Earnings call transcript: ComSpace Q2 2025 reports 45% revenue surge

ComSpace, with a market capitalization of 192.8 million USD, reported a significant revenue increase of 45% year-on-year for Q2 2025, reaching 96-97 million SEK. The company’s EBITDA turned positive, hitting 9 million SEK, compared to near breakeven last year. The market responded positively, with ComSpace’s stock rising 11.54%, closing at 11.78 SEK. According to InvestingPro analysis, the stock is currently trading above its Fair Value, with a price-to-book ratio of 87.37x reflecting high investor expectations. This performance is underpinned by strategic investments and strong market demand, especially in marine domain awareness and satellite technologies.

Key Takeaways

• Revenue increased by 45% year-on-year, reaching 96-97 million SEK.
• EBITDA improved significantly, turning positive at 9 million SEK.
• Stock price surged by 11.54%, reflecting investor confidence.
• Major contract signed for 18 satellites worth 215 million SEK.
• Strong market interest in satellite technologies for defense and surveillance.

Company Performance

ComSpace’s Q2 results show a robust financial performance with a 45% increase in revenue compared to the same period last year. The company’s strategic focus on satellite technologies and marine domain awareness has driven growth, with InvestingPro data showing a 5-year revenue CAGR of 14%. In the first half of 2025, revenue rose by 59%, and EBITDA exceeded 20 million SEK, marking a significant turnaround from a negative 16 million SEK last year. The company operates with a moderate debt level, maintaining a total debt to capital ratio of 0.05.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 96-97 million SEK, up 45% year-on-year.
• EBITDA: Positive 9 million SEK, compared to near breakeven last year.
• Free Cash Flow: Negative 45 million SEK due to strategic investments.

Outlook & Guidance

ComSpace remains optimistic about its growth trajectory, with revenue guidance set between 320-380 million SEK for the year. The company aims for a 30-50% growth rate and positive EBITDA, driven by ongoing investments in scaling operations and expanding market presence. InvestingPro analysts anticipate 39% revenue growth for FY2025, though they don’t expect profitability this year. For deeper insights into ComSpace’s growth potential and comprehensive analysis, investors can access the detailed Pro Research Report, available exclusively to InvestingPro subscribers.

Executive Commentary

CEO Carsten Wachmann expressed confidence in the company’s growth, stating, "We are growing with confidence. We have the technology. We have the means. We have the heritage." These remarks highlight ComSpace’s strategic positioning and commitment to delivering investor value.

Risks and Challenges

• Strategic investments have led to negative free cash flow.
• Market competition in satellite technologies is intensifying.
• Economic uncertainties could impact defense budgets and spending.
• Supply chain disruptions may affect production timelines.
• Dependence on key contracts for revenue growth.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about ComSpace’s ongoing negotiations for a project in Indonesia and the company’s outsourcing strategy with local partner Nekhaas. These discussions highlighted ComSpace’s efforts to scale production and expand its market reach, particularly in North America and Asia.

Full transcript - GomSpace Group AB (GOMX) Q2 2025:

Michael, Moderator/Host: Welcome to today’s event where we have the pleasure to present GumSpace. The occasion is, of course, the financial q two and h ’1 report fresh from the press this morning. Looks like market are are liking what they are seeing, at least at the at the share price level. So help us through take you through the results and answer question. We are joined by Carsten Wachmann, CEO of Comspace.

As always, ask questions in the box down below. There’s already a lot of questions in maybe if it’s asked, you don’t need to ask it. So try and read some of the the questions. But do feel free to do it. Also, feel free to ask in Danish.

I will try and translate that to the best of my ability. But for now, I think I will let you, Carsten, take the stage.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Thank you, Michael, and and and welcome to I’m actually standing right now in the North Sea Oceanarium up in Northern Jutland. It’s a bit of a special background. You you can see right here. We’re we’re here on a on an executive team meeting. We are talking about strategy.

We are talking about the future. As you can see, there’s a lot to do in the future. And just to give you an idea of where we are, it’s a pretty big tank behind me here. There’s about 54,000,000 liters of water, and I just checked the the the glasses they stick behind me, so don’t you can’t see my face now. But it’s very interesting being here.

We thought the link here is also well, we’re talking to our customers that are usually human beings, but, hey, we’re actually also here to help the environment. We’re here to help the fishes. So we thought it was we thought it was, you know, a good place to be. So so we’re enjoying ourselves up here. No.

Those of you say, oh, it’s just kind of lead it to a background. It’s not. Just watch the shark and and and and the stingray that’s passing once in a while. You’ll see it’s actually live. Anyway, let’s get started.

So we make space yours. I start I’m gonna talk a bit about investor communication as I usually do, some key messages and highlights, where are we on our business units. This is Comspace, quick overview. We’re growing with confidence. You’ll hear me say that a couple of times in a quick summary.

Okay. Clarity and communication. My two key motos motos internally, externally. We need to be clear. We need to communicate.

So let me try and help you as investors the best I can here. So key messages for for q two. So let’s take the revenue. Basically, second quarter, we we are we are 45% compared to the second quarter last year in 2024. It’s a pretty pretty significant increase.

Our EBITDA is positive, about 9,000,000. It’s also an increase. We were just below breakeven same period last year. So very, very happy with that. Our cash flow this year was was this quarter was negative, minus 45,000,000 Swedish kronas.

We’ve had a long stream of positive free positive cash flow positive free cash flow. This has been really good. We have managed tightly the cash. This is what we needed to do. But we knew now that we have cash coming in.

We have capital coming in. We have good credit facilities. So we have been much more forward leaning to capture the growth that we’ve seen in the market. And this is then the outcome here that we are we are negative on the free cash flow. We’re keeping momentum for the for the year.

You can see that we are about 96,000,000 for in in revenue for the second quarter. We were 88 in the first one. So quarter on quarter growth, which is good, and we have the positive EBITDA that we are we are chasing for the year. As as as promised, we are we are looking to to generate a positive EBITDA. So tracking fine there.

Significant events, big contracts, 18 satellites, 215,000,000 Swedish kronas, pretty good. We closed it just at the end of the quarter, few days before we’re closing, to be delivered over about twelve months plus minus. Really, really strong deal for us. Also, why we’re speaking with confidence about what we think we’ll deliver for ’25, also gives us some confidence into to next year. We have the capital access to the capital now.

Money has come in from Peter Hargreaves, 196,000,000 SEK. We also have the credit facility that actually Hargreaves had taken over from from European Investment Bank. Some of the follow-up that is that we have we have a lot of cash now. And if you look at it combining that, good results, we are actually on a good track for the p and l, and our balance sheet is really strong. This is a very good position.

I’m very very pleased that we are are here now. As said, the free cash flow is impacted. This is a little bit the price of winning. I would claim that we have probably we would would have been really difficult for us to win. It was difficult, but we won anyway.

The large contract had we not had the confidence we had by having cash and cash coming in. So that basically led us to make some decisions saying, hey, In order to win this, we need to start investing in, we call it, long lead items. We are ramping up early, and that was also part of the sales process convincing the customer. Come with us. It’s safe.

We know what we’re doing. We can stomach this now in a in a start up phase. And that’s actually why they chose us in the end as well. So it takes some some cash in order to do the bigger deals, and I I I’m I’m really, really pleased with this. And this is a consequence of having more capital now.

If you’re looking a little bit beyond, first, just summarizing. So for the first half year, we are up 59% on the revenue. Pretty pretty good as well, I would say. First half year EBITDA in total is slightly above 20,000,000. This is against minus 16,000,000 last year.

So, again, we are trending in the right direction for for EBITDA and operational profit, if you like. And, obviously, the the free cash flow is is negative as I’ve discussed as a as a consequence here. Looking forward, we maintain our outlook with confidence with confidence, for sure. We are the the big contract that came in, of course, gives us that confidence. It we don’t we need more than that.

So let’s see what what’s happening in the in the coming months here. There’s still a few months to go, but that contract gives us a lot of confidence in delivering on our on our outlook. We are increasing spending in some areas more than I had originally budgeted, and this is to capture the momentum that that we’ll talk about later. The momentum in the market. If you want to set ourselves up for continuous growth, we simply need to be more in the market.

We need to have more salespeople, business development people all over the world. So we are base we are basically saying we have to start investing in that now. We’re also investing in more people with solution experience so we can go out to the customers and help them build the solutions that that they require in order to solve their business case, legal fishing right behind me here or monitoring what’s going on in the oceans around around their country, etcetera. So this is already when I say with confidence for the outlook, we have actually increased our costs in in certain areas, but we maintain our our confidence here. Look into the beyond q two, it’s also just to say we actually had a negative equity in in first half of the year or the end of the quarter.

This has been restored. We knew that would happen. Our equity ratio right now is about 40%. We have more than 200,000,000 SEK equity and cash in bank. August was 260,000,000 SEK.

So if you go in and read, it says 29,000,000 in the bank end of the quarter, not so good, but we knew money was coming. We have 260,000,000 SEK. It’s the most money I’ve seen in a very long time. So everything is fine, and we can continue to execute here. Cautious optimism for 2026.

I don’t normally make forward looking statements, and I should be careful what I say. But I would say we have a certain optimism that the momentum that we are picking up on in in 2025, there’s a good chance that we will we will go into the 2026 with a bit with a confidence and some optimism. Okay. Just a reminder, we run our business through three business units, programs, doing contracts with customers for the building satellites, products where we are selling bits and pieces of the satellites to competitors, universities. And then North America, a little bit outside of this, but simply a big geographic region.

We want to capture business in North America. It’s the biggest market in the world. So mood pictures, this is what an example of a satellite. We’re putting it together in a in a clean room. So I know we have a lot of new investors.

I hope you enjoy the pictures here. It’s really cool. Here, we have some examples of the products or the insights of the satellites. I can usually say laptop it’s a flying laptop or satellite. We do hot days.

We do power power supplies, etcetera, which is sitting inside the satellite. This is what it looks like. Battery packs as well. So pretty pretty cool stuff. Pretty cool stuff.

Go look at our website also if you wanna see more. Now let’s dive into the revenue. So how was it distributed? As I said, it has increased very well year on year, about 49%. It’s 96, 97,000,000 in total.

If you look at the breakdown, and now we’re sharing with you, we are running our business based on the business units also to help you to see the the dynamic here. So 40% improvements for for programs, pretty good. It’s about 60,000,000 out of the total, so they’re about two thirds. Products increased 71. This is also a consequence of you remember, we we had a very good order intake in the first quarter of the year.

Now we see that because, of course, we start delivering, so we start seeing the revenue coming in. So a great performance there. A little bit less on on North America in in the quarter. So looking at the half year, program’s up 73%. That is pretty damn good, if I can put it that way.

Slight increase in in products and also North America. It was just slightly small steps are are moving forward, and we see some some motion and traction there. So that’s the distribution. Take a look at the EBITDA. So we’re around 9,000,000, a little bit less than the first quarter.

This is related to the mix of products and programs and margins, so it will always vary a little bit. Breakdown into programs to deliver the very good EBITDA this quarter. Products a bit less. We had some more costs coming in there, and the product the margin mix was a bit different. And that North America, just around breakeven.

The story in North America said, it’s okay. We we don’t need to make a lot of money there right now. We just wanna start building business, and we every time we make money, we’ll be invested in North America so we can grow the platform. On a half year basis, programs to about 13 out of the 20,000,000, products 7,000,000, and North America, as I said, just about breakeven. So I’m I’m pretty content with the with the EBITDA results here.

Doesn’t say we don’t wanna do more. Of course, we will do more, but it’s a pretty good development if you compare it to to previous years. Operating profits, we are actually a bit positive. A 100,000 is also positive, but let’s be fair. We are around breakeven on the EBIT.

That’s good. The net profit, I haven’t put in the numbers, but it was a negative quite a lot. And this is a bit odd. It’s just a very brief explanation on that. We have with the European Investment Bank, a loan that’s now transferred to Hagariff’s.

There are also warrants associated with that. So this is a technicality, and it’s because we have a lot of investors. You like us. Share price has gone up a lot, so there’s a technical valuation, a liability on those warrants that is basically impacting the net profit. If you ask me, and I’m pretty blunt about things, a pretty stupid way of accounting for it, but whatever, that’s what we have to do.

And, actually, this will fluctuate with our share prices, but there’s no cash involved. It’s got nothing to do with our financial performance. Nothing. But it is purely accounting and technicality. So if the if the share price in in the next quarter is somewhat less than what it was in average the second quarter.

Actually, it’ll be positive again. Anyway, now you know. No cash impact, no impact on our business, no consequence for anything, but, hey, that’s accounting. So I already I restate here the the equity ratio and equity is restored in August. We knew this was coming, but just to be clear, because if you read the report, you have a negative equity, not anymore.

We are fine with a strong balance. No problems doing government business, etcetera. Free cash flow, negative in the q two. I explained that. This is about leaning into winning a deal, a large deal that we then won.

It was the right decision. You can say, so why why did you get some of your money? Well, we signed a contract at the end of q two. I decided to very early on do ramp up to we started to work internally via paid suppliers to make sure that they could deliver in time. This is a very short time frame for our delivery.

It’s really, really tight, so there’s no room for mistakes. So everything is on track there, but it’s cost money in q two. And since we signed a contract end of the quarter and typically there are there are some payment terms that basically say the contract payment terms are coming into the third quarter. And I’m expecting to rebalance that in Q3, we should see a positive free cash flow again, and we’re also guiding on the full year to say we maintain our guidance on positive free cash flow. Bank balance, 260,000,000 SEK.

Not worried about the cash. Don’t misinterpret what I say. It is really, really good that we have that money. We will strive that from our operations, from the business we do, the products we sell, the programs, we will make money. That money gives us some cushion to be a bit more bold in taking larger deals.

The other thing is it allows us to start investing more. But we’re not jeopardizing it. We’re not having the money to say, okay. Now we can go to sleep and we have money for years. No.

No. That money is gonna be put to work, but not to cover losses, but actually to increase the top line and thereby also the profit over time. This is very good. And I’ve estimated we’ll have a positive free cash flow again in in q three. Okay.

Order intake went up. Programs improved a lot, obviously, with a big contract, and we’ll we’ll keep chasing that those size of contracts and and more where we can. 145,000,000 moving upwards, including delivering actually the the highest revenue from programs this year or or if if ever, actually. So very I’m very satisfied with the increase. You see a slight decrease in products.

They had a very strong first quarter, know, significant really, really strong first quarter. It’s dipping a little bit now. We see the revenue. You can see the revenue here is about 30,000,000, 31,000,000 we’ve taken out. We have less coming into the backlog is dropping.

This is okay. Of course, we’re expecting this to go over again. But at the same time, we’re also driving on fast delivery, which means, I’ve said before, our visibility here should not be much more than three, four months tops. We wanna get the order, we gotta get it out the door, get the cash, and get the revenue. So we will never have hundreds of millions in order backlog here.

We shouldn’t, then we are failing. We actually need to constantly rotate it and keep it at a steady pace roughly where it is now. North America, we build out a bit of backlog, so so trending in the right direction. Okay. Quick overview of the markets.

Remember, a lot of things are happening in the market. I get questions from many of you all the time. So what are you gonna do in the future? Well, look look at what’s happening in the market. We talk about marine domain awareness, illegal fishing, surveillance of who’s sailing in and out of your territory or sovereign territory.

What about the shadow fleets from Russia? There’s a lot of things that are driving this. We we have a desire and a need to know more about what’s happening in our oceans and our seas around the different countries. Denmark, not to forget, absolutely, and I think more is happening there. But Indonesia is is on everybody’s mind.

We have Thailand. Have Philippines. We have Singapore. There’s a lot going on. Secure communication in general is is important and also alternative communication, not just via ground, but also via via space.

And then a whole in in earth monitoring environments. And on top of all of this, since everything we do is dual use, dual use means, well, we could take pictures of fishes. We can also take pictures for defense purposes. So our technology can be used either. It’s it’s it’s it’s a question of what’s on the picture.

There’s no difference to what the satellite is. So the whole defense industry is booming. You know that already. Our share price has gone well in this context, of course, we are working hard to jump on that wave. So if you ask me, oh, what are you gonna do about the future?

I’m gonna catch the wave. That’s what I’m gonna do. And now I have the money to do it even better. So marine domain awareness, one of my favorite presentations. I think many of you investors have seen it before, others maybe not, but this is a great picture.

This is for our good friends, Unseen Labs. The white dots are these it’s called AIS transponders. It’s all about their per by law, they have to say, here I am. This is me. This is my ID.

You know, I’m all friendly. I’m all good. But they can turn that off. They can, you know, forgot to charge the batteries, whatever the excuses usually are, then they go dark. The red dots are representing dark ships.

Basically, ships that if they don’t have their transponders on, they probably shouldn’t be there or doing something they shouldn’t be doing. That’s already a tell. Look here with our friends and from Ansin Labs, and it’s all our technology. All our satellites are all their satellites are coming from com space. We can monitor the the Baltic Sea here.

You see the red dots. You see a couple of guys at the time where it’s taken up just outside of of Lympho and So something is happening there. I wonder what that is. I would send the coast guard out to check out what’s what’s going on there. Not a surprise if you look up at the bottom of the the Potomac Sea there, a lot of red dots where there’s probably Putin’s fleet sitting out there, not not wanting to tell who they are or what their intentions are.

The orange cable is the is the fiber cable or gas lines, you like, coming from from from The Nordics and down to Europe. It was cut. I had the story before. I love the story. It was cut by a Chinese trawler not so long ago.

Sort of a big problem. 35% of the data traffic was cut for a period of time. We we saw that. We could we could monitor that. Onsi Labs could monitor that.

And this is down from the the Strait Of Gibraltar between Africa and and Spain and Europe. Lots of cables going across there. You see the white line is representing the same boat, the same Chinese trawler, and how it was sailing. And no no no boat is sailing like that. That trawler was trying to drag an anchor very likely to cut a cable.

With the technology we have with our partners, you can avoid that for sure. Some of you have been sailing down there. You will also know that’s a that’s a pretty strong current. So even if you say, oh, I was just floating. Yeah.

That’s good. You’re not gonna float like that. That’s not how it works. So good technology. I’m gonna jump on that ship as well.

We we have that technology. We have several customers looking to to buy this. Megatrends, market changes. You’ve seen this slide before, but I wanna repeat it. Heightened threat level environments.

This has lead to increased defense budgets in Europe. Denmark has increased the the spending, believe, up to five 5% of GDP. Many countries have done that. It is unique. It is very different.

I know the Danish defense has now allocated about 3,500,000,000.0 kroners in the coming years for investing more in in space technology of different kinds, so that’s good news. Things are moving forward there. And in general, there’s a sense of urgency. We do see more requests. We are engaging in many more deals, and the common denominator when we talk about government business is wanting to control assets.

You can buy as a service. You can buy from Elon Musk or from others. But at the stage, you don’t necessarily control it. So people see, yeah, maybe I could rent it, but I would actually like to control it myself. I can decide what I do want to do with it.

I can make sure it’s always available. I can make sure the data that is coming is unfiltered, unedited, nothing. I know exactly. I control a whole stream of data. That’s really important.

So that’s a trend we see as well, and we have many governments, customers asking us for advice. How how how do we do that? How do we deal with that? Obviously, one area which is on everybody’s mind right now, many areas, Ukraine in particular and also Denmark is thank you. Denmark is actually investing a lot and giving a lot of financing towards Ukraine also to help Ukraine and to promote Danish technology.

And these are, of course, some of the trends that are happening now, and we have our nose in that trail, and and we’ll definitely follow it. So addressing market opportunity, some of the things we need to do. Reduce time to market is important. Things are moving fast. We can’t come out and say, yeah.

Sure. We’ll we’ll take your order, and we’ll deliver in two or three years from now, or take us nine months to to give a to deliver a part to a satellite. It doesn’t work. We have to be faster. So we are building on that and investing in that.

We have to have more defense and government oriented solutions, so we are going in that direction. Cybersecurity, more signal intelligence, general intelligence, and surveillance is important. Excuse me. There are simply more coming. So that’s a shift we are trying to jump on.

And to capture the new market opportunities, we we need to do a couple of things. We, of course, need to advance the technology that we have, the capabilities of our satellites, but we also need to be in front of the customer and beyond everybody’s mind. So that requires sales and business development people, and this requires technical people that has time to talk to the customer. You want to be the trusted adviser. You want to be the company that everybody comes to and say, these guys know what they’re doing.

But in order to do that, I need I need more than three people. I need a lot more, and this is what we’re investing in. It will obviously cost some money initially, but we are on the right track now to do that and still have a positive EBITDA and cash flow. So that’s good that’s good news, I think, also here. But following the trends, you asked me, Karsten, what are you gonna do?

I’m gonna follow those trends. I’m gonna gear up and be ready with my organization. I’m gonna have the right skill sets. I’m gonna make sure I’m present in the right parts of the world. Very clear.

So in summary, we’re growing with with confidence. First half year showed a strong growth on on 2024. We also have a positive EBITDA. Checking the box for that one. Free cash flow.

Yep. It went negative, but for a good reason. Look at the deal we got in. Happy with that. It will recover in q three and q four, so I’m not worried about it.

Order backlog increased. That’s great. Increased order backlog gives more visibility. It will always mainly be from from programs as you just talked about, but it gives us more confidence and visibility. You can do the math with that size of of backlog and what we’re delivering.

There’s the backlog is extending into to next year also for execution. So that’s good. We have restored our our balance sheet. I’m very, very, very pleased. Thank you, mister Hagreaves, for the investment.

I think I hope everybody is giving a big thanks to Hagreaves supporting here. He has no interest in taking over the company. We said that many times, but he really believes in the story, and he provided this capital without blinking. It is it was less than twenty four hours. And this has really restored us to a level where we have a strong equity ratio.

We need that to do government business, and we have cash in banks. So we don’t we can really start focusing on developing the business from here. Guidance, we our outlook, we keep that $3.03 20 to $380,000,000. On the revenue side, somewhere between yeah. Probably positive, we can say that, and and up to 11 for the adjusted margin.

EBITDA margin 11% on a positive free cash flow. I and again, I wanna repeat, we say it with confidence. We there are more things to be done. And even this, if you allow me, we stick with the confidence in this delivery of the top line. It’s still a 30 to 50% growth on 2024.

That’s pretty damn good. If can do more, we’ll do more. Don’t worry about it. I’m not holding back. We are pushing forward, but we wanna do it with be profitable as we go along.

I now also say with some confidence running into 2026, I think we can keep our momentum going. Thank you.

Michael, Moderator/Host: I think, Karsten, should we jump into the question? As always, a lot of questions, but I think we will get very well around all the edges of your investment case. Let’s start with the one we usually get. Indonesia, have you had any contact with the government down there explaining some of the delays? So any thoughts you have on on on the Indonesia potential contract?

Yeah.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yeah. Contact every week. Always, we we talk to them. Remember, we have a very good French partner, Ellipse Projects. They’re actually present in in in Jakarta every day.

So we are in contact all the time. I think it’s not about them needing to explain a delay. It’s just a process that we’re going through, and I’ll my statement from earlier. I will tell you if something significant is changing to the for the better or for the worse. Right now, it’s status quo, and we are we are working on this every day, and we are in we are in regular contact with the customer.

So nothing has really changed. And remember, we have we signed a commercial contract 2023. That hasn’t changed. That contract is still valid, but the financing is required for Indonesia to execute it. Technically, I could execute it now and then hope that they would pay me, but I’m not gonna do that.

I think they need some financial backing. But this is ready, but the financing is is a political process that is tracking out. Hey. It’s fine. We have a lot to do, and it one one day, this this one is gonna show up in one shape or another.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. And then, of course, to mister Hardtief and and and this his offer he’s needed to make for to to the shareholder. And and I and I should allude that the people asking this question, of course, states that this is actually between the investors and mister Hargreaves. And you are kind to kind of be the mediator here. So any any news and and exactly this, the twenty day where from from which date?

Was it the August 1 or was it when the shares were submitted? And then, of course, there’s still this question about, is it these twenty is it these twenty days average price that will set the price? So I know, Karsten, you’re actually not obligated to to to talk a little bit about it, but to talk about it. But if you can kind of allude to to your knowledge about this Of course. This process.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yeah. I think what I would like to focus on on repeating why is Peter Hargreaves doing this. He’s doing it because he’s very pleased with the development of the company. He came in early and and and basically saved the company. Let’s be honest.

That’s what he did. So he came in. He saved the company with the cash. And he really sees now we’re on the right track. And I said to him, Peter, you know, if you want me to accelerate, we need we need more cash.

And he was ready to do that immediately. So the reason Peter Hancrevich is doing this, he wants to help us boost the company and take it further. Guys, do the analysis. If he wanted to buy the company, he probably have bought it at three or four quarters. He could have done that.

He did I mean, he could have done it, written a check, and it was done. Is that’s not what he did. He invested, and the share price is going up. He’s helping everybody. We can really grow the company now.

That’s why he’s doing it. There will be an offer from Hagris coming soon. I don’t want to comment or or or speculate in that. You know that the FDI process or the foreign direct investment has been approved. I’d be I don’t even wanna say any dates.

But once that approved, the the clock is ticking, which means Hagris has to come up with an offer in a very near future. And once you see that offer, you will see what what his final decision is on what what he wants to offer in the market. And I I I don’t wanna comment anything on on that just saying, so there’s no misunderstandings. Peter doesn’t do this because he wants to buy the company. He wants to help the company.

So everybody in on the ride, thanks god for Peter Hargreaves because we are we are going in a good direction here.

Michael, Moderator/Host: I know. And as we said, soon we will get this out of

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yeah.

Michael, Moderator/Host: What are your expectation of revenue recognition for the eight satellite deal you you signed, the the big order there, given that your guidance now remains unchanged? So can you give some kind of a feel on when this revenue will get recognized in your books?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yeah. It’s as as stated in the press release, and we are required to do that also. We state the contract value, and we have to indicate the delivery time. So it’s within, give or take, twelve twelve months plus minus. So we can do a little bit of the of the math, because there are different revenue recognition patterns.

But how I would state it is that when I say with confidence, obviously, that has given me confidence. There are many parameters that need to move where you can you can read on my body language. It has not put it in in a worse situation than we were for. It has helped. So we say that with with confidence.

I’m not gonna comment on on revenue recognition of as such that would be be wrong, but but you can see that it’s trending in the right direction.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Then there’s a the share of adminstraint employees have increased from 16 to 20% over the last half year. What’s the explanation for that?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a very good question. And just to be precise, it’s the it’s a percentage it’s not an an percentage increase.

It’s a potentials of percentage of the full staff. Yes. There’s some technicalities on that, but actually, the main reason is what I said before, sales and business development people and solution architects and engineers that we need. So we’re investing a lot of that right now. So I’m taking in and deliberately increasing my my overhead cost there towards the sales.

So it’s actually SG and A. I think there’s an estimate in the report. Sales, general administration. The G and A hasn’t moved so much, but the sales has moved up a lot with good intention and and good purpose.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. Then a little bit about and I think you touched upon it, your confidence in in this cash flow. The deferred customer payments primarily primarily drove the weak cash flow. Are you worried about the customers’ ability to pay or what had driven the deferral? I think you mentioned that it was a contract that came in late q two.

So and and remember, it’s the balance sheet for that.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: I’d say, you know, I am always vigilant about our customers paying, and I am on their back. First of all, I’m on the back of our own people to deliver in time. So we per contract can can invoice and we can collect cash. And, of course, we’re following up strongly on our customers to deliver. Like you said, yes, the payment terms if the contracts were sort of leading into q three.

So we will see payments during q q three. But in order for me to close the contract and win the confidence of the customer, I basically decided to spend money ahead of time. It was a calculated risk and, hey, it paid off.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Good. Could you add some explanation to the SET Swedish krona 20,000,000 program order that was canceled during the quarter?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yeah. This is a and and good catch. Also, I’m very pleased that we were actually reading the the the details of their report. This is a program this is a customer order we actually got some quite some time back, I think, maybe even before my time. We have a lot of first startup customers peeping look people looking for capital, etcetera.

So they placed an early order to get some commitment from us that technology wise we could do it. They never managed to raise the capital. We’ve been working with them over the years. We are accepting to say, okay. You know, let us know when you’re ready.

But we have decided, okay. We’ll take it out of the backlog now, and then the customer is still there, but they need to raise the capital. So so, basically, that’s why. So it’s not the cancel order hasn’t really taken anything away from our our outlook or or cash. We have we haven’t spent much time on it.

We’re just waiting for the customer. And I wanna say what’s very interesting, and that’s also why some customers come to us. Almost everything in this business is is start up. It can be a small start up or a big start up. It’s all new ideas unless it’s government business.

We I’ve worked in a in a start up. I understand what it means to raise capital. I understand the dynamics. So we have a very good dialogue, and we we we don’t take any stupid risk on this. We are deliberately understanding who they are, which phases are they going through, and how can we best help them.

Because I strongly believe that one or the other of these startups are gonna go in the right direction. If you’d help them, we have a long term customer. One example, Onseed Labs. When they started, they were really small. They had nothing.

Comspace was helping them getting started, helping them with the technology, and look at where they are today. Fantastic company, growing a lot, and our best customer ever. So that is that is why. So the long explanation of why did we cancel that, what we’re technically, say, okay. It’s been now more than two years, so we’ll take it off the the list.

But if you when when when you’re ready to move, come come back.

Michael, Moderator/Host: I don’t know whether you wanna answer this, Karsten, but how how are now looking at your order book in in the systems, how how many are a lot of this type or very small, I guess, if I put the 200,000,000 in, I can actually calculate that can be a lot of this.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: No. No. Okay. Hey, Kasnit. It hard there?

No. It’s not. There’s not a no. There’s not a lot of that. But it is just a leftover from the past.

It’s I don’t wanna I can’t disclose what it is, but just say that it was it was it still is a new technology that if it flies, I saw great opportunity in that. So I let it slide a bit longer, but okay. Now we we’re moving on and and leaving it there. So, no, there’s not an over inflated auto backlog. Don’t worry about that.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. Perfect. Then do we have any comments on Space Inventor claiming that Bifrost is the first satellite to survey the Arctic Arctis?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: I offer you facts. Here’s a fact. In 2018, ground space launched two satellites. It’s been flying over the Arctic for almost six years. Those two satellites was launched.

One was paid by the Danish Defense, and the other one was paid by ESA. They’re called GOMX four a and b. They’ve been flying, taking pictures, doing signal intelligence, doing communication for more than six years. And we as we do, because all the satellites are our small babies, we we shed a tear. We celebrate it.

We have a tear in the canteen. After six years of a loyal service to us and providing data to ESA and to also to our Danish defense to the extent they wanted it, they they were end of life. This is really good. The average end of life is actually five years in this context. They flew for six years, so that was really, really good.

But in the end, they retired, and we said, okay. Time to go to sleep. So they have been deorbited. So I have no comments to what they’re saying, but I can just offer you a fact. In 2018, we launched two satellites over the Arctic.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Then there’s a question. Do you have any pending projects or order that might have waited the final finalization of the stock emission? And I think also there’s one asking about the equity, you know, when you need to go out and and and and and take in big projects, of course, the clients look at your balance sheet and on the equity. So has something just postponed that that might now happened, or have you been able to convince customers, look. I I have everything coming in.

Feel comfortable with us.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yeah. So let’s let’s start backwards on on that. There’s nothing has been waiting for this. We’ve actually got all the deals. And when I was confident, we got it.

I repeat the story. I went out. I pushed all in on waiting those 18 satellites, which is really, really good for us. And I wanna repeat in many sense, yeah, you you understand the top line. But beyond that, it’s really proving our capability to produce a lot of satellites, 18 satellites in a very, very short period of time, manage the whole supply chain.

You have seen announcement that we have outsourced part of our production of of of our subsystems to a local partner, Nekhaas. They’re doing really well. So it’s it’s capacity scaling that we’re doing. So not only does it generate a top line and, of course, profit, it’s also helping us gearing up our organization. So this is a really strong reference case for the future.

I could do that because I knew the capital was coming in. It wasn’t waiting for that. It enabled me to do that. Outside of that, I’m not gonna comment on if anything is just around the corner, but there’s nothing Of course. There’s been no blocking points for us not having that capital, but it has enabled me to do more.

Michael, Moderator/Host: And then there’s a question, and I think you already answered it. Are you convinced you secure enough orders in h two to be able to continue strong revenue growth in ’26? And I’m not asking you as a guide, And I think you can maybe just move to the slide where you commented that.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Right. I I I we we say with confidence speak about confidence with confidence on our outlook. So yeah. You you deduct from that what you want.

Michael, Moderator/Host: And and and and there’s a that that’s a long question, but I think I can sum it up to can you talk a little bit about the changes that has happened since you arrived at the company? And secondly, where do you see the company moving in the future?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yep. Yep. You know, now we are we are out here in the North Sea or or scenario for this a little bit of fun in that because fish in the background is also about fish, what what we’re doing. We have an executive team here where we talk about strategy into the future. Very intense discussions because of all the things already listed on the slide.

So looking forward, it’s simply a market opportunity thing that we need to capture and we are starting to learn and understand what we need to do. We also have a larger team. A lot of our project managers and middle managers are here for for a day where we are talking about the the next steps. And that’s leading me to say very good motivation, really good engagement from everybody. We’re on a good track.

And that that brings me back to what have we done over the over the past two, two and a half years. Well, a couple of key things. First of all, to me, it’s all about people. If I can make people function together, if you have the same value set, if you understand what we want to do, then we can solve a lot of problems. If you fail to focus on your people, if you fail to appreciate and respect people, you will fail no matter how smart you are.

You simply will fail. So we fixed that a lot. We we really on a completely different level than we were two and a half years ago. It was a turnaround from a pure cash point. It was a turnaround.

Money just came in. How could we save us? So we’ve had a lot of focus on cash. Cash, cash, cash, cash, cash all the time. And then profitable orders, we’ve cleaned up our order backlog earlier.

We have let programs go. We have stopped programs where we couldn’t make money simply to say, but it doesn’t make any sense. We can’t have hundreds of people and not make money on programs. It it will it won’t fly. So we did that.

So we’ve had to focus on cash, then we have invested more in sales. So we have built a pipeline. We are much more present around the world. We have a North America strategy, which is slowly will come. We have closed good business in Singapore with several customers in Singapore that’s really strong.

We continue business with Unseen Labs. And we start seeing a couple of other customers lining up that hopefully we can develop into long term customers. So in summary, people, focus on cash, clean up the order backlog, build the pipeline. And here we are. You see the result.

I don’t how to explain that. You see the results for the first half year. It’s good. It’s a good result. And and there’s money in the bank.

So now I can start turning my attention towards how do I grow it even more. My focus in the past have been how do we make sure that we keep having money in the bank and we slowly grow to basically to continue as a business and to make sure that our investors are happy and now we can do even more. So quick overview there.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. Perfect. After a solid EBITDA result in the first half, why are not narrowing your guidance? And where do you expect to invest with if that’s the explanation of you’re not narrowing your guidance?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: We so again, I say with confidence about our guidance. We’re still a little bit left in the year. We’ll we’ll we’ll see what what’s gonna change. I don’t feel any special need to to just keep changing this. I think we the guidance is really good here, and it speaks for itself.

We have a positive EBITDA in the first half, and you see a pretty solid revenue as well, and we keep our guidance on on the top line as well. So but then we’ll see. And remember, it’s an EBITDA percentage that can change a bit on my top line is the, you know, the the the percentage would be be changing. So I didn’t see any reason to do that. Listen to my voice.

Listen to what I’m saying. Analyze the words confidence, optimism about 2026. I think that’s more than sufficient.

Michael, Moderator/Host: And a little bit about where to invest because I think you also alluded to that now you wanna also build efficiency and and use a little bit money to be more efficient to produce and so on. Is that the same as you said, or are you expecting maybe to to push a little bit harder on such investments also to be able to really deliver faster and faster and faster?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yeah. The the so efficiency or or scaling is perhaps a better would be a more appropriate word. We are learning to scale. Scale mean how do we how do we ramp up faster? How do we have a bigger operation?

Everything gets more complex when you have more more products, more customers, more things to do. So this is what we’re investing in. There is there is certain level of of ability to to procure perhaps a little bit more buffer, but it’s not so much about that. But it’s the ability to scale. So when we go out and outsource to this company, Nekas, we have to invest in some pilot ones with them.

We have to do some initial investments to get them up to par. And then once that started working, then we will see our ability to scale increasing. So this is really what what we mean.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. And there’s there’s a lot of question about whether the money help you to actually start securing order, and I think you explained it very well. No. Not securing orders, but scaling so you are able to deliver on the orders there. So so so I think we have covered all those questions on on that one sentence.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: No. And then, Michael, and I I can I can comment further? I can just repeat. I I don’t I don’t think we would have taken that big contract if I did not know that the cash was coming. Yeah.

And it’s because of that, I could also give the confidence to the customer that we are rock solid partner to do this. That’s why we win. Really, really important. Perfect.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Then there’s you recently applied approximately 30 employees between this q two and q one. What is the short term goal numbers for employees if you wanna give that? I’m not sure. And are you scaling based on increased orders or a little bit is there other parameters you are scaling of your organization?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yeah. Two two two key areas. We are we are scaling with the with the pipeline on order backlog we we take in. So some of the people coming in is to execute. So a higher person, that person generates revenue because we have an order.

So there we have grown our engineering organization that are delivering. So that’s one area of of growth. The other thing is that this is in our programs. If you look at our products product business unit, we have invested a few more people into logistic and supply chain because their complexity is increasing as well. And I didn’t want to have issues there.

So that has gone up a bit. And then as I said before, sales and business development and solution managers, solution architects, We need that. We have really, really good people. We need more. And good good news, a little investor hint, the GumSpace brand is actually doing really well.

We we are getting a lot of requests from customers. Employees starts calling us. We are known in in really many places. We have no issues finding more staff now, and they’re coming from a whole lot of world moving to to Albo. Go figure to to work for Comspace because we have such a strong brand and we have a very good culture that is spreading in the town.

Those of you who lives in Albo and start talking, you will hear people talking about it. So it’s also really positive that we have turned this around so we can we can hire people and we can grow that way. In North America, and we are here, we have Slava who is our new heading up our our CEO in North America, also telling me he comes to the market. Everybody’s heard about Comspace, but we haven’t been that present, but didn’t know about Comspace, and they started to understand what we can do. So this is also very strong.

So I’m very I’m very happy and very proud about our brand with customers and with employees and also with competitors because they know they have to watch out because we are here and we’re not gonna go away.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Then there’s a there’s a question. What is the probability probability that you can close like a like a type of Indonesia order in the second half? And I think you already alluded to it. You are not going to speculate on on on orders and big size and when they get closed. But maybe I can ask it in a little different way.

Do you have the capabilities to do it? Do you feel your organization is ready and and you you could actually you could you could deliver on such a one. Not that whether you will do it or the probability, but actually that you are able to. If it comes, you would you you put your signature under it.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yes. Yeah. The answer is yes. We are in a much better place now than we’ve been in the past. You you also see that we are increasing the headcount a lot.

I do that mindfully. I do that carefully. We need to be able to support the business we have, but we also cautious about not going overboard. That doesn’t work. But, yes, we are we are we are are quite confident.

And the interesting part again, leading back to the 18 satellites, this is really our reference case, and there are not that many of them around, which means other customers coming are not gonna ask question whether we can do that. I’m very, very confident that we can deliver this. So yes, we have a big confidence in being able to take in bigger programs as well as we see them coming.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. Let me just look. Then there’s a little bit about the North American market and the tariffs. Will that be impacted being a non American company?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: I don’t know. I discussed that with Slava, our our guy in in North America, and he says that it’s not really a topic that’s been discussed. I mean, can barely understand themselves right now what what tariffs are there. It’s not really a topic. It’s not it’s not a focus from my side because it only makes sense if you have a very, very large revenue and maybe your profitability is impacted and you’re you’re worried about that.

I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about getting the traction we need, and we’ll we’ll figure out if there are tariffs into the future, what we do with them. It’s not it’s not a focus area for for me.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. Then, Idra, the test phase was positive and worked. What is the next step?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: So some of you are probably following Idra. I hope you do go to their LinkedIn or actually it’s it’s Statico. It’s a place to look for that. We have launched. The satellite is up and flying.

There is a communication. You’ll find that there’s some communication from the satellite to ground, which is really good. That was the first in the world. They are now testing, and we are talking with them, of course, on a regular basis, but they they have to decide what they want to do next. But I believe they have said they have a probably one and a half, two years of test in front of them trying to figure out how to do this, and then they also need to raise the capital to to build out the network.

But we are in there. We have delivered the first satellite. There’s an antenna. The communication is going on. So so far, so good.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. Then there’s a question where you are asked to comment on a competitor. I don’t know whether you like to do that. But your thoughts about the in orbit demonstration, one project has taken years for GOM space. Kongsberg is now in I o d two phase in one year.

How do you see the development where the future for the development of the the the work together with Startiq? Is there a chance that Commspace will will land a bigger order on a bigger constellation?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: So I think look look at look at Comspace where we are. Look at Comspace where we are. We’re growing the top line. We’re starting to have a positive EBITDA. We have money in the bank.

We have very skilled people. We have a very long heritage in the market. Do you think we’re gonna be competitive? Absolutely. Bet you’re as we will be.

So, of course, we’re gonna go in and compete. And, hey, nothing is given. Nobody win. Nobody’s gonna give us anything. We have to go fight for it.

And that’s what we’re doing. And we I have I have all the parameters ready now that I need to to do this. I didn’t have that two years ago, but now everything is falling into place. So, of course, we’re not gonna go out and compete for Staticol, for Indonesia where we are competing for other countries, other opportunities that are coming up. We fought for the 18 satellites and we won.

It was a real team effort and we won. We will fight, of course. And we have we have the technology. We have the means. We have the heritage.

We have what the customers are looking for. So, of course, we’ll do more.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Then there’s a little bit about the Arctic. And I think the question is surrounding that you can deliver surveillance, but could you also find a partner that delivers Internet and and security services and such as besides surveillance, you talked about this dual purpose that that maybe your satellites could actually do. And I guess in such an area, it could also be interesting to deliver some kind of Internet capabilities.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Of course. And this is remember, it’s not for me to build satellite constellations. Customers have to do that. If Denmark wants to build a communication network, we are ready to be part of delivering that. We’re certainly ready on Friday with our French partner.

We can deliver surveillance of the whole Arctic. No problem. We already have the technology in place. The contract with VEONSEA Labs will deliver the the satellites. So we can do all of that today.

Just to be precise, it’s not a dual purpose. It’s a dual use. Dual use means Sorry. It’s both for for commercial and for government purposes. So two different things.

So there is absolutely possibilities to expand in many technology directions. If you speak about security, well, the observation part is actually about sovereign nations and and national security security so that surveillance is good. I don’t know Denmark is, of course, looking at this now, understanding that maybe we need to do a bit more ourself.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. And then maybe to round off, there’s a question here. Could you actually do a Constellation, sell it to the the Baltic Sea, sell it to the Danish government, run it? And and and and the reason could you do that yourself as Comspace, or do we need it to a partner? And because there’s also one asking, do you actually compete sometimes with your with your partners about projects if if you could, you know, make the constellation your yourself and and and and and run it?

So a little bit of talk about your role and and and and and the partners not seeing you as a competitor.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: Yeah. Okay. Let’s start backwards for who we are as Comspace. We are we are very skilled and experienced provider of technology and solutions for satellites and and satellite solutions. We have all the core technology.

We understand how to do special solutions like the signal intelligence, observation, imaging, etcetera. This is this is what we do. No. Basic principle of business, don’t step into your customers’ areas. I don’t want to compete with that and say, last, why would I do that?

Then I’m gonna lose all my my technology business. So I’m not doing that. As to the question, could we build a constellation? Of of course, we could. I could I could build the same as Elon Musk has done, but I need $30,000,000,000 minimum plus government support for another 30,000,000,000.

I don’t have that. So it’s not really about whether I can do it or not, but our our swim lane is to deliver the best technology in a world with heritage, fast in a competitive price, and add a solution component on top where we’re really solving real problems for our customers. For example, monetary legal fishing or monitoring coral reefs, which might be polluted, and we need to do something about it. These things we can do today. But we need to have a customer who has a business case that they want to they want to implement.

And then we are we are becoming one of the strongest partners for that.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. And then that that just came in one in. Which impact on margins would you expect from the outsourced production, or is that more about speed than the margins?

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: I’m not gonna comment on on margins as such, but I would say the the the speed, I would say the capacity, the scaling, the ability to go up and down, we have to expect that our don’t have a linear demand on our products. It’s going go up and down and up and down. It’s nothing bad, that’s just a reality. So it gives us a flexibility. Okay, now there’s a peak, so we have a partner, we can put it out.

We keep our staff the same. Now there’s less. We we we we stopped the production with the partner, do it ourselves, another peak. So it’s really ability to scale. The big satellite oil projects, 18 satellites, is really, really pushed that because in order for us to deliver on all the good product sales we have to individual customers and that we have to do so on top, that was a stretch.

But that’s we have now solved that with an outsourcing. So it’s really about, you know, more capacity and ability to deliver more in the same time without adding a lot more resources because that also takes time.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. And and it has come in some questions about this 20, when should it be counted for? And I do fully understand it’s not you who should comment on this. I’m just asking because lot of people are a lot of interested in whether you wanna comment not on the price, not the average price, but on when the 20 should be counted from. And I do fully understand, Karsten, if you don’t wanna get into this legal mess as you are not a part of the, actually, a part of this.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: No. No. So let me let me give you my focuses. My focus is to deliver the best possible result for the investors who believe in gum space and receives a future, who understands that space is only just starting and we are really well positioned. That’s my focus.

Any kind of speculation on what the share price is now and can I cash in? I I leave that with you. It’s I’m it’s totally not interesting because I know we’re gonna do a lot more.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. Thank you, Karsten. That was the last question. And thank you for taking us through your result and answering a lot of questions that got us. I think got us very well around in the the corners of your business.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: So and did you count the shark? How many times did he pass?

Michael, Moderator/Host: Nope. No. No. No. I was actually concentrating on you, and that’s a

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: good sign. Alright. Very good. Okay. Thank you, everybody.

And, oh, by the way, advertising, we’re in a in a millionaire club tomorrow morning if you haven’t seen that. So if you wanna hear more and have a a listen to, hopefully, a fun interview tomorrow morning at 08:30, the Millionaire Club.

Michael, Moderator/Host: Perfect. See you, Karsten.

Carsten Wachmann, CEO, ComSpace: See you. Bye bye. Thank you.

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