Earnings call transcript: Vaisala Q3 2025 sees strong sales growth

Vaisala Oyj (NASDAQ:VAIA) reported robust third-quarter results for 2025, with net sales rising by 13% year-on-year, driven by impressive growth in subscription sales. Despite a decline in orders received, the company’s EBITDA margin remained strong at 18.2%. Following the earnings announcement, Vaisala’s stock saw a modest increase of 0.77%, reflecting positive investor sentiment. InvestingPro data shows the company maintains a GOOD financial health score, with a P/E ratio of 26.3x, suggesting premium valuation relative to near-term earnings growth potential.

Key Takeaways

• Net sales increased by 13% year-on-year, with subscription sales growing 57%.
• EBITDA margin remained strong at 18.2%, excluding restructuring costs.
• Orders received decreased by 21% year-on-year.
• Stock price rose by 0.77% following the earnings announcement.

Company Performance

Vaisala demonstrated solid performance in Q3 2025, marked by a 13% increase in net sales compared to the same period last year. This growth was primarily fueled by a 57% surge in subscription sales, showcasing the company’s successful expansion in digital services. However, the decline in orders received by 21% highlights potential challenges in sustaining future revenue growth.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: €590-605 million (full-year guidance)
• EBITDA Margin: 18.2% (20% excluding restructuring costs)
• Free Cash Flow: Approximately €40 million

Market Reaction

Vaisala’s stock price increased by 0.77% after the earnings report, reaching a last close value of €45.7. This movement places the stock closer to its 52-week high of €54.9, indicating positive investor sentiment driven by strong financial performance and strategic initiatives. According to InvestingPro analysis, the company has maintained dividend payments for 33 consecutive years, demonstrating remarkable financial stability. The stock currently trades near its Fair Value, based on comprehensive analysis of multiple valuation metrics.

Outlook & Guidance

Vaisala maintained its full-year guidance, expecting net sales between €590-605 million and an operating result of €90-100 million. The company anticipates continued growth in industrial measurements and stable performance in the life sciences and power sectors. However, challenges persist in the renewable energy and aviation markets.

Executive Commentary

CEO Kai Öistämö highlighted the company’s profitability, stating, "We maintained a very solid profitability, 18.2% EBITDA margin." He also emphasized the scalability of the software business, noting, "If software business grows 50% year on year, one should expect that it scales."

Risks and Challenges

• Decline in orders received may impact future revenue.
• Volatility in the renewable energy and aviation markets poses challenges.
• Currency fluctuations, particularly USD and Chinese Yuan depreciation, could affect financial performance.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the impact of U.S. tariffs, to which the company reported no significant effects. There was also interest in the strong performance of the industrial measurements sector and the positive contribution from the ex-weather business at the EBITDA level.

Full transcript - Vaisala Oyj A (VAIAS) Q3 2025:

Niina Ala-Luopa, Investor Relations, Vaisala: Hello and welcome to Vaisala’s third quarter results call. I’m Niina Ala-Luopa from Vaisala’s Investor Relations, and today with me in this call are President and CEO Kai Öistämö and CFO Heli Lindfors. Like always, first Kai will present the results, and then we have time for questions.

Kai Öistämö, President and CEO, Vaisala: Hello and welcome everybody from my side as well. Vaisala had a good third quarter, strong sales and profitability, as the headline says. Let’s dive a little bit deeper. Where did it come from and what are the details behind? First notion, the net sales growth was strong, 13% in reported currency, which can be characterized really as strong sales in a quarter. The orders received simultaneously declined by 21%, leading into a decline in the order book. Whilst when going back to the financial performance, we maintained a very solid profitability, 18.2% EBITDA margin. If I exclude extraordinary items due to the restructuring and so on, actually the EBITDA margin was 20%, which I think is an all-time high for us in terms of an EBITDA margin, if I recall right. Really happy on industrial measurements on the demand picture and now clearly also broader than earlier.

On the other hand, weather environment side, more challenging market environment, and I’ll talk about both in detail in the coming slides. Really happy on the subscription sales growth continued to be very strong, 57% year on year, and also the underlying organic growth on a very healthy level. As I said in the release already, it was great to see also subscription sales now contributing positively also to the profitability of the company. The market environment continued to be challenging. If you think about the entire third quarter, inside of the third quarter, it started with the tariff changes and kind of fixing the tariffs between Europe and the U.S. At the same time, during the year, continued in the third quarter, the depreciation of euro, vis-à-vis USD and Chinese yuan.

The environment has many moving parts, and the depreciation of dollar and renminbi really are things that don’t often get talked about as much as the tariffs. Actually, if you think about it, like the magnitude of the depreciation of those currencies, vis-à-vis euro, the impact actually is equal, if not greater, than what the tariff impacts actually are. It’s good to remember that as well. As I will conclude at the end of my presentation, the business outlook for the year 2025 remained unchanged. Before going into the numbers and performance of the company in more detail, good to kind of look at a couple of words on strategy execution inside of the company. This time, in terms of a couple, we picked a couple of kind of interesting launches that are reflecting also the strategy and strategy execution of the company.

The first one, Vaisala Circular, it’s a service product, and the emphasis really is on the word product, where the industrial measurements probes are recalibrated and provide a reuse service where the customers maintain a dedicated probe pool at our service centers. Essentially, what it means is that we are able to, we have productized the calibration service in such a way that now we are selling an always accurate uptime and continuous operations in our customers’ operations instead of talking about calibration or other technical terms. This is obviously kind of crucial in terms of selling services, but how do you productize it? Crucial for the customers to understand what’s the value, and crucial for our sales to actually then be able to communicate what the value is and what the customer should be paying for.

Kind of a great example of the things that we are doing to drive our service sales, both in industrial measurements, where Vaisala Circular is an example of, but we are doing similar things also in the weather and environment side. Next, on next weather, the hail forecasts. Hail actually is one of the more difficult weather phenomena to actually forecast. It’s been really one of these places where, or one of the things that really has been really a challenge for meteorologists for a long, long time. Super happy to report that now we have in next weather hail forecasts, and hail is really important in terms of the damage it causes for various kinds of property or infrastructure. For us in Finland, the hail sometimes gets to be kind of pea size, and even that can kind of cause some damage.

In more southern countries, where more extreme weather and extreme thunderstorms typically are, when hails get to be baseball sized, they really can kind of create quite a bit of damage. It really is like billions of dollars losses in various kinds of places. The example we are showing here, where we can apply the kind of capability to the forecast and create alerts for hail, is solar parks. If you think about solar parks, there’s a whole host of glass facing upwards. In case of a hail, that’s really prone for damages. If you think about solar parks, one of the features is also that in many cases, they actually track sun, i.e., they are turnable. In case of a hail forecast, you can actually turn them sideways, so you can avoid the damages.

There’s a kind of a big market and unsolved problem that we are solving for here with a hail forecast as an example. WindCube, the next generation, is really again a good example of how we push the boundaries of the technology with our own R&D. With this evolution on LIDAR technology, we can actually increase the distance out of which we can read the wind and the wind fields, increase data availability, and much, much more robust performance in clean air and complex terrain environments. A significant step up in terms of performance, which I believe both demonstrates our capabilities and is important for that business and puts us squarely in the lead also from technology and solution and performance perspective in that business. Moving on to the financials, starting with the group level, strong growth, as I said, in both business areas.

Orders received decreased as talked about, and I’ll still talk about that a little bit later when I go into the business areas because there’s differences in those in the performance side. Order book consequently down from the same time last year. Net sales-wise, very strong quarter, 13% up year on year. If you take the constant currency side perspective, it would have been 16% up year from year on year, same time also third quarter last year. Gross margin a bit down, and I’ll give you, it’s easier to explain when I go through the different business areas. Nothing dramatic about that there. On the profitability side, as I said, if you exclude the restructuring side, actually the EBITDA margin being all-time high, at least in my recollection. Cash conversion, no news there, remained on a strong level. Now going into industrial measurements, yet another strong quarter.

Really happy to note that now the positive results are coming from all market segments on all geographies. Super happy to see that now Asia performing really well compared to the same time last year. Equally so, almost equally so, Europe. At the same time, the U.S. growth continuing. Obviously, in the U.S. and in China, for example, where the local currencies have devalued vis-à-vis euro, that has a negative impact. If you, like if I take, for example, U.S. in a constant currency, year-on-year growth was 9% in industrial measurements in America’s region. I promised to talk about the gross margin in the business area side.

If I take industrial measurements side first, what I forgot to say is the orders received actually increased on the industrial measurement side, corresponding to the net sales growth, actually a little bit more, increased 9% year-on-year here when the net sales grew 6% in reported currencies. Back to the gross margin, gross margin decreased a little bit. This really is due to exchange rate impacts. Clearly, a big part of the impact was the proportional impact on the U.S. tariffs. Here it may be worthwhile just pausing and explaining the math that we’ve said that we have been fully mitigating the tariff impacts in our business. That means that we’ve raised the prices correspondingly to whatever the tariff costs have been.

If you think about how that math works, it means actually that the relative, even if it’s fully mitigated in absolute terms, since the divider and the above the line and below the line, when you do the division, are added the same amount, the relative number actually goes somewhat down. That is really like in, if you have time, just play with the math and you’ll see what I mean. That’s a big part of the explanation. I am not worried. It’s within the normal boundaries in terms of what the gross margin changes have been. It’s worthwhile saying also that we are in the industrial measurement side. It’s obviously easier to mitigate by price changes, extraordinary events like the import duties and such changes in import duty regimes compared to fluctuations in currencies. Since we price, and any global company would do the same, price in local currency.

You know, you cannot go every time currency exchange rates go back and forth, go change the local pricings. Obviously, long term, there are pricing means to compensate this, but short term, you cannot react to all of this. It would not be constructively taken either from a customer perspective. In weather environment in net sales, actually a great quarter, and subscription sales wise equally so. At the same time, the orders received decreased in weather environment driven by a couple of things. There’s a strong decline in renewable energy market, as we have been saying since the first quarter of this year. Nothing has really changed on that. There was a kind of a significant change in the market in the beginning of the year. It continues to be on a low level. We do not expect that to change any time soon.

I’ll come back to that in the outlook. Likewise, now in aviation and meteorology markets, there was a very strong comparison period and kind of big orders taken in the comparison period last year. Also, this part of the market, when you take aviation and meteorology, there is a fluctuation between kind of natural fluctuation in those markets, as well as this year, where there have been a couple of headwinds that we talked about before. One being the China investments due to, to a large extent, I would argue, the fact of the cycle in terms of the five-year plan, this year being the last year of the five-year plan and very often being the least investment, at least in this sector. We have seen that in declining order intake.

Simultaneously, the administration changes and DOGE and so on impacts on delaying the order intake this year in the U.S., which obviously is another contributor to this. There are kind of gives and takes on the rest of the market, which is within the kind of, I would argue, in the normal boundaries. Good to remember in the comparison period in the aviation and meteorology side on the back of really a kind of a very strong now two years in terms of an order intake, really driven by the European stimulus fund on the radar. Radar networks in Southern Europe, most notably in our case, was the big order that we got from Spain. There were multiple other ones that we benefited from as well during the past year, year and a half, are still in our order book, and then they are being executed.

Now on the gross margin side, decrease of three percentage points, sales mix, stronger portion of the project revenues being recognized. That’s in plain English what the sales mix means. Same things as what I talked about in the industrial measurement side on exchange rate and the U.S. tariff impacts, albeit somewhat less pronounced in case of weather environment as the sales mix is more in, it’s not as heavily weighted in dollars as over the U.S. business is a little bit less than what in industrial measurement it is. EBITDA percentage being on a very healthy level of 14.6%. I mentioned the cash flow continued on a good level. Here you see it on the bridge on puts and takes on the cash flow. Cash conversion being at an excellent level of 1. Free cash flow around $40 million during the period.

If I look at the year to date, both net sales and profitability clearly improved during the first nine months compared to the same time last year. Orders received did decrease by 13% year on year, while net sales grew by 9% year on year. Subscription sales, if I take the first nine months of the year, almost incredible 58% up, obviously boosted by the acquisitions of WeatherDesk and Speedwell Climate, but also great performance on the underlying organic growth. Gross margin slightly negative. Same explanations that I went through. On EBITDA percentage and EBIT percentage, up from comparable time or same time last year. Worthwhile saying on the operating expenses, the restructuring costs, as said, also in regards of this past quarter have been not insignificant as we have been adjusting our renewable energy business to the new market reality. That’s now behind us, that restructuring.

Acquired businesses and so on, other explanations on when you look at the year-on-year comparison on operating expenses. Financial position continued on a very good level, low leverage on the balance sheet. We continue to have asset-light business model, no changes seen or foreseen in that. On this page, I think it’s good to note that the automated logistics center is now in a phase where we are loading it. It’s actually fully in schedule. We are putting material into that and starting to use it as scheduled in the fourth quarter of this year. Also a notable thing during the quarter was the acquisition of Quantera Systems.

Think about it this way, that it’s kind of an interesting team and technologies on monitoring CO₂ fluxes, which means question whether individual geographic area, field, or piece of land is a carbon sink or carbon emitter, which is a very interesting piece of technology. Potential long-term, kind of quite a bit of potential on that. That was announced in September. Market and business outlook. We continue to see growth in industrial measurement instruments, life science measurement solutions, and power. We continue to see roads as a stable marketplace. Renewable energy measurement solutions, meteorology, and aviation decline. This is outlook for the rest of the year.

Obviously, the renewable energy being kind of a clear change in the marketplace since the beginning of the year, whereas the meteorology and aviation are suffering slightly different market conditions, as I explained before, in terms of the government subsidies and government incentives, kind of on a lower level than when we compare to last year. On a business law outlook, no changes to this. We continue to see net sales to be between €590 million and €605 million, and operating result being between €90 million and €100 million. With that, I want to conclude my prepared remarks. I’ll open up for any questions you may have.

Conference Operator, Call Moderator: If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Nico Ruokangas from SEB. Please go ahead.

Hello, this is Nico Ruokangas from SCB. Thank you for the presentation. I have three questions, and I’ll go one by one. Starting with weather and environment and orders, which you already discussed, and you told the reasons why they have now declined for a couple of quarters. Should we soon start to see the trend in orders happening there, or has the demand continued sequentially weakening? Do you think that the U.S. government shutdown could affect you now in Q4?

Kai Öistämö, President and CEO, Vaisala: Yeah. Obviously, kind of when we talk about, we compare to year-on-year kind of things, we’ll obviously, when the comparables change, then that’ll change. Your question was on a sequential basis. Sequential basis in especially aviation meteorology, you know, things kind of come as they come. Even if there would be like numbers improvement or decline from one quarter to another, it would be hard to make a conclusion out of it since they are kind of, it’s a lumpy business as a starting point. As I tried to explain on meteorology and aviation, this is more of a, it’s a bit of a cyclical business where now we have enjoyed a, I would argue, almost like exceptionally high cycle of the in it for good almost two years. Now it’s more on a normal basis what it looks like.

I would not be overly worried about it at where I’m standing today. On the U.S. government shutdown, it’s a great question. Two comments on that. We’ve seen the budget proposal, and I would be actually happy if the budget, and this is the government’s budget proposal, not the minority budget proposal. I would be happy if and when that is approved, so I have no issues with what is proposed. The shutdown itself, obviously, you know, during the shutdown, getting a new order for next year since there’s no budget approved, nor there are a whole host of people furloughed, it’s postponing things. If I look at a bit on the history, typically what has happened is that during this kind of U.S. government shutdowns, they will then, the orders will just come a little bit later in.

If I take a kind of a 12 months average or what kind of a little bit longer time series, you know, it will normalize itself post a shutdown. It’s like a little bit plowing snow in front of a snowplow kind of a thing, at least has been in the past.

Okay, understood.

How long this will last. Yeah, we’ll see how long. It can stop tomorrow, or it can be continuing for some time.

Yeah, understood. Thanks. On the guidance, as it indicates for Q4, clearly kind of on year-on-year basis, weaker sales and EBITDA development than now in Q3. Is this basically explained by smaller project deliveries expected for Q4?

A big part of it is also very high comparable. If I’ll actually go, and I’m usually not doing this, I’ll try to go back in my slides just to illustrate what I’m saying on this slide. Oops, not this slide, here. If you look at this slide, it kind of like highlights the unusual nature of the last year in terms of how the order intake kind of behaved, and especially net sales behaved. We had a very weak first quarter, very strong second quarter, weak third quarter, and a very strong fourth quarter. If you went back into 2023 or earlier years, typically, you know, the second half, both quarters have been stronger. Typically, even the third quarter has been stronger than the second quarter clearly on an average year.

There’s a bit of, when you compare to year-on-year kind of numbers, the anomaly of last year makes it a bit harder this time around.

Yes, I think the second topic is actually the effects that Kai was referring to earlier on. In the beginning of the year, the effects were still more similar level to last year, whereas now in the second half of the year, we see more of an impact of the volatility of the effects. That will definitely be a factor in Q4 as well if the kind of rates remain as they are today.

Correct. It’s again a good illustration of that. If you go back and look at our second quarter results, we said that there was not really a material impact on effects yet.

Okay, thanks. This year, more normal seasonality expected than last year.

Correct, correct.

On the cost side, you mentioned the €3 million restructuring expenses. If we leave those out, it seems that your operating expenses were down in weather despite the acquisition or fixed expenses, but clearly up in industrial side. If you exclude those restructuring expenses, were those including something extraordinary, or is it kind of describing the trend you are now having?

Yeah, the extraordinary costs, as I said, they were related to the restructuring that I talked about in relation to the energy business and renewable energy business. I think your conclusion was exactly right. If you look at our numbers and we have now a good trend also on the industrial measurement side, we have been in a little bit longer kind of a time series again over the past two years where we had more modest growth. We were more conservative in spending and spending increases in industrial measurements. Now we see kind of clearly more growth opportunities and a bit more spending, not going wild, but a bit more spending on industrial measurement side.

All right. That’s a good explanation. I’ll leave the floor to the others. Thank you.

Conference Operator, Call Moderator: The next question comes from Pauli Lohai from Inderes. Please go ahead.

Hello, it’s Pauli from Indiers. I would start with this demand-related question. Have you seen any signs that the increased tariffs could start to dent the good market activity you have seen in the U.S. market or elsewhere compared to what we have seen already this year?

Kai Öistämö, President and CEO, Vaisala: I don’t see it. I understand your question. No, the answer is no. We can’t point to anything in the U.S. or anywhere else which would be at all related to tariffs. It’s been more positive than what I would have speculated pre-tariffs.

Your scheduled deliveries for the rest of the year in the industrial measurements are a bit lower compared to Q3 last year. Do you think that the current favorable market activity could still offset this?

Now, Pauli, remember what Heli just said in terms of the exchange rate changes, which, if you compare to last year, I think we are about 15, 16 points cheaper dollar than it used to be a year ago. Industrial measurements and ex-weather are highly exposed to dollar.

Also in dollar and renminbi, especially for the industrial measurements, the renminbi is also very important.

Yes, currency.

Currency, so.

It is written out really. You can draw your own conclusions. I would not be worried about the demand picture per se.

Okay. Regarding the cost base, how large savings do you expect from the recent restructuring on annual level?

We have not communicated that. I’ll put it this way: when we said in earlier quarters, similar calls, we’ve said that we are going to adjust our operating expenses to the level that matches the market picture on the renewable energy business. We’ve now done it.

Regarding the new logistics center, do you expect any short-term cost-based increase or operational extra costs from starting to use the new center?

Absolutely not.

Do you see that it could provide any material financial benefits next year?

Over time, I think it clearly, I mean, if you think about it now, fully automated material flow, it should yield into kind of a better rotation days, better management of the inventory, multiple benefits in terms of how do you kind of how much capital is tied into an inventory, and different tools to also optimize that inventory. Obviously, we have a business case and over time that this is an investment where we expect a payback as well.

Okay. Finally, on ex-weather, do you think that the current roughly double-digit organic growth rate is sustainable going forward, taking into account the new product launches and maybe potential synergies from the recent acquisitions?

Yes. Here also, short term, we have to take into account the currency exchange rates when we look at the euro reported numbers. Typically, we do the pricing changes at kind of around the year end in all of the businesses, at least industrial measurement instruments and ex-weather. We need to then see how those impact going forward as well, depending on how the exchange rates then turn out to be.

Good. Okay, that’s all from me. Thank you.

Thank you.

Conference Operator, Call Moderator: The next question comes from Walter Irazi from Danske. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for the presentation. A few questions. First, about the industrial measurement orders in America. The report said that they grew slightly. I think the wording was a bit softened from previous. Have you seen any changes in the activity level in America, or is this only related to the effects?

Kai Öistämö, President and CEO, Vaisala: I think I earlier said that it was a 9% on constant currency level year on year. If you look at the reported currency, it would have been 2%. Here you see kind of an impact, direct impact on the currency exchange rate. I would be very happy with a 9%. I would be very happy with a 9%. I’ll offer you that.

Okay, perfect. You don’t disclose how much America is off the industrial measurements orders. Can you give any?

Not on orders and not on a quarterly basis, but it’s clearly the biggest market that we have. It’s clearly north of one-third of industrial measurement sales.

Okay, thank you. About the ex-weather business, it said that over past quarters, it’s actually been contributing positively on profitability. Does that mean that the segment is making now positive operating profit already? If so, are we talking about low single-digit margin or what?

We are not reporting that business separately. I’ll decline to answer you in any, we have not quantified. Contributing positively kind of would imply that it actually makes money.

Yeah, sure. I was just making sure that we’re talking about EBIT on an operating profit level.

Remember, on EBIT level, we did the acquisitions last year. That’s obviously a kind of the amortizations of those assets raised the hurdle on one hand. If you look at on an operating profit side, then that’s what I’m referring to.

Okay. We should still expect that you are continuing to invest in the growth of that business and shouldn’t expect the profitability to kind of start to improve or scale up from now on.

Yes. If software business grows 50% year on year, one should expect that it scales.

All right. You are still keeping the view that you are shifting focus from growth to clearly start improving the profitability side only later during this strategy period.

No, there’s no shifts on between profitability and growth to be foreseen. You know, it’s always in like when you’re scaling a software business, it’s always a kind of a trade-off a bit that how much do you invest in the growth. Typically in this kind of a software business, it really is investments into sales and demand generation rather than increasing in R&D when software businesses are scaling. The return on investment should be quite quick. There should be, and it’s relatively easy to verify as well, kind of from a cost of acquisition side. If you kind of invest into customer acquisition cost, you can actually measure what the return on investment is, and it really should be quite quick.

Okay. Thanks. Lastly, as of now, earlier in the year, the expectations were kind of lowered because of the U.S. tariffs and how they will impact, especially the weather and environment public side sales. How would you describe the impacts of the tariffs on the public sales this year? Today, has your view changed since the pre-tariff?

I would say no impact so far on the weather environment sales in the U.S. from the tariff side. As you may recall, we did kind of a plan for the tariffs, and we mitigated the tariffs by actually shipping into our own warehouse in the U.S., so that we have a little bit of time to pass the tariff costs into prices. I think we are executing against that plan very well.

Okay, thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Conference Operator, Call Moderator: The next question comes from Jonas Ilvenen from Evli. Please go ahead.

Hi, it’s Jonas from Evely. I have a couple of questions about industrial measurements. You already discussed this question of costs. I think your R&D costs were down to a relatively low level. Of course, I think there’s always a bit of a quarterly variation when it comes to that. I saw your total OpEx still grew quite a bit. It was still at a rather moderate level. You mentioned this investment in sales and digital capabilities. My question is that how do you see these kinds of overall industrial measurements investments continue to grow from now on? Do you expect it to grow basically at the rate of sales volumes?

Kai Öistämö, President and CEO, Vaisala: If I take a kind of a, that would be a good approximation over time. Obviously, these things change over quarters, and the quarters are not equally strong and so on. Different quarters are a little bit different, but over time, you know that’s a good proxy.

That’s clear. You mentioned IM APAC growth that was especially strong. Was this mainly due to China, or were there any other countries you would like to highlight? Which specific industry groups? You mentioned life science and power in your report.

Yeah. As I said in the prepared remarks, if I start from the kind of the latter side of the question, it came from all segments in the industrial measurement side. All market segments grew, and it’s both in China and outside of China. China did have a market change compared to the second quarter, clearly having more market optimism in the third quarter. Great to see. It was not only China, it clearly was outside of China as well. If I pick one very interesting market, which has continued to be strong, it is Japan, where obviously lots of industrial activity. We have a great position in Japan in various different segments. Not only those two markets, it’s broader than that.

All right. There weren’t basically any kind of weaknesses in terms of geographic regions or?

No, not that I can think of.

Okay, that’s clear. Maybe one last question. You already discussed this IM cross-margin headwind due to exchange rates and tariffs. I was going to say that at some point, but did you comment on how, when exactly is it going to pay? Does it still continue over Q4 or in the next year? I mean, considering how things look right now.

Yeah, so two things. If you look at gross margin, and this was a bit on the net sales side as well, what I tried to say earlier as well. One thing is that we, and they function differently if you think about the FX and then the tariffs. The tariffs, what I said, and what we’ve been saying all along is that we fully mitigated that by raising prices. That has a kind of by itself a negative relative impact on gross margin. I’ll do you the math. Pardon my details here. If you think about that, let’s imagine that the transfer cost out of which the tariffs are counted would be 100 units. Then you put a 15% tariff on it. Now that cost would be instead of 100, that would be 115. You fully move that into the sales price.

Let’s do an easy math and call it like it’s 200. You put 15 on top of 200. Now you fully mitigated it. If you do the relative calculation, there is a negative impact on relative number.

All right.

I think it’s good to understand that that’s when you, and then on FX, as I said, you can’t manage FX-related changes within a quarter or within a half a year. You cannot fluctuate your local prices based on exchange rates. We do try to be smart when we do the annual price increases as we do every year in the beginning of the year. That’s a chance of actually taking the currency exchange rate and costs and everything else into account.

Okay, that’s clear. That’s all for me. Thanks.

Thank you.

Conference Operator, Call Moderator: As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Matti Riikonen from DNB Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, it’s Matti Riikonen. Good afternoon. Sorry if I have to ask some questions again because I had to jump to another call for 15 minutes during the presentation. Some of the questions might have been asked already. I start with the math question that Kai, you just explained. Is it in rough terms we are talking about that the price increase that you made, it covers the kind of cost price, but then the margin that comes on top of that doesn’t follow? You are not getting the compensation for the lowest margin compared to the margin % situation where you put the kind of markup to the imported price.

Kai Öistämö, President and CEO, Vaisala: Yeah, and even if you put a markup to it, you can do the math in different scenarios, how much of a markup you need to do in a high gross margin business in order to kind of mitigate the gross margin. There’s obviously a limit how much you can pass on the costs if you think about the tariff, kind of a drastic change in the middle of the year. It’s what’s acceptable from a customer side. Yes, in a way, what you asked for. I’ll go back to what I just said, that at the beginning of the year, we are going to review our prices anyway, and we are going to look at different kinds of costs and things, where do we put the prices going forward.

Yeah, basically, isn’t it always so that when the new year begins, you are trying to kind of achieve the same profitability level or higher what it used to be?

Yep, yep, of course.

It takes some time for the following price increases to kind of correct the situation into what it was and move from there.

Yes. That being said, when the book-to-bill cycle is three weeks in the industrial measurement side, that’s pretty fast.

Yes. Right. Regarding the weather and environment, when you talked about received orders and how they were kind of suffering different things, you meant that there’s also industrial cyclical fluctuations, or I don’t remember what the term that you used was. What does that actually mean in the weather and environment business? What kind of industries are there on the customer side that are affected if you’re not talking about the renewable business, which I would call an industrial fluctuation?

No, no, no, I was not talking about the renewable business. Maybe I’ll just explain it a bit more. It’s not really an industrial activity. Think about it this way, that it’s a relatively small market in the end, I mean, in the total market as we are the market leader in terms of an absolute market leader in this. It’s a relatively small market. Many of the products are having their natural cycles, and sometimes they are quite long cycles. If I take the radars that were just sold, I’m not expecting the kind of a complete renewal of Spanish network until 15 years from now or something like that. Here, relatively small individual things like the COVID-19 fund to renew, which was used to renew Southern European radar network, kind of increased the tide a bit. Now the tide is kind of lower as we speak.

That has been a phenomenon if you go on a longer term, a longer term kind of a history in meteorology and aviation that the relatively small, two big airports get to be built at the same year, kind of increases the size of the market. The market years are not exactly the same. This market just has a phenomenon where there’s a relatively small discrete demand changes change the size of the market somewhat.

Yes. Okay, that clarifies because maybe the wording in the Finnish stock exchange release was about the industry. Basically, it means the sector where you operate and the word is.

Right. Thank you. Well supported.

If we then think that these sector changes tend to be quite slow and one year is not necessarily enough to make it go away, are you afraid that this would continue also in 2026? I’m not talking about the order backlog which you already have or the Indonesian order which might come sometime next year, but basically the new weather orders that you were or you are expecting every year. Is there a danger that we would see an even slower 2026 when it comes to new business? If your order backlog is decreased this year, then of course you would have less to kind of deliver in 2026 based on old kind of order backlog. Do you think that that is a kind of risk that you would like to highlight? Of course, you have to take a stance on that when you give the guidance for 2026.

At least, I mean, at this point of the year, you probably already know and you have made some internal plans how it’s going to be in the weather business in 2026. Any thoughts on that would be good.

Yeah, let me answer. It’s exactly like you said, we’re going to give you guidance next year when the time comes. Let’s think about it this way: there are the product sales which are selling to existing projects and existing customers, and the fluctuation on that business is very small. The fluctuation really comes from the kind of new projects and bigger and smaller and so on. There’s a kind of a level that, if, you know, has been at least relatively stable in the past, then I don’t see any changes why that assumption should be different going forward.

How individual projects come through and so on, that obviously will not only impact our sales, but actually if kind of a couple of big big orders come, big big projects come in a half a year, that kind of theoretically means also irrespective of who wins, that impacts the entire market as well.

All right, we will wait for your guidance for 2026 to see what is your plan that you promise to deliver.

Correct.

Okay. I’m just saying that it doesn’t look so good when this year, of course, the order book has been decreasing, and you have basically a negative outlook for all key meteorological and weather-related events.

For the rest of the year, remember the outlook was.

What would need to happen that it would kind of recover to a normal normalized situation in 2026? Do you foresee some positive changes to this current trend, which you have now said that will impact 2025? Do you see some positive triggers that would change the situation for 2026?

Like I said, as the market impact, market size is really individual, bigger orders can swing in different ways. That’s something that, as you know, historically, it’s really, really hard to say when certain things kind of come through. The pipeline remains on a good level on new projects, but the kind of flow through the pipeline continues to be very unpredictable as it has been in the past.

All right, fair enough. Final question. You already touched the topic of industrial measurement and some investments in digital capabilities. Just out of curiosity, what kind of digital capabilities are you talking about?

Online as a sales channel, whether we talk about to our distributors or whether we talk about to the end users, especially on the services side. If you think about, today, it’s mainly we don’t have much of a sales through the digital channel. We are doing demand generation, but the actual sales transactions, we do very little through digital channels. That capability we are building. It’s very important, like kind of a first, it will have an impact on the services delivery side. Longer term, I believe, like in any other business, obviously it will have an impact on our overall sales, I believe, as well.

Does that mean that the existing customers would kind of want or need a different approach to maybe order from you, or does it mean that you are seeking new business through those channels?

I think it, in the end, will be both. I don’t think any businesses will remain as they have all like always been. I’ll just use the car analogy here that nobody ever believed that a car can be bought online, and look where we are today. Try to buy a Tesla offline, you know, they will throw you online.

All right, fair enough. That’s all for me. Thank you.

Thank you.

Conference Operator, Call Moderator: The next question comes from Walter Irazi from Danske. Please go ahead.

Just to clarify the ex-weather profitability question, I think I was talking about EBITDA and operating profit as a synonym previously. Let’s talk about EBITDA. Is the ex-weather currently contributing positively on EBITDA level?

Kai Öistämö, President and CEO, Vaisala: Yep.

Great. That’s all.

Subscription sales, to be specific, that’s what we report today. We don’t report separately ex-weather.

Conference Operator, Call Moderator: There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers.

Niina Ala-Luopa, Investor Relations, Vaisala: Okay, that was our Q3 call. Thank you all for joining. Thank you for the questions. Thank you, Kai. I would like to mention or remind that we will arrange a virtual investor event for analysts and investors on November 24th. There, Kai and our business area leaders will provide an overview of Vaisala’s strategy and business areas. You will find more information on the event on our investor website, vaisala.com/investors. Thank you all for joining and have a nice rest of the week.

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