Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q3 Full Year 2025 Trading Update Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm Matilde, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Christian Waelti. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Matilde, and good afternoon, good evening, everyone. I'm Christian Waelti, head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined today by Peter Mainz, our CEO, by Davinder Athwal, our CFO. As you know, earlier today, Landis+Gyr issued an ad hoc release and related presentation on the Q3 FY 2025 trading update, which are available on our website. This session will follow the structure of the presentation, so we encourage you to follow along. We'll conclude with Q&A, where Matilde will provide further instructions and where you will be able to ask questions. Please take a moment to review the usual disclaimer on Slide 2 of the presentation. After this short introduction, I'd like to hand the floor over to our CEO, Peter Mainz.
Thank you, Christian. Good afternoon and good evening, everyone. I'm here at our U.S. headquarters in Alpharetta, just outside Atlanta, with Davinder, our Chief Financial Officer, and we are pleased to provide you with an update on our third quarter performance. With that said, let's now start with a review of the highlights of our performance in the third quarter and the first nine months of our financial year, 2025. Let's move to Slide 3. This is actually the first time Landis+Gyr is issuing a quarterly trading update, and we are publishing it after market close to accommodate both our European and North American investors. We believe this provides investors with an additional data point and increased transparency, highlighting our quarterly performance and seasonality throughout our fiscal year.
In the third quarter of financial year 2025, we continued the solid momentum from the first half year and delivered performance significantly ahead of the prior year quarter, with both net revenue and adjusted gross profit expanding by double digits. We're also particularly happy with our order backlog, which has increased by almost 30% to about $3.9 billion in the past 9 months, reflecting the strength of our pipeline, driven by the increase in load growth, combined with the enduring trust of our customers. Importantly, book-to-bill in our largest segment, the Americas, remained at 1. With disciplined execution and solid demand across our core markets, we're confident in a strong Q4 and therefore reiterate our financial year 2025 guidance. At the same time, we are progressing well on our strategic priorities, including the EMEA divestment and preparations for a US listing.
On to Slide 4. Let's cover how we continue to execute on the strategic initiatives outlined in October 2024 in more detail. Last September, we announced the divestment of EMEA. Our teams, together with the buyer, are currently working diligently to carve out the business. Earlier in January of this year, the transaction received regulatory approval from the European Commission under the EU Merger Regulation, and we aim to close the transaction, as mentioned before, in Q2 of calendar year 2026. What remains is a global business focused on North America and Asia Pacific. We're excited about the global appeal of the offering, with a focus on advancing a high-quality global business built around Grid Edge Intelligence solutions and delivering exceptional value to utilities worldwide.
The focus on this business will elevate both our EBITDA and cash profile, with very low capital intensity, creating an exciting and very different financial profile for the business. With that in mind, we keep on working towards a U.S. listing in the second half of 2026, aligning capital markets with the majority of our operational business activity. This includes a continued listing of the shares in Switzerland on the SIX Swiss Exchange, to enable Swiss investors to participate in the value creation of Landis+Gyr's strategic plan. A Capital Markets Day will take place in New York on June 1, 2026, to update the investment community on the company's profile following the EMEA divestment. Finally, we launched our buyback program last November and have so far bought back close to 1% of our outstanding shares from our strong balance sheet.
Now I will give the floor to Davinder, our CFO, who will walk us through the key financials.
Thanks, Peter. Good afternoon and good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'll briefly walk you through our Q3 results, covering order intake and backlog, revenue and gross margin, and then conclude with our full year guidance. Overall, we continue to see strong commercial momentum and remain confident in our outlook for fiscal year 2025. Let's begin with order intake and backlog on Slide 5. Order intake for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $762 million, resulting in a book-to-bill ratio of around 0.9 times, reflecting sustained customer demand across our core markets. As a result, our backlog increased by 26% to approximately $3.9 billion at the end of December. Importantly, around 40% of the backlog relates to software, supporting high visibility and strong margin quality through recurring revenues.
Geographically, backlog growth was driven primarily by the Americas, with continued momentum in APAC. Pipeline activity remains strong, especially around our grid edge solutions, which we continue to see increasing customer investments. Our backlog position gives us solid visibility into the fourth quarter and beyond. For the full fiscal year, we expect a book-to-bill ratio of around 1x. Turning next to revenue and margin on Slide 6. Net revenue in Q3 increased by 39% year-on-year to $278.7 million, driven by higher volumes and strong execution. This performance was primarily due to a more than 50% year-on-year increase in Revelo shipments, as supply conditions continued to normalize and customers accelerated deployments.
For the first nine months of fiscal 2025, total net revenue amounted to $814.7 million, representing a slight decline compared to the prior year, driven by the earlier achievement of project milestones last year. Adjusted growth margin remained broadly stable on a like-for-like basis, excluding a one-time gain on sale of real estate recorded in fiscal 2024. Margins in fiscal 2025 are consistent with the prior year. During the third quarter, margins were impacted by less than $1 million of tariff-related costs, which we continue to actively mitigate through pricing actions, sourcing initiatives, and operational measures. Overall, the underlying margin profile remains resilient, supported by volume leverage and the growing contribution from software. And now turning to our fiscal 2025 guidance on Slide 7.
Based on our year-to-date performance, backlog visibility, and the momentum we saw entering into Q4, we are reiterating our guidance for fiscal 2025. We continue to expect net revenue growth of between 5% and 8% compared to fiscal 2024, when we reported net revenue of $1.123 billion. We also reaffirm our expectation for an adjusted EBITDA margin of between 13% and 14.5% of net revenue, including approximately $10 million-$15 million of temporary dyssynergies on an annualized basis. We anticipate a strong fourth quarter, driven by robust business momentum, shipment normalization, and continued operational discipline. In summary, demand remains strong, execution continues to improve, and our financial performance is tracking in line with expectations. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator to take your questions. Thank you.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Akash Gupta from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi, and good day, everyone. I have two questions to start with, and I'll ask one at a time. The first one is on, commentary on order intake, and I think, during the you said you're expecting one time book-to-bill for full year, which will imply, recovery in orders in Q4. And maybe can you talk about how much visibility do you have already, and where we are towards the end of the month? And then how does the pipeline for order intake, look like beyond current fiscal year? So that's the first one to start with.
Yeah. Thank you, Akash. So I... It was a bit difficult to hear, but I, if I want to reconfirm, the question was around our order intake, and I want to focus on the order intake for North America, where our largest segment, our most important segment, and for the first nine months, we had a book-to-bill of 1. So we continue to have exceptional performance here on the order intake side. And as I've mentioned multiple times in our business, if we have one of those large wins, as we had at the end of the second half of last fiscal year, that distorts the book-to-bill ratio, as we are at 1.4, 1.5 to 1.
Outside those, a book-to-bill of 1 is what we are aiming for, and we have achieved that over the first 9 months, and we continue to push for that over the remaining 2 months that we have now to end the year on that book-to-bill ratio as well. Pipeline is supporting it, and pipeline, certainly in North America, is a very substantial, exciting pipeline that we see, and we continue to not just see the pipeline activity, we also see pipeline transition into orders, transition into the backlog. So we feel quite good with the momentum we have and the momentum we see in that area.
Thank you. My second question is on margin. So if you look at your Q3 gross margin, it's up 20 basis points sequentially, and 33% in H1 and 33.2% in Q3. And if you look at your full year guidance, which is on Adjusted EBITDA, you guys for 13%-14.5%, and you had 12.9% in H1. So I wanted to ask, like, are we now going to end towards, let's say, lower half of margin guidance, or can you still do the midpoint of the guidance on full year margin? Thank you.
We'll be within the guidance, and no indication to the low end of the guidance. We are within the guidance, and the gross margin profile is certainly driven by Revelo continuing to pick up and continue to outperform on the margin levels what we have seen a year ago when we were earlier on in the launch of that platform.
Or maybe in another way, if you look at gross margin for Q4, can you exceed Q3 when we look at your product pipeline, or is it going to be more in line with what you have delivered in Q3? Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, I think Q4, Q4 is very much in line with the profile that we have seen in Q3 and also in the first half. You know, remember, Davinder mentioned that tariffs are abating in our profile, and then as you look at the calculation for the revenue in the fourth quarter, operating leverage is the second substantial drivers for the gross margin continually enhancing.
Thank you, Peter.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Jeff Osborne from TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, or good evening. Just a couple quick questions on my side. I was wondering, you, you've highlighted the activity in the market is still strong, but are you seeing any delays in the regulatory environment as it relates to approving any of the projects that you've been technically awarded?
Not any different, what we've seen in the industry over the past decade. So I would not highlight any regulatory delays in the customer base that we have or in the market that we participate in. So nothing, nothing changed from what is typical for the industry. We continue to see accelerations and delays. It's just the nature of the industry, so nothing, nothing abnormal.
That's great to hear, Peter. I just also wanted to confirm. I think the new governor of New Jersey, on the January 20th, signed an executive order around utility costs and future rate base increases. The contract that you folks won with PSE&G has already been fully rate-based at this point, and so there's no delays or impact from that executive order that was signed last week. Is that correct?
That is absolutely correct, Jeff.
Okay, just wanted to double-check. Then the last one I had a bit obscure, but there are some industries that have been highlighting in the earnings call cycle issues with memory availability and memory pricing. Just with the Revelo product cycle and being able to download apps, I wasn't sure what your exposure is. Are you having any challenges either on price and/or availability of memory for your product cycle that needs it?
We have certainly seen that the market a bit tighter than before. We're not anywhere close to what we've seen in the supply chain crisis. What is it? Four years ago, so we're not anywhere close to that. So we saw a bit of tightening. We saw a bit of an increase in lead time, but nothing to date that doesn't allow us to manage it. But we certainly slightly noticed that.
Perfect. I appreciate you hosting the call. It's very, very clear for the sake of transparency. Thank you.
Thank you, Jeff.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press Star and One on your telephone. We now have a question from the line of Christoph Grau from AWP. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you very much for taking my question. I have two questions on your strategy. First of all, on the second listing in the, in the U.S., why do you maintain your listing in Switzerland? To set something about participation of the older shareholders, and does this pay out for you, the second listing? And my second question is, is a move of your headquarters to the US an option for you in the long run, long run, maybe?
So, as I said... Thank you, Christoph. Sorry. As we said at the beginning of the call, we're actually taking this call from outside of Atlanta, so I would say operationally, we are already very much set here in the U.S. And if you go back, a couple of the announcements that we made, you know, I live in the U.S., and Davinder lives in the U.S. We have a chairperson, she lives in the U.S., so we are focused for the operative support of the customer base that we have going forward. That is more than 70% in North America.
That's where we are set up, and we also continue to take advantage of the skill base that we have in our current headquarters in Switzerland and continue also to take advantage of that to support the business going forward. The dual listing, you know, we have been successfully listed in Switzerland for the past eight years, so we have a shareholder base in Switzerland that we just want to take care of. And we want to make sure as the strategy plays out and the value creation is realized that the shareholder base that stood with us over the past eight years, that we take them along for this very, very value creation that we're aiming for.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Louis Billon from Baader Europe. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. So my question is about the Asia Pacific region. So in the press release, you have mentioned that the large project delay was the reason for the decline this quarter in sales. Could you give us more detail for those delays and what—I mean, what are the reasons, and should we expect a catch-up effect in the last quarter?
I'm sorry, Louis, I'm not quite sure I really got which project you're talking about.
Yeah, in the Asia Pacific region, you mentioned that the decline of net revenue was largely reflecting project timing.
So that is a bit the same theme as I continued to mention in North America. We also in that region, we have some large contracts, and the transition from one large contract to the next large contract is not always seamless in that area. We announced earlier this year that we have a substantial contract with PlusES in Australia, you know, compensating the contract in Hong Kong that is nearing the end of its contract. And as I said before, especially on a quarterly basis, it's never seamless how they transition from one to the next. So that's also Asia Pacific is not different from what I continue to articulate that we see in North America as well.
Okay, that's clear.
We now have a question from the line of Mark Diethelm from Vontobel. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon, or rather, good evening, everyone. I have 2.5 questions. The first one is on the strong increase in backlog you showed. Can you elaborate how much of this backlog will electric converter sales in the next 12-24 months? And the next, with the second and the second half on top of it, you mentioned the Swiss listing will continue. Does that mean there is no delisting at all planned from the Swiss exchange? And then this half question on top of that, does that change in kind of listing also affect capital allocation in the future, meaning that the dividend will get a greater focus again against buybacks? Thanks.
You want to start with the backlog, and I-
Yeah, I can take that one. Hi, Mark. Good, good, good to speak with you. This is Davinder. I can take the backlog question. So the way that I would guide you on that is to think about as we disclose 40% of the backlog is software, and that typically comes in over about a 10-year period on average. So the balance of that, which would be the hardware or platform part of it, or 60%, that you can think of coming in over three to four years on average. We've not yet broken out the margin profile, but I think it's fair to say that our software margin is higher, as you would expect, and I kind of note it's about a third higher than what we see on our hardware.
But if you model it that way, that'll give you a sense of kind of like, you know, what you might expect to see come out of backlog and into revenue over the next few years.
And then the second question, I wanna make sure I understood it. So, as we said, in the second half of 2026, we're working towards the listing here in the U.S. As we achieve that, we're gonna maintain a dual listing in Switzerland as well. And as I said before, that listing exists to allow the Swiss shareholder base or other European shareholder base to participate in the value creation. And I think that has been articulated to the financial community that way over the past couple of months already, actually.
And a full answer to your half question, it doesn't affect our capital allocation strategy at all.
Yeah. Sorry, I forgot about that part. Yeah.
Okay. Got it. Thank you very much.
For any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. We have a follow-up question from the line of Jeff Osborne from TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for allowing the follow-up. I just also had a question on the 40% software. Just wanted to be a two-part clarification. There's no recurring services or consulting or people items in that. That's all true software and technology. Is that the right way to think about that? That services and labor are not typically part of the backlog?
Hey, Jeff, this is Davinder. I can take that one. There are some services in there, but I would kind of call out that these are not low-level installation-type services. These are kind of really where we're delivering either software or some kind of high-level intelligence through a service. So there may be humans involved in the provision of those, but you know, you can think of it essentially as software and intelligence. I would just kind of caution you not to think about it as kind of installation services that some software companies have.
Got it. And then is there a way? No, that makes sense. And then another follow-up on the 40%. Is there a way to compartmentalize the TEPCO, you know, contract? My guess is that that maybe is a third, at most half of that number. And, you know, some of—as investors benchmark yourselves versus peers, they don't have that sort of... Most of your peers don't have a $30 million endpoint contract that, you know, was deployed over 10 years ago, that was recently renewed. So is there a way you could just compartmentalize that so people can see what the North American software exposure is?
I would still say that Japan is a smaller portion of the overall when we break it down on the—did we say we had a $2 billion over 10 years or 8-10 years, roughly? So that is about $200 million or $200 million+ that is in the backlog. So I think that is a, it's a smaller portion, but this is a 30 million+ endpoint that we manage. That is, you know, five times more than the largest deployment here in the U.S.. So it's a substantial achievement they have here in Japan, managing TEPCO every day with... But it's not the biggest portion on the $200 million+ annual recurring revenue that we have on our backlog.
Well, so in other ways, that's kind of skewing the market profile, I think is the ultimate question. Makes sense. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you, Jeff, again.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Peter Mainz for any closing remarks.
Thank you again for joining us today. We appreciate your time and interest in Landis+Gyr, and I look forward to meeting all of you soon, some of you in DistribuTECH or virtually, and in person. Goodbye. Have a great day, and talk to you next time. Thank you.
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