Welcome to the PowerCell Group Q4 2024 report presentation. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode. During the Q&A session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing #5 on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Richard Berkling, and CFO, Anders Düring. Please go ahead.
Good morning and a warm welcome to our Q4 report for 2024. I am now joined with Anders for the first time, so a warm welcome to Anders.
Thank you. Thank you.
Anders Düring has been now with the company for two months, working initially in parallel together with Torbjörn Gustafsson and taking over from January 1st. It is with pleasure that we're now presenting the Q4 report and also giving you some introduction to the general status in our industry and where we're heading with PowerCell. Q4 2024 became a slight recovery compared to what was previously a rather soft year. We were able to report a 30% growth for Q4, which gave us an 8% growth for the full year, which was quite good in what was a rather soft market that we have reported starting from Q3, Q4 in 2023 and carrying over. Also happy to be able to report a small positive result, although it's just for one quarter. It's still a good indicator of the potential we have to leverage growth in PowerCell.
Other significant events in the quarter is, of course, the memorandum of understanding we signed with ZeroAvia to explore the next-generation aviation fuel cell. We are in the process of certifying the first part of the business for the smaller aircraft propulsion unit, where ZeroAvia last week received a G-1 certificate from FAA in the U.S., and PowerCell this week reported that we completed certification of AS 9100, which is the aviation certificate for designing and manufacturing for aviation, which is indicating that the certification process and commercialization of the first part of the business with ZeroAvia is progressing well. The fact then that we add a collaboration or evaluation of a potential collaboration for the next part, where we go for larger aircraft, is, of course, encouraging and a good indication of a very healthy joint development that we do with them.
Also completed the direct issuance of share in December, which we were happy about, bringing in new, stronger owners and, of course, fresh capital for the company, strengthening the balance sheet and giving us more room to maneuver and accelerate our development because we think that we are in a very good position strategically. This gives us even more potential to act on what could be a potentially interesting market. Also, positive cash flow that we improved. Anders will explore more about this because we have one-time effect that is positive this time, where we had some negative cut-off effect last year. Really good underlying cash flow, but something we need to continue to monitor and work on going forward. All in all, for us, it has been a robust market. The fundamentals are there for us, and we talked about this in previous calls as well.
After summer in 2024, we saw a change in the market where we saw OEM orders coming in. First half of 2024, it was difficult to have any signed orders. Second half, the market accelerated, and it's doing it with the OEM customers that we have been positioned and trying to establish contracts with for quite some time. The change is that previously the turnover time from initial negotiation to completion of the delivery and invoice was roughly five years. Now it's down to 18 months, which is a significant change in our industry. That is not just from the Italian shipyard that we communicate, but that was in general the order intake of the second half of last year.
PowerCell has continued to focus on OEM business and commercial integration, which is important because in this market where you see a lot of uncertainty related to policy changes and regulations, working with OEMs that are doing this because it makes business sense and it's critical for them in the future competitive in their industry, I think gives us a bit more robustness to these fluctuations that we see in subsidies and policies. The segments that are driving growth at the moment are marine and power generation development. We see increased demand with really strong customers with a specific purpose to what they do, which is also very encouraging. If we then summarize 2024, it was a soft market, but we saw good improvement in the second half of 2024, driven by OEM orders to PowerCell. The order intake for the second half was about SEK 50 million per month.
Once again, with rather short turnover time, from order to complete the delivery and after that invoicing. A good progress in the market, not just in numbers, but in the characteristics of the orders. We were happy to introduce Marine System 225 and also the M2 Power Methanol Power Pack, which is adding to our competitive strength. We saw with the introduction of Marine System 225, which was the upgraded version, we immediately received more than 75 orders or system orders, which is now the wrap-up we do with serial production on this one, which is also a first for PowerCell. As I said, complete certification of the AS 9100, which is a very important milestone for PowerCell because this is also one of these indicators of how we are maturing as a company.
Although this certificate is specific for the aviation deliveries, it is, of course, a very important fundamental for all our segments because it gives us a step of approval on the industrial stability and ability to provide quality and safety for our customers, which is really important. When we exit 2024, we do it as a strong company. We have updated the product portfolio. We have an updated technology portfolio with the next-generation fuel cell stack, which we were running for the first time in December as a full stack. This is the building block that we configure between 300 kW up to 1 MW of power, which will be a very important building block going forward.
Even though we claim that we have the best energy density and thereby performance in the industry, this new generation, which is on TRL level five at the moment, gives us a 55% improvement in performance, which is significant because it brings down weight, size, and thereby also cost. A very important part of our future development. The fact that we are now in start of production of serial delivery in Q4 and wrapping up in Q1 this year is really encouraging. We have a proven business model, and we have also proven ability to leverage growth. Anders will show this because we are managing to report a small profit, but we do it on also rather low levels of revenue.
We have a very interesting business model, which we have claimed previously to be asset-light, and it's proving now to have a strong leverage in its growth. We also enter 2025 or exit 2024 with improved financial stability, and we have strengthened the balance sheet, which was a focus for us in the later part of 2024. With that, Anders, give you an introduction to the numbers.
Thank you very much, Richard. I will walk through the numbers. I will do that in a more reflective mood as the numbers are quite well described in the report itself, and there are some elaborated texts associated to them. I will try to highlight some of the things that I think either could be elaborating on what Richard has been saying and what I think is important to remember as you read the numbers. Starting with the sales number, obviously, we see the quarterly differences here with a very strong fourth quarter compared to the previous three quarters. If we would have looked at the year before, we would have seen the same trend. I think the indication report gives at hand that we might see a more smooth ride here between quarters moving forward without having said anything about forecasts or anything like that.
This is the trend, and we had a very healthy Q4 with that respect. We can change slide, Richard, to the next. Now, looking at the Q4 P&L, I think the obvious thing here is that we have some order intake that we accounted for as a stage of completion that generated a strong outcome of the top line, although we have been to some extent conservative. This is one of the first real large such orders when it comes to the profitability on such a contract. We still see that the fundamentals in Q4 came out very strong, and we are happy to be able to leverage up that going forward. We can go on to the next page. For the year and the P&L, I think it's important to remember the one-time effect or the extraordinary effect that we're taking in the previous quarters this year.
That is a SEK 30 million grant that was given to us, basically relief. That is a SEK 30 million plus to the P&L. You see that as a non-recurrent item for this year, although there were no such things in Q4 for comparison reasons. I think that's the real key thing to notice here. With that having said, I think we can go to the next one. Balance sheet, like Richard said, I mean, the focus for the company in the last half of the last year was basically to have a more stable balance sheet, including equity. We had a successful round of bringing in equity.
The other things that have changed that is obviously different from 2023 is that we do have capitalized a bit more of the research and development activities as we are moving into a more aggressive phase on those things and taking on more tasks. We also, at the year end, had the situation of that we had a lot of purchases following the order that we received in Q4. We also had some prepayments for the funded projects that we're doing internally. Those things together generated a very high level of current liabilities. Part of that is payables, of course. It is important for me to say here that as much as a negative cutover effect that had last year going into 2024, we might see a bit of a positive turnover effect here when we go into 2025.
The differences that I will share with you in a while will, yes, there are differences. They are, like Richard said, there is a fundamental improved cash flow. Obviously, it has had some prioritization effects when it cut over from last year to this and from this year to next, 2024, 2025. Let's move on. The outcome of what I just mentioned is quite well viewed here on this chart. There was a very negative operating cash flow by the end of last year or 2023. This year, we have a positive operating cash flow. I just want to make sure that everyone understands that there are cut-off effects that work in the opposite direction in the two different cut-off points. Underlying cash flow is positive.
I think I'll leave it with Richard and potentially pick up questions after having finalized with some KPIs. I think these KPIs are fine in the report. I think it's, for us, extremely important that we follow the EBITDA as a result measure and, of course, the total cash flow. Talking total cash flow in this case, obviously, we've had a significant improvement following both the loan that we had from our financers and the share issue. Have you said so, Richard? I'll leave it to you.
Very good. If we then look at the strategic focus for 2025, we have a very strong focus on reaching break-even. That should not be misinterpreted as a forecast, but it is a strong focus. I think that this is why we talk so much about leveraging growth. To continue our top-line growth, we need to focus on the OEM contract because that is what is giving us a repetitive, sustainable business. We have now a number where we have designed in our technology into both marine OEMs and also power generation OEMs, which means that when they are outselling their core offering, we are part of that, which is a very, very good business model for PowerCell.
That is giving us an opportunity also to scale by selling more of the existing product generation, which is a very important enabler to drive towards break-even and a very good balanced cash flow. At the same time, we are accelerating the next generation of product. This is where I'm always coming back to where I'm most proud of PowerCell. The ability to actually have a growth that is one of the best in the industry, the ability to leverage growth while we're still investing into current offering on the product portfolio and into the future earning because this is so important. We are not running PowerCell only to show short-term growth and short-term profitability. We are investing into the future ability to also generate money in the upcoming technology portfolios. That is, as I said, really proud of that balance.
We are continuing to work with the industrialized innovation concept where we are adding more and more product features. Last year, we had two major releases of new technology and new offerings. In 2025, we will continue because this is still an innovation-driven market. We need to add more and more value to our customers, which is part of the industrialized innovation concept. As I said, I'm really proud of our ability to balance innovation, industrial stability, and leverage growth with a clear path towards break-even. We will be happy to explore more of that in the question section. We have said this before, that we are now in a new phase in the market where we see a commercial market growth from OEM business, which is posing new requirements on companies like PowerCell, where you need to have your technology, product, and operation in order.
We are now entering into a market where more traditional competitive perspectives are creating value. We need to have delivery on time. We need to have good quality and good safety in our product. We need to focus on uptime in the application for the customer, etc., which is really, really interesting because that's also proving PowerCell as an industrial company, not just a technology startup. This also poses new opportunities because not everyone in the industry, they're not up for this. We think that we are well positioned to capture this. We have prepared for doing this by investing into the product offering, investing into internal abilities and capabilities. We have focused on productivity in our operation and on internal efficiency. All of these are quite, if I may say, boring characteristics of running a company. That is what's creating value long term.
Everybody can invest in new technology and in your brand and marketing, but you also need to invest in the fundamentals of being an industrial company. That is something that PowerCell has been preparing for and hopefully can benefit from in the upcoming years. If we look at the market, we now see what I call a bit of an ambiguous market characteristic. We see solid OEM-driven growth rather than the subsidy-driven growth. We also have an uncertainty around policy and regulatory aspects. For PowerCell, I am convinced that the energy transition, it is happening. We see more action in the market than we have seen ever before. We see more investments and actual deployment of hydrogen availability, hydrogen value chain, and supply chain. We see more actual progress. We also see more questions and more negative sentiments around the whole energy transition.
To me, as I said, I think that it could be a bit of a challenge sometimes, but we have not been chasing the subsidies. We have been trying to focus on OEMs that are doing this because they need it in their business model. Hopefully, that can give us a bit more of a robust situation when you have some uncertainty on the policy side and subsidy side. We are working with a clear commitment from OEMs where they have a focused effort and a clear secure deployment plan. We will come back to this in the quarter one report on how the market is developing. For PowerCell, we are a bit positive, but not over-enthusiastic. When you have uncertainty in the market, it's affecting everybody. We're trying to navigate with our offering as we have done in the past.
We do that with having leading technology and actually going into real commercial deliveries, which is quite important for us. With that, we will come back and talk to you with interim reporting for quarter one on April 24th. We have the AGM in Gothenburg where you're all invited to visit us. Most likely this time, we will be at PowerCell, which gives you an opportunity to come and see production and meet the people and see the products firsthand. With that, we open up for questions from the audience.
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Good. We enter into questions. One of the most obvious ones is the ones that we can touch upon. Do we have any concerns about tariffs from future U.S. deliveries or deliveries to the U.S.? Of course, we have concerns because we do not really know where this will play out. On the other hand, we also see a lot of opportunity. We have been preparing to have assembly in the U.S. if we have customers that are delivering us enough critical mass. If this happens and materializes, I think that everybody will be affected. We have a very strong offering. We have a good, I think, price point and value point. Most likely, we will be able to navigate through this. We will focus on this and come back and report how it is affecting us.
This is not a great concern to PowerCell at the moment. Any comments on that from your side, Anders?
No, I think you're right. I think there will be a very strong drive from many companies and will be part of that action list that will be taken. I think, as you mentioned, that we are well prepared for it.
We have a question whether or not the Norwegian ferry order is fully delivered and invoiced. That is no. We're still in the deployment phase. We will be shipping components to be commissioned into the ship during 2025. We still have some revenues and also cash flow coming in from that project and order. We have a question on the collaboration with Bosch and the royalty. We see now that the royalties were improving, primarily driven by growth in the Chinese market for Bosch. That is a quite interesting indicator to the energy transition in general. China is developing really rapidly in this area. That is driven by a very clear policy from the government to electrify a large part of their commercial transportation sector.
They have now, in quarter three, I think it was, deemed gray hydrogen as green as long as it's a byproduct of previous industrial processes, enabling access to massive amounts of hydrogen and really being a catalyst towards the whole energy transition in China related to fuel cells. We expect China to continue to grow. For Bosch, we saw stable income on royalty. I'm not sure about the numbers, Anders, for 2024, but it was a good growth. Hopefully, that can continue to be a stable income. Unfortunately, this is nothing that PowerCell can affect. We're just reporting what is sold by Bosch. We think that Bosch is doing quite well, especially on the Chinese market. Let me see. I have additional questions here. A question that we saw a good development and a positive result, quarter four for PowerCell.
What is the most important to focus on in 2025 to keep the positive momentum? I think that that's a good question. I think that if we scale down to what is the growth strategy for PowerCell on the fuel cell market, it's quite simple. The growth strategy in any technology shift, you need to grow number of installations, penetration in the market. Then you also need to grow your own creation per installation. So when you do that, you get an exponential growth. The Marine System 225 was an investment in that by improving performance, more power from the same output and the same product. Really important. We saw good progress in that one with the orders coming in. The methanol power plant is, of course, a very important one where you actually get both of these perspectives.
You will expand number of installations because with the methanol power plant, especially for marine, you lower the threshold for the customers. You take a lot of the responsibility and complexity of integration away from your end customer. You shorten time to market. You minimize technical risk and technical investment for the customer. That is driving a number of installations. When you do that and you incorporate and integrate more into your offering, you also increase your value per installation. Instead of just selling the fuel cell, we're selling a more bundled offering, which is doubling the revenue per installation. That is one of the key important aspects of driving growth in this market. Focusing on your cost position, cost of goods is really, really important. Having a healthy gross margin so we continue to leverage growth.
That will also be a very important part of what we focus on in 2025. Sorry. One question is if we have any activity in the train market, Ballard seems to be successful in this area. Yes, and they are. We are quite happy about that because we need to have strong colleagues in the industry. Ballard, they have been approaching the train market for, I think, three years, and it is now paying off. We have decided this year to enter into the train segment because we think now we have an offering that is quite good for trains. Unfortunately, the train segment is heavily driven by subsidies because it is quite often either public transportation tenders that you are quoting and/or public operators. That is a market that is a bit more affected by changes in policy and regulation. We still see an interesting development in this area.
Let me see. With your order book giving you the possibility to enter serial production in 2025, do you expect another growth year? How should we think about the bottom line development for 2025? This question is from our good friend, Constantin Hesse, at Jefferies. As always, I'm disappointing Constantin because he wants me to give forecasts, and I am a boring CEO saying that we're not giving a forecast. We're just reporting what's happening. Of course, what we said in the quarterly report is that with the OEM orders, we see an opportunity to even out some of the variances between the quarters, a bit more stable. That shouldn't be misinterpreted as solid high number growth. Of course, we are viewing ourselves as a growth company. We managed to report an 8% growth in what was a very soft market in 2024.
We now see that we have a good position with the updated product portfolio, with our strategic positioning, with our offering. Of course, we are expecting to be a growth company. How that plays out in 2025, or if it is going to be over 2026, that needs to be the proof is in the numbers that we are reporting. We are going to focus on protecting bottom line, protecting the gross margin, driving towards breakeven. Hopefully, we can come back quarter by quarter and have good progress to report. Thank you for your patience, Constantin. Overview of what is in our order book for 2025. We are contemplating this together with the board of PowerCell and our financial advisors how to start with more forward-looking information, a bit slightly better guidance, not necessarily a forecast.
We will come back to that one in quarter one because we see the need to give you more guidance on especially the order book. Thank you for that question. Hopefully, we can come back and have a bit more of a positive response. We have from Carnegie, if we have any updates on HyFlex and Hitachi. Hitachi participated in the big hydrogen trade show in Paris last week of January. HyFlex was one of the important pieces of their presentation. It was also noted that the HyFlex product and team around it received the Hitachi Group Innovation Award for 2024. This is becoming a prioritized area within Hitachi. Hopefully, we can come back with some information and actual orders.
Before that, we can just point in the direction of communication and activities that are being done in the market from Hitachi and together with PowerCell. We think that that segment has a very promising future. If it happens in 2025 or 2026, we do not really know. The demand for electricity in society is just increasing. I think that the report from IEA was 4% year over year in 2023, 2024, which is a massive growth when we are talking about public grids that are already crammed today. The demand for decentralized solutions, for complementary solutions where you have green energy solutions, green energy sources that are volatile in its nature, of course, having technology and solutions to balance that, to have backup solutions or energy storage, that demand is going to increase. If we see that growth in 2025 or 2026, we do not actually know.
As soon as we know, we will come back and report back to you. We have a question whether or not we will have an off-grid package for private houses. That was a focus in the industry in 2018, 2019. I think that that could, in the future, be a very interesting technology proposal. At the moment, the cost of technology and cost of investment is too high for the consumer market. Our technology and products and technical solutions and infrastructure is more suited for commercial applications where you can have a clear analysis and return on investment calculation. No, I do not think that we will see anything for the consumer market in a fairly long time. With that, I think that we have covered most of the questions. Let me see if I have something more.
The next question comes from Henrik Alveskog from Redeye AB. Please go ahead.
Okay. Hello, gentlemen. Do you hear me?
Yes. Hi, Henrik.
Hi. Great. Okay. You have covered most of my questions already, but I am a little curious about your sourcing of stacks from Bosch. Since the S3 stack production started at Bosch, I think 2021 or 2022, and you have been working with upgrades on your systems, etc., through these years. I am kind of wondering if they are still producing the same stack as they did initially. I am just trying to figure out if the sourcing on your side might run into difficulties at some point.
Okay. Good question. Just to go back in history and get the dates right, total production for Bosch was in 2023 with S3. One reason why we cherish and value the collaboration with Bosch is that when you have an industrial partner like that, with any industrial product, you make constant upgrades. You do upgrades because you see cost reduction possibilities, you see quality improvements. Bosch may have a meticulous process to do that and do the kind of upgrades in a controlled manner. When PowerCell or Bosch finds a way to improve the core technology for products, that is incorporated, tested in that design, validated before it's put into production. When we scale something in that sense, we have full process control doing that.
In parallel, PowerCell still has the ability to manufacture stacks themselves in our factory in Gothenburg, although the sourcing is from Bosch. Now we have an updated stack that is S3 still, just a revision update. What we do improvements on is on the system side. One reason why we can do so many improvements on the stack is because we have a very stable core product in the stack. It is a good question. We still have a very solid industrial partner in Bosch, which is our main supplier for stacks. In parallel, of course, PowerCell has maintained the ability to manufacture our own stack if we, for some reason in the future, would be forced to or choose to manufacture in our own control instead.
Yeah. Great. Thanks. A question on your partnership with ZeroAvia. The certification and everything is, I guess, going according to plan. While production is getting closer. Previously, you talked about setting up assembly in the U.K., and I guess you've been considering maybe doing it in the U.S. instead. I'm just wondering, since we're getting closer and closer, is there a plan now? Could you say something about it?
Yes. We have a plan. Once again, going back to the business model and industrial setup of PowerCell, we have an opportunity to select rather late where to initiate the final assembly. Once again, the core production will be together with Bosch or in the factory in Gothenburg, which are both already operating and up and running. The final assembly will happen close to the customer. As you point out, with some of the uncertainty in the industry, ZeroAvia have been talking about the U.K. assembly and also American, where they have initiated their factory up in Washington State. If they would make any changes to that, that is something for ZeroAvia to communicate, of course.
We would, of course, then consider following them where they go because, as we said before, we think it's very important to have a proximity to the customer when you have a serial production on that scale. We will be able to follow them and support them wherever they go.
Okay. Great. Finally, you mentioned the methanol reformer in the presentation. Did I understand correctly that it is already ready for launch?
It is ready for orders, and we're selling it to the market. A complex integration system like that will require receiving customers. Although if we have an order today, it will not be commissioned before 18-24 months because it needs to be built into a vessel. That vessel is most likely a larger installation. Yes, it is ready to, we're selling it to the market, but delivery, it's not something you order as a component off the shelf and a commodity. There will be quite an extensive period from order to delivery because it's such a complex industrial system.
Right. Yeah. Thanks. That was all for me. Thank you.
Yeah. We do not want to build expensive inventory. I have a CFO focusing on that one. That is why there is a slight kind of project phase as well. Did we have an additional question?
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Okay. With that, I think that we have completed this quarter four report of 2024 and can now fully focus on 2025. As always, if you want to stay in touch with us, you're more than welcome to reach out. You're more than welcome to visit us in Gothenburg, visit the factory, and also see products and people, talk to us. Otherwise, looking forward to see you here in April for the quarter one report and continue to push PowerCell forward and grow our significance in this market because the energy transition is happening. PowerCell, we're a proud partner in that one. Thank you very much. Enjoy your rest of the week.
Thank you.