider is that we manage and control the entire service value chain. We deliver SATCOM-as-a-Service with immediate connectivity. Our commitment to customer support is second to none. We deliver 24/7, 365 customer service and support in both a centralized and decentralized way. Satellite communications has today become an integral part of the broader communications landscape that connects and powers the world. The increased geopolitical tensions in the world fill our news daily. The warnings of environmental changes are obvious as we see growing numbers of natural disasters such as flooding, storms, and wildfires. This has also led to the increased refugee streams across borders.
For our customers, this harsh truth has become more and more obvious. Fast, easy-to-use, and guaranteed satellite communication solutions are critical. Ovzon operates in the premium segment with customers and markets with no-fail requirements and in demand for guaranteed performance, resiliency, and mobility. Ovzon is well-positioned in this market. At Ovzon, we're confident about our ability to deliver and meet the world's rapidly increasing need for high-performing, resilient, and fast mobile connectivity via satellite.
That gives you a perspective of what the company does. We provide high performance, high throughput mobile connectivity in environments and in areas where there is no infrastructure or where you have a need of having continuous connectivity and no other means are possible to use it. You got a lot of the background in the video. Founded in 2006, then focused on mobile satellite terminals, laptop-sized. We revolutionized that market to begin with. Normally, there were 1.2 m dishes that you had to set up, and it took hours to get directed towards the satellite. Today, you can bring it in a laptop. You can get up and connect it in about 60 seconds or so.
From that perspective, our then biggest customer, the United States Department of Defense, asked us really to be the integrator of a system for communications for them, which meant that we also then started to design a satellite based on highest throughput streaming experience throughput through the satellite, steerable antennas of the satellite, so you can follow where the need is, terminals on the ground, and then building networks and building in resiliency, cybersecurity protocols for continued connectivity. So that's kind of where we've gone. We've shifted quite dramatically in the last two years from trying to do a sell to media TV and broadcast providers, other types of more commercial organizations, shorter-term contracts, to now being very focused on defense, total defense, military and civil defense, national security, and public safety. Markets that are normally fairly slow in moving, but also in the greatest need of this as well.
We'll come back to the financials a little bit. As you can see, we've invested very heavily in the satellite, the Ovzon 3 satellite, more new terminals, smaller and better, and also in systems engineering in terms of building the integrated system of those networks and communication to meet the needs of the customers. The video probably showed this a little bit, but the world has really, really changed, as we all know it, the last couple of years with extreme geopolitical tension. I would say scary. We should all be a little scared about that, but extreme geopolitical tension. Most of the things we do are digitized. Data, information are critical to society today. Cybersecurity is most likely the most unseen, but the biggest threat to all of our integrity as organizations and as humans.
And of course, climate change, which means that infrastructure, normally infrastructure disappears in a second maybe, and the only thing you can rely upon is satellite communications. That has meant that space is becoming a new economy. Space is at the forefront of investments in most countries. Most countries need to and want to and must invest in capabilities that are sovereign, which they only can control. You cannot only rely upon that you buy off-the-shelf things from satellite providers. So these are trends in the markets. We are the only provider in the world. We are in the geostationary orbit with our satellite and the acquired satellite capacity we have. We're the only provider that provides an integrated capability. Our competitors do not provide an integrated capability, nor do they provide a guaranteed connectivity with uptimes of almost up to 100%. Many people ask me, what about Starlink?
Starlink is fantastic. Low Earth orbit satellite that circles the globe closer to Earth. Trains of them will be thousands and thousands of them, but they do not guarantee. They guarantee best effort to have connectivity. So you can have latency and you can have glitches in the communication. We do not have that. We are geostationary. We can turn the satellite antennas towards a smaller area, provide higher throughput, provide better security, and resilient communication anytime, any place. So we've found a niche where we're at the top of the pyramid of everything we do. We are not for everyone. We are for those that really need it for critical missions and a pretty big market. This is how we measure performance. We call this the Ovzon Coefficient. In terms of mobility, we are not fixed. We are not big transportable parabolic antennas.
We are the smallest, almost mobile phone size, or at least laptop-sized terminals. It is very difficult to do with radio frequency technology, antennas, power, et cetera. We're experts in the world on it. We've moved on that axis very further down that anyone has. Performance is important, meaning we have to guarantee that the user has enough data throughput up to the satellite, down to the teleport, and connected to fiber, and resiliency is becoming maybe the most important thing. What we have learned from lessons, the West has learned from lessons in Ukraine, is Starlink did not work when it was needed, but others worked when it was needed, so you have to have resiliency built in, cybersecurity protocols on the terminal, on the network, and intelligence on the satellite. What Ovzon has done is to develop something we call an onboard processor.
The onboard processor is a digital hub. We've moved the intelligence from the ground to the satellite, and we can control that from the ground, et cetera, et cetera. We'll come back to that in a minute. Remind me tomorrow. There was a signal there. I don't think this works. Maybe here. Oh. So talking about coming into financials, but first of all, this is big year for Ovzon. We have spent since 2018 investing $2.3 billion SEK, privately invested, privately funded into the satellite and the technologies we have, both on the satellite and on the ground. We launched on January 3rd from Cape Canaveral, United States, with SpaceX. The satellite was in position sometime at the end of May in orbit and was brought into commercial service on July 5th.
What the world doesn't understand is that many satellites actually have issues, whether it's launch issues, whether it's in space on its way to orbit, or whether it's in space. Our satellite is perfectly healthy, works extraordinarily, and is taken in use by a number of customers. So most organizations, government organizations cannot buy a product or a service that is not a physical product or a service. They can maybe do pre-agreements, but they cannot buy something that is not a physical service according to some procurement rules. So we can demonstrate and we can showcase and we can show the value before July 5th, but from July 5th, we've been dead on focused on selling and engaging with customers around the world.
This is a race to get as many tenants and users on the satellite as possible, as quickly as possible to drive return on investment and drive profitability for the company. Some use cases. First of all, the first user was the French government's anti-terrorist group, GIGN, that used it during the summer games of the Olympics in Paris and really had a number of hubs. This is one of our terminals in Paris, a number of hubs for connectivity around Paris where they could switch over to this communication channel or they could use it as the main, depending on what happened. They wanted to have it because they wanted to guarantee communication if something would happen with mobile phones or other types of infrastructure. Very powerful first case for us.
Another use case was what we recently did with the Swedish FMV, where we took an unmanned ground vehicle. They took an unmanned ground vehicle. We put one of our terminals on and we used the Ovzon 3 satellite and remotely steered the unmanned vehicle from Stockholm, and the vehicle was in Kiruna, about 1,000 kilometers from Stockholm. Quite extraordinary to do. Lessons learned from the geopolitically tensioned areas in the world is that unmanned is the future, and the only way to guarantee communication and steering of that is to have satellite communications. So we're on to something extraordinary here, and I think that's just going to explode as we go forward. The biggest thing that happened was, of course, that in August, we moved our current customer, United States Department of Defense, from leased capacity.
We used other types of satellite capacity prior to Ovzon 3, and they've since then been the first user, and they use one of our. We've built several networks for them on the satellite. We hope they will be followed pretty soon by other customers on the satellite as well. We also took a fairly big order last year and then renewed that this year through our reseller partner, Swedish Space Corporation, a government-owned entity that is responsible for the kind of space activities in Sweden. Fairly big and large contracts. They expanded that order here in November as well and a prepayment of a total of SEK 132 million, which is a welcome addition to our cash balance and liquidity for the company and bodes well for the end of this year and for 2025, obviously.
Financially, in Q3, we had a strong quarter, very strong quarter, foremost both on order intake, but also on revenue. If we look on the graphs here, they are all actually trending in the right direction. We had a very strong EBITDA in Q3 because we've managed cost very well. We've gotten orders in. We've delivered on those orders, so we can see a little bit of a trend shift for us in terms of profitability and EBITDA and also strengthening actually on all axes going forward. We are in a total commercial breakthrough year, I would say, so we're very excited about finishing this year strong and moving into 2025 in a very good way, and I think we're kind of at the end of a big investment period of three, four, five years into more of a commercialization of the capabilities we have.
The stars and moons have aligned a little bit around what we deliver, what we can deliver. I'll end with saying very proud of representing pure Swedish technology. We usually say, "By Sweden, for Sweden, with Sweden." Thank you.
Very good. Very good, Per. Thank you so much for that introduction into Ovzon. Always a pleasure, as mentioned earlier, hearing those thoughts of you. Could you initially talk a little bit about the initial feedback that you received from the tenants that have now been onboarded of the Ovzon 3 satellite?
Yes. Very unique. They've never experienced anything like it. Words like wow and powerful. That comes from, to give a little bit more detail, the ability.
The satellite has six really steerable antennas, one we call a gateway antenna, but six steerable antennas you can move very quickly to a new area, or you can concentrate them on a smaller geographical area, which means that you can increase the data throughput to the terminal. They have been very impressed with that. They've been very impressed with the ability to actually use our terminals to connect very quickly. We also have showcased the ability to, when they test things about jamming and being kind of in an environment that is very contested, more like what we would call electronic warfare, in the test we've made, there is no disturbance and our capabilities are up 100% of the time. Those are the feedbacks from customers, and I think that's going to be reference points for others to utilize.
In addition to this high throughput and high resiliency, you also have the onboard processor on Ovzon 3. You touched upon it in brief terms. What is that about, and has that fully been launched? What does it bring to the table?
Very good question. The onboard processor is a, we can call it a digital hub that is placed on the satellite. Basically, we're the first in the world that have moved the intelligence and the ability to switch over from, maybe we'll take a step back. Normal satellite communication functions the following way. You have a terminal on the ground that gets the signal to the satellite. The satellite then connects down to a big teleport. The teleport is connected to fiber. The signal comes back through the teleport up to the satellite, down to the terminal.
If the teleport is gone or not functioning, you have no signal. But with Ovzon 3 and the onboard processor, the onboard processor is almost like a digital switchboard, which can make one of the terminals a teleport, and you can have a closed-loop communication system between your own terminals and so on. So it means you only need the signal once, and then you can repurpose it and reuse that. So you never lose connectivity, basically. There's nothing else that we know about, that we've heard about, that we've seen in the world, and that's what the customers are actually looking for, this 100% uptime and not being vulnerable about losing connectivity.
Very good. Very good. And in addition to Ovzon 3, you also have leased capacity and a leased capacity business that have been operational for many years now.
Can you talk a bit about the balance here between managing leased capacity, which you have to pay for, but still it adds capacity, and the Ovzon 3?
Yes. So maybe the easiest way to think of this is we want, of course, to have 100% capacity utilization on Ovzon 3 because that's where the investment comes, and that's where we have the strongest capability of delivering the highest value. However, there might be parts of the world where we don't have connectivity or where we can't reach with the one satellite we have. So we complement that with leased capacity from other satellite providers. We're very good in doing that. We're very good in building networks. That's what we've done for the last 10 to 15 years. So it will be a complement to what we can do ourselves with our own satellite.
I think the key is if you think about the, we normally talk about networks and how we set up networks, but if we can get up to 100% of the capacity of Ovzon 3 utilized, we need to complement that with other types of capacity. So it's really no difference, but we have higher performance on our own capability, obviously. But maybe a comment financially on that. So historically, we've signed up for long-term contracts to have leased capacity, and it hasn't been fully utilized, which also burdens the financials and the EBITDA. The EBITDA numbers in Q3, all the leased capacity was 100% utilized. You can see how the numbers actually then go up immediately on that. So now we don't have a burden of having too much inventory of capacity.
We're 100% utilizing it, and we're trying to get more anchor customers on Ovzon 3, which should help the financial projections of the company as well. Perfect. And then going into 2025, how do you think we should view OpEx levels? Because you also employ some 40-50 people, so that's a big chunk of your current cost currently, like for many companies. But still, you target growth here. Does it mean that you need to add more people to manage this, or can you drive operational leverage from improved sales? Our team, we call them Ovzonians. This is not a volume play. This is a play of smarts. We have the best employees in the world for what we do.
We don't need to add volume of people, but we need to add complementary skills and competencies and also invest a little bit in our go-to-market organization to actually cover the geographies that are prioritized for us. But you shouldn't see OpEx as a big increase going forward, but gradually with revenue growth, you'll grow the OpEx base somewhat. And you didn't ask about CapEx, but most of the capital expenditure is actually taken. We recently in Q3 also said that we have about SEK 60 million in 2024, 2025 remaining on Ovzon 3 and related technologies. It's not a lot in comparison to the SEK 2.3 billion we've done. So that should also kind of be somewhat lower than what we've seen historically for the company.
So that's, I mean, with breakthrough going through a high investment phase and now getting into commercialization of the capabilities we've built should also be a strength for us going forward.
How would you describe the operational momentum and also the climate, the market you currently operate? Because I'm sure that many people here, they have lots of reference points when looking at cap goods companies or IT companies in general terms, but there aren't that many Swedish-listed satellite companies or within that space.
There's maybe only one. Yep.
So in light of that context, how would you describe your performance and how does the market currently, how is the health of the market? I think the biggest opportunity and the biggest challenge is the lead times in sales.
It takes quite some time when you work with government organizations to go through public tender processes or procurement processes for them. So you have to be proactive, you have to be predictive, you have to be progressive in how you work with them because you can't cut any corners. There are rules and regulations, and should be rules and regulations how it's procured. The good thing is that the world has shifted towards that this is essential, not nice to have. So the essentiality for most countries are that you actually have to talk to both political leadership and defense and civil defense leadership, as well as the grassroots that are actually going to use the solutions, and that takes a little time. It's several dimensions of how you actually have to go to market, but I think we started early.
We are in a good momentum. We are in deep discussions with many, and we are very positive about the possibilities for the future, both with current customer base as well as a new customer base. But it takes a little time, and that's, I think, the, I mean, it's not an off the shelf ice cream in sunshine that we sell. It's quite complicated, and you need to change your architecture a little bit for how you think about organized communication, where satellite communication now is the new entrant and maybe the most prominent entrant into the total infrastructure. So momentum is good. Timing is what we're trying to be more predictable with.
And then just a final question. We only have 30 seconds or so, less of this presentation. How would you describe your priorities going into 2025?
Fairly simple. Sell. Sell. Sell.
No, with customer engagement and getting more customers on our own capability, obviously. Manage cost carefully. Don't get overexcited when business comes in and start to invest heavily. Be very measured in how we do those things. Position the company for continued success. And then behind the scenes, also looking into what's the future. Should we start very quickly to have more own satellites in the future? Can we build terminals that have even smaller antennas so they can be on very light unmanned vehicles, for example, which we've proven works? And then working with customers to apply this broadly as a main means of communications. So priority is actually growth.
Priority is to manage costs so you can drive up EBITDA and positive cash flow and then continue to be measured in how you innovate and drive new capabilities so we can leverage this further and lift ourselves up to even higher levels.
A very clear and good answer that I believe most of us can comprehend in here. Thank you so much for coming here today, Per, and we'll have a five-minute break before the next presentation starts, so thank you again.
Thank you, Simon. Thank you.