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Seco SpA reported a robust financial performance for the third quarter of 2025, with significant year-over-year growth in key metrics. The company's sales increased by 9% compared to the same period last year, contributing to an increase in EBITDA by 50% and an EBITDA margin of 22%. Despite a 30% decline in sales in Germany, Seco's overall performance was buoyed by strong growth in other main markets. The company's stock price rose by 4.18% following the earnings release, reflecting investor confidence in the company's strategic direction and growth prospects.
Key Takeaways
- Seco SpA's Q3 2025 sales rose 9% year-over-year.
- EBITDA increased by 50%, with a margin of 22%.
- Stock price climbed 4.18% post-earnings announcement.
- New production facility near Arezzo to boost capacity by 50% by Q2 2026.
- Full-year guidance of $200 million+ confirmed.
Company Performance
Seco SpA demonstrated strong performance in Q3 2025, with sales growth across all major markets except Germany. The company's gross profit margin reached 55%, and it reported a $10 million increase in adjusted net income. The leverage ratio remained just above 1x EBITDA, indicating healthy financial leverage.
Financial Highlights
- Revenue: Increased by 9% year-over-year.
- Earnings per share (EPS): Not explicitly provided but implied improvement through increased net income.
- Gross profit margin: 55%.
- EBITDA: Up 50% year-over-year.
- Cash generation: $2 million in Q3 2025.
Outlook & Guidance
Seco SpA has confirmed its full-year guidance of over $200 million in constant currency, with expectations of strong Q4 revenue exceeding $50 million. The company is focusing on expanding its software recurring revenue and anticipates significant growth over the next three to five years.
Executive Commentary
Max, the CEO, highlighted the company's strategic direction: "We are standing at the crossroads of a technology revolution." He emphasized Seco's mission to simplify AI usage at the edge, aiming to strengthen its position as a leading partner in the industry.
Risks and Challenges
- Sales decline in Germany: A 30% drop in this market could signal regional challenges.
- Slow B2B AI adoption: Fragmented technology stacks may hinder faster adoption.
- Vending sector destocking: This could impact revenue from specific verticals.
- Macroeconomic pressures: Potential global economic slowdowns could affect overall performance.
Q&A
Analysts inquired about the company's order intake, which increased by 10% year-over-year, and the book-to-bill ratio, which remains consistently around 1. Seco also reported $24 million in design wins for 2026, highlighting its strategic planning and growth potential.
Full transcript - Seco SpA (IOT) Q3 2025:
Clarence, Unspecified Executive, SECO: Good afternoon and many thanks for all those who have connected to this call. Today, as usual, our CEO, Max, will take you through the main updates in our business. Before that, our CFO, Lorenzo, will run you through a detailed analysis of our financial performance. Let me start with this snapshot of our Q3 numbers. There are three messages we want to convey today. First, our top line, which recorded another acceleration in growth compared to the same period last year. Second, our continuous margin KPI progression, with both gross margin and EBITDA reaching their best levels in two years. Third, our guidance for the end of the year, which we are in a position to reconfirm both on top line and gross profit. To complete this picture, we also wanted to reiterate some of the key milestones we achieved in the past three months.
On the business side, this includes the launch of our first joint product with Raspberry Pi, the Pi Vision, based on the latest CM5 chip. We also launched our ClearVent telemetry platform, consolidating our historical leadership in that vertical. More broadly, our Application Hub continues to fill with a growing number of algorithms on track to reach our target of over 150 dedicated solutions by early next year. Let me now hand over to our CFO, Lorenzo, for a more in-depth look in our numbers.
Lorenzo, CFO, SECO: Thank you, Clarence, and good afternoon to all. Let's take a look at the key financial highlights on the nine months 2025 KPIs. We are up 5% year on year on sales, with a plus 9% in Q3 2025 respect to Q3 2024, increasing from the plus 6.5% of the second quarter 2025 respect to the second quarter 2024. The growth is coming from all main markets under recovery on 2024 overstocking context, with the exception of Germany, which signs a minus 30% year on year. Software business is growing for the recurring revenue part at plus 11%, driven by the progressive increase of the connected devices to the platform. For what concerns gross profit margin, really good performance is recorded in Q3 2025 with a 55% profitability.
This thanks to multiple factors: the contribution of software sales, a positive sales mix in edge computing on profitability terms, and good purchasing results on electronic components. Most important for us is the EBITDA indicator. We are plus 50%, 5-0 year on year, with a 22% EBITDA margin recorded in Q3 2025. Key driver of this result is the operating leverage over decreasing OPEX, thanks to lower manufacturing costs recorded quarter by quarter during this year. Adjusted net income increased by about $10 million year on year, primarily as a result of the EBITDA performance. I want to point out the reduction of interest expenses in the period by $600,000, thanks to the progressive deleverage and to the official rate reduction. Passing to commenting on the sales trend by area, it's important to point out that year on year, all key geographic areas grow at more than 20%.
The only exception is Germany, featured by a difficult economic and industrial context, which registered a -30%. Please consider that even EMEA, excluding Germany, recorded a growth higher than 20%. Having a look to the end market, our key verticals experience a double-digit growth, industrial and medical in particular. The only exception is vending, impacted by the destocking matter over a German customer. Let's pass to the adjusted EBITDA performance in the nine months of 2025. We recorded a 21% in profitability terms, with a really strong 22.2% in Q3 2025. Other than sales and gross margin, the main driver of these results is the $4.6 million OPEX reduction, these excluding non-recurring items. The higher contributor to this achievement is the production efficiency, considered that manufacturing costs decreased by $2 million compared to the same period of 2024.
For what concerns non-recurring adjustments in these nine months, almost all are represented by the stock option actuarial value. For what concerns instead net financial position, in the third quarter, the Group had a cash generation of $2 million, adjusting the KPI by the growth investment of the two new plants in Arezzo and China for a total consideration of $3 million paid in Q3 2025. On the financial side, I want to point out the good leverage ratio, just above one times EBITDA calculated on the last 12 months. Thank you very much for your attention. I pass the talk to Max to continue with our presentation.
Clarence, Unspecified Executive, SECO: Thanks, Lorenzo, and good afternoon to everyone. Now let me spend some time discussing our business and its prospects going forward. As you know, we are standing at the crossroads of a technology revolution. Artificial intelligence is transforming the industrial sector, unlocking new ways to operate, optimize, and scale the business. Whether it is smart automation, immersive human-machine interaction, or real-time data monetization, all these are enabling faster, smarter decisions and driving a dramatic transformation into the industrial field. Despite this potential, it is a matter of fact that the adoption of AI in the B2B nowadays remains slow. Why? Because OEMs face a fragmented tech stack, poor interoperability, and complex stakeholder coordination. Legacy systems only add to the challenge. That is why the winners in this space want to just offer powerful technology that will radically simplify its adoption.
This is where I think SECO will mark a significant difference. This is our mission to really become the better partner to simplify the usage of the AI at the edge. Through the years, my vision for SECO has been to offer a fully integrated end-to-end solution. Now we are really there. Everything is ready. I think thanks to it, we can really simplify and accelerate the adoption of edge AI for the OEM. In fact, with our modular vision HMI system and our own stack software framework, Clear, together with all the recent launch of our dedicated AI algorithm App Store, they will really offer an end-to-end solution ready to be implemented into the OEM end solution and product. This is where our strength in R&D will mark a significant differentiation factor between ourselves and the rest of the competition.
Thanks to our decade of expertise, we bring now verticals' know-how into connected solutions, enabling a new business model to accelerate further the growth of the recurring part of our software business. If we go to the next slide, here we prepared some examples to make it simpler in terms of comprehension for everyone. This is divided and we will see it in three different kinds of verticals, but you can imagine something similar, of course, for any vertical. This is where our capability to digitalize the product of the client, both on the hardware and on the software side, really makes a huge difference also in terms of user experience. The picture is extremely clear. I do not want to say too much else.
Just everything that you can see here is digital payment, tailored refiling, dynamic pricing, predicting maintenance, all this kind of value-added service unlocked thanks to our software suite, Clear. If we go to the next slide, we can see, in fact, how the vertical for the vending space, Clear Vending, is working. This is an example of how our platform, which is hardware agnostic, works and really provides smart data and AI analytics ready to be used and leveraged by our customers. Moving forward, I think this is another good example, taking it as a reference example for any kind of industrial factories.
Here you can see how we, for Garbo Zera, which is an Italian producer, we really simplify their production line, combining modular vision with Clear, being able to directly show on the production line a lot of essential KPI, quality, production, so on and so forth, to really help the customer to increase efficiencies as well as production numbers. Another strong example on the energy is, of course, what we are doing with Hitachi Energy, where basically we combine, again, our strong expertise on the hardware part, producing for them, designing and producing for them an integrated grid computer to manage the distribution of the energies across the second station, as well as integrating all the data within Clear. This is providing an unparalleled solution to really help the customer to manage a lot of complexity and a lot of interaction between himself and all their business partners.
I think looking at this such an example and thinking about what we are doing into the Application Hub, you can really understand which is the potential, which is completely unexpressed right now of our software offering. As we go, we are continuing adding new applications made by SECO and also by partners to our Application Hub, which will be launched later in the beginning of January 2026. It will unlock another piece of complexity, providing the capability to the customer to really implement AI on a device very quickly and in a super simple and user-friendly way. All in all, all of these such solutions are always hardware agnostic. This is important to be able to cover also from a software perspective customers that are not using SECO hardware eventually. Finally, let me introduce our launch on the Raspberry Pi modular vision.
This is an amazing new product, low cost to cover the industrial demand. We will start to sell it during the first quarter of the next year. Of course, we are expecting to have an acceleration of our organic growth thanks to this product, which is, by the way, one of a family of new products that we are launching right now. We will expect to receive orders and forward revenue in the forthcoming quarter. This is important also to mention in this product, it's available, Clear. The framework is already pre-installed, potentially available with a few clicks for any customer. Let me go into the investments that we are doing into the production side.
In this picture, you can see the new facility, which is located nearby Arezzo, our headquarter, at 3,500 square meters, a very new building that will be up and running by the beginning of the second quarter next year and will increase our production capacity by 50% and will provide also additional savings in terms of cost, reaching efficiencies at the maximum level. I think we can go now to the KPI of the company. We have a solid KPI. I think these kinds of KPIs are really helpful to understand also which could be eventually the future of our growth. Looking at the backlog and the order intake, you can appreciate that it is up by 10% year on year already. Our book-to-bill continues to be healthy.
All these key indicators are really confirming the good trend and the growth that we can keep in the near future. Just to conclude my speech and leave space for a Q&A section, I want to reiterate and fully confirm our guidance, which is set at $200 million plus in a constant currency effect. I think we covered all the main topics of this publication. I am now happy to take some questions, if any. Thank you very much to all.
Call Moderator: Thank you to the speakers today. We now have an opportunity for questions. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand function on your screen. For those dialing in, it is star nine on your keypad. Once your name is announced, please unmute your line and state your company name before asking your question. Thank you. First question today comes from Mr. Marco Vitale. Please, the floor to you.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. The first one is on the outlook. We appreciate that you have confirmed your full guidance. I was wondering if you could provide us some additional insights on the order intake trend. Also, what are the business pipeline as we are heading to 2026? The second question concerns the profitability. Once again, you have delivered very strong operating leverage and also very healthy gross profit margin. Going forward, do you still expect, say, additional margin expansion coming from operating leverage, also taking into account that you will ramp up the new capacity, the new plant in Arezzo also in the first part of the year? I was wondering if this could have some, say, headwind in terms of profitability expansion going forward. Thank you.
Max, CEO, SECO: Thank you. About the revenue, we are expecting the last quarter of this year to be very strong with our revenue well above $50 million. It will drive us into a landing figure which is fully confirmed and which is reflecting and potentially beating the guidance. I think all the orders are already there. It is a matter of execution. We are executing well right now. I have no doubt that this part will be covered by the end of the year. In terms of profitability, the good trend that we are having, I would expect it to continue because it is in some way structural in terms of business model. As we go, we will continue to increase piece by piece proportionally the revenue side that is coming from the software, and it will provide us additional headroom to improve our profitability.
As well as the new building, I would assume to see it fully working by sometime in May next year. It will drive in the second half of the year, of course, efficiencies and so reduction in terms of our production cost.
Thank you.
Call Moderator: Thank you, Mr. Vitale, for your questions. Next question today comes from Mr. Filippo Mazzoleni. Please, the floor to you. Mr. Mazzoleni, kindly unmute your line.
I have one. I have a couple of questions. The first one regarding CapEx out of the $33 million one-off plan. Could you please share the split between tangible and intangible and indicate when the remaining $7 million is expected to be spent? I mean, the second quarter 2025 or the first quarter 2026 or later. Secondly, on gross profit, could you give a bit more color on the business mix driving the margin improvement and on the savings achieved on purchasing? Thank you.
Max, CEO, SECO: Right. I will cover the one on the gross profit, and I will let Lorenzo cover the one on the Capex. On the gross profit side, it's split between a mix of three positive factors. One, as I said, is the software. The other one is because we are able now to buy components at a better price without reducing the price to the customer. This is giving us an additional headwind. The last, but not the least, is, of course, due to a mix in the sales where medical and defense are more present against, for example, industrial or vending. Those two verticals, of course, provide us definitely a better margin than the others. As a mix of the three, it is due to this such of results in the gross profit. Bottom line, I think a good portion of it is long-term sustainable.
Lorenzo, CFO, SECO: Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Max. Having a look to the Capex for these first nine months, 2025, and the split between intangible and tangible, we recorded about $12 million in intangible Capex, on which, as you know, the biggest part is represented by the R&D capitalized over standard product. The residual part is tangible Capex. On this residual part, $3 million are represented by development extraordinary Capex relating to this new plant we are developing in Arezzo and China. For sure, the plant in Arezzo is pretty much bigger with respect to the one in China. The bigger part is relating of this $3 million to the new plant in Arezzo. Thank you.
Thank you.
Call Moderator: Thank you, Mr. Mazzoleni. Next question comes from Ms. Arianna Terrazzi. Please, the floor to you. Ms. Terrazzi, kindly unmute your line.
Yes. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can indeed. Thank you.
Presentation time, Max. First, I would ask a clarification on expansionary Capex. The plant in Arezzo will be ready next April. Could you recall us when this production site and the new lines in China will be at full regime? To avoid misunderstandings, is it possible to know what revenues level can we assume when at regime? Lastly, and second, last, a follow-up on profitability and costs. So far, this year, you were able to manage well components purchase. I was wondering if you could provide more color on this front and an update on cost dynamics. Thank you.
Max, CEO, SECO: All right. So about the production capacity, we basically will close our production facility in Tregozzano, which is another place nearby Arezzo as well. We will start in mass production, basically 100% of activities in May into this new plant, which is again nearby Arezzo. We will add, starting from January, also an assembly factory in China. Thanks to these two adoptions, we have enough production capacity to produce internally around EUR 350 million in revenue. We thought it was good for our company to make these investments now to prepare ourselves for the next three to five years where we see a potential very strong growth. To make these investments right on time, it is important to be ready to capture the growth later as it will come.
In terms of gross profit margin, mainly our capability to strengthen the relationship with the key silicon vendors, which are partners of SECO like Qualcomm, Intel, NXP, and many others, is providing us also the capability to buy components, CPU, processors at a lower price, or let me say, at one of the best prices available to the market. It is giving us a competitive advantage in terms of pricing. Of course, headroom where we are improving our gross margin on the existing customers. I don't know if it is enough, Arianna, or do you want to know?
That's great here. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you.
Call Moderator: Perfect. Thank you, Ms. Terrazzi. Next question comes from Mr. Barath Nagaray. Please, the floor to you.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a few, please. One is just a follow-up on the net new capacity. Sorry. I think you said you're shutting down, if I'm not wrong, one of the old factories. The new one that you're building will take its place, and you'll start production from May. In terms of the net new capacity increase, what would that be? Is that 50% still, or is that lesser than that? That's the first question. The second one is around, could you speak about any looming supply chain risks? For example, this Nexperia export ban, which seems to have now been lifted, and also higher memory prices in the industry. How diversified is SECO in terms of the supply chain? The last one, just further clarification on the Capex.
Should we kind of assume we have $20 million approximately of Capex currently for 2025, 2026 each year? Should we just increase $5 million for each year for the new capacity that you're trying to build? Just wanted to make sure that I get that right. Thank you.
Max, CEO, SECO: All right. About the first question, I confirm it's 50% net net, meaning that from where we are right now, 50% plus, it will drive our production capacity in total at $350 million potentially in revenue. That's for what regard the production capacity. In terms of risk on the supply chain and what's happened with Nexperia, yes, you are completely right. It was a problem, basically, during the last couple of months. We did a lot of work with our internal R&D to select pin-to-pin compatible alternatives, which we are now validated. Hopefully, we had enough stock in our warehouse to fulfill the demand of the product by the end of the year.
For the next year, we are replacing basically the majority of these such components with new components, pin-to-pin compatible, validating them thanks to our internal R&D very quickly, and made them available into the bill of material to enable our purchasing to acquire the goods. I think regarding the Capex, as always, Lorenzo is three times better than me to cover the point. Lorenzo, the stage is yours.
Lorenzo, CFO, SECO: Yes. Thank you. For what concerns the future, and you were talking about our average $20 million Capex. Also, if we take a look to last year, this is correct that $15 million is in general represented that we can continue to have this number for what concerns intangible. We have on average $5 million on tangible. This could increase a little for what concerns next year, including these development Capex. I would say in a range between $3 million-$4 million, not more for next year. I would say $2 million-$3 million in addition for this year. We have development Capex, but that will not change in a significant term our Capex trend, our Capex figures.
Understood. Thank you very much. Just a quick follow-up, if I may. In terms of the October book-to-bill ratio, have you seen any further improvement from, let's say, the slight dip that we are seeing in the graph in September? Thank you.
Max, CEO, SECO: Are you meaning the order intake or the book-to-bill?
The book-to-bill, sorry.
The book-to-bill is always like a cardio.
Yeah. Yeah.
The reason why it's so simple, for example, it was higher in August and July because we had also holidays. We did less production. This is the reason why it's higher. When we were back and we made a lot of revenue in September, it went down. It's not in absolute term. I would suggest to you guys to see the left part of this slide where you can see the order intake month by month. This is where you can see actually the trend of the business.
No, absolutely not. Thank you for that. That's very useful. The reason I asked the question is because you have said in the statement above the book-to-bill is consistently about 1 for the first half. Hence my question. Thank you.
Yes. As I said, it is looking the book-to-bill is still above 1.
Okay. Okay. Thank you very much, Max.
Thank you.
Lorenzo, CFO, SECO: Thank you.
Call Moderator: Thank you. Next questions come from Ms. Alexandra Arzoba. Please, the floor to you.
Can you hear me?
Yes, we can indeed.
Okay. Great. Thank you for your presentation. A couple of questions or follow-up on my end. If I remember correctly, during your last presentation, you said that you have roughly EUR 24 million in design wins and new contracts that will generate, let's say, new revenues next year. Maybe an update if you are on track with these projects and if you see any risk on delivering this EUR 24 million and if you are gaining, let's say, achieving new contracts, new design wins. This is the first one. The second one is maybe some clarifications on Clear. As I can see, you increased slightly the proportion on recurring revenues of the total. Doing some algebra, some maths, it seems that in absolute value, the recurring revenue stays at about EUR 2.1-2.2 million in the quarter, so the same as the last couple of quarters.
How is the conversion rate of, let's say, project to recurring revenues going on? What is the evolution of the recurring revenue you expect in absolute terms in the coming months and quarters? Thank you.
Max, CEO, SECO: All right. Let's start with the evolution of the recurring revenue in Clear. We are expecting to see and to continue to see progression quarter by quarter. Excuse me. On the recurring revenue side, I think it will be next year much, much better because we have a few customers, but very important, that will run into the mass production on the software side. Therefore, will contribute in the recurring revenue later next year. In terms of design win, it's all confirmed. We got this $24 million that are related mainly to 2026. I think it's important to mention based on our business model now, we are working on new customer and new opportunity. If we get something now, you will have an effect maybe in the last quarter of 2026 or later in 2027.
We are at full speed now to collect important new business that will generate additional growth and additional revenue later in 2027. What you mentioned for 2026 is fully confirmed, is on track in terms of R&D so far. So far, so good. Thank you very much for your questions.
Thank you.
Call Moderator: Thank you, Mr. Nargi. Next question comes from Mr. Pietro Nargi. Please, the floor to you.
Hello. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Two main questions. The first one is on the operating expenses. We have seen a strong improvement on OPEX in the third quarter. In particular, if my calculations were correct, there is a decrease on labor costs, both on a quarter-on-quarter basis, but also compared to the third quarter of last year. I was wondering if this decrease in labor costs is also due to higher R&D CapEx over the quarter. This is my first question. The second one is on the current market consensus on fully R26. Assuming the confirmation of the guidance for 2025, and looking at the current consensus that is more or less EUR 230 million for 2026, that means organic growth in the mid-teens. I was wondering if you have any comments on that expectation.
Also, considering your order backlog is growing by 10%, what is your feelings about current consensus expectation? Thank you.
Max, CEO, SECO: As you know, Pietro, we are not used to comment on the consensus. We will provide, as always, as we go, we will guide the market across our numbers as we are now in a phase to prepare the business plan 2026-2029 for our board. I do not want and I cannot comment on the consensus. About what you said on the labor cost, what you are thinking is completely wrong. The level of capitalization on R&D is fully stable, even both comparing it with the previous quarter and the previous year. The benefits that you are saying into the labor cost are mainly driven by a couple of effects. We did last year, and I mentioned I did it many times, a strong work in reduction of our fixed cost. This is a portion of that work.
The efficiencies, basically, that we had into the production made us capable to deliver, let me say, good revenue stream with less man-at-opera cost, with less cost of employees related to production. The saving in terms of cost is coming from production. It's not coming from anything else.
Okay. Many thanks for your clarification.
Call Moderator: Thank you, Mr. Nargi. Currently, we do not have any questions queued. We will wait a few seconds to give everyone the opportunity to raise their hands. As there are no further questions, I now have the pleasure of handing over back to the management team for any final comments. Thank you.
Max, CEO, SECO: Okay. Thank you very much to all to follow this presentation. In the next forecoming weeks, we will be around, especially Clarence, in different kinds of roadshow. Anyway, our IR team is always happy to be in touch for any further analysis. Thank you very much to all. See you soon. Bye. Bye-bye.
Call Moderator: Thank you. This presentation will now come to an end.
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