Good morning and welcome to Polygiene Group's presentation of the fourth quarter. I am Ulrika Björk and I'm the CEO of the group.
I'm Niklas Blomstedt and I am the CFO.
We're going to introduce to you the fourth quarter from 2024, and I'm very happy to see how the company has performed during full 2024. I will start to give you some highlights of the quarter, and then Niklas will give you the financial performance, and then I will give you an update on Polygiene and Addmaster, some updates from the quarter, and also where we are in the different segments. We're going to have a Q&A in the end, as we normally do. Let's start with some highlights. As you know, 2024 has been a comeback year for the group. We have strong results, and also the conclusion of the year, we ended up with a very strong growth, 45%, and we also have proven the scalability of the business. We're delivering very good results overall in the year.
We can also see that all the other key numbers have also been pointing at the right directions, and we continue to improve on all areas. As a result of these good key numbers, the board has also decided to propose for the AGM a dividend and an update on the dividend policy. The policy is actually a proposal to give back around 40% of the result after tax, which should amount to SEK 0.05 for 2024. That will be decided on the AGM 8 May. We're also expanding our agent and distributor network, both in Polygiene and Addmaster. We have some new agents and distributors, and this is part of the future growth strategies to extend these networks. We also had some interesting breakthroughs in ScentMaster, which I will come back to.
I will give you an update on the Shed Guard project that we now are in collaboration with the University of Manchester, which has been giving the project another dimension. First, some numbers from you, Niklas.
Yes, if we look at the numbers, then a short summary, we can see that in the quarter we had sales of SEK 44.7 million versus SEK 30.9 million in the quarter last year. Full year, we are having SEK 156.9 million versus SEK 113.5 million. We had a strong gross margin of 76.1% versus 70.6%. For the full year, it was 70.8% versus 73.2%. We had operating cost of minus SEK 25.1 million versus SEK 25.3 million last year. Full year amount was SEK 85.1 million versus SEK 88.1 million.
An EBITDA of SEK 5.9 million in the quarter versus minus SEK 6 million, and for the full year, SEK 19 million versus minus SEK 12.2 million. With an EBIT of SEK 4.4 million versus minus SEK 302.4 million. For the full year, it was SEK 13.2 million versus SEK 312.6 million. We had a strong cash flow of SEK 9.4 million second quarter versus minus SEK 2.3 million, and the full year we had SEK 21.4 million versus minus SEK 3.7 million.
At the end of the year, we had a cash of SEK 68.7 million versus SEK 44.1 million. As Ulrika said, the board has proposed a dividend of SEK 0.05 per share or 5% per share. If we go in a little bit more into the sales, we can see that sales was up 45% versus last year. That included the 1% FX impact. The sales in the quarter four is also better than we had in quarter three. During the quarter, we had a stock buildup at the distributors in Polygiene and over approximately SEK 5 million.
That is partly driven that the Chinese New Year is fairly early in 2025. Looking on the shares of sales, Polygiene is now up to 57% in the quarter because Polygiene increased with 55% during the quarter versus last year. Addmaster increased 32%, so their part of the share is 43% in Q4.
From a region point of view, we saw that the strongest increase was in EMEA with 39%, followed up by Americas with 33%. While we have a small decrease in APAC with 7%. If we then look on the numbers, other numbers, we can see that the strong gross margin of 76.1% versus the 70.6%, it's partly driven by FX around 1% unit and also that we have a good mix with more Polygiene sales in the quarter with high margin. In the last year, we had an inventory adjustment of SEK 0.7 million. The operating costs include in the quarter a bonus of SEK 1.7 million. Last year, we had SEK 2.5 million for ending consulting contracts. The operating cost is also including variable sales cost, and for this quarter, it was SEK 4.8 million versus SEK 3 million last year. This is driven by the increased sales.
EBITDA, as we said, 5.9 versus - 6, and EBIT 4.4 versus - 302.4. Last year, we had the write-down of goodwill of around SEK 295 million. The strong cash flow of SEK 9.4 million was driven partly by contribution from operating activities, strengthened working capital, and reduced investments during the period. We have had some small shortages on the supply during the quarter, so we had to do some air transport. That air transport comes with shorter payment terms versus the sea transport. That has a positive impact on the strength of working capital. As we said, we have a strong cash of SEK 68.7 million, and the dividend of 0.05% is approximately SEK 1.9 million.
Thank you, Niklas. I will move in to talk a little bit about Polygiene, the textile segment of our business. There is a good trend, there is a good drive in the textile business at the moment. As we can see, there was a strong growth of 55%. The share of sales for the full group was 57%, which also triggered the higher margins of the quarter. The sales within Polygiene is mainly driven from Europe and EMEA and the Americas this quarter. We can see a lot of our customers that declined during 2023 are back on track again, like Arc'teryx, On Running, Edelrid, and Adidas. We can see they picked up volumes again, that is really, really positive. We also have new brands coming on board. For instance, we have this prestigious brand Passenger from the U.K., which is an outdoor brand.
We have a lot of focus on sustainability. Polygiene fits very well in with their message. Yes, I want to update you on Shed Guard. Shed Guard is an innovation project that has been running for 1.5 years. It's a long-term project. We are in a phase now where we are going to test more fabrics. We're going to treat more fabrics and send for new tests. We're going to have those results by the end of quarter one. Meanwhile, we have this partnership with the University of Manchester, who came in with extensive knowledge of microfibers. They have equipment, they have labs. This collaboration with Polygiene's experience in textile applications is a super good match. The project is funded for around nine months, and this is super interesting. Meanwhile, we are waiting for the test results from phase two.
The university is now conducting 250 wash tests. That is a large number of analyses going to be made now to find out what are the common patterns to see on what fabrics, what kind of fabrics, if the water has an impact, if it's normal filter water or it's the ionized water. We're also looking at detergents if that has an impact. There is a lot of analysis going to be made now. We're going to have the results from these washing tests within the next coming weeks here. It is going to be super interesting to see how this project is going to work. It is not only about to have good test results, it is about to have consistent good test results for it to be a viable commercial product.
That is why we have to do all this work now if we're going to be able to put this on the market or not. So far, it seems positive, I would like to say. We have all reasons to come back to the Shed Guard project when we are introducing you to the Q1 in April. As I said before, part of our strategic growth is that we have to partner up with other partners in the network, like distributors and agents, because we are not many in the organization. We have 45 people. We have to have arms out there. We onboarded Weichert in the US to have one salesperson in the West Coast and one on the East Coast. Weichert is the agency that we also work with in Germany. They belong to the same group.
Weichert is also the company who is doing all these big trade shows. They are super connected to all the brands and all the industries. It is a perfect match for us. After around a couple of months now, we can already see very, very good results from them with incoming leads, with prospects and projects. This has been really good for the Polygiene Americas now. We are also looking for technologies, tomorrow's technologies to extend the technology portfolio. We have worked very hard the last couple of months here to try to find something that could be complementary to our StayFresh technologies. The R&D team has worked really, really hard the last months here. Another positive note on Polygiene is that we have a healthier customer structure.
By analyzing the customers, we can see that there are more tier one brand partners than before, and that is minimizing the risk. If somebody will change technology or do other changes, we still have more of the bigger customers now, which is very, very good to realize now. Moving into Addmaster, the protection side of the business, the hard surfaces. They also had a great quarter. I mean, 32% is a good growth. We can also see that it's existing customers picking up volumes again, but we also have new customers coming on board continuously. The share of sales was 43%. I think if we look full year, I think it's more around 50-50, but a little bit upper side on Polygiene this year. EMEA is still the largest region with 61%, and the full year is 70%.
We can see that we have growth in Americas, for instance. Hopefully we can see that APAC is picking up as well. The Americas doubled the sales in Q4, but that is from small volumes. It is also a signal that the US is a future market for us for Addmaster. The same as with Polygiene, we have to extend our networks. We have signed on a new global distributor. It is a German global company that has facilities in China. They are going to promote and sell Addmaster's technologies from this year. That is also exciting to follow how that will develop. We had a presentation at this conference. It is a big import exhibition that happens every year. We had the stage where we could introduce and present Addmaster for a big audience. That was really fantastic too.
We have launched with ScentMaster. ScentMaster is quite a small part of the product portfolio so far. It's mainly about Biomaster and antimicrobials, but we also believe that ScentMaster has great potential. Now we have launched oral products and other personal hygiene essentials like razors and shavers. We have toothpicks. We have other kinds of personal hygiene where you need an antimicrobial to add value to the technologies. We have several companies that have launched with oral products. I think it's two, three different customers from different regions that have picked up this. It makes sense to have a scent with mint or lemon or something like that in these toothpicks. It's a great match. I think we can see more from this area moving forward. There is another positive note on the geotextiles.
We have partnered up with a big partner. It's one of the largest geotextiles in the world. They are relaunching GeoClean, the textiles where Polygiene and Addmaster Polygiene Group is included. They are going to launch that under the name OMORIA. You can go into the website and see how nicely they are presenting these aqua textiles. We were there on an innovation workshop with them to try to find more technologies that we could add to these geotextiles. This was quite a good workshop, very positive, good partnership. I think they also mentioned that they now have signed on Brussels Airport with these aqua textiles, which is quite interesting. They are only launching this in Europe so far. I mean, it's a global company. They have Asia, US.
There are lots of other markets where this can be introduced in the future. Very exciting to follow this as well. Yes, and then there's another interesting thing I want to mention is that Addmaster has its 25 years anniversary in 2025. The business was started by Paul Morris in the year 2000. We are going to highlight this during the year with a lot of PR. We're going to do a lot of events and also include our customers and partners in this. It's going to be an exciting year for Addmaster for sure. We have a very busy spring here. We're going to go out and promote Polygiene Group as a good investment case. We believe that we are in a place now, that we are confident, that we are stable. We have a huge schedule here in March.
We're going to on a road trip across Europe. We're going to visit funds and investors in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich, and Copenhagen. We're going to do lunch presentations. We have evening events, and we're also going to do one-to-one presentations that we have been signed up to. We have produced this one-pager. It's like a folder that we're going to ship out both physically, but we're also going to email to 500 contact investors, both private but also institutions. We can now for real go out and promote as to the stock exchange market. Yes, I think that was all from me. If you want to go deeper in, you read the full report. I think I'm ready for some questions.
We had some questions here before. That was in the team before. Something was a little bit about it's been a little bit quiet, not so much news about products. I think you mentioned a little bit about it that there are some exciting things coming up. Do you want to say something more, Ulrika, about that or?
Not for now, but I think, as I said, we are looking into the future and what is tomorrow's technologies. I am sure we will announce something when we are ready for that.
There were also some questions about Shed Guard and StayFresh BIO.
Shed Guard, as I mentioned, it is an innovation project. It is still ongoing. It is absolutely alive and positive. For the StayFresh BIO, we launched that last year. It has been some strugglings because of its new technology. We need to have registrations. You have to have the compliance in place and also, of course, testing. We have tested with customers during 2024. Let's see what we bring in now in 2025.
There have been some questions about some competitors. There has been some strugglings in the market. How we would sort of have a view on that from a customer point of view or acquisition point of view.
Yeah, so there is a consolidation in the market for sure. There have been companies. I mean, it's been tough years in the back. There is a consolidation in general in the market. Polygiene Group is always open to evaluate and to check what's out there. We do our due diligence. If something is interesting, we will strike. If it's not, it's not interesting. We keep our eyes open and are updated on the markets.
There was a question about the bonus. What we can say is that the bonus is for everyone in the company. All of the employees are part of the bonus program. It is both sales and the EBIT, so it is a combination of that. It is based upon that you have to do an overachievement versus the budget. That is the background on how the bonus is built up. As the Board has said, it is for everyone in the company. There is not that much new.
Other questions?
Questions? No, I think the ones we have, new ones we already sort of answered in the ones we had before.
They've been covered in the presentation. That's good.
Yeah, for sure.
Yes. I do not think we have anything more to add. I can just, like, on some people ask, how do you feel about the first quarter? It is very early. We have the Chinese New Year much earlier. Of course, we cannot compare January to January. We have to look at January and February together. I think March will be the month when we know because then we can see how much we can pick up from the first two months. It is too early, but we have a very positive feeling. The company within the company is super good aligned, the full team. We are focusing. We know that strategy and focus is one of the success factors here during 2024 to be aligned and to just, like, do the right things. Of course, there has been a recovery as well for existing customers.
We like following their trends. In general, I think we picked some market shares during 2024. We have a bigger growth than the industry in general. I think we are in a good place. I really hope that we can continue on this path moving forward.