W5 Solutions AB (publ) (STO:W5)
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May 12, 2026, 5:29 PM CET
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Earnings Call: Q1 2025

May 7, 2025

Hannah Falkenström
Director of Communications and Investor Relations, W5 Solutions

Hi and welcome, and thank you for joining our presentation of the Interim Report Q1 2025. My name is Hannah, and I'm happy to moderate this session with you. Joining me today, I have our President and CEO, Evelina Hedskog, who will take us through the key highlights and the financial development during the quarter. Throughout the presentation, you're more than welcome to ask your questions via the chat function, as we will conclude with a Q&A at the end. Okay, I think that's it. I'll hand over to you, Evelina.

Evelina Hedskog
President and CEO, W5 Solutions

Thank you, Hannah. Welcome, everyone, and especially welcome to all our new shareholders listening into this session. We have actually doubled the number of shareholders in W5 since New Year's. Again, an extra warm welcome to you. I will start this presentation by giving a brief introduction to the company and what we do, and after that, I will move into the quarterly report. W5 , our vision is to become the leading global provider of sustainable defence technology. Our mission, what we do every day, is that we deliver cutting-edge solutions to empower owned and allied forces. We do this through our three business areas: integration, training, and power. I will get back to them a little bit later and tell you more about the products that we offer within these business areas.

Our headquarters is based in Stockholm, but W5, we have locations all over Sweden, from Älmhult in the south to Piteå in the north, and also in Kongsberg in Norway and Nurmijärvi in Finland. We are really a Nordic defence company. Right now, with about 175 employees. Looking at the customer base, we have a mix of defence authorities like armed forces or defence procurement agencies, but also other defence industry, and primarily OEMs like Saab and Thales that we sell to in that segment. Our financial targets, they are that we are aiming at a revenue turnover of SEK 1 billion and a profitability of 10% when we close 2027. In three years' time, these are the targets that we aim for.

Going back to the business areas, if we start with business area training, we have two product areas within that business area, and that's LiFi training defence and security and LiFi training sports and hunting. The product that we offer here is basically any type of equipment that you would need on your shooting range or for more tactical training out in the field. It is both hardware such as pop-up targets, but it is also software where you get feedback to the shooter or the instructor with the results, and you can also evaluate the training that you are doing. Moving on to integration, also two product areas within that segment, starting with shelters. Shelters, that is basically very sophisticated container modules with ballistic protection that you can use for different military applications such as field hospitals, command posts, or repair workshops.

Shelters is really a modular and mobile solution for armed forces. Systems integration, in that product area, we do systems integration, but we also have products such as tailorized harnesses and intercom solutions, etc. The third business area, power. Here we have batteries and chargers. We come from an expertise within battery chargers for the military context and have now moved into battery manufacturing during last year. We have our gensets and also simulation where we really have the expertise within high-fidelity hardware simulators. This is a very brief introduction to our broad product portfolio that we have within the group. With that, I'm moving into the first quarter of the year to discuss a little bit what has happened here.

You cannot really talk about the first quarter of 2025 without addressing the geopolitical turbulence that we find ourselves in and what that means to us as a company. For W5, there are a few facts connected to the U.S. Firstly, I want to state the fact that we have a very limited customer base in the U.S. and also a low dependency on US sub-suppliers. Of course, this is positive for us given the developments during this quarter. On the contrary, we have quite a local supply chain. The majority of our supply chain is close to us and primarily in Europe. As described earlier, our production is done in the Nordic countries. This is now a competitive advantage for us when European customers are looking more for European suppliers and moving away from U.S. and Asian suppliers.

We have a competitive advantage when it comes to our supply chain and also where we develop and manufacture our products. At the same time, as you know, the EU is putting more and more funding into defence development within Europe, and this is also something that we as a company can tap into and benefit from. Last but not least, like I said in the beginning, there is a huge interest now for investing in defence, and of course, that helps us in, for example, our M&A agenda, the fact that we have a big interest in our shares. Okay, moving on to a little bit of a deep dive into our strengthened cash position and what that has helped us with during the quarter. End of last year, we had record high invoicing, which of course helped our cash position.

Also in January, we had a directed share issue of SEK 36 million. This has given us the opportunity to mitigate risks from capital tie-up in a number of customer-financed development projects that we now have ongoing in the group. It has also helped us to enable self-funded product development. Last but not least, it also made it possible to pre-start production and ordering of long lead items for future orders. This is something that we really benefit from, the fact that we can work proactively in this way now with this strengthened cash position. Some examples then of what we have done: we have broadened, or are right now working with broadening, the genset product range. We are developing batteries for mission-critical systems, and we have pre-started LiFi training projects in order to be proactive there.

All in all, a lot of good things going on to prepare for the future. Okay, looking at some key figures then for the quarter. Net sales and profitability is not where we want it to be. If we compare to last year, it's a slightly different situation though. Last year, when we looked at the figures in quarter one, we didn't have the order backlog to support our organization and to make sure that all our resources were put to use. This year, it's different. We are now in full development mode, as I referred to earlier. Our resources are now involved in development efforts. However, it is not yet showing on top line. Of course, a disappointment that we can't do better than this right now, but looking at what's happening in the organization, I think that we are in a bit better position.

On the positive side is also the order book and the orders received during this quarter. As you can see, it is a steady build-up of the order book. Worth mentioning is also that this order intake of a little bit over SEK 100 million is more or less only bread and butter and no big projects. The majority of these orders are to be delivered this year. Yeah, again, net sales and profitability from a slightly different angle here. We see the development over the last couple of years. As you can see, quarter one is normally not the best quarter, especially not when you have a good quarter for the year before. Some seasonal aspects of the first quarter as well that we see this reflected in this year's figures as well.

Now something that many of you have been asking for and waiting for, and it is the first time that we now present our segments, our business areas and their performance. Worth mentioning before we look into the numbers is that behind these three business areas, we still have the legal structure with seven subsidiaries. There might be some aspects of how we slice the cake, a little bit of a shakedown period right now where we need to make sure that all revenues and costs end up in the right place and in the right business area. Regardless, this gives you a good indication of where we stand. As you can see, it is a fairly even split between the three business areas when it comes to turnover, but not when it comes to profitability.

That is, I would say, primarily because of where we have larger development projects and where it is more of a sort of ongoing production and invoicing. Yes, one last slide with looking at the order intake. This is a pie chart showing the split between this year and next year and when we can expect the orders in the order book to become invoiced and delivered. As you see, two-thirds of what we have in the order book right now is to be delivered within this year. This means that we have a huge focus right now on order to delivery. We need to get these orders that we have transformed into deliveries, and it is a lot of it. If we have had a huge focus on order intake before, it is now slowly shifting to delivery.

A glance at the book to bill still indicates an organic growth somewhere above 20%. I think that's worth mentioning, that is really what we have in the strategy. Together with that organic growth, we have growth through acquisitions. Together, that's sort of where we aim to be in order to meet the financial targets that we have for 2027. To conclude this quarter and where we stand, we are ramping up. We have no negative impact due to the geopolitical turbulence. On the contrary, there might be some positives for us. We have a record high order book. We have an improved cash position. That cash position has enabled investments in product development that we hope will pay off within short. We have a very strong focus on order to delivery at the moment.

Of course, not neglecting order intake and building the order book, but it is really a shift of focus now from only winning orders to also making sure that we turn this into deliveries. Okay, that was it. Thank you.

Hannah Falkenström
Director of Communications and Investor Relations, W5 Solutions

Thank you very much, Evelina. Thank you for the presentation. Now it is time to move over to the Q&A session. What I can see is that we will jump into it right away. To start off with, my first question is, after the end of the period, we secured a key order from the Finnish Defence Forces. Could you tell us a bit more about what that means for us and the impact on our business?

Evelina Hedskog
President and CEO, W5 Solutions

The Swedish market has really been our home market and a super important customer for us, very important as a reference customer when we are now focusing more on the export market. This first order with Finland that we won in a competitive procurement is really a stepping stone. We really hope that this is just the first of many contracts with the Finnish Defence Forces. Now focusing on making sure that we deliver this with quality and on time and creating that relationship with Finland that we already see that we have with Sweden. Are you seeing any interest from other countries as well? If we talk LiFi training, it is very clear that the ramping up of basic training within all European countries right now also means that they need to have more training material.

Our products for LiFi training are part of that. We are in discussion with a number of countries, both in the Nordics, but also outside the Nordics.

Hannah Falkenström
Director of Communications and Investor Relations, W5 Solutions

Looking at our M&A agenda that we recently restarted this year, what is the status and what do we focus on when we evaluate potential acquisitions?

Evelina Hedskog
President and CEO, W5 Solutions

Yeah, since January, we've been working proactively with M&A again and looking for the right targets. What we are really on the lookout for is companies within the Nordic countries because we want to continue to build our base as a Nordic defence company. We're looking for companies that have a majority of defence customers, not necessarily 100% defence customers, but at least a majority of what they sell should be to the defence market. Companies of about SEK 100 million of turnover and also companies that are profitable.

We're not looking for turnaround cases. We want to bring in profitable business with a turnover around SEK 100 million. That's basically what we're looking at.

Hannah Falkenström
Director of Communications and Investor Relations, W5 Solutions

Thank you. Another question I got is looking at the order side, how is the development of the gensets for FMV progressing and is everything running according to the plan?

Evelina Hedskog
President and CEO, W5 Solutions

Yeah, that's a valid question given that we're talking a lot about the development efforts that we have ongoing right now. I think the question refers to last year we won a framework agreement with FMV for SEK 500 million. The first step of that was a SEK 100 million contract for development of a certain genset. That development started right after summer last year and will be ongoing until September this year. So far it's going according to plan.

We actually had a very important milestone that occurred last week and we're on track. Hopefully after a successful completion of the development phase done in September, we hope to be able to see follow-on contracts for the serial deliveries.

Hannah Falkenström
Director of Communications and Investor Relations, W5 Solutions

Another question, do you think the ongoing customer projects could see revenue already in Q2?

Evelina Hedskog
President and CEO, W5 Solutions

Revenue for development projects, no, probably not if we talk about the development where we're really getting new products into our product portfolio because then you still have the manufacturing phase as well after that. I do think that if we go back to the slide that we showed earlier where we have done sort of pre-start of production for products that we already have, sort of could be pop-up targets, for example. That type of investments that we're doing now can pay off already in this quarter, yes.

Hannah Falkenström
Director of Communications and Investor Relations, W5 Solutions

They're coming in, some questions here. I'll dig them through. Yes, do you see potential for order intake to grow in the coming quarters based on the medium-sized orders? Or do you need to win larger orders to see growth in the order intake?

Evelina Hedskog
President and CEO, W5 Solutions

I think, I mean, the numbers that we see here from the first quarter show that we can actually grow the order book also from sort of bread and butter and medium-sized contracts. I do think that we see a mix of both large contracts and medium-sized and the smaller ones in the pipeline. It will be a mix going forward.

Hannah Falkenström
Director of Communications and Investor Relations, W5 Solutions

What is the time from order to delivery of these medium-sized orders on average? Can we say something on that?

Evelina Hedskog
President and CEO, W5 Solutions

Yeah, it's always tricky. I did check the orders that we received during quarter one, the 100 and something, or was it SEK 104 million or something like that?

Hannah Falkenström
Director of Communications and Investor Relations, W5 Solutions

Yes.

Evelina Hedskog
President and CEO, W5 Solutions

75% of these orders are planned to be delivered this year. That could say something about the lead time. It is different if it is LiFi training or if it is a simulation. It is very different lead times.

Hannah Falkenström
Director of Communications and Investor Relations, W5 Solutions

I think that is it for today. Thank you for joining our presentation today. Do not hesitate to come back with your questions to Evelina if you have any. We wish you a great day and take care.

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