Earnings call transcript: NCAB Q4 2024 sees stock dip amid sales decline

NCAB Group reported a decrease in sales for Q4 2024, leading to a 12.4% drop in its stock price. The company’s net sales fell by 6% year-over-year, while EBITDA margins also contracted. Despite these challenges, NCAB maintained a positive book-to-bill ratio and proposed a dividend of SEK 1.1 per share. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains strong financial health with a score of 2.66 (GOOD) and operates with a moderate level of debt. The market reacted negatively, with shares trading near their 52-week low of SEK 55.65.

Key Takeaways

• NCAB’s Q4 2024 net sales decreased by 6% year-over-year.
• The company’s stock price fell by 12.4% following the earnings report.
• Gross margin improved to 37.1%, up from 36% the previous year.
• The company maintained a positive book-to-bill ratio of 1.09%.
• Proposed a dividend of SEK 1.1 per share.

Company Performance

NCAB Group’s performance in Q4 2024 was marked by a decline in net sales, down 6% from the previous year, with full-year sales also decreasing by 12%. This reflects a broader trend in the industry, where the market for high mix, low volume printed circuit boards remains competitive. Despite the decline, NCAB’s gross margin improved, suggesting efficiency gains in production.

Financial Highlights

• Q4 2024 Net Sales: SEK 830 million (6% decrease YoY)
• Full Year 2024 Net Sales: Down 12%
• Q4 EBITDA: SEK 72 million (8.6% margin)
• Full Year EBITDA: SEK 450 million (12.4% margin)
• Gross Margin: 37.1% (up from 36%)
• Book to Bill Ratio: 1.09%
• Proposed Dividend: SEK 1.1 per share

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, NCAB’s stock price fell by 12.4%, with shares closing at SEK 57.55, close to its 52-week low of SEK 55.65. This decline reflects investor concerns over the company’s sales performance and the broader market environment. InvestingPro analysis indicates the stock is trading at a high P/E multiple of 38.5x and appears overvalued based on its Fair Value calculations. The stock’s movement contrasts with recent sector trends, where some peers have managed to maintain steadier performance. For deeper insights into NCAB’s valuation and 12 additional ProTips, consider exploring InvestingPro’s comprehensive analysis tools.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, NCAB anticipates a gradual market improvement in 2025, with a continued focus on mergers and acquisitions and geographical expansion. The company is also monitoring the impact of new tariffs on Chinese imports, which could affect supply chain dynamics. InvestingPro data shows the company maintains healthy liquidity with a current ratio of 1.91, providing financial flexibility for its expansion plans. Analysts have revised their earnings expectations downward for the upcoming period, with revenue projected to decline this year.

Executive Commentary

CEO Peter Kruk (WA:KRU) emphasized NCAB’s leadership in the printed circuit board sector, stating, "We are the leading company supplier of printed circuit boards with outsourced production." He also highlighted growth opportunities, noting, "We believe there’s a lot of work for us and opportunities for us to grow within this market."

Risks and Challenges

• Market Saturation: The high mix, low volume PCB market remains highly competitive.
• Supply Chain Issues: Tariffs on Chinese imports could disrupt supply chains.
• Macroeconomic Pressures: Economic uncertainties may impact industrial and automotive sectors.
• Margin Pressures: Particularly in European markets, as discussed during the earnings call.
• Inventory Destocking: While improving, it continues to be a challenge.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about margin pressures in Europe and the impact of new tariffs on supply chains. NCAB’s management also addressed factory utilization in China and conversion rates between order intake and sales, providing insights into operational efficiencies and future strategies.

Full transcript - NCAB Group (NCAB) Q4 2024:

Conference Moderator: Welcome to the NCAB Q4 Presentation for 2024. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing key five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Peter Krouk CFO, Timothy Benjamin and Head of Investor Relations, Gunilla Oman. Please go ahead.

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: Good morning and welcome. My name is Peter Kruk, and I’ll start the presentation today. First, a little bit about NCAB. NCAB is a supplier of printed circuit boards. So the foundation in any electronics and the basis for any intelligent product that you see in the market.

And we supply the product, the bare board that you see to the left, and our customers will then mount semiconductors, microprocessors to create the intelligence in the product. And we sell them either directly to the OEM, the end product manufacturers, or through contract manufacturers who supply them with the built electronics. As a company, we are the leading company supplier of printed circuit board with outsourced production. We believe very much in a setup where we are local and close to the customers, where we will add technical quality support as well as logistics and commercial dialogue with our customers in their local native languages. We also are local very much close to the factory side.

Even if we don’t own any factories ourselves, we have, out of our little more than 600 colleagues across the group, we have around 120 which are working in dialogue with the factories and are in proximity of our manufacturers. Our focus is on supplying printed circuit boards for demanding customers, typically in the high mix, low volume segments and supplying these with zero defects produced sustainably at the lowest overall total cost. And our aim is to be number one PCB producer wherever we are. And as I mentioned, we are already the leading company worldwide. If we then move over to the fourth quarter.

Fourth quarter was weak in terms of our revenue and primarily from the European side. So if we look upon the different markets, Europe has generally weak demand based on the macroeconomics and this is impacting both our legacy business as well as the acquired businesses that we acquired here during 2024. In The Nordics, however, we can see more positivity. Order intake continues to grow from Q3, and we’re also here benefiting from growth in areas like defense in the market. North American East, who have been in a positive movement for some time, continue their positive progress with an increasing number of project wins and also more stable markets than what we see currently in Europe.

Overall, our gross margins are remaining on a healthy level, but our EBITDA is lower primarily as a consequence of the lower revenue. And we can also see that the gross margin is impacted slightly by the fact that we’ve added now a number of acquired companies in the year who are operating already at a lower gross margin than MCAV as a whole. And EBITDA margin as with the lower revenue is impacted by the top line. M and A activities remain strong. We made quite a few acquisitions during 2024, and we continue to develop our pipeline and retain discussions with potential new targets.

Looking at what we did as a summary in 2024 on the M and A side, we started the year with a smaller acquisition in Belgium. We believe very much in being local and close to our customers, and this is a nice add on to our Netherlands organization and enables us to serve the customers in the Belgian market more efficiently. Similarly, we have also made acquisitions in Switzerland and Austria, giving us a local presence in these markets. We were partly selling to some of these markets before from our German based organization, but now we have a stronger local presence and are taking over or bringing in new customer relationships through these acquisitions. Print production was a smaller acquisitions in Denmark, which strengthens our team here with the technical know how and also brings in new customer relationships.

And finally, we had the more significant larger acquisition in 2024 with DBS Global, with business primarily both in Italy, but also partly with an organization in Asia, and they came into the business here in quarter four. If we look upon the numbers for Q4, we can see order intake up slightly 4% versus prior year in U. S. Dollars by 3% up and now we have a book to bill, which is positive of 1.09%. Net sales, however, decreased by 6% to 830%, and you can see an organic growth of minus 11% in U.

S. Dollars. This is, you could say, the consequence of the relatively low order intake we saw in Q3 and then the seasonality effects that we typically have around year end where customers defer deliveries from December to January. And we can see some of those orders now being delivered out in January. EBITDA decreased with the low revenue to SEK72 million and maintaining an EBITDA margin of 8.6% and gross margin remaining stable, close to stable versus Q3, but down versus prior year.

And there’s a little bit of impact here from the acquired entities in Q4. Operating cash flow as a ratio of EBITDA remains healthy and strong, but lower than last year, also a consequence from the lower top line. And working capital up slightly, partly due to the fact that we’re bringing in working capital from the acquired entity in Italy, notably that impacts slightly. So we’re expecting that to reverse back here in the coming quarters. For the full year, we can see that order intake down slightly or almost flat, so book to bill also close to one, slightly positive.

Net sales, however, down 12% and organic grown down 15% in U. S. Dollars for the full year. EBITDA, as a consequence, also is down to SEK450 million, but still maintaining a good margin of 12.4%, which is not far from our sort of the implicit financial targets that we have. Our EBITDA gross margin increased year over year to 37.1% compared to 36% in the prior year.

And operating cash flow still continues strong. The comparison with $23,000,000 is difficult and challenging as in ’23, we were in a process where we were working down working capital, which was on a higher level from the kind of pandemic long lead time situation. So we had an excess cash flow during 2023, but I think the SEK 3.57 versus EBITDA is in a very good level. And the board suggests a dividend at SEK 1.1, which is equivalent to what we had in 2023. Okay.

So if we

Timothy Benjamin, CFO, NCAB: look at quarter four and a little bit what plays out here, what we see is around SEK830 million in sales, which is about 6% lower than the prior year. Same more or less the same thing when we look at it in the U. S. Dollar currency, which resulted that level of revenue resulted in around SEK71.6 million of EBITDA, down 40%, as you saw mainly related to Europe, which was around an 8.6% EBITDA margin down 4.9 percentage points. I think you heard a little bit from Peter what’s been trending with the gross profit up full year to 37% versus 36% in the prior year.

And then when we look at the order intake side, we see order intake up to nine zero seven, up 4% versus prior year, supported in part by acquisitions in comparable units by 3%. We saw a positive development in Nordics. We saw good demand in North America and also growth in East. But I think as you heard from Peter, and we’ll talk a little bit more, still a bit of a weak Europe. As said, 6% down on the net sales, but book to bill still at 109% and also a good trend in new part numbers and customers.

Yes, when we look at the total, as said, around SEK71.6 million on the EBIT side compared to prior year of 2019, largely related to the decline that we see in Europe on the revenue side. The EBIT at 8.6% was really a function of what we saw on the order intake side in quarter three, what was able to translate there from order intake and then we had some longer lead time orders, which obviously don’t deliver in that same quarter. Gross margin for the quarter still good at 35.9%, not quite as high as we were prior year at 38.2%, but still at a very good level, which relate to around SEK 298 million in terms of gross profit. EPS comes out at around SEK22 billion per share.

Gunilla Oman, Head of Investor Relations, NCAB: I think over to you, Peter. Okay.

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: Thank you, Jim. So looking then into our different segments. So Nordics, you can see here, our order intake grew substantially by 14% to SEK234 million over SEK204 million in prior year. And we see, notably, we and Defense continue to build our order book. Some of these orders have longer lead times, so we should not expect them to turn into revenue in the next term quarter.

We also start to see some positive movement in areas of green energy like EV charging, in construction, heat pumps from a very low level in 2023. So we can see the order intake here starting to pick up. And we can also note that some of our end customers are seeing growing sales, but they are still working through some inventory of final product. So we expect here things to improve in the coming year. Book to build continue to be positive at SEK1.19.

Net sales still lower than last year at SEK197 million versus SEK217, so a decline by 9% in Swedish kronor. EBITDA amounted to SEK31 million versus SEK33.2 million, slightly lower, but an EBITDA margin that increased from 15.3% to 15.7%. If we then move to Europe, where we have our biggest challenges, we can see that our order intake is in line with last year, but then, of course, we have acquisitions that have supported the order intake, otherwise, we would have been lower. And we can see that the demand in some of the key markets in Europe like Germany, Italy and UK remains quite weak as we can also see from macroeconomic indicators for purchase managers index for manufacturing industry. But we can also see some positive improvements in other markets in Europe, but which doesn’t really fully offset the big ones that we mentioned.

We see some positive movement in commercial vehicles, so trucks and buses, but also in aerospace, and the book to bill ended at 1.17. Dollars Net sales is where we saw a big decline of 11% to $365,000,000 versus $412,000,000 in prior year, but the decline is, of course, operationally more substantially if we take out the acquired entities that we did in 2024, and then we can then see that organically we’re down 21% as a result of the low Q3 orders. And then of course, year end effects where shipments are quite often moved from December to January. So that drop in volume led to a big impact on our EBITA side, which came down to SEK3.4 million on the margin of only 0.9% versus SEK13.3 million in the prior year. Moving to North America.

Here we can see the order intake is based in line with last year. For the full year, we have a good development with up close to 15% and the comparable units up 5% for the full year. So we’ve continued sort of positive trend here. Net sales increased for the year by 7% to SEK205 million over SEK191 million. And I think here, we are leveraging our strong technical know how in the group and also leveraging our group capabilities in the North American market and as we also, at the same time, are expanding our sales network.

The U. S. Market overall represents a similar potential as the European one and our market share is at this point considerably lower, so there’s a lot of opportunity for us to focus on growth in this market. We also have some unique capabilities to supply PCBs for The U. S.

Aerospace and defense industries, using also suppliers outside U. S. In Taiwan, which gives us also a strong advantage in that segment. And we can also see that our we are now in a situation where tariffs are being changed in the North American market from imports from China. We are already dealing with tariffs historically, but now there has been an additional 10% tariffs imposed starting here from early February.

And I think we can support our customers in a good way twofold that on the one hand, we have a good network of supporting customers with supply from outside China. We already today our U. S. Customers to degree of around 50% sourced from outside China, and we have an ability to grow that share should our customers want to. Should they remain in China with their production, then we will sort of transfer the tariffs as part of our pricing.

EBITDA in The U. S. Increased to SEK 32,800,000.0, up from SEK 25,300,000.0, and the EBITDA margin improved from 13.3% to 16% in the quarter. And then finally, over to our East segment. Here, we can also see positive development on the order intake, which has been sort of going on for a couple of quarters.

So order intake grew by 11% to SEK 55,000,000, up from SEK 49,000,000. And we generally don’t really see a strong positive development of the market, but I think we’re making good progress in developing niche applications in a number of high-tech segments. We can see even if their market in general is not growing, there has been a pickup during 2024 in specifically data centers, which applies to worldwide demand. And that is, of course, improving the loading situation with the factories, which on the one hand may lead to future price increases to the industry, but I think it also leads to opportunity for us to serve the customers in a good way as the factories themselves turn their attention to those high volume end customer applications. Overall, our net sales in the quarter grew by 8% to SEK63 million, up from SEK59 million, and our EBITDA remains stable around SEK11 million with EBITDA margin on a good level at 17.3% for the quarter, slightly down from 20% in the year before.

Timothy Benjamin, CFO, NCAB: Then back to you, Tim. Thanks, Peter. Thanks, Peter. So you’ll probably recognize a lot of these figures as they’re not so much changed from prior quarters, a couple of changes here. Return on equity coming out at 18.3% versus 31.9% for prior year.

Net debt to EBITDA ticked up a little bit from around 1.1 last quarter to about 1.5% this quarter. That’s coming from the acquisition that we made of DVS Global, which you heard a little bit about from Peter. Equity to asset ratio, still around 42.7%. And then working capital, up a little bit in the quarter, which is a seasonal effect that we’ve seen historically, but also as you heard from Peter, a result of the acquisition of DBS Global increasing the working capital that we have. Available liquidity at $1,400,000,000 also as a consequence of the recent acquisition, and the Board, as you heard, has proposed a dividend of $1,100,000,000 When we look at the acquisition process, very much continued progress in this area here.

Still a short list with around 50 target companies, active negotiations going on all the time, and it’s really just about picking the best ones.

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: And then as we sort of round off, just some comments around the overall global market situation. As we’ve mentioned, I think the global manufacturing industry, especially in the European markets, are still quite muted or negative, slightly better outlook in The U. S. Market as well as in Asia. But if we look upon the global mid- to long term outlook for printed circuit boards, the outlook from Prismac, which is kind of the authority on make analysis on our industry, is looking at a market where in 2024, actually there was a globally slight growth, really tied to the data center applications and telecom, a lot of sort of AI driven data centers driving a pickup in the market.

Markets like industrial will see will still negative as well as automotive, etcetera. But I think the outlook is that they are projecting a continued positive development overall in the market. I think for us, it’s important to understand how quickly this will happen, but I think the trend is looking to a reoccurring development positive development for the industry as a whole. And if we look more specifically at the end system, so here it’s important just to distinguish that this is not showing the PCB need, but actually end product sales of products. So of course, you have to factor in that during the last years, we’ve also seen inventory reductions, which would have reduced the demand for the printed circuit board or other components in the segments.

But here you can see the computer sector, which also includes the data center. I think data center had a growth of around 40% in 2024. So that growth is expected in the next, say, four, five years to kind of stabilize and come down from its extreme level. Telecom (BCBA:TECO2m) communication started to show growth in ’twenty four and is expected to continue to grow actually faster in the coming years. But then you can look upon to the right side where you have the focus areas in more high mix, low volume industries where NCAB has its presence.

And you can see we’re coming from a quite negative automotive and also slightly negative industrial, which I think has been further impacted by the inventory adjustments, whereas you’ve seen medical and the aerospace defense where we have also seen growth in the last year. Now for the years to come, we’re expecting to see that these markets start turning around. But based on the fact of what we can see at least in the European markets for the main industrial manufacturing industries, we don’t really see that happening immediately, but it will be a gradual improvement and recovery in the market. So if we look upon our overall strategy as a company, we intend to stay focused on supplying printed circuit boards to the market with an asset light model where we don’t have in house manufacturing. I think overall, the global market of print circuit board is still around this kind of $70,000,000,000 plus market where high mix low volume is north of, say, $20 -twenty five billion dollars So we believe there’s a lot of work for us and opportunities for us to grow within this market.

So we will be continuing to be investing in technical and manufacturing capabilities with our partners to continue to grow our market shares. We are also looking to further expand our geographical presence, primarily through M and A activities. And also, the market still is a very fragmented market with a lot of smaller niche players, which lends us still a lot of opportunities for consolidation, And this is something we will continue to explore in the month and the year to come.

Unidentified Speaker, NCAB: So thank you very much, Peter and Tim. So let’s open up for questions.

Conference Moderator: The next question comes from Gustaf Berenblad from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Gunilla Oman, Head of Investor Relations, NCAB: Yes, thanks. Good morning. It’s Gustaf here from Nordea. Maybe just to start off in Europe and the weak development here and sort of the extreme margin pressure we are seeing. And you do comment in the report also that you expect pressure likely to remain here early twenty twenty five.

And of course, I’m aware that you don’t give any guidance, but can you just help us understand how you think about the margin here, particularly for Europe heading into 2025?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: Yes. Hello, Gustav. Yes, I mean, clearly, I think the margin in Europe is very much impacted in the fourth quarter also by the low revenue. I think we have more stability in the order intake and there will be some pickup of these kind of year end effects to the revenue side. So part of the really low revenue side in Q4 will be brought back up in Q1.

So we are not expecting to sort of to remain at this low level. I think Q4 is by tradition our weakest quarter, and I think in this quarter in Europe especially it was very, very low. So we are expecting to come back up to more decent levels.

Timothy Benjamin, CFO, NCAB: Yes, important to look at the book to bill

Gunilla Oman, Head of Investor Relations, NCAB: there. Yes, okay. But I mean, I recall you saying in Q3 that you saw some orders being pushed into Q1 and you also said it on a call here. But is it possible to give any sense or ballpark figures or how much sort of has been pushed into Q1 from what we’ve seen here in the orders?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: I think what we have seen, I kind of maybe I cannot speak specifically for Europe generally, but I think in general we have seen that typically of I mean, we’re not in normalized order and supply situation, you would have orders in one quarter turn into revenue the following quarter. I think the difference you have in Q4, you generally lose somewhere between five percent, six percent of that order intake in Q3 gets pushed over the year end. So generally, December is extremely weak whereas January is quite strong. And we can confirm that we see those a number of orders being shifted over. So it’s not that we expect to continue at this low level in the market.

Then you can also say that for the full group, we also had growth in the defense area in Q3, so which we’re also informed about. We have a number of orders more in the Nordic segment than which would not translate into revenue in the near one to two quarters, but actually be starting during ’twenty five and spread over a longer period of time. But for the Europe side, it’s more that kind of weak order intake in Q3 and then you have, say, somewhere a portion of that is shifting over. And of course, the weak market that we have seen in our legacy business, which is where you’ve really seen the weak markets being Germany, Italy, UK, well, that, of course, also impacts the company we acquired in Italy, so as well as in Switzerland, Austria. So all these three companies also have faced a quite weak fourth quarter and are not really contributing in a positive way in the fourth quarter.

It doesn’t mean that we have changed our outlook on the acquisitions, but in that fourth quarter, it’s a week. And then, of course, you have some minor costs extra on top for the Association for bringing them on board. And we also took we have continued with our business system implementation, and those activities are not fully linear throughout the year. So you could say we had a higher activity in Q2 and Q4, we had less in Q1 and Q3. And now in Q4, we went successfully live in Germany.

So we had a lot of activity in the European segment as well, which further limited impact the costs in that quarter.

Gunilla Oman, Head of Investor Relations, NCAB: Okay. That’s very clear. Thank you. And then just one follow-up on that. Are you doing anything on the cost base to sort of adjust for the lower volumes, particularly in Europe?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: Yes. And I think we are yes, we are, as you say, we are trimming continues to have been doing for quite some time. And I think you could actually go back and look at our headcount number. You take it to, say, a year ago and the number of headcount we have taken over through the acquisitions. And I think you can see that we have taken up roughly 20 people or 25 people throughout the organization through various activities.

These are not things that we do as kind of restructuring and sort of break up, but we take it runningly. So that means that we’ve been taking some costs as well during both Q3 and Q4, and those costs out effects will start to pay dividends here in the coming months.

Gunilla Oman, Head of Investor Relations, NCAB: Okay, perfect. Then just one last one, then I go back in line here. But have you noticed any preordering effect given the talks of tariffs and so forth? I guess this is particularly related to North America, but yes, if you can say anything here.

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: No, we have actually, I think we have not really seen at least not that we can sort of break out and quantify in any significance. I think everyone has been quite uncertain what would happen. I think we saw the movements with this Canada and Mexico tariffs being imposed and then postponed, etcetera. So there’s been no preordering that we could note. Now we have new tariffs that are in effect from February.

So goods in transit can still be delivered until sometime here in March, and then you have basically new tariffs coming into effect on anything that’s shipped from China with an additional 10% on that goods. And this is something we will sort of transfer on to our customers, just like we are transferring current tariffs that are in the market, but it’s also an opportunity for us to help the customers who want to move part of their supply from China to our other manufacturing base. And we have over the last couple of years built up, I would say, broader manufacturing base outside China. And there, I think we’ll expect maybe to see that shift a little bit more volume from a Chinese base to those factories instead.

Gunilla Oman, Head of Investor Relations, NCAB: That’s very helpful. All right. Thank you.

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: Thank you.

Conference Moderator: The next question comes from Jacob Edler from Danske Bank (CSE:DANSKE). Please go ahead.

Jacob Edler, Analyst, Danske Bank: Hi, Petr, Timothy and Gunilla. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple starting on Europe to follow-up on Glisto’s questions. I’m just trying to understand the margin again. I understand the negative leverage here on the sales, but is there anything else we should be aware of on the OpEx side?

I don’t know. Do you have anything you can share on DVS? Did it have very low margins in the quarter now that it has been integrated? How was their performance, etcetera? Yes, I’ll start there.

Gunilla Oman, Head of Investor Relations, NCAB: Yes, I would say this is

Timothy Benjamin, CFO, NCAB: the first quarter where we have DBS. So the intensity in terms of integration and costs that you have related to that, this tends to be one of the higher periods. So we did see some extra costs there. I think you heard a little bit from Peter as well earlier on the IT rollouts. I mean, one of our largest rollouts that we have globally is in Germany, and that happened in quarter four as well.

So we also Europe also gets hit with quite a bit of IT cost as well at the same time. So yes, you have a confluence of a number of different factors hitting Europe at the same time. I don’t know if you want to say anything more, Peter.

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: Yes. So yes, I mean, it’s nothing one thing that sticks out. I think you can say that you have a couple of those things. You have some costs related to the acquisitions, the acquisitions being really low on revenue as well in the fourth quarter. So they’re not sort of contributing in a good way.

Their gross margin is not worse than what it was, but it was lower already than ours when we took them over. So it brings down the gross margin percentage a little bit in the European segment. And then you could say, so you have the combination of slightly higher SG and A with the rollout of the IT program, which was primarily in Europe in the quarter. We have the integration activities with the new acquisitions and you have some of the, say, cost out activity that’s boosting cost maybe slightly. None of them really sticking out.

Maybe the IT one is the one that’s sort of is more significant, but the others are sort of minor. But then of course, in a quarter with very low revenue, it pulls down the numbers.

Jacob Edler, Analyst, Danske Bank: Yes, cool. So there’s nothing, I mean, when you’re looking at the order intake now and just looking at the margin profile on those orders, there’s nothing not a bad structural trend here that you’ve seen recently that we should be aware of? I understand that the market is a bit tough here and now, but the orders you’re taking on is not with a lot worse margin profile?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: No, I don’t think so. I mean, if we look upon our gross margin development, you can say that we were into, on say, 32% in 2022, we went up to 36% in ’twenty three percent and we’re now at 37% in ’twenty four percent. But one also need to remember that there was margins went up primarily as a consequence of prices going down. They are enough keeping the gross profit to kind of boot the percentages. And during ’twenty three, you were kind of in the beginning of the year, we were kind of 33, 30 five and at the end of the year, you were just above 38 and you were above 38 in beginning of twenty four and that it’s kind of come down to a 36 level in the second half.

And I think there were some elements in that gross margin, of course, was we were able to sort of there were price changes in the market. We were able to get some of the price changes from the factories before they were handed over to some of our customers. And that maybe gave us that boost up to 38% in late Q3 late ’20 ’3 and early twenty four, but I think the step up from 32 to 36, I think that I think we are sort of more comfortable with that we can retain.

Jacob Edler, Analyst, Danske Bank: Yes. Just another question then, just talking about, I guess, conversion rates from order intake to sales between the quarters. I mean, you’ve talked about this stuff. You a couple of quarters ago, you expect the order intake to mirror the next quarter sales. I understand that there is the Christmas effect here and stuff.

But I’m just wondering, is there a structural trend here where you’re going to have a bit worse conversion in the upcoming quarter owing to the defense and aerospace momentum, etcetera, that we should be aware of? Or because now you had a couple of quarters with like 95 or below 90 conversion, yes, quarter to quarter.

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: Right. No, that’s a very good question. And I think we will see a little bit of that. I think we’ve seen in The Nordics in, say, in Q3, we had substantial orders from defense in The Nordics, which we, I think, we highlighted then that this will not translate into revenue in Q4, but it is going to start in ’twenty five and we spread over quite some time. We also in Q4 this year, we also here have some orders in the Nordic side, which are on the defense side, which actually will be revenue more like later half of twenty five and even into ’26.

So as we grow Aerospace and Defense, this effect may play into the overall picture and maybe skew that picture. And we’ll try to be sort of highlight that in our communication so that you can see where it’s going. But I think we are right now, you can say to some extent, we’re building a little bit of a nice order book for the future, even if maybe we will not see that full follow through from the order intake we’ve seen in Q3 and Q4 in The Nordics directly translate immediately into the revenue in fully in Q1, Q2.

Timothy Benjamin, CFO, NCAB: But at some point, you get that

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: nice little boost when orders intake from

Timothy Benjamin, CFO, NCAB: the prior quarter. Actually, it doesn’t

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: look like it’s even better. And as we are, I mean, right now, it’s primarily the defense side is maybe U. S. And partly Nordics. As we are expanding our capability, we now have the certifications, we are supporting customers also in Europe.

This can be a growing market for us. And then, of course, that can become a more significant impact. Right now, it’s not impacting Europe numbers. But as and if it will, we will let you know.

Jacob Edler, Analyst, Danske Bank: Are you able to add any flavor on how much the expense and aerospace is right now in order intake?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: I’ve not done these. We haven’t done the full sum up of the breakdown by the industry sectors. I think in 2023, we were around 5%. I expect that number to have grown in 2024, but I need to come back with a final number there.

Jacob Edler, Analyst, Danske Bank: Cool. Last question, sorry, for a lot of questions. Just on the tariffs, February 1. I mean, looking back at 2018, ’20 ’19, I do recall that I remember the customers were a bit hesitant because first you had the 10% tariff and then those were hiked a couple of months later. Do you expect that to happen again or what’s the indication from customers?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: So far, we’re not really seeing we have neither seen any kind of pre buys nor do we see customers delaying to wait and see either. So at this point, we don’t really notice a different behavior from our customers. Yes, cool. But we know that the quality already during Q4 just one comment there. Already during Q4, we had increasing questions from our customers regarding our supply options outside China.

So I think that has started and we started to sort of place a number of customers started placing some sample orders there. And of course, with the tariffs coming into effect, that could, of course, lead to the incentive to maybe move outside just from a pure cost perspective is becoming greater.

Conference Moderator: The next question comes from Marcus Davilius from DNB. Please go ahead.

Marcus Davilius, Analyst, DNB: Hello, Peter, Timothy and Benoit. Just a few questions from my side. I joined the call late, so maybe you already answered this. But could you maybe talk about where we are in regards to the destocking in each market in terms of your customers’ customers? Have you seen improvement there?

That’s the first question.

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: I think there is gradually improvement happening, but it’s very hard for us to exactly see what’s going on. I think we can see I mentioned in the call early on that we can see with a number of customers that we have had great business in the last couple of years in The Nordic, for instance, related to EV charging, where the market halted was everyone was kind of ramping up and that created big inventory situation and also it’s kind of slowed down in their sales in the end. I think what we can see now is actually their sales have started to pick up and what we can see in here is that they are selling on a very good level right now, but still they still have some inventory work through. So we are not expecting orders in this maybe in a quarter or two to really kick off. So I think it varies, but it’s hard for us to see.

But I think this will, of course, at some point, provide some support in the market just from the fact that the inventory adjustments are flushing being flushed out of the system. So even if end customer demand still remains quite soft, the inventory reduction activities disappearing alone should favor a market pickup from our perspective. We see fairly, not that any customers have PCBs in large quantities. I think that period, I think, we’re putting behind us.

Marcus Davilius, Analyst, DNB: Okay. And then just quickly on factory utilization in China. Would you say it improved this quarter?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: Or where are we? I think it’s gradually improving. And I think we see also, I mean, we are working with leading factories and they are successful. I think their factory loading has generally started to improve. I think, I mean, if you go back half a year, maybe then over a year, they were maybe down in 50%, sixty %.

Now maybe they are coming above 70%. And then of course, you have some factories which are also having a greater exposure or involvement directly with AI data centers or telecom, and they are seeing maybe quite high loading. So I think things are improving there on the loading side as well.

Marcus Davilius, Analyst, DNB: And then final question from my side. You mentioned that some of your customers have talked about moving to factories outside of China. What does that mean for your gross margin? Is it a better price for you to produce outside of China? How should we interpret that?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: I think for us, basically, gross margin wise, it’s basically neutral. It doesn’t make a big it has no specific impact if we move outside. It may have an impact, of course, on the top line because I mean, sometimes generally today, outside China is more expensive. And that, of course, will boost top line more pricing questions for the customers.

Conference Moderator: The next question comes from Gustaf Berenblad from Nordea.

Gunilla Oman, Head of Investor Relations, NCAB: I was just thinking about the your comments recently about quite significant uptick in winning new articles. Are you still seeing this? Or is this trend sort of slowing down? Or you don’t really comment on it in the report here?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: No, I’m happy to comment on it. I think we still show a very good progress there for the full year and also in the later part of the year. So we continue to grow new article numbers. We continue to grow new customers buying from us at a good pace. So I think that is it’s a little bit like are on the seashore and the waves are rolling out.

And right now, we’re swimming against the wave that’s rolling out. But I think we’re making progress. And once the waves start moving in, we’ll then end up much higher up on the beach. I think that’s a little bit the feeling we have. We’re making good progress in terms of activities with customers.

But the way the market or the waves are moving right now, we are still floating backwards in terms of revenue, especially in Europe, whereas in the other segments, we start to see progress maybe.

Gunilla Oman, Head of Investor Relations, NCAB: Okay. Very illustrative. And then just on the North American margin there, I mean, it’s quite impressive. Is that something you is there any extraordinary items there or something you expect to continue?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: No, I think it’s a I mean, we always have some variations and mix between the different quarters, but I think it’s also a sign of the fact that we see the volume pickup in North America. And with that, we also then start to sort of leverage a good stable gross margin, leveraging down to the bottom line margin.

Timothy Benjamin, CFO, NCAB: And I think we have a good fixed cost base in North America. So I mean, as we continue to grow there, it’s good

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: to see the leverage come through. And you could actually say that if you look a little bit further back, we were operating, say, even kind of around that 15 or even north of 15% for a couple of quarters in earlier part of ’23, but where we declined a little bit in the end and with a volume drop also in North America, now volume, we start to see a little bit of a pickup on the volume side and then we’re able to get back into such a higher margin.

Gunilla Oman, Head of Investor Relations, NCAB: Okay, perfect. Yes, just very last quick one here. And then on the IT platform rollout here, how should we think about this in Q1? What countries are you targeting now? Or is it similar cost levels?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: I think when we go yes, that’s good. I mean, we would always have a little bit of variation here between the quarters depending on when we go live. And you also have some seasonality in terms of activities with holiday breaks and so forth, which governs a little bit when the activities take place. I I mean, we are now in a situation where we have roughly one third of the company up and running on the new platform, and our aim is that we will be, say, around three quarters end of this year running on our new platform. We in the beginning of this year, we will have we are doing some part of the group perspective from some of the corporate activities here in Q1.

So Q1 normally is slightly lower, but then you will have a couple of significant go lives planned for beginning of Q2 and late Q2, early Q3. So you can expect probably, let’s say, Q2 will have a higher rollout activity level than Q1. And then probably, again, you will see that Q3 due to the fact that you have July, August, you have a lot of the resources that are involved in this not able to continue with rollout at the same activity level. So typically, Q3 will be slightly lower and then maybe Q4 bigger again. So I think that is typically Q2 and Q4 is probably going to be more intense than Q1 and Q3.

Gunilla Oman, Head of Investor Relations, NCAB: Okay. That’s clear. Thank you very much.

Conference Moderator: There are no more phone questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions or closing comments.

Unidentified Speaker, NCAB: Thank you very much. We have some questions written here. And the first one is from Xavier Barado from Bank Inter. And he asks if we could give some color around pricing pressure on Europe.

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: I think if we talk from, say, from the supply base as a starting point, you could say that, say, our pricing from Asia is largely stable. We saw prices fall down during ’twenty three quite significantly. And but you could say that from late ’twenty three and during ’twenty four, prices largely remained stable. Whereas you can see that on Europe side, there, there maybe has been more kind of price increases due to the fact that you’ve had inflation. And I think now it’s I would say it’s pretty stable, the pricing situation in the last couple of quarters in Europe.

Unidentified Speaker, NCAB: And next question was from Alexander Weinberg. And he wonders what explains the higher days outstanding than in previous year.

Timothy Benjamin, CFO, NCAB: Yes. I think maybe two effects there that we’ve noted so far. One is that we just had a recent acquisition, which came with quite a bit of accounts receivables and then you don’t necessarily when you do the calculation, you don’t necessarily see the historical revenue that goes with it. And then another piece is many times when we have a seasonal effect on revenue in quarter four, we also see accounts receivable come down a little bit. This year, we saw some of that, but we also saw some customers holding payments over the year.

So then that’s another effect which keeps accounts receivables a little higher than usual.

Unidentified Speaker, NCAB: Okay. Thank you, Tim. And the third question comes from Thomas Blickstad with Pareto. He asks if there is any other customer segment in Nordics showing order intake growth or was it purely defense?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: I think in a general comment, I think we can say that the general industrial mood is better in The Nordics than what it is in Continental Europe. You’d say Germany is the darkest situation right now and supported by some others in Europe, Nordic business climate is slightly improving in a sense. So defense clearly is, of course, one of the driving activity areas, but we also see movement in some other areas. And I think we’ve seen some, even in some areas like construction, it’s starting to move a little bit in the right direction.

Unidentified Speaker, NCAB: Great. And here we have another question from Hampa Styrazon at Handelsbanken. Are there any concerns about capacity in factories outside China with the expected movement of customers?

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: I mean, I can answer this maybe twofold. I think on the one hand, you say, globally, it’s a huge problem. Outside China cannot cover for China. China represents like two thirds of world manufacturing. Then of course, you can say NCAV is 2% of the high mix low volume market and even less of the total market.

So yes, the rest of the world could cope with MCAV’s needs. But I think overall, it will of course be a challenge to move quickly. We have a good base. I think we are in a better position than most other players in the market in the fact that we have already an established functional supply base outside China and we have put more factories online outside China here in the last year. So I think for us, it’s a competitive advantage, but of course, it will be a challenge for the whole industry would there be a bigger move happening.

Unidentified Speaker, NCAB: I think that was all questions we had for today. So thank you very much, Tim and Peter. And I just want to remind you that our first quarter report is on the April 25, and we have our AGM on the May 8. So very welcome back. Thank you.

Peter Kruk, CEO, NCAB: Thank you.

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