Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Kempower's Q1 2026 results presentation. My name is Calle Loikkanen, I'm Director of Investor Relations, and it is my pleasure to introduce today's speakers: CEO Bhasker Kaushal and CFO Jukka Kainulainen.

The gentlemen will walk us through the highlights and results of the quarter, and after the presentation, we will end with a Q&A session. Without any further ado, let me hand over to Bhasker.

Bhasker, please, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Calle, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to be with us today for Kempower's first quarter results in 2026.

We have good news to share this morning, and let me start with the headline. Q1 was a strong start to the year.

Revenue grew 54% year-on-year, North America more than tripled, up 230%, and these are share gains, and we are outperforming the market. Gross margin held flat sequentially versus the fourth quarter of 2025.

Our product cost reduction program is offsetting the price pressure, and we expect that program to ramp up further in the second half. Significant operative EBIT margin improvement, which is up 11.6 percentage points, and this was driven by revenue being up 54% versus the fixed cost being up just 20%.

Now, this is the operating leverage model working as designed. Finally, the order book.

Our backlog stands at €141 million, which is up 32% year-on-year, and order intake of €69 million is a record for the first quarter. This gives us a strong foundation for the rest of 2026.

Next, let's look at the financial highlights. Let me take you through the four headline metrics.

I'll start with order intake first, which is up 16% year-on-year and driven by continued momentum across key European markets. Second, revenue: up 54% year-on-year.

Our growth has been broad-based: North America more than tripled, we see strong growth in Europe outside the Nordics, and services revenue up 45%. Third, profitability: revenue grew 54% versus the fixed cost up just 20%, which is the operating leverage that I referenced.

Gross margin was a key contributor, was 45.3%, which is flat quarter-on-quarter, but lower year-on-year. Our operative EBIT margin improved by 11.6 percentage points overall.

Finally, cash flow: cash flow from operating activities improved by €6.4 million year-on-year, and this was driven by the improved profitability. Our liquidity position also remains strong, and I'd say, overall, a very solid set of numbers across the board.

Next, let me put our performance in the context of the market. Let's start looking at the growth in BEVs and new public fast charging installations.

New BEV registrations, which is the chart on the left, Europe up 26%, with North America down 27%. The new public DC fast charging installations, the chart on the right, Europe up 56% and North America down 1%.

You see two very different market backdrops. In Europe, the policy environment is supportive.

Around €5 billion of new public funding has been announced in the beginning of 2026: €3 billion in Germany and £1 billion in the UK. In North America, the picture is a bit more mixed.

We see the slowdown in EV passenger car sales, which is somewhat expected given the federal subsidy expiration in September of 2025 and the surge in EV demand prior to that expiration. Even in a soft registration market, the funding fundamentals have been intact.

We see the federal NEVI program rules have been streamlined and the funding is available, it's actively being dispersed, being actually used by a number of our customers. California introduced a new voucher program to drive the adoption of clean trucks and buses.

Now, in North America for Kempower, our focus has been to grow faster than the market, and that's through share gains given that we entered the market about two years back. We're doing this very well.

We're gaining share, and I'll talk more about that in a minute. A quick note on commercial vehicles.

E-truck and e-bus registrations grew 52% in the fourth quarter of 2025. Now, that market data is published with a bit of lag, but this reflects the acceleration in the heavy-duty market.

Next, let me go a little bit deeper into our regional performance. I'll start with Europe, and our strategy there has been clear: grow across continental Europe and diversify beyond the Nordics.

Q1 shows that our strategy is working. Revenue in Europe outside the Nordics is up 87%, and order intake in Europe outside Nordics is up 16%.

We've seen strong growth across France, the UK, and Germany. In Q1, Nordics is now about 24% of our revenue, and a year ago, it was 32%.

Year-over-year, Nordics revenues and order intake declined, which is somewhat expected as the demand in that market has somewhat normalized in passenger cars. We are seeing signs of acceleration in e-trucks and the next wave of charging infrastructure for heavy-duty vehicles.

A couple of customer highlights in Europe: we strengthened our airport presence with an installation with Hilton Heathrow Terminal 5, and our partner Plugit deployed Finland's first public MCS site for electric trucks, and that's at the Port of HaminaKotka. That's a real sign that heavy-duty charging is moving from concept to deployment now.

On to North America, and there, our strategy has been clear that we outpace the market through share gains. The headline number, which is revenue up 230%, shows that we're executing on our strategy, that revenue growth is more than triple year-on-year.

Order intake is up 16%, and the underlying momentum there remains strong. Growth is coming from across our customer base, including public charging and fleet customers, and we added four new customers in the quarter.

The standout in North America was our partnership with EV Realty. We supplied their multi-fleet truck charging hub in San Bernardino, California.

I was there at the site two weeks back, and what a tremendous site: more than 70 plugs, and that site is ready to help drive the adoption and scaling of e-trucks in that market. As we've been talking about, heavy-duty fleet electrification is a major opportunity for us, in addition to public charging.

This deployment validates our position in that segment. We also showcased our products at the EV Charging Summit in Las Vegas, which I attended as well, and there was strong engagement with charge point operators and fleet customers, and our booth had one of the best attendance and footfall at the show.

Overall in North America, our pipeline's healthy. We see strong opportunities to continue to gain share.

Now let me step back and talk about our strategic priorities: four pillars, all are progressing well, and we're making measurable gains there. First, winning with customers: we acquired eight new customers in Q1.

Our MCS deployments are transitioning from pilots to full-scale orders now in both Europe and North America. As a reminder, megawatt charging technology allows charging speeds of up to 1.2 megawatts, and it's the new standard for heavy-duty charging.

Second, on differentiated technology, we launched the analytics view of our ChargEye software in Q1. That gives operators uptime, performance, and fault analytics, and we're very excited about continuing to bring more advanced analytics features to ChargEye.

Also, in terms of the more-plug solution that we launched late last year, customer deployments continue to advance there as well. Third, operational excellence: on-time delivery performance was strong.

That's what allowed us to deliver 54% revenue growth year-on-year. Our product cost reduction program is on plan, and I'll talk more about that in a second here.

Fourth, winning culture and team: we rolled out a new organizational structure during the quarter, which is focused on driving clearer accountability, faster decisions, and aligned to our strategic priorities. Next, gross margins deserves a closer look.

This chart here on the left shows our trajectory over the last 3 years, and in Q1, gross margin held flat sequentially quarter-over-quarter at around 45%. The story behind that number is important.

There are three drivers at play here. First is the price, and there's continued pressure on price in the market given the intense competition.

Second, there's regional sales mix: as we are scaling into newer markets, the early phase in that carries a different margin profile than our established regions, which is very normal in any geographic expansion, and that margin will improve as we scale and optimize in those regions. Third is productivity: our unit cost reduction program is offsetting these price and mix headwinds.

That cost reduction program was launched in the second half of last year, as we've talked about. It has three work streams.

For example, in procurement, we've ran multiple rounds of RFQs across categories in Q1 and seeing cost reductions there. In production, we're consolidating subcontractors, we're rebalancing our workforce across factories to have labor productivity.

In product design, we're running should-cost analysis, testing alternative components that are less expensive, but still offer the same features functionality. These benefits will continue to ramp and materialize through the course of the year as these actions that I just talked about mature and the inventory turns.

We expect the gross margin to step up from there and improve. Now, I'll hand it over to Jukka to take you through the financials in more detail.

Yes, thank you, Bhasker. Let's look Q1 financials more in details.

We continued executing our growth strategy also in Q1. We had a strong performance in sales, like Bhasker already commented.

We grew the order intake 16%, we grew the revenue 54%, and driven by several regions outside Nordics: North America, Europe. Actually, our region APAC and MEA was growing nicely orders as well.

Really strong performance sales-wise. Also, we were able to improve our profitability significantly.

We improved the operative EBIT by €3.8 million, which was a good result as well, even though still negative by €3.5 million. Then at the same time, we also improved our cash flow from operating activities from €7.5 million negative to €1.1 million negative.

Summarizing Q1 financials top line-wise: strong start for the year, and also at the same time, we improved operative EBIT significantly, as we have been guiding for the whole year as well. Little bit more about the order intake: so order intake grew 16% for the Q1.

Actually, it was the highest quarterly Q1 order intake in Kempower history, which is a nice milestone as well. Highlighting few areas where the growth was coming: in Europe, DACH area, Eastern Europe was growing strongly, especially the public charging side.

Like I highlighted already, the APAC and Middle East Africa region actually growing nicely as well, more than 200%—sorry, more than 100%. That was driven mainly by the bus charging segment in that region.

North America growing 16% in order intake-wise, but actually, if we look only the US, US orders were growing almost 200% during the quarter. Good result over there as well.

Then when looking the coming quarters, our order backlog is 32% higher than the year-on-year, so that gives a good foundation for growing in the coming quarters as well. Then about the revenue: like I mentioned, significant growth, 54% in the revenue, and that was driven by the growth in North America, more than 200% growth over there, and also Europe outside Nordics growing strongly as well.

Then, one highlight also, when looking our recurring revenue and our services and aftermarket, that revenue in Q1 grew also 45%, reaching almost €5 million, €4.6 million to be exact, which is 7% of our total revenue when looking our Q1 2026 numbers. Then about the profitability: regarding gross profit margin, sequentially, we kept that flat, more or less on the same level than in Q4 2025, but year-on-year, that dropped by 4.2% units.

Like Bhasker commented, there's price erosion ongoing in the market which continues, and there was some regional mix impacting as well, and we had few little bit lower margin customer deals also impacting on the margin. Operative EBIT, like I mentioned, improved significantly, almost €4 million year-on-year, being negative by €3.5 million.

That was driven by increased volumes, but partly offsetting by the lower gross margin and higher fixed cost base, what we had during the Q1 2026. When looking our guidance and our targets, we of course continue focusing on our top-line growth, revenue performance, but of course at the same time, we continue controlling our fixed cost and managing the fixed cost in order to improve the profitability for the coming quarters as well.

Then going to cash flow and liquidity more in details: like I mentioned, cash flow from operating activities improved from negative €8 million Q1 2025 to negative €1 million during the Q1 2026. That was driven by improved profitability and the positive change in the net working capital altogether.

Then when looking our liquidity level, which include our cash, our money market investments, and our RCFs, we actually improved our liquidity situation. Our liquidity has increased to €119 million, improvement year-on-year.

We are quite confident that this is one of the strongest liquidity levels among the peers in the DC charging industry in North America and Europe. Now I hand over back to Bhasker.

Thank you, Jukka. Let me conclude with a summary.

Our outlook for the full year is unchanged. We expect revenue to grow between 10% and 30% versus 2025, and for reference, 2025 revenue was €251.3 million.

Operative EBIT is expected to improve significantly versus 2025. Last year, operative EBIT was negative €12.4 million.

We will continue to invest strategically in technology, in sales, in services, because these investments strengthen our long-term position. We do recognize that these do weigh on profitability in the short term, and that's a deliberate choice that we're making to position us for the long run, and we believe it's the right one.

Three things to take away from the first quarter: first, strong organic growth and momentum. You see revenues that are up 54%, North America up 230%, and services up 45%, and the order intake for the first quarter is a record of €69 million.

Second, we continue our execution of the strategic priorities. We are continuing to gain share in a competitive market.

The eight new customers in Q1 demonstrates that, North America outperforming the market demonstrates that, and we are leading in megawatt charging and MCS is moving from pilots to commercial deployments. Third, we are laser-focused on financial discipline and delivering to it.

The operative EBIT improvement of €3.8 million year-on-year shows that. We continue to balance gaining share with our focus on gross margins, and on that, our cost program is ramping up well and our cash conversion is steady.

Overall, a strong start to the year and we are executing our plan. Now, before we move to the questions, a quick reminder: our Capital Markets Day is coming up on the 26th and 27th of May in Oslo.

We're hosting it at the Munch Museum, and we will present our updated strategy and financial targets. Day one is presentations and dinner with the management team.

You can join the presentations on-site or via the webcast. Day two is on-site only.

This is customer site visits, where we hope these will give you a glimpse into the future of electrification and you will see the electric transition first-hand in one of the more advanced markets. We hope to see many of you there.

We're very excited about it. For registration, the details are on the Investor Relations website.

I'd say with that, I think we are ready for Q&A. Calle, over to you, please.

Thank you, Bhasker. Thank you, Jukka, as well, for the presentation, and now let's continue with Q&A.

We will start by taking the questions from the conference call line and then move on to questions through the webcast. Let me at this point hand over to the operator for the instructions.

Operator, please go ahead.

Hello. This is Nikko Ruokangas from SEB.

Thank you for the presentation. I have three questions and I'd like to go one by one, and starting with order intake and delivery times.

You had many orders last year with more than 1-year delivery time. If you now look at the Q1 orders, are you now trending towards shorter delivery times or do you continue to receive new orders with long, more than 1-year delivery time?

Yeah. I can take that.

Hi, Nikko. Thank you for the question.

Look, yeah, order intake, there's different delivery times that we get in our order intake. Our total order backlog is now €140 million.

I would say this time around, more than three-quarters of that is for 20 2026 delivery. That's the trend that we're on.

I think we were at about one-third of our or two-thirds of our backlog was for 2026 delivery at the end of 2025, so that's increased a little bit.

Thank you. Then on profitability side and in fact, the fixed costs, as you already touched upon the gross margin quite a bit.

Fixed costs were up now, should we expect similar kind of a pace of fixed cost increasing in the coming quarters as well?

Hi, Nikko. Thank you for the question.

Regarding fixed costs, maybe few items to take into account: there was a bad debt provisions, which caused some costs now in Q1, close to €1 million. Then when we look our comparable period, actually, that those created income of €1 million.

Those created €2 million delta when you look the fixed cost kind of year-on-year increase. This is of course we follow the IFRS 9 when we do the accounting.

We don't see any major risk increases on that, we expect to recover most of that. Then other items impacting our fixed cost, also our personnel costs were slightly higher now in Q1.

For example, last year Q1, we didn't account any bonuses, and this year Q1, we account around €1 million. Those, when you look the comparables, are impacting when you look the higher fixed cost base now in Q1.

Understand. That explains well.

Thank you. Then the last one from me, and regarding the gross margin, you already discussed a bit about it, but now from kind of product mix perspective.

Could you discuss on how much has your sales split between commercial vehicles and personal vehicles changed during the past 1 to 2 years, and then how has this impacted your gross margin and mix?

Of course, good question. When looking over the years, of course, the commercial vehicle segment has becoming also quite a big, relevant segment for Kempower looking intake-wise and revenue-wise.

We are of course really strong player in that segment when looking on distribution duties solutions, the large charging solution, also a ChargEye overall. Which is natural part in that sense.

When looking Q1 gross margin, that was not any reason for our gross margin development, how it evolved. Like we have commented, there is continued price erosion on the market, there's some kind of regional mix impacting on our gross margin as well, and then there's a certain customer deliveries with the slightly lower margins also impacting in Q1.

Like we commented, we have this cost savings program ongoing and we expect that to impact a relevant amount to gross margin in Q2 and going further,

so. Perhaps, Nikko, maybe I'll add to what Jukka just mentioned briefly.

Look, I think from a mix perspective, for us regional mix and then product versus aftermarket is more important than just product mix, because if you look at our product, it's very modular. The same modular platform is serving commercial vehicles as well as our public charging, and MCS is an exception where MCS is dedicated to truck charging.

You look at the e-bus charging and even truck charging that we've been doing over for years now, that's coming out of the same product platform. From that standpoint, there's not a big product mix shift, but regional and then over a period of time, product versus services, which we'll talk more at the CMD, is more of effect.

Yes. We'll continue then on discussion.

Thank you. That makes sense.

That's all for me.

Thank you, Nikko.

Yes, thank you. Good morning.

Two questions for me: the first one, regarding you mentioned pricing pressure. Is it coming from your competitors or is it related to new clients discounts?

The second question is related to excess inventory on the market. What's your view on that?

If you could give us more color on potential excess inventory in 2026. Thank you.

Perhaps I can take the pricing and then Jukka takes the inventory question. On pricing, hey, Paul, good to hear from you.

Thank you for the question. Look, on pricing, it is an intensely competitive market, and you see a number of players, a lot of players in this market and a number that are subscale that are also striving for relevance in the market.

Pricing for them, when in an undifferentiated space, is a lever that they use. I think, for us, we start with differentiated product and technology.

As we're looking to gain share in newer markets for us, yeah, we do go up against those competitors in some of those are more localized competitors in those spaces. Starts with customers loving our technology and to start having them get a taste of that technology, we want to first show them the ROI.

Yes, we do see pricing pressure, it's intense and there's a lot of local competitors. Now the markets that we're entering, and North America is a great example: the fact that we entered that market just 2 years back and we are gaining share through a great product, through a great team and price is not the only lever there.

We are leading with our product and team and our capabilities, we see success there and we will improve margins even there over a period of time.

Paul, what's your another question about the excess inventory? Sorry, I partly missed that, so.

Paul, if you are still on the line?

Just yeah, do you still observe excess inventory on the market?

Okay. Then I heard that.

Because we can see only our own customers' inventory situation, and what we can comment is that it starts to be quite a normalized from our point of view. We see that from the ChargEye data and another thing we see it from the customer behavior and discussion.

We have several, let's say, old customers back in ordering, back in normal business as usual kind of discussion. We can comment from our point of view, of course, we cannot comment totally market at the same time, but situation has normalized from our point of view.

Thank you very much. That's very clear.

That's all for me.

Thank you, Paul.

All right. Thank you very much for the questions, and now we'll continue with questions through the webcast.

We have a number of questions already coming in, a bit of overlap, I'll try to filter through those. If we start with the first one: what kind of growth investments did you make in Q1 considering the clear increase in cost structure, and how much of this is recurring and how much is one-time?

If we look our investments overall, opex, capex, we of course continued investing quite a lot on technology. We have all the time critical product development, new features, products.

We are investing heavily and want to get those out to the markets, and that's a one critical thing. What about this kind of one-time items?

We don't want to call it that way, but like I already commented, about this bad debts, like €2 million year-on-year increase. It was income one year back, now it was a cost in our P&L, that was a one item.

Then the bonuses also, which we didn't accrue in Q1 2025 and now we did €1 million, so that's a big picture from our point of view.

Good. Then actually to continue with the bad debt or the credit loss provisions, there's a question that has some of your customers gone bankrupt or why did these credit loss provisions increase?

That's based on this IFRS 9 model, what we are following. We are following the payment behavior in different customer groups and in different stages, how overdue the payment is.

Of course there's all the time risk that some customers go to default. We have own process in place for that.

We are using credit insurance, we are using advanced payments as well. Our bad debt provision is €4 million at the moment, and of course, there is always some cases which might end up on the default, but regarding Q1, we expect to recover most of the impact.

Yeah. Then on the gross margin side: what kind of improvement do you expect in the gross margin during the year 2026?

I can comment. We don't guide the gross margin.

We guide the top-line growth between 10% to 30% for the year, operative EBIT improve it significantly. Like Bhasker commented, our unit cost savings program, of course we expect to get the good results from there, so that's I think all we can comment,

yeah. Look, maybe just to add on what Jukka said.

Look, we look at all three: price, mix, cost productivity. Bottom line is, our goal is price-cost neutral or positive, and, especially as the cost program ramps up, our goal is to be able to improve gross margin.

At the end of it, we are balancing a number of factors here: growing market share, growing our overall operative EBIT profitability, and continuing to invest in areas that we think are strategically very important in the long run. We've talked about technology, services, sales.

We always try to balance between those and achieve the plan and the targets that we've set for ourselves.

Absolutely. Then maybe the last one on the kind of fixed costs and the cost side: there's a question that should we pencil in a new, higher level of fixed costs in the coming quarters, and also about the warranty cost, that what should we expect with the warranty costs going forward?

The fixed cost and new run rate, of course, good to take into account the comments I mentioned, bad debt as an example. Warranty cost, we reported it also in our Q1 report, €4.1 million warranty cost, which was actually going down year-on-year.

It was €4.4 million 1 year before. We work also, of course, heavily on that area, and what's positive impact on that area of course going further is that we of course have a asset base which is all the time with the newer and newer generation of the products and the better and better quality metrics.

We expect that to go down over the time,

yeah. Very good.

Then if we move to the guidance range, there's a question that why is the guidance range for revenue growth still 10% to 30% when growth in the Q1 exceeded 50%?

Perhaps I can comment on that. Look, yeah, the first quarter, we had a strong first quarter, up 54%, but I would say, especially in the second half of the year, the comparables get tougher for us.

As you saw, in the second half of last year, we grew 17% year-on-year, our comparables are tougher in the second half. The second thing I'll say is the market is dynamic.

We have seen that, and we've just completed the first quarter. We'll reassess after the first half, second quarter quite important, of course, but at this moment, we feel good about the range that we provided.

Absolutely. Then the final question, this is more kind of a longer-term question: how are you scaling production capacity to address the anticipated growth in global demand for fast charging infrastructure?

Yeah. Perhaps I can say, hey, look, we'll talk more about it in our Capital Markets Day coming up in a few weeks, I encourage folks who are interested in that to attend.

At high level, look, we have capacitize for growth and that is a lever that we continue to use, that a lot of the investments that were put in were based on the targets that we've set. We have plenty of capacity to incorporate for growth, and we'll talk more about specific levels in the CMD.

Perfect, that's all the questions that we have for today, we can conclude the event. Thank you, Bhasker.

Thank you, Jukka, for the presentation. Thank you, all the participants, for the questions and the activity.

As a reminder, please do sign up for our kind of exciting CMD. I hope to see many of you in Oslo in May.

Then finally, before we close the line, we want to end with a short customer video. This time around, the video is related to our operations in North America and it's about our partnership with PowerUp.

With that, have a good rest of the day. Thank you very much.