Studsvik AB

Studsvik AB

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Q1 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptApril 23, 2026

Operator

Welcome to Studsvik Q1 2026 conference call. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode.

During the questions-and-answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers.

Please go ahead.

Karl Thedéen

Welcome to the interim report for Q1 2026 for Studsvik. I'm Karl Thedéen and next to me I have Peter Teske, my CFO.

Let's start to go through the quarter. First, a summary of the Studsvik Group.

We are a worldwide service and product provider to the nuclear industry, and net sales last year amounted to 883 million SEK. We have offices in Asia, in Europe, and in the US.

We're a little bit more than 500 employees in six offices around the world. Before we go to results, just to remind everybody where we are in terms of what we do, because that is always important.

Start with the top left-hand corner, New Build, which is actually an area that we took significant step to enter more broader in this quarter with the acquisition of Kärnfull Next. I will talk more about that later.

Already before that, we are supplying our services and products into that market, with fuel and materials testing for new reactor developments, supporting with waste planning for licensing, working with different fuel manufacturers for fuel that goes into these reactors, and obviously supporting the SMR project development. The other three business areas or operations that we are engaged is: Decommissioning, which is predominantly a business that we do out of Germany, but also we are also engaged in Switzerland, Benelux, and in the Nordics.

In a secure and safe way, we are tearing down and decommissioning nuclear power plants. Typically, a process takes more than 20 years.

Long-Term Operations is the majority of our business. That's to serve the a little bit more than 400 reactors in the world, and we are active with at least half of that amount, with our testing services, supporting the planned outages, our software for fuel management, safety systems, and so forth.

That will remain a very important part of our business as these nuclear power stations are now set to be extended in their lives from 40 years to 60 years to 80 to 100 years. We have also an additional business that also requires our competence to handle radioactive material within Life Science.

We see increasing demand for that specifically for the unique facility we have in Sweden to handle that kind of materials. We run this business from three different business areas: Decommissioning and Radiation Protection Services, Fuel, Materials and Waste Technology, and Studsvik Scandpower, our software business.

Fuel and Materials is the largest of these ones in terms of net sales. Let me then come into the result of the quarter.

We reported a stable quarter from a top-line point of view, came in basically at the same levels as last year. The growth in local currencies is around 4%, and an operating profit of 12 versus 19.

We should then be reminded of that we have some specific FX effects in last year in 2025, which has affected the results positively. We ended up with a 5.4% operating margin.

Free cash flow was low in the quarter, was -12.5 million versus a positive of 39.6 million. That is due to the large amount of prepayments that were received in Q4 from some of our customers, and also that we had some late invoicing in the quarter.

Key milestones for us in Q1 2026. The maybe the one that stands out is the acquisition of a company called Kärnfull Next, which is a Swedish project developer for new small modular reactors in so-called SMRs.

They have expertise and worked very closely with the Swedish government and other key players in the Swedish market to understand how to, in a new way, develop sites and projects for nuclear power in a new way that is already seen, for example, in the wind power industry. As a sign of that, just following the acquisition, they also handed in an pre-application for building an SMR park in the municipality of Valdemarsvik on the southeast coastline of Sweden.

This is the first application of its kind for a total new site or location in Sweden for over 50 years. They also plan to send in more of those over the coming years.

Also in the SMR market, we expand our relationship with Rolls-Royce SMR. We already do business with them, but now signed an MoU to explore a broader set of products and services from us to support them in their endeavors to build a fleet of Rolls-Royce SMRs in Europe.

We also signed a very interesting MoU with Novatron Fusion Group. Fusion energy is very interesting at this time.

There has been some good progress in the technology development and there's a vast amount of investments put into various initiatives in Europe and in the US. Here, we are supporting Novatron, a company based in Stockholm, with their endeavors to do this.

We are now exploring various testing and so on that we can do for them, which is very similar to what we have done in the nuclear fission industry. We continue to be active to show our competence and our brand.

In this quarter, we went to the Global Waste Management Symposium in Phoenix, US. Let me take a little bit through more on the Kärnfull Next.

For us, it's a strategic step to develop Studsvik's competence around New Build, moving Studsvik into the forefront of the SMR market segment in Sweden and overseas. Basically benefiting from being in a market which has very good foundations and conditions financially and competence-wise to build new nuclear, being Sweden.

By engaging early in these projects, by being part of the projects, we will gain a lot of competence around how these are done, that we can also scale worldwide. They bring, obviously, a vast experience on understanding this market and how you set up these projects.

They have an extensive range of vendor relationships, not only with the reactor vendors, but also with all other vendors and suppliers required to build a nuclear power plant. To build this, you will need to invest in the projects.

Investments come here from the state, but we're also looking here to, obviously, look for private investments. They have built relationships and understand which of these investors that are actually have the right knowledge to invest in nuclear power.

There's a lot of regulatory and policy expertise in this group, as they have worked closely with the Swedish government to understand how to facilitate and change the regulatory environment to enable new players to build new nuclear. They have access to land rights to develop new nuclear, the application for Valdemarsvik being one example.

Here you see a picture when we actually handed in that application. We see the Minister for Environment, Mr.

Johan Britz, getting the application from Kärnfull Next. This is a way for the government to, in an early stage, make sure that we, as a project developer, can understand if this site will be approved and we don't end into a situation where we invest a lot of money and then, subsequently, they will say no.

It's part of the regulatory changes and that we now benefiting from. We will hand in more of these in Sweden.

I foresee maybe 1 to 3 more over the next 18 to 24 months. Let me then take you through the business areas: Decommissioning, Fuel and Materials, and Studsvik Scandpower.

Decommissioning and Radiation Protection Services, you know that we have struggled with our profitability in this market. We had done some changes in management and the way we operate this.

We have set a new agenda for finding the right profitability. I'm happy to say that that's now starting to pay off.

We saw a doubling of the operating margin and we see a good momentum in this business, specifically an area that we'll be struggling with around engineering services and dismantling. There we now see a better order backlog, making sure that our utilization rate of this very people-oriented business is high.

If we then go to Fuel, Materials and Waste Technology, which is the biggest both in terms of top line and in terms of margins, which is predominantly run out of our facility just south of Stockholm. We continue to have a high order backlog and a high demand for our services.

This business is very much subject to how you manage these labs that you see pictures on, and making sure that you have the right flow of some complicated testing scenarios. I think we did that very well in this quarter.

We also signed two important MoUs in the quarter to further strengthen our outlook for this business: Rolls-Royce SMR, which I mentioned, and also Novatron Fusion Group. Taking steps into become broader and bigger and more strategic vendors into these two important companies.

Waste is a part of this business, and we have our in-drum reduction of waste unique technology that we are building or planning to build on our site, and also licenses to players outside Sweden. To present that and further drive that business, we attended the Waste Management Symposium in Phoenix, where we had some important speeches and, obviously, met a lot of important customers.

Studsvik Scandpower, that is the world leader in development and support of software for reactor fuel analysis, independent of fuel suppliers, enabling our customers to work with the four different and put them under different fuel suppliers and put it under competitive offerings. Business developed positively thanks to high demand in our project and engineering services.

This is a mix of licensing and also implementation and engineering services. We have added, last year, a new business to this, which is Black Star Tech, which are supporting hardware and software for safety system in nuclear power plants and also to other heavy industries.

We saw an increase in orders, an increase in revenue, and specifically interesting to see that those orders are not only coming from the nuclear industry, we actually have demand also for other industrial sectors, which is important to build scale over time with this important business. We are also continuing to strengthen our organization in the US.

One key strategic initiative we have is to make sure that we get a better growth and higher volume out of the very important US market. We're doing that by strengthening the organization for the group to drive business with key customers in the US.

With that, I hand over to Peter Teske, our Chief Financial Officer. Please, Peter.

Peter Teske

Thanks, Karl, and I will present the financial performance of our three business areas for the quarter and then followed up by the financial results for the group, included the cash flow. We start with our first business area, Decommissioning and Radiation Protection Services.

We see in the quarter, the sales amounted to 84.1 million, and that's an increase of 1.9% in local currency compared to the same quarter last year. We see that we have, as Karl mentioned, focused on the higher-margin business now and also reduced our head count in our lower-margin services.

This has improved our profitability, and we are now see a clear increase in this in our KPI, sales per employee. The operating profit improved to 3.7 million, correspond to an operating margin of 4.4%.

The margin improved is primarily driven then by the higher utilization, cost efficiency, and a shift towards the higher-margin service area, as we mentioned. If we then move to the Fuel, Materials and Waste Technology, we see that the sales in the quarter amounted to 96.7 million, and that's a decrease of 0.8 in local currency.

Basically we are flat compared to last year, and that's reflects a continued solid progress in our project, and the overall activity remains stable compared to last year. We see a slight decrease in the operating profits.

It decreased from 14.3 to 12.3, and operating margin is 12.8%. The decrease is explained by slightly change in our product mix during the quarter, as well that we had a positive one-off effect in the first quarter 2025.

With that said, we see that we have a profitability remains in a solid level, and we are continued focus on the utilization and focus on the cost control and our financial discipline within the business area. If we then move to Studsvik Scandpower, and the sales in the quarter amounted to 49.5 million, compared to 46.2 million last year.

Here we have an impact of our FX, and we see in the local currency, it's an increase of 16.6%, and that's reflect a strong demand in the core business. We see also that the sales within Black Star Tech products increased to 7.7 million, and that's up from 3 million the same quarter last year.

The operating profit amounted to 8.5 million compared to 11.3 million last year, and the margin is 17.3%. The decrease is primarily explained by the positive FX contribution we had during Q1 2025.

Overall, the underlying business remains stable, and we also have a continued focus on the profitability and execution. If we then move to for the group, look on the group numbers, we see for the total, the sales in the group amounted to 226.4 million, and that's in local currency an increase of 4.1% compared to last year.

As I said, the increase is basically from the Decommissioning and Radiation Protection Services and from Studsvik Scandpower, and the Fuel, Materials and Waste Technology is basically flat compared to last year. Overall, our sales remain solid, and we have an underlying growth in the local currencies.

The operating profit for the group is then 12.3 million in the quarter, and that's a operating margin of 5.4%. We have a decrease in the operating margin compared operating profit compared to last year, and that is that we have some one-off effects during Q1 2025.

Also, we have done some investments in some strategic investments, and also we have some one-off acquisition costs during this quarter 2026. We see then also it's positive that this quarter, all our three business area are performing well.

That's real positive. Also, I think it's worth mentioning because we talked a lot about the FX effects, and in operating profits, we have limited impact on the foreign exchange effects, and that's because our revenues and expenses are largely matched in local currency.

Therefore, we don't have any bigger effects on the operating profit. Finally, we're going to look a little bit on the free cash flow on the cash flow for the quarter, and we have a negative free cash flow of 12.5 million compared to the positive 39.6 million last year.

The decrease is primarily reflecting the timing effects in our working capital, that we had big advanced payments received in the fourth quarter 2025, and that we had invoiced a lot during late in the quarter. During the quarter, the group amortized 7.1 million of our bank debt, and our net decreased to 78.1 million.

Overall, the group maintains a solid financial position, with continue focus on our cash flow discipline and our working capital management. With that said, I will hand over to Karl Thedéen.

Karl Thedéen

Thank you, Peter. Just some outlook on the external markets in this emerging industry of nuclear.

If you look on the world, the nuclear is still positioned very much as a critical for stable fossil-free baseload in high-demand future grids. The SMR part of this, the new way of building more scalable, modular products that can be to a large manufactured in normal factories and then shipped to the sites, are gaining traction in the world.

There's a global resurgence for nuclear led by state-backed investment models, and reiterate that the IAEA, 40 countries have signed up to triple the nuclear power of the now next 30 years. We see the same in Europe, with a major push in the UK.

France is, obviously, the biggest country for this. Finland, Poland, and Eastern Europe.

Poland is a new country for a new nuclear, so that's happening also in those kind of countries. Sweden, we're moving into execution phase.

We have the Videbergskraft application in from the Vattenfall Group. The state is also taking a key role here, not only to finance and the CFD schemes, the offtake of the electricity, but also going in with equity in the different companies that would apply for building new nuclear.

For the industry, nuclear power is becoming strategic industrial solution. It drives the electrification, and notably initially it's very much driven by the AI industry, but we also see large-scale other industrial sites that will require stable baseload that can be delivered from new nuclear.

In terms of the SMR, that we had seen a very interesting launch of a strategy, including financial support to develop the European Union's SMRs fleet and also technology. This is very important, as we this needs to be something that we in Europe also can develop and maintain ourselves.

In the UK, there has been major funding of, specifically, the inherent their incumbent developer of Rolls-Royce, and it was announced in April that they will now have financing to build three new SMRs in the UK. Maybe most important to point out and why I think the nuclear wave is here to stay, is, obviously, that it's a key role in energy security and also combining that with also providing a net-zero contribution because we obviously not sending out any CO2 emissions from a nuclear power plant.

This is becoming increasingly important in the geopolitical situation that we unfortunately are seeing as we speak now in Iran and Ukraine and other places. I think that's also why we have a very strong political backing, not only in Sweden, but also in the EU and worldwide.

We are ready to support this. We are one of the few companies that have a base inherent competence and customer relationships and products and services, and we will use that to invest and grow with the SMR growth in the world.

Here is a continuation of some of the news that has coming out recently over the last couple of quarters, and you see to the top right-hand corner where Kärnfull Next team hands in the application for the site of Valdemarsvik. A lot of things happening and that will continue to happen a lot of things in our industry.

Final remarks. A stable quarter with continued investments for the future.

I think it's very interesting and very good to see that all three business areas are now delivering a solid quarter. If you remember, we didn't see that in '24 when we had difficulties with F&T business, and in '25 when DRPS had a difficult year.

Now I see a stable situation for all three, which is very important for our year. We have taken a big step to expand into new nuclear product development and being part of New Build with the acquisition of Kärnfull Next.

At the Nuclear Energy Summit in Paris, it was reiterated by politicians and European leaders that nuclear is very important for EU to strengthen energy security and regional energy supply. We've seen the legislation initiative from the Swedish government continues, and in this quarter, we saw the lift of the ban for Swedish nuclear along coastlines, not only being able to build on the existing site, but actually opening up for other sites to be explored.

That is, obviously, very important for our new business together with Kärnfull Next. We also see that the company now expanding, and notably we have already business in the fusion industry, but with this MoU we're looking to expand it.

Once again, taking advantage of having a strong local driver of our initiatives in the Novatron Fusion Group. We also continue to expand our business in the SMR business by expanding our business opportunities with Rolls-Royce SMR.

We have a strategy which is basically having the foundation of our very competent people, our three business areas, and then expansion in the areas of markets, products, and M&A. We will continue to do, and it's a good sign this quarter that we have an M&A case, we have market expansion with new hires and new expansions in the US market, and we are continuing to drive innovation in our product areas.

Last, but not least, I have used this picture to, in a good way, exemplify what we are doing and what is happening at the, and you do that physically at the beautiful site of Studsvik. You can see different initiatives happening on our site and in the world.

The small modular reactors, that is interest, and we are exploring the possibility to build SMRs at our site. We have discussions with SMR vendors around that, and obviously that is strengthened by the Kärnfull Next acquisition.

There is an initiative in Sweden to see if we can find funding and a general consensus in industry and states to, once again, have a research reactor at the Studsvik site to support both the nuclear and the life science industry. Our hot cells is key to what we do.

We are working with Novatron to see if we can explore having a test facility for fusion, and we're continuing to build and invest in our in-drum facility on site. I think it's a good picture to showcase what is happening at Studsvik, in the world, with this image.

With that, I will say thank you and hand over for questions.

Operator

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad.

The next question comes from Lara Mohtadi from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.

Lara Mohtadi

Hi. First one here.

The operating profits from group functions and eliminations, they drag down group EBIT quite a lot this quarter. You mentioned both in your presentation and in the report that you've taken some costs related to acquisitions.

I'm guessing that they are related to the pending Kärnfull Next acquisition. Firstly, were these under group functions and eliminations, and maybe could you quantify the magnitude of these costs?

Peter Teske

I think that you have correct in your analysis, because if you look on the group functions, we see an increase in our costs, and we see that some of the cost is related to the one-off effects compared to the acquisitions. For the year, yeah, we have a strategic development and we will so it will be perhaps be slightly higher compare yeah, during the year, the costs.

Lara Mohtadi

Okay. Thank you.

Karl Thedéen

Maybe I can add there. It's not this was a specifically high in the quarter.

Peter is absolutely correct that we are continuing to invest in long-term business opportunities that will require us to take cost in terms of advisors and so on to drive. They were unnormally large in quarter one.

Lara Mohtadi

Okay. Thank you.

Fuel, Materials and Waste Management had slightly lower margins year-on-year, and sequentially. How should we think about the margins in this segment?

Should we expect some lumpiness generally between the quarters because you mentioned that this was due to products mix? How should we think when we model the maybe the annual margins here?

Karl Thedéen

I think my view is that this is a low-margin quarter for FMWT. We should be higher, and I mentioned before that we should be north of 15%.

The reason for this is a project mix, we are executing our different testing projects, and some of those will require more utilization than maybe planned, and then the margins go down a bit in those projects, and some we are performing better, and then hence we get better margins. This is combined that we are constantly trying also to increase our prices on outgoing offers, but obviously a lot of this what we're doing now is to work on our backlog as well.

It is a weaker quarter in terms of operating profit for that business unit, but I have no big concerns around that, as it's a normal variation of projects.

Lara Mohtadi

Okay. Great.

Very clear. It's positive to see that Scandpower is contributing to sales.

Can you say anything about maybe the margin profile of this business compared to the legacy Scandpower business? Oh,

Karl Thedéen

you meant Black Star Tech or?

Lara Mohtadi

Oh, Black Star

Karl Thedéen

Tech. No.

Black Star Tech should it's a combination of a hardware and software business. I think, in general, it should be coming slightly lower.

I should also say that we are learning this business as we speak, it's new to us, and we have been sort of positively surprised so far with the deals that we have done. I think it's I'm a little bit early to say exactly where we end up on the sort of average margin over time in this business.

My guess it would be a bit lower than the normal Scandpower business.

Lara Mohtadi

Great. That was all from mine, and thank you very much.

Operator

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Kaleb Solomon from SEB.

Please go ahead.

Kaleb Solomon

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. How much, if any, of the sort of profitability improvement in Decommissioning is purely seasonal versus sort of due to the cost measures you describe?

As a follow-up to that, you mentioned there was a few or there was a reduction in the number of employees, was or will there be any negative one-offs related to that?

Karl Thedéen

The first question if this is the business is typically have lower margin profile in Q1 based on the holiday season around New Year and so on. It's seasonal, but all the improvements here are from increased utilization and higher sales per employee, as Peter alluded to.

I'm not foreseeing any more restructuring costs coming out of that business.

Kaleb Solomon

That's clear. Thank you.

Then Fuel and Materials, can you remind us how much of that decrease year-over-year that was due to the one-off related to invoicing effects in 2025? Building on Lara's question earlier, do you expect mix to stay the same in Q2 or be back to normal?

Karl Thedéen

Can you take the first question once again, please?

Kaleb Solomon

In Fuel and Materials, if you can remind us how much of the decrease year-over-year that was due to the one-offs related to the invoicing effects in '25?

Peter Teske

The decrease was around 2 million SEK. The one-off effect was around 2 millions.

Karl Thedéen

That's, obviously, not material, I would say.

Peter Teske

Then

Karl Thedéen

yeah, the project mix, it is actually a tricky question to answer. We are struggling to do a super good forecast on this, because we run our projects, and then sometimes we get a slight problem, and then we start another project, and so on.

This is sort of work in progress throughout the quarter. My answer to Lara's question, which is the same to you, is that I see Q1 profitability on this business unit to be on the low level.

It's not bad, but it's not on the high level, and we should, in average, strive to be north of 15%.

Kaleb Solomon

That's helpful. Thank you.

Just on the Kärnfull Next acquisition, can you maybe give us some color on the sort of strategic rationale behind that? How much was wanting to sort of monetize on the actual projects versus sort of using it as a platform to develop products for New Builds?

The on which side of that can we expect to see a contribution first, and when can that be? That was a lot of questions in one, but.

Karl Thedéen

That was a very good question. I think the being in these projects is very important.

Otherwise you stand outside, you don't really understand, and if you don't understand, you don't know what services you can develop and what sort of offerings you should have for other similar projects. To really be in these projects, and I can take an example to the other ongoing project in Sweden where we are working closely with these different vendors, but we're not in the project as of now, and then you miss out on things, I think.

By being in the project, to an extent together with others, we will be very close and nothing's achieved that is very important to us. In terms of how much this business actually will yield in itself to be a project developer, we obviously have good hopes for that as well.

It is a bit, and we need to come back to that to the market and tell a little bit when we what we invest, when we exit from this project, and so on. That is yet something we need to come back to when we start forming these SPVs and start seeing the full scale of the investments and time plans.

That is also important. I think, actually, the strategic importance of us now can being able to say that we are very active and investing in New Build, as that, over time, will be the biggest business that we will enter into 10, 15, 20 years from now.

That's what's going to happen when you triple nuclear power in the world.

Kaleb Solomon

That's helpful. Thank you.

Last quarter, you said that you expect Black Star Tech to reach 10% to 15% of Scandpower sales during '26, and it was almost 16% of sales this quarter. Is it fair to say you already achieved that run rate in Q1, and is this the contribution we should continue to expect for the next couple of quarters?

Karl Thedéen

It was a good quarter. This is, as all equipment business, a bit volatile type business.

I aim, I remain with my hope and belief and strategy to drive this into a significant part of Scandpower. If it's going to be that exactly every quarter, that is something that we need to get back to.

I think it's we're off to a good start. I think we are now having a sales organization that is driving this business, we have better control of what the market is wanting, how to pitch it to different industries, and that's important.

If it will be exactly this every quarter, that's maybe too early to say.

Kaleb Solomon

Just one last housekeeping question. You mentioned that the slightly weaker cash flow is due to prepayments during last quarter.

Can you quantify exactly how much that is, that effect?

Peter Teske

You mean how much effect of the prepayment?

Kaleb Solomon

How much is explained by the prepayment exactly in absolute figures?

Peter Teske

In absolute figure, it's I would say it's around 20, 25 million of those prepayment that we received and in Q4 last year, then. That was a prepayment for this quarter, yeah.

Kaleb Solomon

Okay. That's clear.

Thank you. That's all for me.

Karl Thedéen

Good.

Peter Teske

Okay.

Operator

There are no more questions at this time, I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Karl Thedéen

Thanks for listening. We are still in a very, very interesting market, a lot of things ongoing in the company, and we look forward to report back on our Q2 results July 17th in roughly three months' time.