Hi, and good afternoon everyone. Welcome to this follow-up conference call and Q&A session after this morning's presentation of Kongsberg Maritime's financial results for the second quarter and first half year of 2026.

Thank you all for joining us today and for your continued interest in our company. Joining us on this call is our CEO, Lisa Edvardsen Haugan, as well as our Acting CFO, Jan Erik Hoff.

We assume most of you have seen our report, we are actually happy to dive straight into your questions. With that, we would like to open for questions.

Please raise your hands, and we will take question by question. Maybe, yeah.

Petter?

Yes, can hear me? Yes, we hear you fine.

Yes.

Fantastic. I can kick the party off with a question on the aftermarket.

You posted at least a positive development on the aftermarket revenue Q-over-Q, and we appreciate and understand that the visibility there seems to be rather limited. However, any flavor on activity level into second half would be appreciated, or at least if you could say anything about if there's any typical seasonality patterns we should remember there into second half that we can use as a proxy, any flavor there would be very much appreciated.

What I can say is that when it comes to the aftermarket, we are seeing that the activity number and the number of quotes that we are getting into us are quite stable, and actually also increasing, and that we are taking as a positive sign. That relates both to the field service activity and also to the spares.

When it comes to the larger upgrade projects, we see that some customers are having more this wait-and-see approach, but I do believe that entering into the second half, we will see more positive momentum into this area. There is a lot of interest, it's more this question around timing.

If something I can say is that in the past it can turns real quickly, and that is also what we have experienced entering into 2026. I'm having a positive outlook when it comes to aftermarket because the long-term fundamentals are so strong, I'm cautiously positive for the second half, to put it like that.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you, Petter. Any other questions?

Or while we wait for any hands to be raised, maybe, Lisa, you can comment a bit about both the acquisition that we announced yesterday, and also the development in the quarter.

I will be happy to do that, but should we take the question from Lukas first, and then... Lukas, please go ahead, and then I can comment afterwards.

Good morning. Thank you.

Good morning.

First question is, obviously relating to the margin development. When I look at the segments, margin was down quarter-over-quarter in the Energy and Control division.

That's despite the fact that the aftermarket share was up quarter-over-quarter. Is there something specific that explains the dynamic, or could you sort of provide a bit more color on that?

I can start. I think you are right in what you say, but I think it's also important to remember that the profitability differs also within both newbuilding and aftermarket.

We have seen there are between quarters mix shifts inside the aftermarket and inside the newbuilding market as well. What we see in Energy and Control specifically is that we see very strong development on the newbuilding side, on the new deliveries when it comes to efficiency and when it comes to margins there.

The aftermarket side is more impacted by the mix within the aftermarket, where the development is slightly weaker on the spares side, but better on the more field service and project side. Yeah.

If I were to add something on the answer from Jan Erik, it's also important to keep in mind that the energy part, which consists of a lot of third-party equipment around electro, is also growing, so that are also having some impact on the profitability within Energy and Control, and are also impacting the margins that we are having in the customer support. With that said, electro is a very important driver behind the strong growth that we are seeing also within the newbuilding fields.

Coming back to what I have talked about earlier, that electro is kind of a major integration layer in all that we are doing now, focusing around energy efficiency.

That's helpful. Thank you.

If we keep sort of the outside of the equation now, your backlog for execution for the remainder of the year is roughly 800 million NOK higher than at the same time last year. For the second half of this year, are there factors that sort of move the growth rate in one direction or the other compared to the last year?

It's very positive that it's really strong order intake we are having within newbuild, and of course that brings bigger visibility also into the second half of 2026. With that said, for the newbuilding side, it takes some time from we are converting order intake into revenues.

It's fair to say that we are having a good coverage for the newbuild side entering into 2026, and it also gives us strong visibility into 2027. It's like we have said before, the uncertainty lies within the aftermarket part, which are a positive given the fact that we are seeing increased revenue from the second quarter compared to the first quarter, and also the number of quotes makes us consciously positive in the outlook also for the second half of 2026.

Then I had some questions on the acquisitions, but maybe you can start with a general introduction and we can follow up on that. Thank you.

It's very focusing that we are now doing exactly what we have said. We have talked about the uniqueness of Kongsberg Maritime and how having such a broad portfolio and also broad segment coverage is one of the true uniqueness.

When it comes to the propulsion, it's fair to say that we had quite a broad portfolio for the propulsion range, but we were missing the part addressing especially the merchant sector and also the light-gray naval. This is exactly what we are getting with the acquisition of Berg Propulsion.

They have a really strong presence within coastal cargo, bunker, and tanker, scaling on that, in addition to the very fast-growing defense market, makes this a really strategic move for us, and we have high expectations to this acquisition. They are having an installed base of 4,000 vessels.

It's not much of that that are overlapping with the installed base that we are having in Kongsberg Maritime today. Actually, 90% are on vessels that we do not have Kongsberg Maritime equipment on today.

Also scaling on that and bringing in the broader Kongsberg Maritime portfolio is something we see as very attractive. Of course, with the global footprint that we are having in Kongsberg Maritime today, being present in 45 countries with more than 100 locations, we are now hoping also to utilize that, and that gives us then synergies into this acquisition.

Happy to take questions if there are any around that acquisition. Yes, Lukas?

Yes, I can just follow up on that. If revenue of Berg was around 1.9 billion NOK last year, what kind of a growth are you foreseeing for them to deliver going forward?

Is that in line with your own, or is it higher?

We will come back with more targets regarding the Berg acquisition later on. It's like you're saying, they had €161 million in revenue last year, and they've had a really strong performance the last years.

Of course, we are positive also for the outlook going forward and also what we can bring on of integrated value to our customers with this acquisition.

Is there a reason for not disclosing the transaction value? Because I guess it will be disclosed in the financial statements at some point in time in the future.

Jan Erik, would you like to comment on that?

No, we will, as you said, the transaction value will come at a later point. It's an agreement now that we cannot disclose it at this point.

As we have said in the announcement from late last night, the transaction is valued at approximately the same EV/EBITDA levels that Kongsberg Maritime is trading on.

Okay. Are you going to finance it with the cash on hand and the available debt facilities that you have lined up prior to demerger?

We will come back with the exact way of financing it at a later point. As you are aware of, we have a very strong balance sheet.

We are rated investment grade BBB+ by the credit rating agency that we're using, meaning we have capacity on the balance sheet. We have approximately 2.5 billion in cash at the moment.

In addition, we have credit facilities that we can draw up to 4 billion on. The exact split on financing is something that we will come back to.

When should we include the new business in the modeling process?

We announced the signing yesterday. We are entering into the closing phase as of today, basically.

It will take some time, but within a couple of months it should be cleared.

Okay. It's obviously less than 10% of your revenue base, it's relatively sort of small.

I see the rationale for sort of expanding into the higher-volume segments, but aren't those segments also more competitive when it comes to margin?

It's fair to say, Lukas, that it's fierce competition within this sector. That's why focusing on competitiveness is key.

We have over time built up a supply chain also present in all regions that we hope to get further scale on than what we are having today. For us, this is a really attractive area to enter into.

As the vessels are getting more advanced also, it's easier for us to come in with clearer differentiators also, and moving up then in the price corridor. I will also like to highlight what I talked about around the potential that lies within naval, also bringing in the portfolio from Berg Propulsion.

This is a fast-growing market with huge potential.

If we compare it to your propulsion and handling business, and kind of look at the margin that you delivered in the past, is that comparable or is it widely different?

The Berg Propulsion has been really good in delivering also solid earnings. It's fair to say that they're living on par with Kongsberg Maritime.

Also with this acquisition, we are bringing the scale and the volume part also into Berg Propulsion, and hopefully that will also bring some additional benefits. First and foremost, it's adding customer value to our proposals into this segment, which is a really interesting market.

It's also fair to say that taking a stronger position within merchant are kind of giving us a more natural hedge to what is somewhat volatile development within the different segments over time.

If I can just pivot back to your sort of second quarter. You mentioned that the aftermarket share has sort of stabilized in terms of the revenue percentage.

Is this sort of a level where you kind of feel is a sustainable run rate, or could there be significant swings one way or the other? Because when I look at last year, you were pretty much at the same level and then it bumped up in Q4.

Are we sort of at a level where this is something that should be achievable going forward?

I can I can start commenting on that. With regards to the aftermarket share in the quarter, it was 50 basically 50/50 between aftermarket and newbuilds.

Not not necessarily or we we did not specifically say that that is a a stabilizing or stabilizing split, to say. We have been through a period now over the past year, year and a half where aftermar- the share of aftermarket has gone down from close to 60% at the peak to around levels where they are today.

The previous quarter, the split was 53/47 between between newbuilds and aftermarket. It will fluctuate a bit, it's not like a straight line in one direction.

We have not we have not said any sort of natural split over the cycle or anything like that. That will also differ depending on sort of temperature in the aftermarket.

We had the the newbuild growth that we have seen, we have experienced pretty solid growth on the newbuild deliveries through past past year, year and a half, which has sort of increased the share there, the newbuilds have outgrown the aftermarket side of the business. We see from the order intake that book-to-bill on newbuilds were 1.24 the previous quarter, the book-to-bill on the aftermarket was slightly below 1, meaning taking that as sort of sentiment going forward, you could see an even slightly higher share of newbuild in the short to medium term at least.

Whether we are we are approaching some point, but it's hard to kind of say give you one sort of natural split there, because it will differ between quarters.

I was more thinking about the absolute level. Last year, you were first half, was it 3.5 billion on average on the aftermarket.

Now you are about 10% lower, it's been between 3.1, 3.3. That seems like could be sort of what should be achievable, and then obviously you could have some quarterly variations in addition to that.

I understand your question, and you're right with regards to the absolute level. The absolute level in Q2 was slightly higher, I would say, than Q1.

It was slightly higher than Q2 last year. With regards to sort of development in that area, you can say that it hasn't weakened any further during second half, with that in mind, it seems to find sort of a stabilizing level.

Of course, this market is reacting pretty quickly on what's happening in the world, to say, both on the positive and the negative side. The picture can change quite rapidly.

When you look at Q4 last year, the aftermarket bounced up to 4 billion in the Q4, and looking sort of in the rear mirror, what was the driver behind that?

It is mainly fluctuations and especially deliveries of large projects that could make their revenue have those kind of fluctuations.

Thank you very much.

Yes, Sindre?

Yes, hi. Just a question on the naval side.

I can see that that's kind of the highest contributor in the order intake here with close to 1.4 billion if I read the chart. Obviously it's volatile, but can you say something for the, let's say, expectations going forward in that segment?

It is fair to say that naval is one of the areas that we are monitoring closely because of the underlying drivers, which are really strong, and also the momentum of focusing on utilizing commercial products into the naval context in order to keep cost down. Of course, the large program in Norway with the standardized vessels represent a huge opportunity for Kongsberg Maritime for the entire portfolio that we have with everything from the bridge to the electro to the propulsion part, and also for handling.

Of course, also we are seeing increased interest around the USVs, unmanned surface vessels, and especially that we are having this out now and demonstrated our capabilities is something that has caught the interest from the defense sector. High expectations also to this market going forward.

Now also with acquisition of Berg Propulsion, we are broadening the portfolio range that could be attractive for this market even further. In the quarter, it was this offshore patrol cutter that came in with this large contract.

We talked about that also in the Q1 presentation.

Thanks.

Hello, I have a question.

Go ahead.

It's Marius at Mustad here. It's regarding the breakdown of the result in the quarter.

I see the Other line is a quite big negative number there, and there's a footnote, but Jan Erik, I wondered if you can kind of give some color on this number and whether this is something that's going to sort of be quite big, volatile piece of the income statements on a normal basis.

Yes, you're completely right. We have a quite negative EBITDA impacting from the Others line, and included in that is 37 million that is related to the demerger from Kongsberg.

This should be the final quarter where you see the effects from that impacting our P&L. Also, we haven't specified the exact figure, but there are some sort of startup costs on establishing systems, IT, and such with regards to us standing on our own feet, to say, from the 23rd of April.

That is the main impact. We also have a division inside the Others reported numbers, or an area called Digital and Emerging, which has a negative result, but it's a slight improvement from Q1 individually for that division.

That said, the cost level there has come slightly down towards the last 2 months of Q2, the run rate is at a better, to say, area now than it has been in the previous two quarters.

Thank you. This IT build-up program is gonna run for several quarters?

That's a question for Jan Erik.

I can start. There will be some costs going on.

It's not like you turn on a button and everything starts at day one. It's an area that we follow it very closely to kind of don't take on additional costs that aren't necessary, of course.

We aim to get that cost normalized as soon as possible, I would say. We are more or less, I would say, approaching a level where we have completed these initiatives that has been required.

There is also one other thing that I did not mention with regards to the Others side, and that was when Kongsberg Maritime demerged from Kongsberg, it was also around 35 corporate employees from Kongsberg entering into the Kongsberg Maritime base, and most of these FTEs are represented also in the Others function. That is functions like IR and such, which was not present in Kongsberg Maritime when Kongsberg Maritime was a business area in Kongsberg.

Perhaps you can also elaborate a bit about the competitiveness program that we have launched, Jan Erik, which is a natural follow-up now when we are establishing ourselves as a listed company.

Yes, I can do that. Of course, it's not like we are only looking at our competitiveness through specific programs.

This is something that we do continuously. From time to time, it makes sense to kind of gather all the programs and look at it from a sort of integrated total level.

We started working on this very early this year actually, and we launched it officially at our Capital Markets Day in June. It's a program consisting of numerous initiatives, both individual initiatives within the divisions and cross-divisional initiatives to in a way what the program is named, Competitiveness Improvement Program, and that is what it is.

It is to secure continued and future competitiveness, make sure that we are working as efficient across the divisions, in between the divisions, and inside the divisions as we can. Our goal is to realize 600 millions of savings by the end of this year with full-year effect next year.

I guess that's summed up the major parts of it.

Thank you very much. Then

we have a question from Sindre.

Hello, Sindre Gellein from Arctic. Just on the FX side, foreign exchange is said to have shaved off approximately 4% from revenues this quarter as well.

Going forward, looking at or assuming that spot FX rates is the level we will see going forward, should second quarter be the, let's say, peak of the negative year-over-year FX impacts? I know there's a time lag there, but you had approximately the same headwind in the second quarter as you had in the first quarter.

Assuming that the dollar now is almost on par with third quarter last year, and actually in the second quarter next year you will actually see a positive dollar effect, and I guess the Asian currencies also reflect the dollar, should we actually see a abating FX impact going forward now?

I think it's like you say, you have to assume a stable FX rate, which of course will never happen. Assuming a stable FX rate, this is, as it's translation effects, meaning it's really translating revenues, results, and balance sheets from our foreign companies back to Norway.

There are someone that are not muted here, where it's a lot of talking in the background. Yeah.

As you say, Sindre, if the average FX rate is the same in Q3 as it was in Q3 last year, these impacts will be smaller.

Makes sense. Thank you.

Yes, Karl Oskar?

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Back to the Berg acquisition, can you talk a bit about the background for the deal?

How long has it been on your radar? It would be interesting to know also what their split of newbuild versus aftermarket is, and what their current backlog has been or is today, and if you can comment on their order intake development, that would be interesting, too.

I can say that Berg has been on our radar for quite a long time. This is a strategic move, and a company that we identified through our strategic process.

Have been quite clear on the fact that we will use the entire toolbox, including acquisitions, to solve the gaps that we are having within our product portfolio. You have a lot of detailed questions.

I think it's fair to say that we need to come back with more answers around both the targets, the composition of the company as soon as we are closed the deal, you will hear more back from that point of view. If I were to say something more perhaps not mentioned earlier, it's to say that the propulsion range that they are having is somewhat below the sub-7 MW product portfolio range, which is a range that Kongsberg Maritime is not covering today, it's very complementary to the product portfolio that we are having.

Not much overlap in the product area.

Thank you.

Rajesh? Rajesh.

Yes.

Yes, hi.

Good morning.

I've got two questions. The first one is on margins.

I think you mentioned in the near term that the aftermarket is likely to be a bit softer than the newbuild. Does that mean this mix shift will have a further negative impact on margins as well in the near term at least?

I think if you assume profitability back in time repeating going forward, you're right in theory. We have also proven, I would say, over the past year or so that we have been able to scale on our newbuilding side.

What we see in Q1 is that that improved efficiency that we are delivering from Energy and Control and Propulsion and Handling combined is not fully, but to a large extent actually offsetting that margin shift. We will work to continue to improve efficiency on the newbuilding side.

We will, of course, also work to improve through both the competitiveness improvements initiative that we have started, as well as others, try work to deliver as solid profitability from the aftermarket side as we can as well.

That's great. Thank you.

Apologies, but I didn't understand clearly on the Other line within the sort of divisional split on profits. How should we think about the normalized level going forward for that line?

Just any color on that would be great. Thank you.

Yeah. No, as we said earlier, it includes 37 million in demerger costs.

We are done with those sort of costs in the P&L now, so that should of course be deducted going forward. We are seeing signs of certain costs coming slightly down on the Digital and Emerging business, which is included there as well.

I won't give you a specific target there, but that number should improve going forward.

Very clear. Thank you very much.

Other questions? No?

No.

If not, very well. Thank you, Lisa.

Thank you, Jan Erik. Thank you all for joining us in this conference call.

Hope to see you next quarter, third quarter, and in the meantime, we hope that you all get a really good summer. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Have a nice summer, everyone.