Earnings call transcript: AutoStore Q1 2025 sees strong order intake

AutoStore Holdings Ltd (AUTO) reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2025, showcasing robust order intake and continued innovation despite macroeconomic challenges. The company’s stock traded at $10.74, near its 52-week high of $11.93, with a market capitalization of $9.4 billion. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains impressive gross profit margins of 80.86%, significantly above industry averages. The earnings call highlighted AutoStore’s strategic focus on cost efficiency and product innovation.

Key Takeaways

• AutoStore reported Q1 revenue of $86 million, or $113 million including AutoStore as a Service.
• The company achieved a gross margin of 74%, maintaining this level for five consecutive quarters.
• Order intake reached $141 million, with over 70% from existing customers.
• Five new products were launched, including Carousel AI, the first AI-powered robotic piece-picking solution.
• The company is implementing cost efficiency measures expected to reduce annual operating expenses by $10 million.

Company Performance

AutoStore demonstrated strong performance in Q1 2025, driven by a strategic focus on innovation and customer retention. The company’s order intake of $141 million, with a significant portion from existing customers, underscores its market leadership in cubic storage solutions. The launch of new products, such as Carousel AI, highlights AutoStore’s commitment to innovation. With a current ratio of 1.65, InvestingPro analysis shows the company’s liquid assets comfortably exceed short-term obligations, providing financial flexibility for continued innovation. Despite geopolitical and macroeconomic volatility, the company maintained a robust gross margin of 74%.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $86 million (or $113 million including AutoStore as a Service)
• Gross Margin: 74%
• Adjusted EBITDA Margin: 25%
• Order Intake: $141 million
• Order Backlog: $513 million

Outlook & Guidance

AutoStore refrained from providing formal revenue guidance due to market uncertainty. However, the company is optimistic about its AutoStore as a Service model, with typical contract lengths ranging from 7 to 10 years. The company plans to continue focusing on innovation and expanding its market reach.

Executive Commentary

CEO Mats Vlangviksen emphasized the company’s adaptive strategies in response to current conditions, stating, "We are responding to the current conditions by transforming our commercial function." Chief Product Officer Parth Joshi highlighted the company’s commitment to innovation, noting, "Innovation has always been core to AutoStore."

Risks and Challenges

AutoStore faces several challenges, including:

• Geopolitical and macroeconomic volatility, which may lead to customer hesitation.
• Tariffs creating market uncertainty, particularly affecting the U.S., which accounts for 25% of revenue.
• The underpenetrated warehouse automation market, presenting both opportunities and challenges.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the impact of tariffs and market uncertainty on the company’s operations. AutoStore executives reassured investors by highlighting the absence of significant order cancellations and the company’s strategic focus on cost efficiency and innovation.

Full transcript - AutoStore Holdings Ltd (AUTO) Q1 2025:

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: Good morning, and welcome to Autostore’s First Quarter twenty twenty five Presentation. My name is Hilda Florescher, and I’m the Investor Relations Officer at Autostore. I’ll be moderating today’s presentation. Today, I’m joined by three members of our executive team. Matzo Vlangviksen, our CEO Paul Harrison, our CFO and Parth Yoshi, our Chief Product Officer.

Now, before we start, I’d like to remind you of our disclaimer with regards to forward looking statements. It can be read here at your own convenience. Moving on to our agenda. We’ll begin with Matt, who will present this quarter’s operational developments, followed by Parth, who will discuss our recent product innovation and how they support our growth strategy. Paul will then provide a detailed overview of our financial results.

And as always, all financials are stated in US dollars. After the prepared remarks, we’ll open the floor for q and a. You can submit written questions through the webcast player starting already now. Additionally, similar to previous quarters, you’re invited to join the webcast via Microsoft Teams to ask verbal questions directly to the management team. Please use the raise hand feature in Teams to participate.

The link can be found on the Investor Relations website and is also included in the invitation that was distributed as a stock exchange release one week ago. After the q and a, Mats will round off with some final remarks to conclude this presentation. With that, I’ll hand over the word to Mats.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: Thanks, Eva, and good morning. With all we have going on in the world right now and the unprecedented levels uncertainty businesses are facing, there is a lot to discuss today. Our numbers tell you that we are not immune to this uncertainty. At the same time, I want to leave you today with a clear understanding of the actions that we are taking to ensure that Autostor emerges from this period stronger than ever, by which I mean with the best solution in our industry, with an optimized go to market model and with the strongest financial profile. It is with this in mind that I invited Parth, our CPO, to join us.

Now coming up to a year with the business, Parth is driving a transformation of our product organization and I want you to hear more about that. But first, let’s take a closer look at the numbers. We closed the quarter with SEK86 million in revenue and SEK141 million in order intake. Gross margin was 74% and our adjusted EBITDA margin came percent. As highlighted during our Q4 update in February, we expected a softer start to the year, reflecting the shift towards Autosur as a Service projects and given the broader macro uncertainty impacting global commerce.

If we included Autosur as a service products we shipped in the quarter, secured revenue was CHF113 million. And I will come back to the importance of service revenue shortly. I think it’s also fair to reiterate my words back at the Capital Markets Day. We’re not satisfied with these numbers. And yes, we can talk to a challenging market at present, but even so, we’re aiming for much better and we know shareholders expect that too.

The encouraging part is that I’m starting to see clear signs that our strategy is taking hold. It’s the same strategy we outlined at the Capital Markets Day, one that we believe will drive a return to highly profitable growth. And I’ll speak more about that in just a few minutes. Moving on to our business developments. Let’s start with tariffs.

You don’t need me to tell you that the situation is still evolving. The timing, scope and details are all uncertain. What I can tell you is that about 25% of our revenue comes from The U. S. And it’s our partners, not Autostor, who import our products into that market.

However, we’re realistic. We know that will likely bear some of the impact. But based on what we know today, we still expect to deliver strong, margins. The more significant impact of tariffs is the uncertainty they create. We’re also seeing market analysts now suggesting that 2025 will be another year of market contraction.

An uncertain outlook leads to hesitation. Our customers understand the strong ROI associated with an AutoStore solution, but it is understandable that many are holding off on their commitments until there is more clarity on this matter. As I said, our response to these challenges is to double down on delivering on our strategy. We know it’s one that will restore growth with a better backdrop and it will see us emerge position. And this is a multifaceted strategy.

Parth will speak shortly about our product direction and I’ll cover progress on the go to market strategy on the next slide. And Paul will later outline our plans to streamline support function and deliver a meaningful reduction in our operating expenses. But while we can’t control the external environment, what we remain focused on is what we can control, which is executing on our strategic priorities and positioning Allosaur for a return to higher levels of profitable growth. We are responding to the current conditions by transforming our commercial function with new leadership, accelerating growth through Autosor as a service and implementing cost efficiency measures expected to reduce our annualized operating expenses by approximately CHF10 million. These actions are aimed at maintaining high profitability, strengthening our competitive position and support long term growth and resilience.

Moving on, we’re happy to share that we successfully completed several AutoStore as a Service projects this quarter. AutoStore as a Service is our flexible subscription based model that removes the need for a big upfront investment. It gives us predictable and recurring revenue. And for our customers, it means faster time to value, predictable costs and more flexibility in how they run and scale their operations. So this model is a win win.

And while still early days, Autosurys as a Service is already providing, proving to be a strong driver of growth and deeper customer relationships, especially in today’s market. So now let’s take a step back. This slide highlights our superior value proposition to customers, our long term competitive strength and superior financial profile. It summarizes the strength of our platform and why we’re uniquely positioned to lead. We have now delivered 1,700 systems with 78,500 robots in 58 countries.

We have over eleven fifty unique customers and we added over 100 in just one year. Within the Cubic Storage space, we are the only player with such a significant install base, providing us with great advantages. Not only does this speak to the strength of our solutions, it also represents a big base for our land and expand strategy. And while our financials on this page reflect the impact of a softer Q1, we’ve consistently demonstrated industry leading margins and profitable growth, which is a testament to the strength and scalability of our business model. And this is also a slide that you’re familiar with.

Here you can see a small selection of our over eleven fifty customers and, as you can see, we have a broad customer portfolio across a diverse set of end markets. Around half of our revenue comes from existing customers and this growing customer base represents a massive opportunity. It is also worth noting that Europe remains our largest region, representing over 65% of our business. To further expand on our reach in these key end markets, we continue to innovate and strengthen our value proposition. So, I’m going to pass to Parth, who will walk you through some of the product innovations from our spring announcement and how they’re designed to drive our growth and continue our leadership position.

Parth Joshi, Chief Product Officer, AutoStore: Hi, everyone. I’m Parth Joshi, Chief Product Officer at Autostor, responsible for all things product and technology. As Mats mentioned earlier, I joined the company in the summer of twenty twenty four, and I’m currently in the midst of driving a transformation of our product organization. It’s been an exciting time to come on board as we work to shape the future of warehouse automation and strengthen our leadership in this space. During my time at Autostore, I focused on three key areas as I’ve done in previous industries.

Driving scale and growth through product innovation, building high quality recurring revenue streams, and combining best in class hardware with truly disruptive As Mats mentioned, we have over 1,700 systems in operation and more than 78,500 robots deployed in the industry leading customers across a broad range of end markets. But for us, it’s not just about scale. It’s about being trusted partners for our customers, leveraging our product and technology to deliver sustainable growth across varying CapEx cycles and business models. We remain focused on solving increasingly complex challenges for our customers. That’s how we continue to create value and unlock new growth opportunities for us and for them.

Today, I wanna show how far we’ve come and why it matters. Innovation has always been core to AutoStore. We focus on solving complex customer problems with reliability, scalability, and standardization at the center. As our customers grow, we grow with them. Just look at the shift from a few hundred robots to over 78,500 now.

From 50 robots per site to up to 2,000 with a 99.7% uptime. This kind of progress drives real impact for us and our customers. We’re doubling down on four strategic priorities that keeps us future ready. First, optimize a cube. We’re increasing speed, density, and efficiency, reducing total cost of ownership and time to deploy.

We still see massive opportunities to continue to optimize our cube with data from a majority of our 70,000 robots keeping us as the industry leader. Second, expand our core capabilities. We are continuing to build on the platform we’ve developed with seamless integration between software and hardware as a key differentiator. Doing so enables us to solve new applications. As an example, increasing our throughput capabilities has helped us to expand into the high throughput segment, which alone represents over a third of the total light ASRS market, making it a significant opportunity for us.

In addition, we have opened chilled and frozen applications through our multi temperature solution and addressed small scale fulfillment through our PO turnkey offering. Third, add on new capabilities. We are also going beyond the cube to add new capabilities. By expanding into adjacent use cases, we’re growing our serviceable addressable market and increasing share of wallet. Solutions like our Carousel AI, something I’ll speak about more shortly, demonstrate how we can extend the value of our platform in new powerful ways.

And fourth, AutoStore software platform. Software drives efficiency of the hardware. It’s the barrier to entry and what truly sets AutoStore apart. This system led approach with software as a brain is what enables long term customer value, high quality recurring revenues, and sustainable growth. We’re building a unified ecosystem that enhances interoperability, accelerates innovation, and unlocks new opportunities in AI and analytics.

As outlined in our Capital Markets Day last fall, our biannual product announcements are designed to deliver value throughout the system life cycle. And that strategy remains unchanged. This spring, we launched five new products aimed at boosting productivity, lowering operational cost, and enabling faster and more scalable expansion. Each product is built to drive continuous value and strengthen our profitable recurring revenue model. A standout in this launch is Carousel AI, our first AI powered robotic peace picking solution and a clear step beyond the cube.

It addresses a key industry bottleneck, which is manual picking outside the system and automates the next logical step in the process. This directly addresses key challenges that customers are facing, such as rising labor cost and warehouse staffing challenges. Carousel AI is a proof point of our strategy to expand beyond the cube, creating value through having a fully integrated, standardized offering. Early traction has been strong and is already a key topic in our customer conversations. More to come on AI related impacts to our products in future updates.

We’re also launching the Essentials software package, a powerful all in one solution designed to enhance performance across the customer journey. It delivers industry leading robot routing, real time system analytics, and intelligent reporting tools for ongoing optimization, which will help drive growth in ARR. By aligning with evolving customer needs, the essentials package strengthens our value proposition while also laying the foundation for what’s next in our software journey. Finally, we’re expanding Peel, our plug and play standardized solution that brings cube storage to smaller businesses and compact spaces. Built on the same high performance robots as our larger systems, PO’s intuitive, fast to deploy, live in as little as four days, and available via subscription through our partner network.

With our spring twenty twenty five release, PO is now available to numerous partners worldwide in a range of sizes, making it easier than ever to offer automation in new markets. We also see a strong pull from partners on smaller use cases within the enterprise segment. It’s a true turnkey solution that generates recurring monthly revenue. As Matt said earlier today, my objective is to leave you with a clear understanding that even in these challenging markets, we are innovating at pace. Our reinvigorated products team will continue to deliver solutions that will position AutoStore more strongly than ever to win in this market.

Thank you. Paul will now take us through the financials of this quarter.

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: Thank you, Par. Good morning. Okay. Let’s move to the financial highlights on the next slide. As Mats discussed earlier, this quarter reflects both clear strategic progress and the ongoing impact of geopolitical and macroeconomic volatility.

As you can see, the slide summarizes our Q1 performance. Revenue came in at $86,000,000 but as Mats mentioned, including shipped order store as a service projects in this quarter, we’re looking at $113,000,000 of revenue. Our gross margin landed north of 70% for the fifth consecutive quarter, while our adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 25%, impacted by that lower revenue. Order intake came in at a hundred and 41,000,000, taking the order backlog to GBP513 million. So on the next slides, I’ll go into more details on the key financials.

As I mentioned, Q1 revenue came in at GBP86 million. We expected a slow start to the year. At the Q4 results, I’ll remind you that we spoke to the impact of our strong close to 2024 and of the successful capture of as a service revenues. We noted that both would suppress Q1 revenue. Looking at the geographic split, Europe remains our stronghold and it is also where we ship the order store as a service deals.

As I mentioned, order intake totaled 141,000,000 roughly on par quarter over quarter. Given the current macro environment, this is a solid result. Over 70% of this quarter’s order intake came from existing customers, underscoring the strength of our value proposition and the benefit of a large installed customer base. We ended the quarter with a backlog of GBP513 million. We’re confident in the quality of our order backlog and have not seen any cancellations, but we are seeing a more cautious approach to capital investments in warehouse automation driven by the volatility in global trade flows and broader economic conditions.

But I want to say that this caution is not a reflection of the attractiveness of our solution, Rather, it is a consequence of the broader uncertainties our customers face at this time. Okay, let’s move on to margins. The highly standardized nature of our product continues to support strong gross margins. In fact, as I mentioned, this is the fifth consecutive quarter with gross margins exceeding 70%. Now, Mats touched on the tariff topic earlier.

Without doubt, the real impact of tariffs is to create further hesitancy to commit in an already challenging environment for our customers. As we said, it is our partners and not order store that import our product to The US. However, we recognize the risk that we will share some of the pain here. But keep in mind that The US is around 25% of our business. So even if we choose to share in some of the cost of tariffs based on what we know today, we will continue to report strong gross margins.

Further down the P and L, lower revenues saw adjusted EBITDA coming in at 25%. Given the current volatile market environment, we’re taking measures to protect profitability. These will generate annualized cost savings of approximately £10,000,000 whilst we will continue to invest in long term growth. Moving to cash flow. Operating cash flow for the quarter was impacted by the GBP 30,000,000 in settlement payments as you see here.

The good news is that we’re now in the final quarter of these payments. We ended the quarter with a strong cash position of CHF282 million, which supports our growth strategy. And we have total liquidity of CHF432 million consisting of that cash of CHF $282,000,000 and a CHF 150,000,000 headroom on our revolving credit facility. So with that, I’ll now pass back to Heeva who’s going to open the Q and A.

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: Can Mats and Parth and Paul join me and we can open the questions from the webcast player. Let’s see. As always, please raise your hand. And, I think, Luke, if you unmute yourself, you’re the first in line. Luke?

There we go.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Can you you hear me at all or not? Yes. Super. My first question is just on the top line trends through Q1.

It seems like you had a halving of demand Q on Q. And I’m just interested to see, is that effectively by by March almost no demand for the quarter? Just how does that fare through the quarter and then into q two? And then my second question is just on the recurring revenues. Can you just be clear on what does what does that do to phasing into q two, q ’3 given the impact we saw in Q1?

Thank you.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: So the first question, I think the Q1 order intake that we reported reflects the strength of our business and particularly the strength of our existing customer base and our stronghold in Europe. But however, as you allude to, the situation has gotten worse throughout the quarter and more uncertainty has presented itself. But it is important to note though that the caution that we’re seeing from customers is about the timing. The conviction of the value that we can bring to them with the Autosor system is still as strong as ever and we’re not seeing customers going to alternative solutions, but this is really a consequence of the uncertainty businesses are facing in this environment.

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: And Luke, to your second question, for order stores as service revenues, we start to recognize those revenues when their systems go live. So contrasted with traditional order store business where we recognize revenues as we ship product, we start to recognize where they go live. Over the contracts we’re referring to, they’re going live in the next couple of quarters. So we’ll start to recognize revenue under those contracts then and and and do so straight line over the life of the contracts.

Speaker 4: Can I just press you a little bit more on the trends through q one? Did it did it weaken significantly between February and then into March? I just wanted to be clear on that and then what the trends are doing into April.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: Yes. No, as I said, the situation has continued to be more uncertain. But given the strength within existing customers and also some of the stronger end markets and regions, we were able to deliver the results that we delivered.

Speaker 5: Okay, understood. Thank you.

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: I think, Tobre, you’re the next one in line. If you could please go ahead and unmute yourself.

Speaker 6: Yes. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Also, two from my side to start with, first of all, would be on the accounting for the AutoStore as a service solution. So understood now that you will start accounting for the revenues once the product is really in use and then over the length of the contract.

So could you maybe let us know on average or how long will these contracts usually last? Is it a three years topic? Is it a five years topic? Basically, what I’m trying to figure out here is how long does it take you to recoup from an accounting perspective the revenues you’re currently losing here? And then just a second question would be also regarding tariffs.

Understood your your partners are importing the product, but still could you let us know into The US, are you mainly shipping in from Thailand or are you mainly shipping in from Poland? Thank you.

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: Thank you. So the accounting for the contracts and their length, the contracts are they’re gonna vary in length, but they are typically longer than that for their initial term. The typical initial term ranging from sort of seven to ten year period. But but keep in mind the observation we’ve made many times in the past that once a customer has an auto store solution, we have instances of customers that have had that solution for in excess of a couple of decades. So so but from a contractual point of view, the contracts tend to thus far trend into that seven to ten year period.

And so what I will say to you is under the the the economics therefore, we move into the black as it were in those contracts well before the end of the minimum contracted term. So as well as bringing predictable recurring revenues, the economics of these contracts are also attractive to order store. As to the tariffs in the main today, our product has been shipped into The US from Poland although we do hold some finished goods inventory in The U. S. As well as consequence of wanting to respond quickly to opportunities there.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: I think important to note on the first one, what we do provide customers here with is flexibility and whether that can be a three year contract, five year contract or a longer term contract can vary across those different deals. But important to note that when you first start using an Autostor system, the value of that is multiyear. Even the first systems that we installed in the early 2000s are still operating today.

Speaker 6: Okay. Thank you. Just one follow-up then on this first question. If you have these contracts running for seven to ten years, is the cumulated revenue higher than in the old CapEx model? Or is it basically from an accounting perspective just taking you seven to ten years to recognize revenue that you would usually have recognized within one quarter?

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: No. The accumulated revenue over the life of the contract would be higher than the old CapEx model.

Speaker 6: Any any detail you could give on this or will we just remain with higher for now?

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: I refer back to my, you know, to my comment that our sort of breakeven position, to your question is well before well before the end of those contracts. That’s the way we structured them.

Speaker 6: Okay. Thank you.

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: Thank you. Moving on to Joachim, if you could please unmute yourself.

Speaker 7: Hey, good morning. Could you provide some color on how you assess the quality of the remaining backlog? Specifically, how much of the current backlog do you consider to be firm versus at risk given the current macro and customer uncertainty?

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: I’ll start with that one. Look, we continue to see a high quality backlog. And you know as we commented, the conviction that our customers expressed to undertake warehouse automation using the order source solution remains very strong. And as I noted in my words earlier, we have not seen any cancellations from that backlog. But we’re cautious of course.

Mean in this environment, we would understand customers saying, yes, we have that high conviction. But we’re going to hold off on making that commitment. So it is a very credible hypothesis that we’ll see opportunities in the backlog shift to the right but what we’re not seeing is customers lose conviction and or canceling their contracts.

Speaker 7: Thank you so much.

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: Think, Erik, you’re next one up. If you could please go ahead and unmute yourself.

Speaker 5: Yes. Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I’ve got three. I’ll do them one by one, if that’s okay.

If we start on the backlog now of $512,000,000 could you share how much of that is, AutoStore as a service? And based on what you know today, what’s the kind of time on execution for that backlog in terms of turning that into revenue? That’s my first question.

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: Okay. So the order stores as a service deals, ones we’ve talked about this quarter are the first sort of principal deals that we’ve announced. And therefore, that full sort of 27,500,000.0 Eric is in the backlog and represents the vast majority of those as a service deals. And sorry, you had a second On the timing of it. Timing of release, Eric.

And as I say, the the contracts will start to release see revenue released on go live in in in sort of one or two quarters’ time.

Speaker 5: Okay. So then fair to assume that around 27,000,000 of the 512,000,000 is related to as a service revenues in in the backlog as of today?

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: Yeah. That is that is the major part. Of course, keep in mind more broadly that we’ve got significantly more recurring revenues than that when you consider software for example and indeed the reoccurring nature of spare part revenues. So we’re building up quite a significant sort of recurring and reoccurring revenue base implicit in the backlog. But as it applies to these order stores as service contracts, that number is directionally correct.

Speaker 5: Okay. And then also just for my own understanding, of the SEK 141,000,000 in the order intake in Q1, would 27 of those be as a service? And also, technically, how do you kinda recognize the value of those orders in the order intake number? Like, is it, you know, the full value of the the order, the initial payment? Just trying to understand how you ’re gonna recognize that value in the order intake and yeah.

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: Yes. So so you are right. The the 27,500,000.0 is in the order intake of a hundred and 41,000,000. And and therefore, in terms of how we record order intake, we’ve remained faithful faithful to the approach we’ve always adopted, which is to take in those revenues we expect ultimately to release to revenue on a one to one basis. So there isn’t Eric, in your question, there isn’t a sort of discounting or an NPV type effect that we’ve built into order intake.

Speaker 5: Okay. That’s fair. Thanks. And just two more quick ones. You also call out the unprecedented geopolitical and macroeconomic volatility as an influence on revenue.

And kind of if we adjust out the the as a service offering, does that mean that, you know, somewhere 10 to 30,000,000 ish in in in revenue has been boned in the quarter as well since you called out the uncertainty?

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: Yes. So I’ve got two things. One is, as we said, as we reported Q4, we did expect a soft start to the year for the reasons that we’ve just talked about. But secondly, yes, given the heightened uncertainty, we have seen backlog being pushed to the right.

Speaker 5: Okay. Thank you. And just one final question for me. Can you just briefly share your thoughts around why you didn’t decide to profit Warren when the numbers were so far off expectations?

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: Yes, Eric. Some time ago, we drew, stopped our approach of giving formal guidance, given the, lack of, or the challenge visibility into the market. And therefore for us it was more appropriate to talk to you today and be able to add more color based on what we’re seeing as of today than you know talk to you sort of earlier in the quarter while the situation was still very very much sort of evolving. It felt more sensible to wait for today and be able to have a fuller dialogue with you.

Speaker 5: Okay, great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: Thank you, Eric. Moving on to Timothy. If you could please unmute yourself.

Speaker 8: Hi. Can you can you hear me?

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: Yes.

Speaker 8: Very cool. Yeah. So two questions from my side. So first one is also on the auto store surface. So the 27,500,000.0 was the order intake for the quarter as you mentioned.

Was that only referred to one project or several projects? And also, what do you expect for the proportion of the auto store as a service in the upcoming quarters revenue? Any expectation on proportion in the future would be helpful.

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: As we noted there are several individual contracts underpinning the 27.5. And as to future quarters, we say today that we think that this is a model that not only is a win for us but resonates strongly with customers particularly in this environment. And so there’s a number of other conversations that we’re having around this model with other customers. But what I can’t comment on is the timing of sort of bringing those to a conclusion. But it’s certainly generating good interest with both our partners and our customers.

Speaker 8: Alright. Understood. The second question is about your r and d full time employee. I saw the number of the r and d staff dropped from 296 by the end of fourth quarter to around 251 by the end of this quarter. May I know what’s going on with that?

Are you trimming your r and d team or as part of the cost saving, measures that you mentioned?

Parth Joshi, Chief Product Officer, AutoStore: We’ve, we’ve looked at our r and d numbers, and we’ve given a pure number of what’s considered r and d. So it’s a definitional change of what we consider within r and d. If we look at the baseline and using the same definition, we’re flat in terms of r and d headcount using the new definition.

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: I can add and Pat may come in as well. One real discipline that Pat has introduced is is a very strong focus on a core set of products. And we discontinued indeed a number of projects that we’re working on and part and parcel of the savings that we’ve talked about today the 10,000,000 is a consequence of that greater focus on core products that Parth has talked about.

Speaker 8: Alright. Understood. Thank you.

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: Martin, I think you’re next. If you could go ahead and unmute yourself, please.

Speaker 9: Yes. Thank you. Good morning. It’s Martin from Citi. Just to come back to the as a service model, when we think of of the software world, oftentimes, the margins are more negative in the initial phases.

You know, a lot of costs are booked upfront. If if we’re gonna see more revenue booked from this as of next quarter, can you just talk a little bit about how you allocate the costs? So are they linear as well? And so we don’t see, whether it’s in COGS or whether it’s in customer acquisition costs, things like that, we don’t see any sort of upfront loading of those costs. Or do we think it’s sort of margin neutral in terms of how we think about the phasing of that as a service?

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: It’s a good question. And I think it’s important to bear in mind the continued involvement of our channel partners on these transactions. These are not deals we’re doing directly. There are deals we’re doing through our channel. So those things that our channel partners do today in terms of upfront sort of support and installation.

They continue to do an as a service contract. So the way to think about it from our point of view is we will have fixed assets on our balance sheet that represent the order store solutions that are in use by those end customers and subject to sort of some relatively sort of small levels of support by order store pretty much from the day we start. You’ve got revenue in the P and L and depreciation therefore going through against operating profit. That’s the way it works given the partner involvement.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: And strategically there’s value from a few different sources here. One is the value from our ongoing focus of standardization. There are no customized assets going into these models. We can ship standardized products out there. The second thing is, as Paul mentioned, the partner channel will continue to provide services, which is not on our cost base to realize these contracts.

But thirdly, this also enables us to deliver on our strategic priority to get even closer to the end customers out there because with that flexibility they have to scale the system based on the needs that they have. And the fact that we’re sitting there shoulder by shoulder helps us build those deep strategic relationships, which will be hugely valuable for us.

Speaker 9: Thanks. That’s really helpful. And another question just coming back to tariffs, and, you’ve you’ve commented that you think the cost increase or potential tariffs could be manageable for your for your partners. Have have you thought about opening facilities in The US? Is is it too early to talk about that?

And presumably, there’s a breakeven level that it makes sense if tariffs are above a certain level and and not if it’s below a certain level. But just to give us some sort of sense as to how you are thinking about that.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: So we do constantly assess what’s the most efficient way to assembly and manufacture our products. That includes where in the world we do so. And of course, we have continued to do those sets of analytics also throughout this period. And our assessment is that with the setup we have today in Poland, in Thailand, with also having strategic warehouses out there is still the most cost efficient and customer efficient setup we can have.

Speaker 9: Great. Thank you very much.

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: Thank you, Martin. Moving on to Petter, if you could please unmute yourself.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore0: Yes, thank you. A couple of questions from me. I’ll take one at a time. You mentioned now and in Q4 that revenues were pushed forward in Q4. We do now see Q4 and Q1 combined.

Is it possible to say something about how big this impact was?

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: If you recall, Petter, we at the Capital Markets Day back in September, we guided to a range for FY24 revenues of CHF575 million to CHF600 million and we came in at CHF601 million. So we came in slightly above the top end of that range. And a lot of the success in landing the business that enabled that to be the case was as a consequence of going out to our principally existing customers and landing, persuading them to commit to deals like extension deals and the like. So a good proportion of that beat was a consequence of going to the installed base looking for opportunities that might otherwise have come in for example in Q1 and securing that business in Q4, which was a very sort of positive thing to be able to do.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: And we talked about this at the CMD accelerating conversion, exploiting our installed base is things that we focus a lot about. It helps our customers get value quicker and it helps us drive conversion, which as we’ve talked about is extremely important, especially in these conditions.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore0: Yes, I agree. The challenge obviously for us is that while this conversion was very strong then in q four, it’s not that strong now in q one. So

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: Yeah. It’s a fair point, Petter. And and, you know, we go back to the February 20 and the q four announcement, we were, so keen at that announcement to explain we would see this effect.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore0: Okay. Thank you. And then just on tariffs, just to understand the potential effect here. If I understood you correctly, you now ship basically from your Poland factory. What do you do then on grids and bins for The U.

S. Market?

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: So grids, we have manufacturing across the world and will, to a large extent, also import those into The U. S, whilst bins are manufactured at several sites across The U. S, and it’s all sourced locally.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore0: Okay. Thank you. And then obviously, back to the current trading environment. I think it’s useful to give some development into Q2, particularly as tariffs really start to unfold from April. Does this mean that your market has become even more challenging now in Q2 on the back of lower potential demand?

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: As I mentioned, we have definitely seen a heightened uncertainty, and uncertainty leads to hesitation. But I think what’s also fair to say is that as we stand here today, that level of uncertainty makes it incredibly hard to predict not only the short term, but predict how that demand environment is going to pan out going forward.

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: But as we emphasized today, that is challenging. But we are focusing, as Parth has mentioned in his section, relentlessly on our strategy and taking the measures that we’ve talked about to reduce the cost base of the business.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore0: Okay. And just me then trying to wrap up, does that mean that you’re not seeing a materially change in the trading environment now versus what you saw in Q1?

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: It is too early to comment on that as we stand here today.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore0: Okay. Okay. I totally understand. Thank you.

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: Thank you, Petey. Torre, I think you’ve raised your hand again. If you could please

Speaker 6: you. Thank you. Thank you for taking another question. Just a follow-up The regional split, I was a little bit surprised by EMEA dropping so much year on year, while North America was mostly stable year on year. Could you give a bit more color on this?

And is the AutoStore as a solution impact on revenues mostly a European one? Or is it also from customers in The U. S? Thank you.

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: And that is exactly the analysis, Tore. And the AutoStore as a Service solutions are European deals and hence the impact on that segment.

Speaker 6: Okay. And in The U. S. Still stable year on year, but I suppose some turn down in the later part of March?

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: As we’ve talked about already, yes, there is a heightened uncertainty out there for sure.

Speaker 6: Okay. Thank you.

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: Thank you, Tore. I believe this concludes the questions from the webcast. I can’t see any more hands raised, so I’ll just quickly turn to the written questions. And I believe most of the questions have already been addressed, so I’m not going to repeat those. I I think there is one slight nuance to the AutoStore as a Service, Paul.

You mentioned revenues include AutoStore as a Service was $113,000,000 What would be the gross profit? What would the gross profit be include including those service contracts?

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: Well, think I go back to the the earlier question, and that is that, you know, with the role of the partner at the center still of the order store as a service solution, then really the cost, the prime cost of order store is the depreciation on the fixed asset that is located at the end customer.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: Over time, this is what we’ve

Paul Harrison, CFO, AutoStore: been accretive. Very much so. Yes. Yep.

Hilda Florescher, Investor Relations Officer, AutoStore: Thank you. I’m just going through the questions. I believe we’ve covered all topics here in the in the written section. Just quickly going back to the live link. No hands are raised here either.

So with that, I think we can conclude today’s Q and A. And I’ll hand over the word to you, Mats, for your final remarks.

Mats Vlangviksen, CEO, AutoStore: Thank you, Hiva. So let me summarize what we’ve presented to you today and remind you of some First, we operate in a large underpenetrated market, which is fueled by long term megatrends. The growth opportunity here is intact and we have a winning proven solution. As we’ve already discussed, we are responding to the current market conditions by taking decisive action aimed at maintaining high profitability, strengthening our competitive position and supporting long term growth and resilience.

And we are not standing still. Innovation is embedded in our DNA and we continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible. Today, you heard directly from our CPO about the latest innovations, both within and beyond theCUBE, designed to meet evolving customer needs and drive long term growth and engagement. We have multiple ways to win and a scalable solution that works across industries, system types and geographies delivered through an efficient partner enabled model. Taken together, these elements gives us confidence in our direction and ability to create long term value.

So, would like to thank you for dialing in today and look forward to speaking to you again soon.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.