Earnings call transcript: Saabtec Q3 2025 sees revenue growth, stock dips

Saabtec's Q3 2025 earnings call revealed a robust year-over-year revenue growth of 23%, alongside significant improvements in EBITDA and a strengthened order backlog. Despite these positive financial metrics, the stock price of Zaptec AS, a related entity, experienced a decline of 2.05%, closing at 28.6 NOK. This dip occurred amid a broader market environment and potential investor concerns about seasonal slowdowns.

Key Takeaways

• Revenue increased by 23% year-over-year, maintaining levels despite seasonal challenges.
• EBITDA rose significantly from NOK 4 million to NOK 21 million.
• The order backlog strengthened by 44%, indicating future demand.
• Stock price dropped by 2.05%, reflecting possible market apprehensions.

Company Performance

Saabtec demonstrated strong financial performance in Q3 2025, with revenue growth of 23% compared to the previous year. The company managed to maintain revenue levels close to Q2 figures, despite typical seasonal slowdowns. This performance is bolstered by a 35% increase in order intake and a 44% rise in the order backlog, highlighting sustained demand for Saabtec's offerings.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Increased by 23% year-over-year.
• EBITDA: Improved from NOK 4 million to NOK 21 million.
• Gross margin: Stable at 39%.
• Liquidity position: Increased by NOK 66 million, reaching NOK 532 million.

Market Reaction

The stock price of Zaptec AS declined by 2.05%, closing at 28.6 NOK. This movement is within the company's 52-week range of 8.45 to 33.35 NOK. The decline may reflect broader market trends or specific investor concerns despite the positive earnings report.

Executive Commentary

CEO Kurt Ostlam highlighted a record month for Saabtec, stating, "September was a record month for Subtech. Never before have we delivered so many chargers and installed so many chargers in one single month." CFO Eirik Helm emphasized the company's robust position for future growth, noting, "We are now in a robust position to manage future growth and to navigate future market uncertainties."

Risks and Challenges

• Seasonal slowdowns could impact future revenue growth.
• Broader market conditions may influence stock performance.
• Potential supply chain disruptions could affect production scaling.
• Market saturation in core regions could limit expansion opportunities.

The Q3 2025 earnings call reflects Saabtec's strong financial performance and strategic positioning, though market reactions indicate some investor caution.

Full transcript - Zaptec AS (ZAP) Q3 2025:

Kurt Ostlam, CEO, Saabtec: Hello, and welcome to Saptec and our presentation of the financial results for the third quarter. My name is Kurt Ostlam, I'm the CEO. And together with CFO, Eirik Helm, we will take you through the highlights from the third quarter. The third quarter was a really strong quarter for Saabtec, driven by the strong EV sales across Europe. The heading of this slide is steady progress.

And the reason for that is that we see year over year that we have an increase in revenue, gross margin and EBITDA for Subtech. The third quarter is always affected by the season. Both installers and the end user have the summer break during this quarter. First in the Nordic countries in July and then in August for the rest of Europe. And this is expected and planned from our side that we see a lower activities in these months due to this summer break.

But despite this, we have delivered a really strong third quarter. And I'm happy to share that we have September was a record month for Subtech. Never before have we delivered so many chargers and installed so many chargers in one single month as we did in September. And even better, this record is already being beaten by even higher installed number of Subtech chargers in October. So this record installation and strong order intake points to future growth for Subtech.

We have also in this quarter have a robust performance where we reinforce our leadership in our core markets, especially in the home market in Norway, we have seen a really strong performance in this quarter. At the same time, we have strengthened our position in major markets in Europe. We have normalized our inventory during the third quarter, and we expect the inventory to be reduced further into the fourth quarter. And this is driving robust cash flow and improved the liquidity to Subtech.

Eirik Helm, CFO, Saabtec: Okay. So I'll briefly take you through the financial highlights before we dive into the details later in the presentation. Q3 was strong in terms of revenue and orders for Suptech. The revenue was up 23% compared to same period last year. The order intake increased by 35% and the backlog strengthened 44%.

The gross margin came in at 39%, around the same level as same period last year. We spent million in OpEx, leaving us with an EBITDA of NOK21 million, equivalent to a 6% margin. The EBITDA was significantly improved compared to the same period last year, where we delivered NOK 4,000,000 in EBITDA.

Kurt Ostlam, CEO, Saabtec: As said, we had a strong revenue in the third quarter. We see 23 revenue increase compared to the third quarter last year. And even if we expect a lower activities during the summer months in the third quarter, we see that we have achieved almost the same high revenue as we had in the high second quarter. So we're really pleased with the revenue in the third quarter. Also, the order intake shows a really strong increase compared to the third quarter last year with 35% increase.

We have now our order backlog of million at the end of the third quarter. And even if I have said this before, I want to repeat it. There is seasonality when it comes to order intake in Subtech, because we want visibility so we can plan our production and be able to deliver our charger when it's needed in the market. That's why we try to take up preorders to have visibility for the next six months. And we do this in the second and the fourth quarter.

In the second quarter, we secure the orders for the second half. And in the fourth quarter, we secure the orders for the first half. That's why we will always have higher order intake in the second and fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, but still really strong third quarter this year with 35% increase.

Eirik Helm, CFO, Saabtec: So let's look into the gross margin in a bit more detail. Sustaining a strong gross margin is a key priority for Saptec. We have demonstrated that over time, we're able to increase the gross margin. This is demonstrated by the trend line in the graph. We have achieved this by targeted supply chain efforts and also from introducing products in the market with higher gross margin.

That said, from quarter to quarter, there might be variability in the gross margin. We saw an example of that in the fourth quarter with 39.4% gross margin, which was somewhat below the trend. As we look ahead, we plan for increased gross margin and we think higher deliveries of the Subtech O2 will lift the gross margin in the future. So over to EBITDA, we increased EBITDA with NOK17 million from NOK4 million in the same period last year to NOK21 million this quarter. If you look at this quarterly sequential EBITDA development, it's important to bear in mind the seasonality, which Kurt mentioned.

When the top line is impacted, it has an effect on EBITDA. So I'd like to zoom out and on the next slide, see demonstrate the LTM development. As you can see here, we have demonstrated the ability to grow EBITDA over time if you look at the last 12. We're targeting to increase this further in the quarters to come and expect based on current visibility to drive LTM EBITDA above NOK 100,000,000 when we look at Q4.

Kurt Ostlam, CEO, Saabtec: The EV market continues to strengthen throughout Europe. And if you look at the plug in vehicle sales in the third quarter compared to third quarter last year, we saw an increase by 36%. And if you look at the biggest car market in Europe, Germany, they have impressive 57% increase in the third quarter. This shows the potential and gives a great outlook for Subtech. The way we are executing our strategy is that we build on our success in our core markets like The Nordics, and we accelerate the rollout of new products, the Go2 and the Pro IceFiles this year, and we expand into major markets in Europe.

And all the time, we have focused on the cost and looking after our working capital and make sure that we optimize our cash flow. When we look in the mature markets or core markets, we see that Norway had 33% increase in revenue in the third quarter compared to third quarter last year. This is impressive. And in fact, Norway have already passed the target for the budget for the entire 2025. Also in Denmark, we see an increase in EV sales and then also a really nice increase in sales of SATA charger in Denmark.

And the increase was 14% in the third quarter. In Sweden, our biggest market with a really high market share, we also see 11% increase on top of a very strong quarter last year. So great performance of all these three markets. And as we have said, a new record in September and a new record in October. We installed more than 25,000 subtercharger in October month.

This is really great achievements. And if you look at this graph, you can see the seasonality with a dip in each summer break and then a strong growth in the autumn. And the growth have never been higher than we see these days. And we're really looking forward to see the results of November if we can manage to set another new record. And we are producing and delivering according to our plan.

We are now producing between 6,007 units of our new products, Saabtec Pro M and E and Saabtec Go two. And the most important with this slide is that we are ready and well positioned to scale up the production of these products when needed. We also have a strong growth in new major markets in the third quarter. We have 54% growth in major markets like Benelux, UK, Germany and France in the third quarter. When that said, we are not satisfied with the development and we are impatient and we want to grow even faster in these in some of these markets.

But we are now putting in more resource into the sales and also delivering new features into these major markets. And we expect to see the results of these efforts going into 2026.

Eirik Helm, CFO, Saabtec: Let's look a bit more into the cost side. We continue to focus our OpEx on innovation and targeted commercial efforts. This includes a new brand campaign launched recently in the fourth quarter. We continue the trend to grow the revenue more than we grow the costs. It's important to note that in the third quarter, the Subtex share price was up more than 50%.

This had an impact on our OpEx and the explanation for that is that we have a share based bonus program for employees and the effect of that was around NOK5 million in the quarter. As we look ahead, we plan for a continued sustainable OpEx level aiming for increasing the top line more than we increase the cost to boost our profitability further. And then let's look into our inventory. Subtex excessive inventory historically dates back to 2023. We had significantly boosted order intake in the first half of the year, leading to a high production order for us.

These production orders were to be delivered at the 2023. However, the market turned around and softened significantly when interest rates spiked and EV sales declined. We have since 2024 worked to normalize inventory in a controlled manner. The third quarter marked another step in the right direction where we reduced inventory with million. We are now approaching the target levels.

However, we expect a continued decline in the inventory in the next quarter. And then let's look at our liquidity position. We delivered a strong cash flow from positive result and from cash release from the normalization of the inventory also in Q3. We added NOK66 million in liquidity. With NOK532 million available, we are now in a robust position to manage future growth and to navigate future market uncertainties.

And with that, I leave it to Kirt to sum up.

Kurt Ostlam, CEO, Saabtec: Yes. And the main driver for our sales are, of course, the EV sales in Europe. And the EV sales in Europe are strong and are expected to stay strong. And we have shown that we are positioned to maintain our leadership in our core markets. And with the record installation rates we have shown, we create new growth opportunities for Subtech.

We are now doing strategic sales initiatives and new product features launching into new markets, and we expect to see results of this going forward. So all in all, we have a continued outlook for profitable growth for Subtech. So thank you for following this presentation, and thank you for following Subtech's journey.

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