Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the presentation of SaaB's Q3 report for 2025. My name is Johan Andersson, and I'm honored to have been appointed Head of Investor Relations here at SaaB. With me here in Stockholm, I have our CEO, Micael Johansson, and Anna Wijkander, our CFO. Anna and Micael will present the report, and thereafter we will start the Q&A session. You can either ask your questions over the phone, or you can enter them in the web interface, and I will read them out loud here in Stockholm. With that quick intro, I will hand over to our CEO, Micael.
Thank you so much, Johan, and thank you all for joining us this morning for the Q3 report and the first nine months. I want to welcome Johan as well as Head of Investor Relationships. You're most welcome to the company, and I also want to thank Merton Kaplan for an excellent job during so many quarters. Looking backwards, I wish him luck, of course, in his continued journey within SaaB. Before I go into the highlights of this quarter, I just want to say a few words about the day we had Wednesday in Linköping, where we had the honor of receiving President Zelensky and his delegation, and also our Prime Minister and his delegation, to host them for this important statement and letter of intent that they signed in the direction of creating a strong air force in Ukraine going forward.
This was, of course, a unique day, and it was an important statement which we have been waiting for to now continue our journey in exploring scenarios and planning for how an establishment and delivery of quite a few aircraft will look like in Ukraine. It also adds to our assessment of investments that we need to do, looking into that. With all due respect, it's no contract yet. Still a lot of work to do. You heard President Zelensky and also Prime Minister Lena Eliasson talking about the financing solution and what needs to be established there. There are a couple of other things, but we will start doing our work to support this going forward.
It was great to see our employees in Linköping spontaneously applauding and cheering when President Zelensky stepped out of the car, and we're so much committed as a company to support Ukraine going forward. That was a unique and fantastic day, and now we will work hard to make this happen as well, of course. With that, I just want to go into a few highlights then of the quarter. It has been strong demand in the market. We still have lots of geopolitical tensions, of course, around us, and strong demand from many countries in all avenues of our portfolio, and we developed contracts really well. We had a strong quarter when it comes to order intake, as we've seen, but it's also timing.
It's on the same level as the quarter last year, but in October only, after the closing of this quarter, we have SEK 16 billion in order intake. We're looking toward a really strong year when it comes to contracts as well. We have a number of campaigns apart for our product sort of demand in the market that we are running, of course, both when it comes to the Gripen side, and we'll come back to that, and also GlobalEye, where a number of countries have a huge interest in our system. As you know, we've been selected by France, and now we're just waiting for them to sign the contract in that country as quickly as possible. We have interest from actually NATO and from Germany and from Denmark, and a number of other countries are looking into our GlobalEye system.
There is still a need to continue to invest in capacity, which we're doing in a diligent way, I think, and looking at the execution this quarter, it's been solid in sort of a normally weak quarter, but it's really been strong in this quarter. As we've seen, the first nine months is now an organic growth of 21%. We've done really well also adding the third quarter to the first two ones here. We will continue to look at our development of our profitability, which has also been good, but we will also never trade off versus sort of investing in capacity to sort of meet the demand in the market, of course, but also being relevant when it comes to new technologies that we have to invest in going forward.
All in all, it's been a strong quarter, and we have, as you've seen now, upgrading the outlook for 2025. I will come back to that in the end, but we're now sort of raising our guidelines on top line to 20%- 24% from 16%- 20%. Back to the numbers. As I said, almost SEK 21 billion in order intake, a good increase in the medium-sized orders. It looks a bit different between the quarters, and I think we, as I said, we added SEK 16 billion only in October, which we have press released. It looks really good going forward as well. We have a book-to-bill of 1.3, and a very strong organic growth in this quarter, the strongest quarter we've ever had on top line, and also in absolute numbers when it comes to EBIT.
The margin is now 8.7% in the quarter, but 9.3% looking at the first nine months. Cash flow is on the same level if you look at the first nine months, sort of minus SEK 1 billion roughly. We have still the same view as last year. We will generate a positive cash flow. We have a number of important payments coming in now during the fourth quarter. I'm confident that we will meet our guidelines on that as well. A few statements about the different business areas as usual. Yes, of course, a big interest in the Gripen E/F version now. We have contracted Thailand during the quarter, the first four, and they are looking into further contracts as well, of course. The batch two and batch three of their contract is being discussed already.
Of course, we have been selected by Colombia, and we are negotiating a contract there. We have no contract yet, but we are moving ahead at a good pace in Colombia. The interest now from Ukraine is something we will sort of take into account and start planning for, as I mentioned. We have a good strong quarter from Aeronautics. They have gone 34% up compared to the quarter last year. They had really good project execution in the Gripen program mainly, but still, the profitability level is affected by ramp-up costs that we have mainly in the T7, the trainer aircraft in the U.S., in West Lafayette. That is still sort of a burden to Aeronautics, but they're moving in the right direction, definitely. Dynamics, again, good growth. A quarter that is normally quite weak for Dynamics has been quite strong, actually.
If you look at the first nine months of Dynamics, they have now grown 34% or something, maybe even 36%, if I remember correctly now. It's an extremely strong year for Dynamics. They have had a number of medium-sized orders, but also a large one from the Czech Republic when it comes to the medium short-range air defense system, RBS 70. There is still a big demand in the market, and we are investing heavily, as you know, to increase capacity in this area. I think we have only in the Costco area sort of 40 projects ongoing to expand everything and building factories in the U.S. and in India, as you know, and they have a huge backlog now of almost SEK 90 billion as we speak. Surveillance, also a very interesting portfolio.
I said that the campaigns for the GlobalEye are a number of them now, so we are intensifying that, of course. I hope that we will see this GlobalEye system, which is the state-of-the-art system, most modern one, taking a bigger position now also within the alliance with multiple countries going for GlobalEye. That is what we're working. The first one that we were selected upon is, of course, France that you know all about. There is not only on the GlobalEye side, but the surface side, the surface sensors, the sensor side of Surveillance is going really strong and getting more and more contracts, and they deliver quite well as well, growing 8%. Honestly, the quarter three of Surveillance is the strongest ever top line-wise. They are doing well also when it comes to project execution, and they have a huge potential going forward, I would say.
I also want to mention that we are divesting TransponderTech, which is a communication and automatic identification system type of entity, as we have also already press released, and we will close that deal now in quarter four. Also, a very big backlog on the Surveillance side, as you can see, SEK 55 billion. SaaB Kockums also have a big interest in many segments. You know, we're working campaigns now on the submarine sides with Poland, and that we're putting a lot of effort into, of course, and it makes lots of sense to have Sweden and Poland work together to protect the Baltic Sea. Also on the surface side, we have the Swedish corvette/frigate program coming out, which is called the Luleå class, which we are also seeing as a big potential going forward.
There are many other export contracts where we are involved, and we have also now invested, but also got a contract to look to design and test a large underwater unmanned vehicle with the Swedish Navy, which is great to see that we're moving in that direction. Also on the Navy side, it's not only in the air you will see collaborative combat entities working with manned entities. That will also happen on the surface and subsurface going forward. We also got a task, which is a fantastic honor, to lead a project within NATO when it comes to underwater battlespace project, connecting and creating interoperability between manned and unmanned systems. We look forward to execute that. The growth is really good, 17% year on year when it comes to the quarter, and they are really moving in the right direction, and they have a substantial backlog.
I need to mention, of course, that after the quarter in October, we got an additional contract, as you've seen, on the submarine side for SEK 9.6 billion, adding to the backlog now going forward. Finally, when it comes to our business area/combat tech, we have, of course, a very well moving forward combat tech, our technical consultant entity. They are growing also rapidly, year on year, 17%. It's all about sort of employing new people, of course, and getting utilization into the operations that create these numbers. I think we've employed 200 people up now only in this quarter from the combat tech side, and that adds to the growth, of course. We're doing well as a consultant company.
We're absolutely in the right areas, in the right niches right now: cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, critical communication, creating security operation centers for many types of industries, and also on the public side, the authorities. Everything connected to total defense in terms of resilience is something that sort of generates business now for combat tech going forward. They had a good quarter as well, definitely, and they're growing quite a lot over the year as well. I just want to say a few words about something that's been discussed every day, every week in terms of what's happening in Ukraine when it comes to drones and what type of drone capability do we need going forward and counter drone capability.
Also, the EU Commission has launched projects now during the last few weeks, which is sort of a drone wall, making sure that we have resilience versus sort of big drone capabilities coming from the east. I just want to mention that this is something we really are investing in, and we already have solutions in place. We don't talk so much about this, but we have already used these solutions in NATO missions in Poland. We call one system. The way we approach this, I must say, is to make sure that we are quite agnostic when it comes to what effectors or interceptors do we use. We can use everything from a Bushmaster gun to electronic warfare type of effectors to nets or kamikaze drones or actually RBS 70.
We are now investing in new missiles that you've heard about called Nimbrics, which is in a segment between the guns and the RBS 70. That's sort of agnostic. We can sort of integrate the system that would manage different types of threats. The LUCA system, as a sort of a brand name of the system, includes, of course, a sensor capability with the One X, which is excellent and the most state-of-the-art radar that will find everything from micro drones to larger drones and cope with many threats at the same time. A command and control system, which is really compact, and then an interceptor vehicle that would have sort of the chosen effector on it. That's a counter-UAS system already established in Sweden and used in NATO missions.
The loitering munitions side, or actually having an own swarm technology capability, we've already released that, that we have something that is self-organized in terms of software and using AI to have a swarm of drones during different types of mission. I think we are focusing, among other things, on not only surveillance, but also loitering munition. That is important because of how you would manage an aggressor going forward, not only with support weapons that are called Gustav and anti-tank weapons, but you can also use drones to accomplish part of the mission and work together with support missions. We are involved in this area and ramping up our capabilities, and we already have existing systems. A couple of highlights from the sustainability area, a very important area to us.
We have this quarter established a biogas facility in our site, which is the Barracuda entity in the Gamleby, which is doing camouflage and signature management, which reduces our energy dependence on fossil fuel, of course, dramatically. If you compare year to year, the first nine months to last year, we have reduced 4% on the CO2 emissions, and we are on a good track now to support our SBTI targets, where we've said we will be 42% down 2030. If you look at the base year compared to where we are now, we are 33% down. We have good progress on operational health and safety. We really make sure that we have a safe operational environment within the company, and we measure this all the time, and we must report every incident to mitigate everything that could happen. Another thing is, of course, diversity and inclusion.
We are happy to see that we are now moving up when it comes to our female employees in the company now at 27%. That is a very good step, and we want to go further also, of course, when it comes to female managers, but we are moving in the right direction. Since we have employed 2,700 people net up during the first nine months, 34% of that employment is actually female, so we're going in the right direction. I'm really happy to see this. Last but not least, I already said that at my first slide that we have, because of the good progress this year, the first nine months, organic growth of 21%, and also good visibility, of course, into the backlog, which is now over SEK 200 billion. We know what we need to deliver the remaining part of the year.
We have now said that we will take this step from 16%- 20% growth rate to 20%- 24% instead. That's our new guidance, and we still retain the other portion saying that EBIT will grow more than the organic sales growth, and we will generate a positive cash flow, and we're confident doing that going forward. I just want to thank all our employees for doing a fantastic job during the first nine months and supporting this growth and the commitment to creating societies and having people in societies safe. It's a strong sort of purpose of the company, which is supported by our employees, and I'm really pleased to see that. With that, I think if I have not forgotten anything, I will hand over to Anna, our CFO.
Thank you, Micael, and good morning, everyone. Yes, as you have heard, we are delivering a strong third quarter, especially from a sales growth and EBIT growth perspective. I think now it's time to dig more into the financial numbers, and we start with the order backlog. We left the third quarter with a strong backlog, increasing it to SEK 202 billion. In particular, it was the medium-sized orders that increased during this quarter. They more than doubled, actually, this quarter, so we booked SEK 21 billion. We have, since the quarter closed, booked an additional SEK 16 billion in order intake. The start of Q4 looks promising. 73% of our orders in the backlog are international, and it's Dynamics and Surveillance that is the majority of the order backlog, 71%.
If you look at the left in the graph, you can also see that we are increasing our deliveries from the backlog for the fourth quarter with 35% compared to last year. We can also see that we're increasing the delivery from backlog in year one and two, that is 2026 and 2027, compared to last year. That really shows that we are on a growth journey and that we are also expanding our production capacity to deliver on our commitments. Let's turn into some more comments on the drivers of our sales and profitability then. As you have heard us saying, this was our highest sales and EBIT ever in a third quarter. We have strong sales growth, 17% reported or 18% organic for the group, and the EBIT grows 16% in the quarter.
What's also good to see is that the gross margin is increasing in all business areas in the quarter due to high project activities. Looking into more in each business area, Aeronautics, 34% growth this quarter, driven very much from the Gripen deliveries and high activities in the business areas. Also, we see improvements in the commercial business in the sales growth. However, the EBIT is still impacted by the startup costs that we have in the T7 factory, as well as a bit higher marketing costs for all the Gripen campaigns. We're starting to do amortization on a capitalized R&D that's impacting the EBIT. Dynamics, again, continued the strong growth from Q2. They grow 12% this quarter and also delivered a higher EBIT margin, 19.3% in the quarter. That is a result also of project execution, several deliveries, a mixed situation.
You know, in Dynamics, we have lots of delivery projects, and in this quarter, lots of deliveries from ground combat that are impacting the margin in a positive way. Also, Surveillance grows 8% in the quarter, good project execution, and an EBIT level at the same level almost as last year. Here, it's very much deliveries from also the URAF 1X radar production that's impacting in a positive way, but also good project execution in the business area. However, on Surveillance, we can mention that there are still negative impacts from the civil business impacting their margins. Kockums also, high activity level and very significant growth in their EBIT margin year over year. That is very much driven this quarter from both high project execution and in particular in their export business.
Should mention also Combitech, they grow 17% in the quarter, high utilization, high activity, and as we heard that they are working very much in an area which is growing as well. Their EBIT margin was on par with their EBIT margin last year if we deduct the divestment that they made in the Norwegian operation last year. From a group perspective, mentioning also that on our corporate level, we have some corporate costs that are $200 million approximately higher this quarter. That is something that we expect to continue. It was driven very much of this share-based incentive program, but also somewhat higher costs for IT and security as we're growing the company. The financial summary then, I think I mentioned all items above EBIT. I think I focus more here on the financial net that turned negative this quarter.
The reason for that is mainly because we had a revaluation of shares in the financial investment of around $50 million that impacted the financial net. We had also a lower result from currency hedges related to the tender portfolio if we compare to last year. This revaluation that I talked about impacted also the tax rate this year. Compared to last year, it's a bit higher. All in all, the gross net income is in line with last year and as well as the EPS. Let's zoom out then to nine months and look how it looks for us after nine months has passed. On a group level, the sales increased 20% or organic 21% related to effect on currencies. All our business areas have double-digit growth year to date. That's very positive to see.
Also, our gross margin is improving 70 basis points, and it's all business areas that are contributing to this gross margin increase. In particular, it's Dynamics and Surveillance where we see the improvements. After nine months, our EBIT is up 30% and we deliver a margin of 9.3%. Year to date, the financial net is positive, and here it's supported by the appreciation from currency hedges related to our tender portfolio. Following that, we also have a lower tax rate decrease due to a lower share of taxable income from foreign operations. Net income and EPS improvement are driven by the EBIT growth and also the improvement in the financial net. Next, our cash flow. I think we can say that we have a strong cash flow from operations despite increased working capital that is driven by our business growth.
After nine months, we have generated SEK 7.3 billion in cash from operations. That's SEK 1.9 billion more than last year. In line with our sales growth, we are building working capital, and we're doing that in line roughly with the same amount as we did last year. If we look at operation cash flow and deduct the change in working capital, we actually have a positive cash flow of SEK 3.9 billion after nine months. We need to do our investments. That's something that we have communicated earlier in the Capital Markets Day and continue to communicate. It's important for our growth, and we have increased our investments. SEK 4.9 billion is the amount now. That's SEK 1.7 billion more than last year.
We end up with a negative cash flow year to date, but we expect the operational cash flow to be positive this year since we are expecting several large customer payments by the end of the year. Finally, on this slide, I just want to mention also that it's very positive to see that we are improving our return on capital employed. It's now almost 15%, and that's driven both by our profitability, but also by increased return on capital turnover. Finally, our balance sheet. We have a strong financial position and a solid balance sheet. Our net debt to EBITDA is on a healthy level, 0.1 times.
This quarter, we have a net debt of SEK 700 million, and that was mainly due to that we have a new lease of our newly opened office in Solna here in Sweden, and that's impacting around SEK 1.3 billion in the third quarter. We have cash and liquid investments of SEK 12.2 billion, and during the quarter, we issued total bonds of SEK 2 billion additionally. Additionally to that, we have an unutilized revolving credit of SEK 6 billion. All in all, that puts us in a strong position to capitalize on future growth opportunities, both through increased investments and also enabling us to do potential acquisitions. In summary, I think a strong quarter in both sales and EBIT across the business. The group has a solid financial position, and we have a strong order backlog to deliver on.
With that, I hand over to you, Johan, to open the Q&A.
Thank you very much, Anna and Micael, for a great presentation. Let's start the Q&A session. We will start with questions from the phone conference. I will ask you also to limit yourself to one question per participant. Please, operator, do we have any questions from the telephone conference?
Yes, I would like also to remind participants they may press star and one on their telephone to enter the queue. The first question comes from Daniel Djurberg with Handelsbanken . Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, Micael, and I'm Johan. I will go to Aeronautics, I think. You had a good quarter, nice growth, a little bit lower EBIT margin versus last year's quarter, 30 basis points, I believe. It's still the, as you mentioned, the 7A program, Lynchirim. Can you ballpark give us an update on this in terms of both the cost or margin impact and also for how long you should expect this to linger and if it's going to increase in size or the opposite? Thank you.
Thank you, and good morning. I think when you look at Aeronautics, I would say that a normal Aeronautics with a reasonable scale of Gripen contracts and what have you should be sort of in the, I don't guide, but we talked about this before, sort of high single-digit numbers. The effect is still there from T7, absolutely. We've turned around the commercial business in a good way. We're not adding lots of profitability really yet, but it's still okay. I would say it's still a couple of years. It won't go in the wrong direction. It will go in the right direction. Before it's actually a good addition to our Aeronautics business, it will be sort of three years ahead from now, roughly, I would say. It will go in the right direction over time, of course.
Excellent. Thank you very much. Do we have another question from the telephone conference?
The next question comes from Yassin Moktadir with UBS . Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. I've got several questions, but I'll limit myself to one on Gripen, please. Could you expand on the comments that we've read for you? I think in the press this morning that you could expand Gripen capacity very rapidly if required. I wonder if you could just educate us on this group as to what was said there and how quickly that could happen. In order for that to happen, do you need to see deposits coming in before you consider making those investments, or would you consider investing on spec? Thank you.
As I've said, we still need to sort of set the scenario that if we now get the financing in place, if the politicians sort that and you get support for financing Ukraine to go into contract on the Gripen and expanding, then production will be important. The way I see it is that I've said this morning that right now we are looking at expanding production with investments that we've taken to somewhere between 20 and 30 aircraft a year. Of course, as you know, with the numbers that were stated in Wednesday's meetings, that would add a lot to that. We're looking into that now. How quickly can we take another step? This investment we're talking about is sort of looked to be implemented next year and the year after that, roughly, to get to that level. You can take another step, of course.
It will be adding more to the Linköping production lines if we do that. That's a few years ahead. It would also mean that we would expand our hub in Brazil, and we are initiating, as we speak, other partnership discussions in countries that would have an interest for the Gripen, of course. It will mean that we would need another hub beyond the hub we have in Brazil and expanding in Linköping as well. We said that if Ukraine pushed the button, we would deliver the first one in three years' time. That is what we commit to. Then it depends on what is the stretch of the delivery schedule with Ukraine in when we have to have this capacity in place. Normally, it takes like two to three years to get improved capacity in place, I would say.
That's the view I have of how quickly we can do this. There is absolutely an opportunity to implement this. Will we? Yes, I would like to see a more solidified financing solution in place before we take the big step to start adding huge investment to this. Since we're already moving in the investment direction, we can add a little bit more, maybe at risk, to actually make sure that we keep the lead times. That's the way I see it without quantifying exactly.
Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you for your question, Yan. Do we have another question from the phone call?
The next question comes from Aymeric Poulain with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Good morning. Clearly, the demand outlook is great, and it's a third year. You're going to be growing at 20% or 25%. The question is, do you expect that rate to be maintained, or are there supply chain challenges, especially regarding the staffing or specific material that are starting to emerge, given the very strong demand situation?
It's a bit sort of premature to talk about the next years beyond, I would say, this year right now. You know, we've committed to a midterm target of 18% CAGR over the time period of 2023 to 2027. We will come back and refresh that, revisit that, and refresh it in the year report quarter, I would say, in February next year. We will have a new view from our perspective on how quickly we can continue to grow. That's where we are right now. If you look at what are the pain points, what are the limiting factors to grow, you are touching upon the right things. We need to bring with us the supply chain and maybe sometimes invest in supply chain, but they have to invest also to find the whole ecosystem supporting us is absolutely necessary.
There are a few pain points there, but manageable, I would say, going forward. I am assuming long term, of course, that we will resolve the rare earth elements discussions we have with China and also start to invest to have sovereign capacity on that side. We're talking years ahead, and that's because that will affect every industry, I would say, if that is not sorted. That's the way I see it.
Excellent. Thank you. Let's take a couple of quick ones from the web. One is, what's the difference between Gripen E/ F, and when can we see the first Gripen F?
Oh, okay. Yeah, we are maybe a bit of nerds using all these acronyms, but as you know, we have the Charlie Delta version in operations right now, and yeah, we have delivered an E version as well. The E is a single seater version. The F is a dual seater version. We will deliver the dual seat version to Brazil in 2027. That's when the first aircraft is being manufactured right now. This has been a design that's been done together with the Brazilian industry and Brazil, and that is in line with the plan that we have. Sweden has not contracted any dual seat versions of the Gripen, meaning Gripen F. I hope I was not too complicated. It's simple, actually. Single seater version, dual seater version.
I think it was pretty clear. Another one, you talked a lot about your drone capabilities in your strategy there. How much are you doing and developing by yourself, and how are you looking and doing things with partners? How do you think strategically there? What's important?
That's a really good question. I think from the software-defined perspective, we're doing everything ourselves. Of course, when it comes to sensors and effectors, we have also things in-house. We are looking into how you can scale something quickly, either yourself, lots of 3D printing, or storing a part that you can actually assemble quickly, and how many partners do we need there? I think on that side, when it comes to platforms, there will be more partnerships. It's a bit different depending on what kind of drone you're talking about, of course.
Good. Excellent. We had a quick one for Anna. Do you expect your backlog to continue to increase going forward?
With our growth that we're foreseeing, I think that is something that we can assume that the order backlog will increase going forward. That's it.
Sounds good. Okay, operator, do we have any other questions from the telephone conference at this point in time?
The next question from the phone comes from Björn Einar Enarsson with Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi. On Dynamics and the super solid backlog, as the mix is very, very important, can you give us some color on how you look upon the mix situation in the backlog as profitability can swing quite a lot? We have seen that over the years depending on what kind of mix you have. Yes, thank you.
In the Dynamics area, you mean?
Exactly.
I think I won't go into exact details on the mix as such, but of course, it's quite dominated today by support weapons and missiles. Both have a substantial backlog in that, and both will add good profitability numbers. We have always talked about what is the ambition level in terms of sustained EBIT level on the Dynamics side. I've always said that depending exactly on the question you ask, the mix between the different portfolio entities in Dynamics, but it should always be in the mid double-digit numbers, around 15%. Now we've had good quarters now, so we are above that, and of course, that's very nice to see, but it will always be on that level, so to say. I won't go into exactly a part of the SEK 87 billion, what's what here, but the main parts are absolutely support weapons and missile capability.
You can probably draw that conclusion from contracts that we have received.
It varies, of course, between different contracts, also within the same business unit within Dynamics, so it differs. That could also impact, but I think it's a good, as you say, Mike, in the mids, mid-teens, mid-fifties, what you say.
Mid double digit.
The mid double-digit, yeah.
I mean between 10 and 20, not sort of between 10 and 100.
That's great. Perfect. Do we have another question from the telephone conference?
The next question from the phone comes from Carlos Iranzo Peris with Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi guys, I hope you're well and thanks for taking my question. I just want to ask on the GlobalEye because it looks that it's having a strong commercial momentum recently. Can you help us to understand how big the GlobalEye opportunity could be for you mid-term?
This is one of the mega deals that always will take sort of a Prime Minister or a Defense Minister to decide in the end. We have campaigns ongoing, as you know, France has selected, and they will start with two. We have three in production for Sweden. There is an interest for a number of aircraft when it comes to Germany and NATO. We have a couple of interests also in the Middle East. It adds up to a number of platforms with a strong potential, but I would hesitate to bring too much of mega deals into our growth. This is not part of our growth this year or a big portion of our business plan going forward. We look upon mega deals in a careful way. They are adding substantially when they happen, but it has to be a continuous growth anyway.
I just want to say that yes, there are many platforms that could come into play, but I wouldn't jump into conclusions because they are mega deals campaigns. Political decisions will also be involved in that. I look very positively upon the future of GlobalEye. That's what I can say. I mentioned a few countries now that have an interest.
Excellent. The next question, please.
The next question comes from Tom Guinchard with Pareto Securities AS. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Question on the raise guidance here. Any changes in delivery pace across the different business areas or what's changed since your last guidance? If you could break that down, please.
I think everyone is actually picking up nicely when it comes to expediting deliveries and pushing things from the backlog into sales. Also, some of it is connected to that we get our capacities coming into place. Yes, we have added 2,700 people to the company net up this year, which adds lots of push into this. We are optimizing our way of working and automating production. It's a number of things that come together that had lacked visibility in the beginning of the year, but now we are more confident that we've actually succeeded in many things that we put ourselves forward to do. It's actually in all areas. Of course, Dynamics is growing dramatically. You see 36% growth over the first nine months. It's an engine in this. The other business areas are growing, and there's lots of potential in Surveillance.
Aeronautics have now really stepped up in terms of growth. I wouldn't point to something specific, but you can see from the numbers for nine months now what's driving this and what comes into play first.
Good. Many thanks. I think we have another question from the telephone conference.
The next question comes from Sash Tusa with Agency Partners LLP. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. It's Sash Tusa here. I've got a couple of questions. First is just to R&D on a nine-month basis. It's doubled over the last four years. Going forward, if you have investments, particularly in counter-UAS, do you expect continued growth in R&D, or is there just going to be a shift in the mix probably towards the counter-UAS area and away from other areas? I wonder if you could just give some color on how the R&D is expected to develop.
No, what I can say is that I want to grow the R&D investments as much as I can, but still keeping to the guidelines that we have, the trade-offs between sort of here and now, top line growth, increasing our profitability, but still having the strength to grow our investments in R&D. We need to do that when it comes to AI-driven autonomous systems in all domains, and also, of course, in the way we develop software. We have established in our common tech organization that is pushing software out on the business unit in a different way with solidified architectures and stuff. We need to continue to invest, make no mistakes. It will continue to grow. It will not only be a mix and shift in that, so to say.
We have to do a number of things going forward in all core areas, both when it comes to autonomous systems in the air, which we call collaborative combat aircraft, the unmanned underwater vehicles. We have, as you know, a collaboration with General Atomics to do an autonomous airborne early warning capability. There are a number of things that we have to do and which I look forward to do. It will continue to grow. I won't quantify it how much. It is always this trade-off between the different pieces I mentioned.
Maybe I can add, we have also some capitalized R&D that we have started to depreciate now. That is also impacting, and that's something positive because we are delivering in our projects, and therefore we depreciate the capitalized R&D. That's also going to increase during the year.
Excellent. Thank you. The next question, sorry, did you have a follow-up there?
Yes, please. That's awesome. I just wondered if you could elaborate on the Lulea Frigate program, which seems to be in a degree of flux. You clearly said that it's now more of a frigate than a corvette. Corvette was probably a bit of a euphemism anyway. Could you just give us some color on where that program is? In particular, the reported bid by France to export frigates directly to Sweden, possibly as part of the offset for the GlobalEye program. How do you see that developing?
I think it's a question you should ask to the Swedish customer mainly. I want to underline it's probably a corvette. It's probably a corvette, of course. Maybe it's my ignorance. Listen, we have put forward a very strong offer together with Babcock, our main partner here. I hope that will prevail and be the selected thing. The Swedish customer has opened up, as I know, for other sort of proposals. It's up to them now to select. I still think we and Babcock have the strongest proposal. Now it's up to the Swedish Navy and Swedish FMV, the Defense Material Organization, to make a selection. Exactly when that is going to be done, I'm not sure. Time is of essence, of course, since they want the frigates to be operational 2029, 2030 something.
Excellent.
Thanks .
Thank you very much. Let's take the next question from the telephone conference. Please, operator.
The next question comes from Marie Ancheridjo with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thank you for taking my question. The question that I have is on your current capacity expansion. Clearly, we see that 2025 is quite a record level for you. You announced some capacity expansion at your last CMD, mainly for Dynamics and Surveillance. I'm just wondering, given the level of backlog that you have today and the demand that you are seeing in the coming years, are you already increasing further the capacity compared to the guidance or compared to the indication that you gave at your CMD, or you are still expecting basically the orders before moving forward from those targets? Thank you.
I would say for the year, we are in line with what we talked about, that the CMD is not sort of a walk in the park to get everything executed. That is really sort of a high ambition to invest all that money into capacity increases that we talked about. We're looking into what do we need to do next year, of course, and we'll come back to that next year. We will continue to invest in capacity increases, obviously because of the demand in the market. What we're doing right now is supporting what we talked about in the support area, going from sort of below 100,000 units to somewhere in between 400,000 and 500,000 units when we get all the capacity in play.
I look forward to getting the factory in Grayling, Michigan, up and running in the end of next year, and also then India, of course, to add to this. We'll come back on that, but we will see more investment. Again, we stick to our guidelines, but we will not compromise making sure that we have the capacity to support the demand in the market and not compromise to make sure that we invest in the right technologies to be relevant all the years to come. This is the sort of the puzzle that we work with all the time to make that sort of really efficient going forward. We will need more capacity investments, absolutely. We'll keep to the CMD statements that we had.
Excellent. Thank you. Just take it to.
If I may.
Sorry. Go ahead, please.
On that, I mean, are you afraid about the lead time for your projects? Are you afraid basically that the lead time about increasing the capacity can limit further growth going forward, given the fact that it will take time? If I'm correct, you have ground combat where you can increase the capacity pretty quickly, but for the rest, I think that takes a bit more time. That's why I was saying if you are trying to be ahead of the curve in terms of adding capacity, because clearly the backlog would support further growth or not. Can you probably just remind us a bit the lead time for any other products that is not ground combat if you increase the capacity?
If you're talking about the lead times to get increased capacity into play when it comes to ground combat, it's like roughly two years. We started early, fortunately. There are different movements. As I said, we have 40 building projects ongoing in the Cald Scoga area only. They are not in the same sort of schedule as we speak, all of them. It's roughly to get a full-fledged sort of big step up on the capacity of support weapons. I would sort of simplify it to say it's roughly two years.
Excellent. Thank you very much for the questions. I think we need to move on to some of your colleagues. Just take one question from the web here. Micael, in your CEO statement, you write that Colombia has selected the Gripen and that you are in negotiations. Do you dare to set a timeframe here, or how should we view that?
As I said before, I hope to conclude that during this year. That's sort of what I've said before. I'll stick to that. I won't give a week or a month or so. We're doing good progress, and I'm pleased to see that. I hope we will conclude this year.
Good. Another one is on your drone capabilities. Should we start to see that that also can be some larger orders here, or will it be more of test and trials and so forth? In the future, would you see that this can also grow to more products and bigger size orders?
No, I anticipate that to happen because I think also looking at what capabilities the commission has stated as flagship projects. If you want to implement that, of course, you need plenty of counter-UAS systems. If you want to have another capability, sort of more aggressive, you also need quantities. We're not really there yet, but we're seeing contracts coming now. I think that's an avenue that will grow, absolutely. Exactly how and when, I can't say. We're in that race.
Good. Okay, I think we have a number of more questions over the telephone conference. Let's spend the last five minutes there. Please, operator, the next question.
The next question comes from Renato Rios with Inderes. Please go ahead.
Good morning. This is Renato with Inderes. Congratulations on the very good results today. Great work. Thank you for taking my question. It's similar to the question that was just asked regarding drones and AI. Looking ahead to, say, 2026 to 2030 or even beyond, how do you see drone technology and AI-driven and powered products and systems moving from development to sort of recurring revenue and contracts? How significant a share do you think this could become in the medium to long term? It would just be interesting to hear your view on the revenue mix, how it could look like across the ground, air, and marine domains and various product categories. Thank you.
Good questions. I think looking into the crystal ball and trying to understand how quickly AI and autonomous capabilities will take an operational role and create quantity is a really difficult one, I must say. It's all connected to also the end user. How quickly are they prepared to change a bit of their concepts of operations from doing what they're doing now to using these capabilities in a new way? I mean, it's different looking at Ukraine, which are moving really quickly ahead with short iteration cycles, upgrading the drone capability on a weekly, daily basis, very decentralized to keep sort of trying winning the war. They take a bit of a risk, of course. It's different in an environment where you change the concept of a defense force or an army to do things.
It will take a little bit of time, I think, but it will definitely prevail and be there going forward. Technology will develop much quicker than I think we understand. How much you can do on an autonomous basis and how much support you will have from AI agents, agent of AI going forward, will be tremendous. To quantify the share is, I can't do that today. I just make sure that we are part of that journey and that we invest in that going forward. Between the domains, I think the land domain will continue to grow and will be substantial. If you look at the company from our side, maritime and air is a bit sort of dependent on the mega deals, of course, a bit different in that domain. There will be sustained business, of course, in the background as well.
I think land domain is more sort of sensors and products and weapons will continue to grow. We hopefully will continue to grow a lot in the air domains as well. That will be a bit dependent on the mega deals, honestly.
Excellent. Thank you very much, Micael. Operator, do we have a final question from the telephone conference?
Yes, and it comes from Afonso Osório with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hello. Yes, good morning. I hope you're both well. I just wanted to come back to this Gripen deal with Ukraine. I mean, the 100 jets- 150 jets, it's a massive potential order here. So firstly, what will be the total length of this contract, assuming that it will even start three years from now, as you just said? And then what will be the profitability of that contract compared to the other contracts you have within the Gripen family?
Good questions that I'm sure you understand. I can't sort of nail that down completely. I have said before, I mean, that size of a contract would, of course, create scale and improve the profitability of the Aeronautics domain. It depends on many other things. What kind of availability do they need? What kind of flexibility and agility do they need? Ground support equipment, training, and all of that in terms of the whole contract. You can sort of look at Brazil and then you do your mathematics on what sort of 100 contracts- 150 contracts. It's in that ballpark, but it depends on the number of things that we haven't nailed down yet to look at the size of the contract. Everything that adds that scale to the operations will, of course, add profitability. That's for sure. I won't sort of say how much today.
That's not sort of possible. We will start working this now and look what the expectations are from Ukraine when it comes to schedule, delivery rates, and when the first aircraft needs to arrive, and then offer them something that needs to be discussed. Apart from that, all these things around financing must come into play as well. We will work that diligently, of course, no question about it. I look forward.