MilDef Group AB
STO:MILDEF
Utilize notes to systematically review your investment decisions. By reflecting on past outcomes, you can discern effective strategies and identify those that underperformed. This continuous feedback loop enables you to adapt and refine your approach, optimizing for future success.
Each note serves as a learning point, offering insights into your decision-making processes. Over time, you'll accumulate a personalized database of knowledge, enhancing your ability to make informed decisions quickly and effectively.
With a comprehensive record of your investment history at your fingertips, you can compare current opportunities against past experiences. This not only bolsters your confidence but also ensures that each decision is grounded in a well-documented rationale.
Do you really want to delete this note?
This action cannot be undone.
52 Week Range |
60.1
115
|
Price Target |
|
We'll email you a reminder when the closing price reaches SEK.
Choose the stock you wish to monitor with a price alert.
This alert will be permanently deleted.
We're here to talk about the fourth quarter, but of course, we'll also zoom out into the full year. We'll talk about some of the big things, and we'll talk about some of the smaller things. And great to have so many joining us today. And I guess that some people are already thinking about the market reaction versus a fairly strong report. And I won't go into many details on that earlier on in the report. But as we conclude this meeting, I hope that we will have traveled through the year and looked at some of those things that are important for short and long-term investors into this company. We'll go through before we go into the fourth quarter, we look briefly at MilDef's universe and how our world looks and how it is expanding. We'll talk about some of the business highlights that lead to the finances that Daniel will talk about in more detail. And then we'll look into the future where we stand today, the opportunities we have ahead, and of course, also some of the challenges, and then we have the Q&A session at the end.So just to put us in a context. This company was founded 1997, so it's 26 years ago. And almost two years ago on June 4, 2021, we were listed on Nasdaq, Stockholm. We are now more than 300 employees across 11 countries. We operate mainly in the Nordics, in the EU countries and within selected NATO countries. And if we look at us from a shareholder perspective, we are now more than 9,000 shareholders in this company, very happy about that number, and we hope to keep improving that. I'm very happy about the interest in this company. The market cap, this is of course, something that fluctuates but at the time of the writing, well, plus SEK3.3 billion, trading on Nasdaq Stockholm mid-cap upgraded from small cap, where we entered in 2021, upgraded to mid-cap from this year and goes under the ticker of MILDEF.This is what we do. We digitalize the world where the stakes are the highest, requirements are the toughest and when technology has gained changing potential. We are a full spectrum provider of tactical IT across hardware, software and services. We serve customers within military, government and critical infrastructure, and we help protect the fabric of our societies. So we are a technology company working with some customers with very unique requirements. And this is just a picture of what I've already mentioned before, 300 employees across 11 countries and additional markets where we have customers, and this is something that we aim to expand more during the year.If we zoom in tight into the fourth quarter and if I steal some of the thunder from Daniel when it comes to the finances, there are lots of plus signs on this. If we look at the revenue growth, this is 57%, and we'll also see that when we zoom out into the full year, we have the same level of growth, 57%, which we are, of course, very happy about. Long-term target for this company is 25% per year, and we don't discriminate whether that is organic or required growth and 57% is a little bit above that long-term target. The order intake, super important for us; these are, of course, our future revenues and with 27% order intake with a quite tough quarter to compare against Auto fees very, very strong. That leads to an order backlog that stays above the SEK1 billion mark, giving us a very good platform to operate from in 2023 and beyond, and that growth is 58%.Quarter-by-quarter, some of these numbers might fluctuate, but we're also always following the gross margin very closely. And we'll see as we also sum-out to the year that we are not just protecting, but also improving our margins. But in the fourth quarter stand-alone, that was the same as the comparison quarter. Even though the adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter goes down, the absolute numbers are going up, and that is because this company is growing at a very, very healthy rate. Of course, these numbers come from somewhere.And if I just look into the fourth quarter, I want to emphasize and highlight that we are doing some things on an international scale that we believe will have also effect going into this year and the next. And two things to note here; lots of big international success when it comes to other international defense companies like BAE Systems, one of the major players on this market that are doing business in a lot of countries. We're working on those relationships, and we are winning strategic big deals with those customers. In the UK, we have established a production facility. This goes on the back of a big program that we won a couple of years back called MIV. We won an add-on order for SEK70 million. This is a 10-year program. It's big and it also is giving us capabilities on the UK markets that we believe will be important going forward. Things like national production capability and national supply chains addressing some of the security supply concerns that are growing in the world right now and that we have a very good blueprint for how to match.Another highlight, if we look at the flag side of things, we just established MilDef Denmark in the beginning of this year. This completes our flag collection in the Nordic countries, which we will come back to later in this presentation, are very important for this company in the future. So we combine what we do in the Nordics, home markets with how we expand in the EU and into NATO countries we operate in. And at the bottom right of the picture, you can see that -- which was also press released, we won an order worth SEK50 million for prototypes for the digitalization program of an army. And of course, prototypes is something that happens before potential serial production. So we look forward to continue on that development, delivering those prototypes for this nation and for many others to come.Sewing out to the full year, we turned 25 years old. This company is maturing. We've always been in this market, and it's a trust market. The threshold is high to gain entry. We've been here for 25 years and with this very strong reputation that is giving us a solid platform also to move forward from. That is proven by a couple of things. One of those are the framework agreements that we won last year, two biggest we've ever won and some of the longest in time and also some of the most open-ended frameworks because we are moving into a more strategic supplier relationship in several markets, and this is important. If we look at the US market, fastest-growing market for us last year, really coming back from after Covid now. And moving forward, we won the biggest deal to-date for an army program in the US, so continuing to have success there.And if we go to the right-hand side, the acquisition of Handheld Group, we've talked about that in many press releases, but this will become hugely important for us. Handheld Group gave us more technology than before, more market access than before and a new customer segment that we really wanted to have access to. So it's a triple effect on that, and we look forward in 2023 to intensify what we're doing together, looking very, very promising.And just the last point here on the software side of things. One is, which is our software for zero-day deployment of IT systems also NATO-compatible, part of our NATO story is gaining international momentum developed for the Norwegian armed forces and together with the government in Norway, now expanding into two more countries, and that is really driving our software initiative forward. So there are a lot of things happening. Work in an environment that was hugely challenging last year. I think that on the business side, we're very happy with the results. And on the financial side, we're also very happy with the results. I guess the only thing that we weren't so happy with were the delays in the fourth quarter. But on the other hand, that is keeping us very, very busy at the first half of 2023.But to look into those numbers and explain more about the year, I want to ask Daniel Ljunggren to take us through the financials of 2022.
Thank you very much, Bjorn, and hello to everyone in this call. As I mentioned before, my name is Daniel Ljunggren and I'm the CFO at MilDef and I will walk you through some of the financial highlights and KPIs.This is a slide showing Q4 isolated and also in the right hand, you can see the full year 2022 compared to '21. We will not stay too long on this slide because it's not so easy for you to consume, but if we take it row by row, you can see isolated Q4 net sales, SEK350 million. That is an all-time high record for this company in an isolated quarter. That is a growth by 57% compared to same quarter last year. And that is also the same growth rate that we are showing on the full year in 2022. So it's a very steep growth rate we can show here. Gross margin in isolated Q4 was 46%. That's the same percentage in margin that we saw last quarter last year. The most important here is, I think as we look at the full year 2022, we can see that we have improved our very important gross margin by 3 percentage points from 45% to 48%. That is something that's really making different on our bottom line going forward. We also can see that on the full year that adjusted EBITDA is almost growing and doubling up. We are increasing that by 87% from SEK32 million to SEK60 million. Even if we are not meeting our long-term targets of at least 10% on the EBITDA margin, we are increasing the EBITDA margin from 6.9% to 8.1%. So we are showing that we are on the right path here when it comes to the EBITDA margin.I think we'll leave this slide and the jump to the next one where you can really see a big picture of our performance in 2022. This is for the full year on a very -- some of the very important financial KPIs. We grow the company by 57%. We have an order intake that grows with 59%. And in absolute number, the order intake is almost around SEK1 billion and that indicates that we can continue to grow this company because we have a book-to-bill ratio that is above 1 because if we compare those SEK938million with the revenue at 2022 of SEK739 million, we can see that we are performing and the order intake is better than we have had sales for '22. Another indicator that shows that we will continue to grow these companies that we have been able to grow the order backlog with 58% if we compare to this 12 months back in time. And the adjusted EBITDA, as I said, is growing at 87%. We almost doubled it from the last year, showing that we are not exactly at the right point where we want to be, but we are on the right path.Looking on to the next and now we zoom-out a little bit and look at the net sales, the revenues and also the EBITDA margin. Over a longer period of time, we can see that each bar is rolling 12 months. And we can conclude that for the fourth quarter in a row, showing an all-time high net sales, which is, I think, is very good for us, given the circumstances and that we have also delayed some shipments to 2023.We can take the next slide, and then we look into the -- we zoom-out even further in time as we do because I think you should look at MilDef in a longer perspective and not always quarter-by-quarter because it can be lumpy, as Bjorn said. But if we can see this picture, we have been able to grow this company with 30% year-on-year. So we have a CAGR plus 30%, which is a good performance. And then even if we delay some deliveries here in 2022, we see a big jump here between '22 and '21. And also the order intake, which is very important, which is our crystal ball for our future should look and our future revenue and future cash flow. We can see that we have now on a rolling 12 months basis, an all-time high when it comes to order intake, and we are close to that SEK1 billion in order intake for a 12-month period. And order backlog, as mentioned before, has grown.If we zoom out here in time and look back how this company looked like in the end of '29 and also in the beginning of 2020, we can see that we have moved into a total different landscape. We have a total different crystal ball. We win bigger contracts. We have longer contracts in the order backlog. We can work with those and we can find our ways forward. So it's a total different landscape when it comes to how we have one business and how our backlog looks like. If we break down this order backlog of SEK1.2 million, we can see that planned deliveries in 2023, it is already SEK759 million, which already is above our revenues for the 2022. So it looks promising for the 2023. We can also see that we have some orders in the order backlog that should be delivered from '24 and '25 and also something beyond 2025. But for the '23, the planned shipment looks very promising.Short snapshot over our current cash position and net debt situation. Net debt excluding lease liabilities is at SEK168 million. We have a net debt through adjusted EBITDA that is 2.8% if we exclude leasing liabilities, and that is due to the acquisition of Handheld was made here in September 2022. So we should hopefully see that, that will go down below our target of 2.5 times. Healthy cash position and a very strong equity asset ratio, I think has put us in a healthy position going forward.So if we have taken and summarize some of the most important KPIs and performance we have done in 2022, we can see that growth is 57%. We are performing an all-time high revenue year. Order intake also an all-time, SEK938 million. We've grown with 59%. We are continuing to improve our gross margin, which is very important for the bottom line, as I said. We have moved from 45% in '21 to 48% in '22. Operating cash flow is negative [indiscernible]. It's a combination of -- we continue to grow this company, which is tying up more and more capital. The net working capital is increasing. And also the landscape that we have had in the past two years with the shortage of components, et cetera, where we need to fill up an inventory to be able to deliver to our customers in reasonable lead times. We can see an adjusted EBITDA that is going, even if it doesn't go all the way up to our long-term target, we can see it's going on the right direction. And if we added those SEK100 million that was delayed, it would have looked a lot better. Order backlog, as I said, is very healthy going forward. Profit per share has improved a lot from minus SEK0.03 to SEK0.37 million and also concluding bullet series that the Board of Directors proposed that the dividends should not be any dividend for the 2022, considering the growth rate the company is showing and the need for continued net working capital here 2023, that is relating to the growth we see coming forward.And with that, I think we conclude the financial part of this session. So I'll leave the word back to you, Bjorn.
Thank you very much, Daniel. And I hope and I think that we'll get back to some of those numbers in the Q&A session. But before we do that, some things about the future. These are our three key focus areas for the group during 2023. The first one is to maximize our Nordic business. We have an unique positioning here on our home markets, and we intend to capitalize on it and grow from that, based to some extent, on the business we won and also the history we have, we believe that we can do a lot more on these quickly growing markets. And combined, the Nordic markets represent a very big financial part of Europe.We look to fortify organization. We onboarded around 100 people last year, which means we're growing fast also in terms of numbers and in terms of the potential and the people we have in the engineers, and the administrators and the supply chain people, and the salespeople. This is our potential to grow even more and this is how we got to the point where we are today. So we look at strengthening our leadership and making sure that we're even more resilient as a growing organization going forward.And last but not least, our NATO narrative is being accelerated. We already delivered a lot of hardware and services and software to NATO countries, but we continue to do more when it comes to interoperability and compatibility with NATO and our importance in the digitalization efforts across NATO and our ambition to become a de facto standard for when you digitalize within NATO. So these are our three key areas for the year.And to get there, we use a few tools that we have. First of all, the markets where we operate, where we reuse the portfolio we have across all markets and there's still a lot of untapped potential in many markets, including some of the biggest defense markets. I talked about the US before and the fact that we're growing super fast there, there's potential to do more with the technological portfolio that we have, including what was gained through the Handheld acquisition. We continue to expand our portfolio. We come from a legacy and history of hardware. We are adding services, which is the fastest-growing segment, and we are also spicing this up with software, which is a very high margin and strategically important part of our portfolio.Last but not least, our M&A agenda. When we find the best companies and best people in the world that we think can make us even stronger, we try to join forces. We do this in a structured way. Our target is to make at least one significant acquisition per year, and we have done so, we have made that our target. And the last one out was the one I mentioned before, Handheld Group, which is kind of a triple effect for us and that we look forward to exploring in 2023, and we can use that to expand even more.If we just summarize on the top level of what happened in 2022, the revenue growth is accelerating. And that is something we believe is important. We haven't yet seen the effects from the increased defense spending and the budgets that are being doubled around the world, but we still managed to accelerate our revenue growth. And of course, we do have a lot of tailwind from the increased attention that we see around the world. We have protected and we have improved our margins, and we'll continue to expand into a range where we believe that we should be giving the technological edge and the importance of what we do. We are improving profitability, and we will continue to work on that, but that feels like we're moving in a very healthy direction. And if we look at the agreements that we have won and the deals that we are winning, we are making strategic headway for the long-term and this creates a vehicle for further expansion for us, both when it comes to the margins, but also for protecting the revenue streams and making sure that those flow freely going forward.And again, we completed the biggest acquisition to-date. It was a huge year for us in terms of what we did, what we accomplished. I think most of that is also well reflected into the numbers. And I received a question from one of our colleagues to say, are we reaching the edge of our expansion universe. Well, I mean we're still a small company. There's so much more to do, but we're focusing on our efforts to make sure that we can continue with profitability with improved margins. And I think that we can accelerate that even more going forward. There is not a lack of opportunities in the world. There's not a lack of business and there's not a lack of need for what we do. So we have a pretty packed 2023 ahead of us, and we know what to do, but we will also leave behind the 2022 that we're super proud of.And with that, I think it's time to open-up for questions and answers. Use the chat or use the -- raise your hand or just speak up.
We have quite a few questions. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for adding questions in the chat. We have quite a few of those there. So maybe I should read them out and Daniel and Bjorn will answer them.And I'll go accordingly to the sent-in order. Do you want to evolve and elaborate on the gross margin in Q4 '24 compared to Q4 '21? And going forward, is it stable or do you see an improvement?
I can take that one and answer that. If we look back in time with this company, we can see that we have done a very good journey when it comes to the gross margin. We have improved the gross margin over-time. Now we also went into 2022. We added more revenue streams coming from the software side, coming from the services side. So we have continued to improve the gross margin being up. But in Q3, last quarter, we were up 51% in I say the quarter. Going forward, I think we will continue to see maybe minor steps in improving the gross margin, but we will continue to improve it, but maybe not in the same pace that we have done in the past 12 months, so to say. But here in Q4, if we look at isolated quarter, sometimes it can be lumpy when it comes to gross margin, it depends on customer mix and the product mix, how the acquisitions are contributing as well to the gross margins, but absolutely stable going forward, I would say.
Thank you, Daniel. So we have a question from Heinz. Is it only lack of components [indiscernible] semiconductors behind the backlog of production and deliveries. Have inventories already been built up or have -- how are the plans for this.
I mean, short answer, yes. This is the semiconductor component shortage that the world has seen during the last couple of years. That is the reason for the delays that we saw at the fourth quarter. We often get a question and we talk internally about whether that is in a situation that is improving or not. We see light at the end of the tunnel, but it's still going to be a rock road also during 2023. But we see some improvements, and we also have mitigating effects, of course. And yes, inventories have been built-up to mitigate some of those longer lead times that we have seen. So we've done a lot. We've put some new practices in place, and we are also cautious not to build-up inventory when we don't have to. Even though we're moving away like the rest of the world from just in time, we're still cautious that we don't tie up too much of our capital in inventory.
Thank you, Bjorn. And Joan has a couple of questions. Do we see a seasonal effect with continued focus on Q4 going forward?
I think it's fair to say that the fourth quarter has traditionally been a very big quarter for this company, but that is also because we come from a hardware background where we've had lots of government customers predominantly here in the Nordics, which means end of year deliveries, spending the budget and that kind of purchasing pattern. We see that this volatility is decreasing. We have more services, which has a more stable revenue stream and we also have a more international business with different budgeters. So I expect Q4 to be big also in the future, but I think that we'll see this evening out over the quarters, and that is something we work actively to reach.
Thank you, Bjorn. We are a tech and product company. And the next question is about R&D. Is the increase of R&D connected to any specific projects or for the overall increased resources for product development.
Well, some of the things that happened in 2022 was that we saw an increase in incoming R&D projects. So the backlog for our engineers is pretty much packed with the needs for the future. So there is some mix in here of some specific projects that are connected to some of the digitalization programs that we talked about before and we are also increasing our capacity. Daniel mentioned before that this accelerated growth is something that we see as sustainable. If we look at the order intake, if we look at the order book, we believe that we can continue to accelerate. So yeah, it's a mix.
I can also add on that one is some part of the R&D expense is going up here in the fourth quarter is related to the acquisition of Handheld, also had capitalized development expenses in the balance sheet. And when you make a depreciation of them, they will end up on that grow in the P&L. So it's also an acquisition effect where we see increased R&D expenses.
Okay. And the next and in the chat, final three questions comes from Erik. The first one is good that gross margin is up 2022 versus 2021, but drop-through to earnings very low, added almost SEK300 million in sales in '22, but less than SEK30 million to EBITDA. Despite gross margin expansion, why should leverage improve from here?
I think that the easiest answer here is the fact that if you take the delayed deliveries, the SEK100 million, and you put those on top of 2022 numbers, you can see that this is a gain of scale. Our company needs -- we have a certain site on the suit and we need certain revenue streams to make this scalability go all the way down. So I guess that is the easy answer on that. And as we continue to grow the revenues faster than we expect to need to grow the cost, I think that we will see this leverage coming through. I think the numbers show it. And again, an easy way is to just to look at the delays, put them on those numbers and see where we end and you see that the scalability does exist. It's very well proven, but now we need to show it also in 2023 in actual numbers.
And a follow-up question to that is short. Do we need to improve financial control disability?
I think Erik here relates to the press release we announced in the mid of December, where we are talking about SEK60 million to SEK70 million that will be delayed into '23. And now when we close it, we will see that there is an extra SEK20 million, SEK30 million also slipping over to 2023. Has been a little bit tricky situation with the component shortage and we thought that absolutely, it was not going to be more than the SEK60 million, SEK70 million, but when we were very close and ended up in January or entering into January, we realized that there is one -- in our business, it can be one to one delivery that it's SEK20 million that's slipping over a couple of days. And when you take all the revenues when you ship things, the hardware out the door, one or two days can make a really big impact. So of course, Erik has a good point here where we need to be monitoring and measuring this very closely and looking into how we can do better on this one.
Thank you, Daniel. And the final question from Erik. Working capital development is quite negative, and you flag more is coming in '23, leading to scrap the dividend. When will dividend return?
On the dividend question, I will not answer because it's not on my table. And we will see when that will come back, hopefully, already next year, but that's a decision for the Board of Directors. And in the end, the AGM to decide up, but I can collaborate a little bit on the working capital development, and it has increased. We have a combination of that. We are growing really fast. We also have a new world order, where we can see that just-in-time deliveries is not here for the moment. We need to build up the inventory. We need to shorten the lead times to be able to do business at all. So that is why we don't -- or the Board doesn't propose any dividend for 2022 that we see that if we should continue to grow in the rate we see going forward, we will need -- here and now, we will need those cash to be able to deliver up on the commitments we have towards our customers. Hopefully, we can go back, if we look one or two years out from here, we can come back to where we have a net working capital around 20% to 25% of the net sales. That is something we measure and we'll look into this very closely going forward, the development of the working capital and how we can work with that. But now I think here and now, it's necessary for us to tie up money. And if you look into the Q4, for example, you can see that we have plus SEK200 million in accounts receivable, which will be paid here in January and February. So I'm not really worried about that one. The one that we should really monitor and look into is the inventory development and how we can bring that down to levels that we have seen in the past.
Yes. I want to add one thing when it comes to the dividend. I think that this decision by the Board, which we support is also a show of responsibility in times where we are growing this company really fast. And when there is some uncertainty on the market, I think to have a solid cash position and invest this money wisely is absolutely the right thing to do. I think a lot of the investors would agree on that.
Thank you, Bjorn and Daniel, for that. And now we will actually leave the microphone if you open it up or I open it up to Erik, who will present this question via voice.
Yes. I'm not letting you guys off the hook, just yet. So I have three follow-ups on what you just stated. And on the gross margin, it sounds a bit different tone there compared to previous year, you've been indicating that gross margin should could quite firmly trend higher based on mix from different aspects. Is that less of the case?
No, I don't think so. I don't think that is [indiscernible] wording, but there's nothing substantial. We have a big double voice here. So asking some to close their mics or their sound. Hang on. All right. What we're looking for and what we are aiming for continues to be the same. We want to move up from where we are now in the 45% to 50% gross margin range up to above 50%, somewhere in this 50% to 60%. We do that by coming closer to the customers, so higher up in the value chain, better mix of the products, introduction of software and so on. So I think that remains absolutely unchanged. And so there was nothing more defensive, I think, in this wording. Yeah, it remains.
And the Q4 numbers is also impacted by the acquisition of Handheld, so also something to [indiscernible].
Thank you. We have one more question in the chat from Heinz of a different nature. Is there a significant aftermarket potential and repair/support component in sight for MilDef.
Absolutely. And if we look at the way our potential for business development, this is one of our untapped potentials. We've seen in the past that an aftermarket portfolio is not something that we really have exploited or explored and the more that we now have the tail coming back from previous orders. I think this is a growing opportunity for us and something that we are looking into and this is also related to the fact that we've added services to our portfolio to a larger extent. So things like training, things like life cycle management. When it comes to repair, well, to some extent, yes, but I mean, our stuff doesn't break, unfortunately. So there's not too much to do. We'd rather just replace -- there's of course, a big replacement markets and renewal of technology, but aftermarket is a huge potential. And the bigger we get, the bigger that opportunity becomes. So we are working on that historically. We've done a poor job at exploiting it. Going forward, we will be better.
I think Erik also had another question. I'm pretty sure of it.
No. I am good actually.
Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, a few final seconds. If someone has another question to add. Heinz says thank you for good answers like especially the replies regarding aftermarket and services. Thank you for that support, Heinz. And thank you, everyone. I think this will conclude this investor call. I'm looking at my colleagues, and Bjorn has a few final wordings and then we will go separate ways. Take it away, Bjorn.
Thank you very much. I just wanted to conclude this meeting because I know that we have a lot of people in this meeting who has followed this journey for quite a long time and also some newcomers. I think it's fair to say that we have spoiled the market a little bit with the development of this company. We've grown so fast and we've done so much. And I think that there is an expectation to do even more, but I feel pretty confident that we can. I just want to say that this comes from the way that we look at the opportunities we have, we look at the organization we have in place. We look at the scalability factors we worked with, the strategic platform that we have deployed, so many things that have been put in place to make us ready to explore the possibilities coming from macro effects in this world where we are not negatively affected so much by interest rates or inflation and other things. We have other factors and other drivers taking us forward. So I just want to say that it takes a little bit of effort to understand the company like ours, and I'm very happy -- and I hear that in the question, we see that so many have taken time to understand this business. It's important for the future, and I think we're going to be one of many companies operating in this domain. So probably the investments you've made into understanding this business will be worthwhile. And so just a big thank you for being part of this journey. We think we can do more, and we'd like to do that together with you. So I guess that's the final words for me.
All right. Thank you so much and Olof has just said, thank you for great questions and responses. This concludes our Q&A session. Take care and stay in touch.
Stay in touch. Follow us on LinkedIn, send an e-mail or make a call. We are here to assist you understand the continued journey of MilDef. Stay tuned for more. Have a fun day. Stay safe.