Earnings call transcript: Bulten AB Q3 2025 sees sales drop amid cyber attack

Bulten AB’s Q3 2025 earnings call revealed a challenging quarter for the company, marked by a significant drop in sales volumes and a cyber attack that impacted revenue. The company’s stock price reacted negatively, reflecting investor concerns over the financial performance and future outlook. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains a stable financial health score of 2.47, rated as ’FAIR’, despite recent challenges.

Key Takeaways

• Sales volumes dropped 22% year-over-year due to a cyber attack.
• Adjusted EBIT stood at SEK 16 million with a 1.5% margin.
• Workforce reduced by 10% as part of strategic restructuring.
• New business wins in automotive and electronics sectors.
• Stock price fell by 13.32% following the earnings announcement.

Company Performance

Bulten AB faced a tough third quarter, with sales volumes declining by 22% compared to the same period last year. The company attributed a revenue impact of approximately SEK 200 million to a cyber attack, which disrupted operations. Despite these challenges, Bulten secured new contracts in the automotive and electronics sectors, indicating a strategic shift towards niche manufacturing and C parts distribution.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Impacted by SEK 200 million due to cyber attack.
• Adjusted EBIT: SEK 16 million, reflecting a 1.5% EBIT margin.
• Workforce: Reduced by 10%, affecting over 200 employees globally.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Bulten AB’s stock price dropped by 13.32%, closing at SEK 53.3. This decline reflects investor concerns over the company’s ability to recover from the cyber attack and the ongoing challenges in the light and heavy vehicle markets. InvestingPro analysis suggests the stock is currently undervalued, with additional insights available in the comprehensive Pro Research Report, part of InvestingPro’s coverage of over 1,400 stocks.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Bulten expects the impact of the cyber attack to persist into Q4. However, the company anticipates a recovery in volumes and potential upside from 2026 onwards, driven by its strategic focus on niche manufacturing and C parts distribution. Bulten is also exploring potential mergers and acquisitions to enhance its market position. InvestingPro identifies several positive factors, including the company’s significant dividend yield of 5.22% and strong liquidity position, with current assets exceeding short-term obligations. Get access to 7 more exclusive ProTips and detailed financial analysis with an InvestingPro subscription.

Executive Commentary

Axel Berntsson, CEO, emphasized the company’s strategic shift: "We will give a better return to our shareholders by investing in niche manufacturing and C parts distribution." CFO Anna Åkerblad highlighted the importance of diversification: "The shift towards other industries is important for us and we aim to accelerate this journey."

Risks and Challenges

• Cyber attack: Continued operational disruptions and financial losses.
• Market conditions: Challenges in the light and heavy vehicle markets.
• Workforce restructuring: Potential impact on productivity and morale.
• Financial covenants: Close monitoring required to maintain compliance.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the recovery timeline from the cyber attack and the company’s inventory levels. Management noted that the affected customer is gradually ramping up production and expects inventory levels to deplete quickly. However, there is no insurance coverage for the cyber attack losses, adding a layer of financial risk.

Full transcript - Bulten AB (BULTEN) Q3 2025:

Moderator, Bulten AB: Hello and welcome to today’s presentation with Bulten AB. With us presenting today, we have the President and CEO, Axel Berntsson, and CFO, Anna Åkerblad. If you’re calling in and would like to ask a question, please press star 9 to raise your hand and star 6 to mute yourself when you get the word. You can also use the form to look into the right. With that said, please go ahead with your presentation.

Axel Berntsson, President and CEO, Bulten AB: Thank you and welcome to this quite special quarter for Bulten. Let’s move to the first page. All right, we have a short agenda for you today. We will go through the key items in our Q3 report, and then Anna will give you some financial updates, and I will give you a few notes on what we look at going forward. If we summarize the Q3 report, we have had a quite big impact on Bulten from a cyber attack at one of our customers, which has had a really negative impact on our sales and consequently also on our profit as a group. That is a big one on the downside.

On the upside, we have done quite a lot of work on a new organization, which we have launched, and obviously we haven’t finalized it yet as people are moving in and out of the group during this period. The structure is finalized and we are now implementing it. It has been a strange quarter given all the volume losses that we have had with the big customer. At the same time, we have actually won a lot of new business. We highlight a few of them in the Q3 report, and I will come back to that in a while. It is also nice to see that there is volume out there and we are winning new business for the future. We are also accelerating our shift both in the verticals that we serve and in the products mix of what we sell. I’m also quite happy with that.

Strategically, we’re moving forward in a good way, but obviously the result itself is not satisfactory. If we look at this report and talk about this quite large business wins that we have had, we have won a new business in the automotive sector where we will get the opportunity to consolidate all the suppliers into a new car factory in Europe. This means an annual volume between SEK 200 million and SEK 300 million per year once it is ramped up. We also see quite a lot of opportunities as new car models will be built in this plant to add volumes to this business.

We’re quite excited about the opportunity here, and it’s also a business with quite a lot of value add to it, meaning that we do a lot of services for this customer as part of this deal, which is then something that we like for the direction going forward of the business. We have won another nice business, which will have an annual sales of around SEK 100 million of nice profitable business. This is to a new smartphone series to one of our customers, and this is done for micro screw applications. If you look at whatever cell phone you have that is held together by really, really tiny little screws that are so small that you can hardly see them, we are very good at manufacturing those in our Asian facilities, and we’re quite proud to win this deal.

We have also won a third business here, which is with a really huge global manufacturer of electrical components. We will then supply as a consolidator of C parts three new factories for them. We’re quite happy for that. We’re also discussing follow-up deals in other countries. This is a type of business that we keep expanding, and we look at strategically for the future as something important for Bulten. If we look at the type of businesses that we have, we have three different businesses today. We have a contract manufacturing business where a big portion of the products go to automotive OEMs. Then we have a niche manufacturing business like this micro screw business I just talked about and our C parts distribution business.

When we analyze the future, it’s quite clear to us that we will give a better return to our shareholders by investing in niche manufacturing and C parts distribution. We will focus more on that for the future and less on contract manufacturing business. We are also running a quite large project where we are analyzing how we could consolidate our factory footprint where we are running this contract manufacturing. That is also progressing well, and we will come back to the market with more news on that once the project is concluded. Over to Anna.

Anna Åkerblad, CFO, Bulten AB: Thank you, Axel. Here is an overview of our quarterly sales, the last years, including 12 months rolling sales. The sales volumes for the third quarter were down 22%, which was the same quarter last year. The main effects are related to the cyber attack at one of the biggest customers and also to exchange rates. When we look at as a proportion of rolling 12 months sales, our industries outside automotive amount to over 15%. This is an increase with 5% over the last three years. Our main customer group, OEM light vehicles, amounts to 60% of total sales and has decreased over the last three years with 5%. The shift towards other industries is important for us and we aim to accelerate this journey. The third quarter delivered an adjusted EBIT of SEK 16 million, equal to 1.5% EBIT margin.

The quarter was heavily affected by the cyber attack at one of our biggest customers. We have worked with efficiency in our operations throughout this year. To still show black numbers in this disruptive quarter is to prove that the efficiency measures are having effect. Our adjusted key indicators for rolling 12 months are affected by the customer’s cyber attack. We judge this effect to be more short-term and that we will be back in 2026. Adjusted net debt in relation to adjusted EBITDA is in line with last year at 2.3%. Now back to you, Axel.

Axel Berntsson, President and CEO, Bulten AB: All right, to summarize, we mentioned quite a few times today already in this short call that we have had a cyber attack at one of our customers. As we write in the report, we’re talking about the magnitude of about SEK 200 million lost sales. Obviously, we are a fairly volume-sensitive business. Even though we have worked on our flexibility and we can withstand quite a lot, overall, we will be impacted when this kind of massive disruption happens to a big customer like this. That is probably the key topic of the quarter, even though we have a lot of interesting things going on in the business. Mentioned in the beginning, the highlight of a new organization structure. We have, as part of this, reduced the workforce by about 10% globally, so a bit more than 200 people in here.

Obviously, not all the employees and colleagues have left the business. Some of them are still in the business but will be phased out over time as we implement the new organization. We are happy that this important step in decentralizing our business, in moving more focus to driving profitability and driving an entrepreneurial type of culture where we chase new business in new verticals with a higher intensity than before, that that work is progressing. We are happy with that, and we can see that already. I think we are winning more business now than we have done in a long time.

It is all business basically, or a lot of it has to do with business either where we have more value-added services or where there are new verticals in a Bulten context with the micro screw applications and different types of business in electronics manufacturing and medical devices and so on. We are quite happy for that, and we will continue to invest in this business, even though overall we are challenged at the moment, short-term, as Anna Åkerblad said, in Q3 and Q4 until we are back to more normal volumes here. It also, we have been talking for a while at Bulten that we will make this shift to other segments. It is nice to see that now we actually walk the talk. We will continue to drive this shift, and we will drive it with intensity going forward.

Also worth noting is that our footprint evaluation is progressing really well, and there are good opportunities for Bulten to improve our overall business by reducing the factory footprint either by consolidation or divestiture. The solution is basically to be seen, and we will come back once that is concluded. Happy with the progress. The team is doing great work, and we are moving along the plan. With that, we conclude and leave over to questions.

Moderator, Bulten AB: Thank you very much for that presentation. Yes, let’s open up the Q&A section here. If you’re calling in, please press star 9 to raise your hand and star 6 to mute yourself when you get the word. We have the first caller, Mats Lies from Kepler Chevreux. Please go ahead. You have the word.

Yeah, hi. Thank you for taking my questions. First, looking at the customer affected by this attack, you mentioned that they are sort of gradually ramping up now. I just wondered how you see that ramp-up going. You expect them to be up and running mid-quarter here in the fourth quarter. I guess you won’t need to supply them with so much of your products. Do they already have inventories to cover the ramp-up, I mean?

Axel Berntsson, President and CEO, Bulten AB: Hi, Mats, by the way. Nice talking to you.

Hi.

If you look at this attack, I’m quite impressed by the customer, I would say. They are doing a really good job with all this, getting things together, getting volumes up, getting production up in their factory footprint. I think they’re doing a really good job with it so far. There is inventory in the chains. In this type of industry, the inventory is fairly small that they are sitting on, meaning that the sequencing of production will move on very quickly. They will run out of that stock fairly fast. Obviously, there’s also inventory on our side sitting in our factories and so on. It will take a little bit of time until we have the right absorption in the factories. There will still be a hit to our cost, even in the beginning when the volumes are more normal.

What we foresee, kind of like what we wrote in the report, is that the impact will be similar in Q4 from this attack. From 2026 onwards, it should actually be an upside as they keep catching up on their backlog. Obviously, they have a lot of unhappy customers that are not getting their products at the moment. They will want to supply that as fast as possible.

Okay, thank you.

The upside to that, I mean, if they ramp up quicker, we can deliver more. It could also be disruption and things happening along the way that we don’t know. There are a lot of suppliers involved in this. Obviously, it’s enough with one big supplier not being able to deliver, and then they will be halting the production. It’s a sensitive system, even though I’m super impressed by how they handle it and what they’re doing at the moment.

Okay, great. What about other customers as such? Could you give some sort of flavor about performance in general for the light vehicles and also maybe heavy vehicles?

I would say that the light and heavy vehicles, I think the trend before this is quite similar to what has been earlier in the year. The general market is down a little bit on that. If you look at the bigger customers that we have, I mean, I think it’s public that we have Scania and Volvo Trucks and Volvo Cars and so on, and JLR in this. Some of them are seeing challenges on volumes. That is kind of what we’ve seen earlier in the year. I think that remains the same, more or less, for that. If you look at other verticals, we’re doing really well. Anything else but automotive, we have a good volume development. We’re winning a lot of business, and that is progressing better, so to say.

In these new verticals, do you have sort of extra costs, sort of SDNA costs and so on to sort of increase the exposure and create a new network of selling to new customers? I mean, or is it sort of up and running and then you don’t need any extra costs?

I mean, that would be phased. If you look at the demand that we have right now for cost for catching that business, I think I’m happy with the organization that we have in the overall kind of shift of staff that we have seen. We have made some reduction, but we also added additions in the places where it makes a lot of sense for us to go and hunt more business. That is already taken, and those costs are in the business. Obviously, as we scale up, we need to add some costs along the way. I do not expect that to be extraordinary. I do not expect it to be kind of outside the normal ratio here of SG&A to sales or something like that.

Great. Looking at the working capital there, it was quite helpful in the quarter. You released a lot. Could you give some more indications of how you managed to do that?

Most of this is actually a timing issue, I would say. I would say that the underlying cash flow gets impacted in the same way as the rest of the business. I think it’s more we were lucky with the timing here at the end of the quarter more than anything, to be honest.

It is not because you have sort of reduced production and so on. It is more.

Not really. I mean, we don’t publish the details behind it. I don’t want to go into that. No, it’s more a timing issue, honestly, Mats.

You also have the savings, efficiency measures to make your company more decentralized and so on. It’s quite a substantial amount of money that you expect. When will this be sort of hitting you or benefit you, the SEK 100 million, I mean?

That has been gradual. The first people left the business back in Q2 here or maybe even end of Q1. It has been gradually happening. I think it will be ending at the mid, let’s say, third quarter 2026. The last person that’s on the list will leave. It will be gradually during this period. Some are already in the boat. Some will come.

Do you expect to be able to keep up the current business and your target of growing into the new verticals with existing manpower?

Yeah, from what we can see right now, we have the right organization in place to do that. Yes.

Okay, great. Finally, just about the, you say you meet the covenants there, but is there a sufficient headroom now when things are continuing to be quite slow here in the fourth quarter? I mean, net debt to EBITDA, is that the covenant that you are exposed to, or is it more other covenants that you are exposed to?

That is the key one. We are managing that tightly. Obviously, depending on where the next quarter ends, that will affect this covenant up and down, depending on how well the ramp-up works and how much cash we get into the business and so on. We are monitoring day by day to make sure we stay on the right side here.

Okay. Great. Thanks a lot.

Thank you, Mats.

Moderator, Bulten AB: Let’s move on to the other questions here. Is it correct to say that the cyber attack on your customer resulted in a sales loss of approximately SEK 200 million, meaning that a weaker market environment accounts for around SEK 100 million of the sales decline?

Anna Åkerblad, CFO, Bulten AB: Go ahead, Cas.

Axel Berntsson, President and CEO, Bulten AB: It depends on how you look at it and what quarters we are comparing and so on. I would say in general, yes, there is an impact of a weaker market, like we’ve seen in earlier quarters. On top of that, we have the hit here.

Anna Åkerblad, CFO, Bulten AB: We also had the currency effect on the sales.

Axel Berntsson, President and CEO, Bulten AB: Yeah, which is about 4%. It’s good to know. Yes, correct.

Moderator, Bulten AB: Thank you for that answer. EBIT fell from SEK 91 million to SEK 60 million. How much of this decline would you attribute to the impacted customer versus weaker margins or other external factors?

Axel Berntsson, President and CEO, Bulten AB: I mean, we don’t make that public, so I will not comment. I think you need to run the numbers kind of on GP loss and so on and compare that with a rough estimation yourself, actually. I think when you compare to last year, though, it’s good to know. I think we commented that on the call last year if I wasn’t here. There’s about SEK 20 million in one-time effect in Q3 last year from some kind of insurance payment that we had because of a big fire. You should probably adjust that from the comparables. Other than that, I don’t want to comment the details as we don’t make it public. It’s also difficult to estimate exactly the impact, given that we estimate the sales loss here to be in the magnitude of SEK 200 million, but we don’t know exactly what it is.

Therefore, it’s also difficult to calculate all the way through with accurate enough numbers. That’s why we choose not to go out. The impact is obviously heavy.

Moderator, Bulten AB: Thank you for clarifying that. Orders fell by 38%. How should this be interpreted, primarily as an effect of the cyber attack or of the market in general?

Axel Berntsson, President and CEO, Bulten AB: No, I think it’s honestly, the order book this year is very, very difficult to look at. The reason is when there’s a cyber attack and all the kind of schedules get wiped, it’s quite difficult because there’s nothing moving in there. That means that moves these order intake numbers up and down quite a bit. It’s very difficult to draw any conclusion from that. Yes, there is a big impact from the cyber attack. The general order intake is a little bit slower than last year, but I would say from what we can tell, it’s not material in a way.

Moderator, Bulten AB: When will the new strategy and business plan be presented, including updated financial and operational targets, as well as a new vision for Bulten?

Axel Berntsson, President and CEO, Bulten AB: Yeah, nobody’s more eager to do that than me. I think it’s important for us that we do it at the right time when we are ready to talk about that. We will talk about that. I mean, we know from the calls that we have had and what we’re writing, I think you kind of know the general direction where we’re going. We’re going after niche manufacturing. We’re going after C parts. We will build an opportunity to do that by M&A once we have the financial strength to do so. We will then do that in favor of contract manufacturing towards OEMs, basically. For more details than that, we will wait until the timing is right. I don’t think the timing is right right now when we have all these issues with the cyber attack. We want to get through that.

We want to manage it in the right way. We want to take care of our customer in the right way, make sure that they are up to speed as quickly as possible, and they do what we can. When we are ready, we will talk about the new strategy and going forward.

Moderator, Bulten AB: Thank you, Axel, for that answer. We’ll take one final question here before wrapping up. Can the existing production capacity support this strategic shift, or will acquisition be part of your toolbox going forward, so to speak?

Axel Berntsson, President and CEO, Bulten AB: Yeah, so I mean, it’s a twofold question. Will the existing factory network support it? No, because if you look at the strategic shifts that we want to do, we have one factory base that is not geared for that. That does not really fit for purpose for that type of expansion that we’re talking about. To get there, we will grow some of that organically. We have interesting developments in India with manufacturing in Vietnam, and we are building manufacturing capabilities. We are also investing in parts of China for this. We are moving in a good direction organically. We want to be a company that has a fairly aggressive M&A agenda. To do that, we need a lot more financial headroom. We need to get there first. Kind of step A is to create that headroom, and then step two is to go and acquire.

Moderator, Bulten AB: Thank you. We actually have one final question before wrapping up. Is there any insurance we could reclaim possibilities on back of the cyber attack?

Axel Berntsson, President and CEO, Bulten AB: No, from what we have, we have obviously explored this opportunity, and we have no insurance that will cover this, unfortunately.

Moderator, Bulten AB: Okay, that concludes today’s presentation and also Q&A. Thank you, everyone who participated in this webcast, and I wish you a great rest of the day. Thank you and goodbye.

Axel Berntsson, President and CEO, Bulten AB: Thank you. Take care.

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