Enersense International Oyj

Enersense International Oyj

HHEL:ESENSE
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Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 12, 2026

Liisi Tamminen

Hello, and welcome to Enersense's 2025 Financial Statements webcast. My name is Liisi Tamminen from Enersense's Investor Relations.

With me here today, I have our CEO Kari Sundbäck and CFO Jyrki Paappa. I'd like to ask you to write down your questions already during the presentations, as we have a Q&A session in the end of the webcast.

Now, without further ado, I'd like to invite Kari Sundbäck and our 2025 highlights.

Kari Sundbäck

Thank you, Liisi. Welcome on my behalf to the presentation.

The year 2025 was a year of renewal, turnaround, and focusing for Enersense. This has all proceeded very well, and at the moment our profitability is increasing and our order book is growing.

I will start with highlights of the year and of the last quarter of the year. Then Jyrki will join me here for a deeper financial review, and then I will continue with the way forward.

Then we will have time for your questions and comments. Please, write them down and ask us at the end.

We are now much more focused and stronger towards our lifecycle partnership strategy execution. The financial turnaround, first of all.

We did 16.4 million of operating profit in 2025. That is 30 million more than a year earlier.

In the first half of the year, we completed the strategic focusing on the company. We focused on so-called core business, and we divested two other businesses and closed a third one, with very successful deals and positive results also in financial terms.

In the first half of the year also, we created for the core business our new lifecycle partner strategy, which makes Enersense much more focused. We are now focusing on three market segments which each attract significant investment and present great growth opportunities for us.

We have throughout the year supported the profitability and efficiency development through the value uplift program, which also has proceeded better than expectation and is generating great result. In the midst of all of this, one very significant achievement is that we cut by more than 1/3 the frequency of lost-time incidents, which is fundamental for a company like us and demonstrates that we can do when we focus on improving performance.

A few highlights on the financial turnaround. We generated 25.3 million of EBITDA through 2025, which is substantially more than the 14.5 million of 2024.

It is supported by a couple of divestments which we managed to execute in a very positive manner. The adjusted EBITDA for the core businesses, for which we had a guidance of 16 to 20 million, ended at 18.8 million, which is slightly above the midpoint.

This is down from 2024, where we ended at 20.7, but it's in line with the decrease in turnover. The equity ratio is now at 32.1, very different from a year ago when it was 12.7.

The interest-bearing net debt is at only 3.4 million, when it was 30.6 million a year ago. You can see that both in terms of operational performance and strength of the balance sheet, we are a very different company from what Enersense was just a year ago.

Let's take then a few highlights from the last quarter of the year, when we were fully focused on executing our strategy already. The relative profitability in our core businesses improved on an adjusted basis.

We were now in the adjusted core EBITDA at 5.2%. We were at 3.9% a year earlier.

At the same time, the turnaround in the trend of core businesses revenue has continued. Over the full year, the turnover was 10% less than in 2024, which is natural in a year of refocusing the company, redefining the core business and being more selective in terms of the kind of business we engage in.

Now, the gap to last year in the fourth quarter was only 1.8%. We have caught up with the turnover pace of last year.

Importantly, the order book is continuing to grow since three quarters now in core business. It is growing sequentially.

Finally, we worked hard during the second half of the year, and in fourth quarter, we agreed on a new financing package which will support our long-term development. We have reshaped our financing.

You saw key figures, and also this financing is at a lesser cost, like-for-like, than the package it replaces. A few figure highlights from Q4.

The revenue for core businesses was at 81.5 million, marginally down from 83 million in 2024. We generated 1 million more of adjusted EBITDA from core businesses, 4.2 million versus 3.2.

That brings the adjusted EBITDA relative profitability to 5.2% versus 3.9% a year ago. At the same time, the order book is growing, and it is now at 392 million.

Actually, the order book in our largest business unit, Power, is at a record high at 254 million. When we take a five-quarter development perspective, the color coding has orange for core business and dark blue for non-core business.

The first thing you can see is that we only have core business nowadays. Secondly, the line represents the adjusted core EBITDA margin, and you can see the trend.

There was a jump in Q3 last year due to one-time positive events, but when you take a line from the 3.9% in Q4 '24 to 5.2% in Q4 '25, you can see that we are going in the right direction. Then looking at the revenue split in a couple of different dimensions, comparing '25 to '24, by business units first, the share of Connectivity grew and the share of Power and Energy Transition decreased slightly, simply because Connectivity grew, whereas Power and Connectivity both shrunk a little as a result of the strategic refocusing.

In terms of the split between projects and services, the share of projects was actually slightly higher in 2025 compared to a year earlier, and this is due especially to a strong volume in projects in Sweden, and then in the Power business unit in the second half of the year. In terms of geographical regions, there's quite a big difference in the share of other Nordic countries, which means Sweden and Norway.

We have had a very large project in Norway and several in Sweden. On the other hand, in the comparison period in 2024 in the Baltics, we were still very busy with the power grid synchronization projects meant to synchronize in a north-south dimension the Baltic network, disconnecting it from Russia.

Indeed, our order book is growing. It is natural in a time of refocusing the company, reshaping the strategy, that there may be a short dip.

It is over for us. We have caught in turnover, and as you see from the order book, we have sequentially, quarter-on-quarter, increased since three quarters, and now we added 13 million to this.

The news we put out just the day before yesterday tell us that we will cross the 400 mark easily in Q1. Q4 highlights.

In terms of the order book, we won simply the largest substation order in the history of the Finnish Fingrid transmission system operator. Naturally, that's the largest order for us as well, at 27 million.

Then we haven't even listed them separately here, they are so many, we received several power line orders both in Estonia and Finland, with which we altogether won nearly 10,000 kilometers of power grid maintenance or construction in both countries. The total value of these orders is 47 million.

In the month of October only, we recorded 48.4 million of order intake in Power. The order book of the Power business unit is now at a record high.

Then, still in Power, we made a comeback. We made a comeback in the renewable energy construction.

Following the divestment of our own development portfolio, which sort of put us a bit in competition with our potential customers, we have reopened discussions and now also the order book, and we re-entered with a substation to one of the big parks under construction in Finland with OX2. Then, in Connectivity, in Lithuania, we won a very important project, a significant national infrastructure project in Lithuania, where we design and build telecom towers.

Then, I'd like to add to this news from yesterday and the day before yesterday. Day before yesterday, on Tuesday, we announced that we have extended our partnership with Helen, with whom we operate and maintain their facilities, their plants, and the district heating network.

We signed an agreement to extend for the years '27 and '28, and that is more than 30 million, the value of that order. Then I mention from yesterday, in Latvia, we are working with data centers with all business units in all of our countries.

Yesterday, we announced that for one of the data centers in Latvia, we are both building the power connection with a medium-voltage line and then the fiber connection for data. We are doing well on the order front, and the order book is growing.

Our guidance for 2026: we estimate that the adjusted EBITDA will be between 19 and 23 million. Last year, the adjusted EBITDA for core business was 18.8 million.

Now in '26, we discontinue separate reporting of the core business because the strategic focusing is completed, and we no longer are in that core business. I will personally pause for a while here and invite Jyrki to continue with the financial review, and I'll be back in a couple of minutes.

Jyrki Paappa

Good early afternoon, and let's start with the revenue side. As you can see from the orange, it's core business, and this is comparison between last year and previous year, and you can see that there was quite big decline during Q1, also declines, but smaller ones, during Q2 and Q3, and during Q4, the situation was almost stabilized.

However, we are having higher order book, and the structure of order book is nice. Moving forward to EBITDA, this is the whole group on non-adjusted basis.

On quarterly graph, you can see that there is high volatility. It's easy to see Q1 where wind portfolio was sold.

During Q4, we had a lot of one-off type of items. They were arising from ramping down of costs of ramp-down businesses.

We were also having write-downs of non-core businesses, and then we have costs which were related to speeding up value uplift and strategic renewal. All of the decline compared to Q4 '24 didn't come from one-offs.

Naturally also, the decline in sales had some effect. Moving forward for the full-year graph, and this is also on non-adjusted basis, you can see that it was structural change.

It was very busy year. Divestments were successful, as you can see.

On the left-hand side, there is the wind portfolio sale, and on the right-hand side, there is a small bar upwards, which is sale of Marine and Offshore unit. There in the middle orange bar, there are changes in core business, meaning we cut the losses of non-core units by 6 6 million during the year.

Naturally, there were also some declining elements like ramp-down of zero-emission transportation, and also from wind portfolio came for Q4 adjustment downwards. Speeding up strategy and value uplift, there you can see 5.6 million cost level.

Earnings per share for the full year were drastically coming from -1.83 to 7 cents. Now moving forward, we are concentrating on core business only.

Dark orange is without adjustments and adjusted one is with light color. There you can see that on adjusted basis, the full year was on the positive side.

The third quarter is typically the best one. Sometimes it might be Q2, but Q2 or Q3 are normally giving us upside swing, and it happened also this year.

I was already commenting that one-offs were high during Q4. We wanted to complete the restructuring.

Then we are having adjusted EBITDA full-year figures. I think the takeaway from here is that despite Power having close to 14% decline in sales, Energy more than 14% in sales, the downside was rather limited on adjusted EBITDA level.

We managed to keep the margins stable or even having some rise during Q4. Then I'm moving to business units, starting from Power.

Let's start from the top right corner. Adjusted EBITDA for the whole year was 12.1 million, this unit generates as 2/3 of our adjusted EBITDA.

This unit turned during the last year revenue from decline to upswing, and it's having currently 55% higher order book than year ago. What comes to the EBITDA, last year was for the Q4 at lower level, and the reason is that there was some projects in power lines where margins were lower, and also, as a new phenomenon, there was also some postponements of projects from '25 to '26.

Those postponements came especially from Sweden, where the national grid didn't stand outbreaks as planned, and they need to reschedule the projects timetable. Moving to Energy Transition, adjusted EBITDA for the whole year on adjusted basis, 5.2 million.

Core business revenue declined quarter-on-quarter basis close to 10%, and the reason is that we sold or closed down those service centers which weren't profitable, and that affected on sales also. Core business EBITDA, the underlying performance is okay, it's 2.9 million on adjusted basis.

However, the amount of adjustment was large due to the closed service centers and also the terminated contract type which were making losses during Q4. Moving forward to Connectivity, its development has been, let's say, most stable.

Starting from revenue, it went up by 6.5%, and it's coming especially from fiber optic networks construction. What comes to the core business EBITDA, which increased in the whole year level from 4.2 to 4.7 and in quarterly level to 2.4, it's coming from three sources of improvement: growth is one of them, second is improved efficiency in processes, and third one is high-performing service level.

Quality is good, timing is as planned, and efficiency is improving. Nice combination in there, and it has continued to improve now for several quarters.

Moving forward to cash flow and balance sheet, starting from left-hand side from operating cash flow, we are typically having strongest cash flow during Q4, and also in last year, and we managed to release 12 million working capital during the last quarter, and therefore we reached positive territory. Moving forward to net gearing and equity ratio, as Kari already told, quite different KPIs than in last year.

The reason is natural, we converted our convertible bonds to convertible hybrid. It's now part of our equity, and therefore ratios are showing totally different numbers.

What is also good for the financing arrangement we made for 2 and 1/2 to 3 years is that the cost of the package is less than with the earlier pack. My last slide before giving speech back to Kari is about value uplift.

If you can look at Q3 '25, the level we have reached on run-rate level was 4 million. We were speeding up quite nicely during Q4, reaching level of 6.7 million, which is already now more than we achieved in the beginning of this program, and we moved our target to 7.5 million in the middle of this year.

Most of the achievement and improvement is coming from the procurement side as earlier. Giving speech back to Kari.

Kari Sundbäck

Thank you, Jyrki. Let us continue with a few words on the way forward.

As a result of the renewal and refocusing of Enersense throughout last year, we have now put ourselves in a very good position at the heart of growing markets. We are top three in each of these customer segments in the markets we operate in.

In Power, just a couple of figures on the environment. The electricity consumption in Finland is doubling in 10 years.

In Sweden, it is also doubling; it takes 14 or 15 years. The point is that if you think of all that's been built in terms of electricity grid over the past 100 or so years, will need to be doubled in the space of 10 to 15 years.

We are busy working on that with a very competitive offering in terms of high-voltage lines, substations, battery energy storage solutions. We have the highest quality rankings from Fingrid, the national TSO in Finland.

We are very high also in the Baltic countries and in Sweden. Much of that consumption increase comes from data centers, where we are busy also as we speak.

We are seeing an upturn in the renewable energy market, wind power projects are coming back. We won one of the new ones.

We, in our own solution development, focus also on the long tail, on the competitiveness of the maintenance offering, bringing different digital solutions aided by AI for increased lifecycle value for our customers. In Energy Transition, the industrial energy transition is accelerated, as we see it, and in the markets we operate in.

We have benefited from this in the form of large projects we are doing, for example, in the Nordics, in Norway, in Sweden, in Finland as well. There's an increasing need for operational flexibility and reduced complexity.

That's essentially what we are providing to Helen, which is in the Finnish context, it's the most demanding, it's the most ambitious, the most exciting customer one can imagine. We are their strategic partner now for a couple of more years, agreed just a couple of days ago.

There also, we have done this, heat recovery from data center done by Enersense in Helsinki on our home ground already. Whenever a data center is going to be built where district heating is available, which improves quite significantly the business case of the data center, that's business for us.

The e-fuel ecosystems is at a face where the hype from a few years ago is gone, and the serious players are staying in the market, and we are amongst them, operating and maintaining the existing hydrogen production with P2X and their customer. In Connectivity, we see there also the data network phenomenon in the form of needs for heavy-duty fiber connections between data centers, which we are busy building for several customers in Finland, and as I mentioned a bit earlier, in Latvia, too, now.

There's an increasing need for predictability and efficiency amongst the mobile operator customers as the data volumes grow, and they are turning to us for solutions in that space because they know we are digitalizing what happens in the field and creating efficiency and new kinds of value there. Also, these customers, the Telias, Telia Towers, Elisas of the world, they are continuously increasing ESG requirements, which is only good for us because we're ahead of others in that space.

The emphasis on network security for sad reasons, but that need continues to increase, and we are working on new solutions with our dear customers in Connectivity as well. I just want to summarize this data center opportunity, which is a huge opportunity in terms of market segment.

In terms of offering, we have it already, and it is day-to-day business for us. Also, we see that growing.

We are ambitiously growing in that space, but it's not something which for us would be something we hopefully could do someday. We are busy doing this.

Each of our business units are working with data centers: Power is working on substations, the power lines, transformers, eventually some BESS; Connectivity is working on building fiber connections; and then Energy Transition is working on heat recovery from the data center and then connecting that and supplying it to district heating networks such as the setup between data center and Helen we are currently operating and maintaining in Helsinki. We did fundamentally important work throughout last year to get to a position where we now have, since well actually a couple of days, our emission reduction targets approved by the SBTi initiative.

The target is to cut by 40% from the level of 2023 to 2035. We will achieve that by reducing 63% in our own operations in Scope 1 and 2, and 38% from the value chain.

A bit more specifically, a couple of highlights. The reference point is 96,000 tons of CO2 emissions in 2023 and going to 58,000 tons in 2035.

The biggest levers there, starting with Scope 1 and 2, is our car fleet. We have progressed a lot in that already in 2025.

Then steel, as you can see from the graph on the left, is clearly the biggest area. We are working actively on offering solutions consisting of recycled steel to our customers.

They are choosing these alternatives. Recently, just last week, we announced a collaboration with WWF on helping our customers, the end customers, make better solutions in terms of recycled steel.

We're active in that front, too. We have the path set now for ambitious targets.

The targets are validated, and this is daily work for us now, and no future promise only, but just daily work. Finally, we launched our strategic targets in connection with our renewed strategy in June last year.

Let me just give you a view on where we stand with these five targets. The first target is growth.

From 2024, a growth of 4% to 5% on an annual growth rate throughout the strategy period, 2025-2028. We shrunk by 10% last year.

However, as we have seen, Q4 last year has already caught up with the level of '24, and the growth in order book tells us that we will catch up with the rate needed and very probably go above and beyond. In profitability, the target is to reach EBIT over 5% in 2028.

Looking at '25, you could say done deal, but '25 was aided by successfully executed divestments. However, we're back to a positive result for the whole company for the first time in three years, and '25 has set a good basis to reach that target, too.

In balance sheet, our net gearing, we target to be below 100. We were clearly above a year ago.

Now we are significantly below. We aim to stay on track, and we will.

In safety, last year was very good in terms of development. Our target is to continuously decrease the lost-time incident frequency.

We certainly delivered that in 2025. It's becoming all the time more difficult, but we are very committed on reaching that target, too.

In climate reductions, the target now exists, it is formulated, it is calculated, and last year was already 13,000 tons of reduction, which is a bit more than the needed trajectory. There also we're progressing to plan.

In other words, the targets stay valid, and we are performing well against them. With that, I'll close the presentation part and invite Liisi here and Jyrki.

Welcome back. Let's address your questions and comments.

Liisi Tamminen

Yes. Thank you, both Kari and Jyrki.

We have a few questions from the audience. Kari, continuing on the data centers, could you give an example of how big one project related to data centers could be for Enersense in millions of euros?

Kari Sundbäck

The range is big, but it's tens of millions of euro euros. A substation only would be 25 million.

You add to that, plus/minus 10, it depends. But 25, 30 could be a good figure for just the substation.

You add to that high-voltage lines, eventual storage, battery storage on-site, then you take from Connectivity fiber connections, you take heat recovery. They can be big.

Liisi Tamminen

Yes. Thank you.

Then the question about the guidance and assumptions behind the guidance. We can see that the lower limit of the guidance is quite close to the '25 figures, and also we say that we have achieved good run-rate improvement with value uplift.

Could you open up this a little bit?

Kari Sundbäck

Value uplift gives us confidence that we can meet the range. Of course, you might say why is it not 18.8 plus all that value uplift run rate has brought.

Some of the net result from value uplift was already in 2025 figures. Then also, we are selectively reinvesting part of the benefit into our growth and capability improvement.

Liisi Tamminen

Yes. Thank you.

Then couple of questions for you, Jyrki. Could you give a guidance on interest rates, what we are expecting for '26?

Jyrki Paappa

They are moving down quite fast and in a big scale. This new hybrid convertible, it's not booked into interest rates anymore, and also we had one-off type of elements during '25 which we won't expect to be repeated.

Liisi Tamminen

Thank you. Then there was couple of write-downs related to P2X investments and also on the wind power projects portfolio, which was sold to Fortum, and those receivables.

Could you please quantify these write-downs?

Jyrki Paappa

They were quite evenly split.

Liisi Tamminen

In total, they were around 7? Yes, totally, yes, around 7.

Jyrki Paappa

Quite evenly split between those two.

Liisi Tamminen

Yes. Thank you.

Far, we don't have any other questions, but please feel free to contact us anytime. You can see our contact details on enersense.com.

We wish you a nice end of February, and we will see you in May with the Q1 result. Thank you.

Jyrki Paappa

Thank you. Thank you.