Hello. This is Per, CEO of Ranplan. I welcome everyone in attendance. George Wells, our CFO, is here also with me. We can wait perhaps 30 seconds, and then we can start. We would like to, yes, here, Victor is now joining also. Hello, hello everyone. I just introduced George Wells, our CFO, and myself briefly. Without further ado, let's start, and I do record here if you don't mind. We will probably keep this relatively short, but as always, you are welcome to ask any questions that you might have. This will be conducted in the English language, but you can ask questions and make remarks in Swedish as well. Let me see if I manage to pull up the slides. They should be available at your end relatively soon. Can anyone confirm?
Yes.
Yes, okay, very good. This covers the period of the first half of 2025, and we are reporting every six months. This is not a quarterly interim per se. It covers the first half of calendar 2025. The synopsis, the summary, is tabulated here. We will go through some of these items in greater depth shortly. The total income is down. We will explain it's down a few percentages here. Net sales is up. Net sales relates to commercial products and services. Total revenue in unchanged currencies, more or less unchanged. In reported currency, 4% lighter in the first half of this year compared with a year ago. Operating income has slid. Either loss has increased for reasons we will elaborate upon.
Cash flow follows the net income trajectory more or less, but there is also one reason why cash consumption, net cash consumption has been higher this first six months than a year ago. The cash holding at the end of June has risen, and at the same time, importantly, I presume the credit line or the utilization, the ability to utilize the credit line has been fully restored. The last two items here should be put into the perspective of the latest set of issues, kvittningsemission in Swedish, that was undertaken in the month of May. To the explanatory part, comparisons. Again, we compare first half to first half. Net sales, 5% higher on a reported basis. Give or take, it would have been up approximately 10% had the US dollar not fallen. Most of our net sales, again, commercial products, services are denominated in the American currency.
Obviously, if we book revenues in $10,000, it translates into less Swedish krona at this time than it did a year ago. Other income is emanating from research projects. These research projects are funded by institutions in the European Union and in the United Kingdom. This compares from a record high level in H1 2024, or almost record high level. We had a slight further increase in the second half. This is largely as expected because two projects were completed either in the beginning of the first half of this year or in the middle of it. Again, the percentage decline is amplified by the currency movements. In absolute terms, this is a negative SEK 800,000. Other operating income, tax credits for qualified R&D. This is an item that we also knew would decline compared with the level of last year.
All that said, total income, the sum of the first three here, a negative SEK 1.2 million, 8% in reported currency less. Cost of sales, very tiny, almost negligible. How come? First, cost of sales relates to net sales. How come it's so small? It's because in this quarter we had no resale of third parties, neither software nor anything else like third-party content like maps or services. This means, as you may surmise, that we still have very, very high gross margins from commercial products and services in the vicinity of 100%. Net sales minus cost of sales is almost the same as net sales. This highlights the attractiveness of our business model when it comes to software. If net sales were to be catapulted higher, it will very immediately and profoundly impact the total income, the gross profit, and ultimately the operating profit line.
Down to the gross profit line, we are still behind by now SEK 1.1 million, largely attributable to research projects, to products coming off. We are in the process of rebuilding, by the way, but we don't know exactly how and when new research projects will be producing income for us. We are subject to negotiations and certain starting criteria. Operating expenditures up 3%. George, perhaps, do you want to fill in on some of the parameters here?
Yes. There are parameters offsetting each other in different directions, but in the UK, we've had done small, which is where most of the salary, which is most of the operating expenses, are. There have been small pay increases during H1 and also smallish tax increases on the salary. This has been slightly offset by Per has sacrificed his salary during the quarter. We also have a seasonal effect that some extra staff come on to help with projects in the summer. That's pushed up R&D expenses in this quarter. That affects this half.
Thank you. Thank you. We should also mention here, as we do in the written report, that there's also an element of restructuring here, restructuring charges that we do habitually include in the reported figures. We don't, as you see here, have an adjusted operating profit or adjusted operating profit margin. There is also a restructuring charge here, as we see, as part and parcel of ongoing operations. The last item here before the operating profit line is worth discussing a bit. Here, the main shift is due to, again, foreign exchange. This relates principally to translation effects of net working capital balances, i.e., negative translation effects because our holdings of receivables, mainly in US dollars or often in US dollars, is larger than our payables, liabilities on the balance sheet. This is a balance sheet translation effect that produces a negative close to SEK 800,000.
Had a dollar not depreciated so much, then this would not have had such a big negative impact here. If we go back a year ago, then there was a positive effect. I think this gives us room to visualize the trends also here, not only the half years, but also the trends. Net sales, if we start with this trajectory, it is largely flattish, but seemingly even in the strongest Swedish krona on an upward curve. We should mention here that in the second half of 2023, there was a very big contribution from the sale of third-party network design services, in the absence of which we would have been probably around the same level as we currently are. H2 2023 is not solely our own products and services. Operating expenditures are rather flattish, a slight increase as we anticipated, as we flagged in the annual statement for 2024.
We are looking still into cost efficiencies and certain actions there, but we take that step by step. Operating cash flow by half year, there is a clear turn to the negative if you look at the comparisons and the trend line here in gray. Importantly, in the prior years here, in the first half of 2024, and I think also in 2023, yes, if I remember correctly, there was a collection of tax credits in the first half. That did not materialize in the first half of this year, and we anticipate that it will happen in the second half of 2025 instead. This, again, is not a symbol of a big reversal in the trend. It's not, again, as I emphasized, it's not H1 to H1 here, a like-for-like comparison.
We did have other positive contributions to cash flow in the first half, an upfront payment, but none making up for the impact of the collection of R&D tax credits, as we have seen in the first half of the prior years. Sources of income in total, again, importantly, then H2 2023, the aforementioned resale of network design services. In the absence of that, the totality would have been pretty much on level where we are today. Flatlining pretty much. It's positive to see now that net sales, the first part of these columns, that's up on first half and on second half 2024, in part because we have invested more in sales and marketing, and in no small part because we do sense, and we're pretty convinced we are gaining market share as we speak. We have a very robust product.
There is word of mouth, and there's a lot of interest from both existing and new prospective customers. Gross profit, as we have already discussed, is down. Year on year, it's up sequentially. Operating profit worsened for the three, four reasons we highlighted, and net income is pretty much reflecting that. Operating expenditures, a slight increase. Remember the 3% we looked at in the prior slide. It is mainly R&D led, research and development. Some salary increases, some restructuring charges, and some additions to the staff headcounts. Sales and marketing up both compared with the first and the second half of 2024. We have invested, participated in a record number of conferences and events.
I think the total is probably seven, eight in the first half of this year, and we hope this will pay off in the coming years, even though we are operating in a business where sales cycles are extended, prolonged, can easily span 12 months, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, but that is a guiding principle. No immediate payback can be anticipated, but through word of mouth and through more customer interest, we believe this will help us over time. General and admin, including management, overhead down year on year, actually down compared with an adjusted H2 2024 because we had a reversal here, so the 3.9. We did flag this in the H2 report. This is not an underlying level. This is partly because of my salary sacrifice towards the end of the second half. Where is this heading?
We aspire to extract efficiencies related to many things on an ongoing basis. We're also keen to reach out to more and more customers, and of course, we are eager to further strengthen our competitiveness. AI in all its shapes and forms will enable companies of all walks of life, not least those that are experts in IT and telecom like Ranplan, to produce more with less effort. Operating income and cash flow, this is one of the last slides on the financials. As always, importantly, we have no fixed assets on the balance sheet. We have no depreciation or amortization, and because of that, operating profit is identical to operating cash flow before movements of working capital, as you can see if you compare the two first columns here next to each other for every period. The last column here is the operating cash flow after working capital movements.
This is why it swings depending on cash collections, not least related to the tax credits. That takes us to the balance sheet. George, do you want to make any comments here? We have gross cash of SEK 3.9 million, no debt. We have net cash, then identical to gross cash. We have current assets above current liabilities. Going back to what we just discussed here, this helps to explain why we had the negative effect from the depreciation of the US dollar. We should perhaps also mention that at this time last year, we classified the loan, the credit line, as a current liability. Otherwise, it would have been much more muted. The difference between current assets and current liabilities, adjusting for that, has always been positive. Shareholders' equity is now back in black territory, thanks to the set of share issues.
A total of SEK 36 million before very modest transaction costs.
I would only add that in terms of current assets, we also have, because the tax credit is in pounds, that's a significant pound current asset.
True, true.
The pound has also formed relative to the Swedish krona.
True. Okay, good. Shareholder structure, what has happened there is that my ownership is now a sliver below the 90% threshold. We did invite shareholders and other investors to take part in the set of issues, but in the end, there was no interest, so I took the whole lot. As some of you may recall, 60% of the total issue was earmarked for external investors should they express interest. Again, on the very same terms and conditions as proposed for the set of issues, kvittningsemissionen. As a corollary, my ownership has now risen to the dominant one. As far as we understand, there are no changes amongst the lead names beyond that. The number of shares has now risen by 30 million from 47,118,242 to 77,118,242, and then the same decimals. The full income statement is here. George, you may want to add some color, financial income and expenses.
We have perhaps not tax, we are not paying taxes, but otherwise, I don't think there is perhaps this. The cost of sales here is the big impact in the second half of network design services using third parties. George, is there anything that you think ought to be added?
I suppose I need to say that the financial expenses, loan interest.
Yes, indeed. This, given that at the moment, or more correctly at the end of June, there was no debt, should clearly be much less onerous in the second half of 2025. Cash flow statement. Investing activities is zeroed because we expense everything immediately. We don't capitalize R&D. We don't capitalize hardware, PCs either. It is a very, very clean cash flow statement. The only variable there compared with operating profit is really the movements of working capital items, as we just showed also in the graphics. This is a condensed balance sheet, which you can also find in the report. With that, I think we have gone through the financials for the first half. We are not providing any guidance, and understandably, people may say, why don't we give guidance? The reason is very simple.
If you look at our operating income here, the one that we cannot predict for better or worse with any decent agreeable degree of certainty is net sales. If we were to capture a few hundred thousand dollar contracts here, clearly this would move in a favorable direction, but we don't have a good sense of the probability, nor of the timing when a customer is ready to put pen to paper. I don't think, if we can't predict net sales even in the near term with any reasonable accuracy, that will also mean that we can't do that at the total income line, nor gross profit. After gross profit, the rest is pretty predictable, our openings. You can see the cascading effect here. Why is this?
We are a very small company and single deans can have and will have historically had a very, very pronounced effect on net sales and also operating profit. Yes, are we open after 30 minutes? Perfect. I think we are meeting the timeline ambitions here. We can open up for any questions in any language.
Thank you, Per and George. This is not really finance related, it's more market related, but I noticed lots of new functionalities in the software, very exciting to see. Do you think that one of these applications could be some killer application that's so good that it can't be ignored, you know, causing this exodus from iBwave that we are waiting for?
There are certainly opportunities, yes, and we are convinced, and when I say convinced, I really mean convinced that we are ahead. We are ahead of the established name in this industry. We are ahead. It is more a matter of when the big users of that name draw the same conclusions. You know, the telecom industry is not known for moving particularly fast, but we do believe that we have a very, very strong value proposition and that there is word of mouth now that Ranplan is the tool of choice. That applies not least to the advanced use cases, private wireless, tunnels, stadia, shopping malls, airports, the smart factory, warehouse of the future, the premium segments of the market. Looking a little bit into the future, 6G in all its shapes and forms is supposed to bring airborne communication into the picture.
It can be via drones, helicopters, airplanes, satellites, etc. This is something we are already preparing for. Again, something that is very difficult to accommodate from a wireless planning perspective, but where we do think that we have immense expertise. In the lead up to 6G, we also see that we can help equipment manufacturers perfect, refine their equipment. There is something known as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. It is a form of, you can say, mirrors. Mirrors that can also be transparent. That can help guide the radio waves in difficult environments. We have in the first half also introduced a couple of research modules. I hope that answers your question.
Yeah, it's always good answers and good presentations. Maybe I can take one last one also, because I think you mentioned private wireless again. It seems that this is a tidal wave, unstoppable in the long run for you. Is there any type of timeline or deadline for when it will really happen? Is there something to look out for in the market or something?
I think it does vary from region to region, and it does definitely vary from use case to use case. What we are very excited about, which we have highlighted on our website, are offshore wind farms. This is a new case study. It's in the Baltic Sea. We work with one of the largest turbine manufacturers in the world. This is an excellent example of how Ranplan's total capabilities can advance connectivity, not only on the platform, the central platform of the wind farm park, but also being able to reach out to all the turbines. If you were to dispatch an engineer to fix something that is not working to perfection, then that engineer needs to also be able to communicate back to the platform. The platform is connected with the global network, either via satellite or through cable or microwave. That's one use case.
Another one where we see a lot of pent-up demand and where we do see that our customers are very, very successful, perhaps in part because of their use of Ranplan, relate to tunnels and railways. This is an arena where we know that we have exemplary features and capabilities. This is a very big market. We see interest here from customers in essentially all parts of the world. Smart factory is an arena where we already are heavily involved in a very, very prestigious project. I think the private wireless bandwagon will intensify, gather steam when companies, with the help of Ranplan and others, by the way, can demonstrate that this works. This could be done. These are the advantages. You can think of a smart warehouse where you have drones and where you have robotics. Here the robots in the warehouse, they have to be able to move.
They have to move in full 3D. You know, you can't just do this at one meter height and then say that you have covered the whole warehouse. The drones can be used for inspection. The drones can also be used for surveillance. One arena where I have had and still have a lot of belief are security cameras that are connected wirelessly as opposed to through cable and wireline, because that gives enormous advantages, the flexibility it engenders. We are also championing open file formats so that it becomes much easier for the engineer to model the environment. I think we have flagged that in the annual report. This time in this first half interim, there is not so much highlighted in terms of our operational achievements, but we will elaborate on that soon. We do believe that private wireless is still in its infancy.
There is much, much more to happen there and that we are going to be instrumental in demonstrating that this can be done successfully.
Yes, yes. Great. It's all good answers as always. Just one last question. This is more a personal one for you, Per, about your ownership. You are approaching the 90% ownership now and I notice shares are not trading very much. I can imagine the G&A cost is a big annoyance in terms of, you know, taking the company private. Do you see benefits of being public that you would prefer to have the company still public? What can you just share some views on that? I think it's an interesting aspect.
Generally, yes, a prerequisite for being on the stock market is that there is a reasonable amount of interest from investors. Yes, in order to provide the liquidity you need in order to be able to ascertain that there is a market price, so to say.
Yes.
The stock market has a value, or the stock listing and the stock market has a value provided that that criterion is achieved. We try to increase the liquidity by offering the shareholders and investors 18 million new shares back in May when you may recall the AGM, etc., but no one took us up on that. Because of that, we are now becoming a borderline case. Should I surpass 90%, my understanding is then if anyone then wants to hand in his or her shares, then I have to accommodate him or her, etc.
Yeah, yeah. That's true.
There is also a value of the stock listing. Who knows? There could also be other aspects here. I can't commit to anything here.
Understood.
There could be, you know, there could be a breakthrough. If there's a breakthrough, perhaps there's a renewed interest in the shares and perhaps then we have the opportunity to sell more shares to existing or new shareholders. By the way, we have the mandate to do that. The board of directors has a mandate to be myndigandy in Swedish to direct new shares.
Yeah.
Everyone, I mean, and of course we will also try to take into account what other shareholders prefer.
Yeah, understood. It's a good answer. It's just a shame that the market has a hard time in understanding the company. I mean, it's a super interesting technology, but maybe it's a bit complex for the average Joe on the street, so to say. I'll just leave it at that. Thank you, Per and George.
Okay, very good. Anyone else who has any question? You can always contact us afterwards. If not, we shall end here. Have a good day and a good end to the summer. Thank you.
Thank you so much, guys.
Thank you.