Malin Siberg
Hello. Welcome to this Q1 report from Guideline Geo.
My name is Malin Siberg, I'm the CEO of Guideline Geo. I'll start with a one-pager about the company, and then we will move our focus to the Q1.
As always, please type any questions that you may have in the chat, and we will have a Q&A session in the end. Who are we?
We are your guide to the subsurface. We design and manufacture non-destructive geophysical solutions that are used for subsurface surveys.
Our main applications are utility locating, finding pipes and cables subsurface, ground investigation such as ground stability prior to any type of infrastructure construction, groundwater management to find and explore new groundwater aquifers. We're a stock-listed company, we have more than 100 years of history, and given our size, we have a true global reach that you can see in the map, and we sell direct through our own subsidiaries and indirect through the industry-leading partner network that are the blue dots.
We are on a growth journey, since 2020 to 2025 [doubled?] in size, and we closed last year at 200 million Swedish kronor.
Enough about us, let's move to Q1. It was a good quarter, it was a strong quarter.
Our net sales was flat compared to last year, 49.4 versus 49.7, but if you look at this in comparable number, comparable currency, it would have been a growth with 16%. Order intake, 51.7 versus 46 last year, is a growth with 12%.
Our profitability grew a bit from last year's Q1, 2.3 versus 1.8 EBITDA, and -1.4 versus -3.3 last year's Q1. We had a—we have a positive and strong operating cash flow, 9.8, and we are still at a strong and solid net cash situation with 23.6 million.
Let's look at the net sales and order intake split by region. If we look at APAC, it was not a strong quarter.
In APAC, we saw a strong—we see a continued strong trend in India, and that's really pleasing to see. We changed the distributor a couple—1.5 years ago, and they're doing tremendously good for us.
On top of that, it's pleasing to see, and it helps us when we see EU signing a trade agreement with India that is supporting—that gives us confidence in a—in a continued growth in India. China is on a poor trend and is behind the—the decline in APAC.
We're not the only one that see a decline in China. There is strong competition to—with local vendors, and you also see more and more tenders requiring—requiring local domestic brands in their tenders.
EMEA, EMEA had a, okay, pretty solid net sales and a strong order intake that we haven't completely delivered yet. Europe is behind the growth, and I'll come back to that in some future slides, exactly what products we've sold in—in Europe.
Middle East and Africa started the year pretty—pretty good, but since the Iran conflict was started, we've of course been impacted in the Middle East region. Americas, strong quarter, year-over-year, quarter-by-quarter growth.
We're doing well in Americas, really pleasing to see. It's US driving most of this growth.
Specifically, this Q1, also pleasing to see is that we saw strong order intake and sales from Brazil. We've also done some—some—some channel changes in Brazil that has taken—has been positive.
Also here again, EU has signed a trade agreement with the Mercosur agreement, and that, in our minds, will also help us going forward. Geopolitical instability, but because of our geographic spread and our strong partner network, even though there is—we see negative trends in some parts of the world, we can always find pockets of growth where we are.
Overall, happy to see this. We are exporting, and 95% of our sales goes on export.
It's—when you analyze us, you need to understand how the currency affects us. We sell mainly in US dollars, quite a bit in euros, and some in Australian dollars in our Oceania subsidiary.
Our supply chain is mainly in SEK, and two-thirds of our employee costs are in SEK. Currency impact in Q1, if you look at our net sales, was 49.4, but in comparable currency to last year's 49.7, the net sales would have increased by 16%.
If you look at the graph showing the—the currency development, you can see Q1 2025, we averaged the dollar at around 10.80, and in Q1 2026, we averaged the dollar at 9.20. Of course, that is what makes the difference.
During the quarter, we had a headwind from the currency in our EBIT with +2.2. Then you have, again, if you look at the black chart, the dollar chart, you can see that during Q1 2026, we entered the—the quarter with a dollar at roughly 9.20, and we ended—we left the quarter at 9.50.
That gave us the—the tailwind from the currency in the quarter. Enough about the currency.
What about the products? This chart shows the sales between the—our product lines, and Q1 was a strong MALÅ quarter.
Across most of our products in the MALÅ portfolio, which is really pleasing to see, our high-volume product, the MALÅ Easy Locator Core, the 2D solution, really good sales, US, Europe, strong sales. Our array solutions, our 3D solutions, also sold really well in Q1, both the MIRA Compact that I've talked quite a bit about, the newly released, and I'll come back to that, the MIRA Flex also sold well in Q1, and also our earlier, the MIRA HDR solutions have been selling well in Q1.
Again, we've—we are doing pushes for growing our aftermarket sales, and slowly, quarter-by-quarter, we are increasing our aftermarket sales, and that is also pleasing to see. If we turn our eyes to ABEM, it was not as strong quarter, but what was strong in the quarter was our TEM sales, and I'll come back to that in a product slide in a while.
The light blue bar on top of the Q1 is what we call other, and this quarter we had a strong sales from our Reutech business in North America, and I'll come back to that, too. If we look at profitability, we were pretty satisfied with this result, EBITDA of 2.3 and EBIT -1.4, as expected and pretty okay.
What drives this is a mix of things, of course. I mentioned the currency effect.
The product portfolio mix that we sell does affect the EBIT level, of course. Some third-party products have lower margins, and some products are really high-margin, so that affects—affects overall profitability or margin.
We have some one-time effects from a cost perspective. We held two partner conferences, and that means a lot of travel and some additional cost around that.
We also did an IT upgrade of our ERP system that was a one-time cost in this quarter. Net cash and cash flow: we had a positive operating cash flow, 9.8.
Q1s are often a good cash flow quarter because we sell a lot, we deliver a lot in Q4, and then we get paid in Q1. Expected, but still positive.
We are—have a solid net cash situation very similar to what we had in—after last year's Q1, 23.6. I want to highlight a couple of things around our markets and our applications.
In Q1, we saw strong sales and order intake from the infrastructure customers and from utility locating customers, goes hand-in-hand with our MALÅ product lines, and mainly driven from US and Europe, pleasing to see. The groundwater market continues to go well for us, and again, here is where we saw a strong trend in sales from our TEM products.
Then we also had a strong quarter from the defense sector. For those of you who follow us, in end of last year, we signed an OEM partner agreement with a partner in the defense industry, and we got multiple orders from this OEM partner in Q1.
In Q4 last year, we also signed a frame agreement with a European armed forces, and they also continued to place order with us in—in Q1, also pleasing to see. Some of you might have seen two press releases that went out in Q1, and they were about large orders that we got from mining customers in the US.
In North America, we are a distributor of solutions from South African Reutech Mining, and we sell their slope stability radars for open-pit mines, like you can see in the picture, to make sure that the—the—the slopes are stable. In Q1, we got one order from US existing customer of another radar solution, like you can see in the picture, and we also got from an existing customer a three-year service agreement worth 6.0 million Swedish kronor.
Important for this business is also import taxes to the US. Last year, we had—we faced 40% import taxes from South Africa to the US, and of course, that impacted all new sales.
Since February, that is now down to 10%, this has helped open up this market for us again, and is—I'm really pleased to see these large orders coming in immediately. Early in the year, we focus on gathering our partner network, and in Q1, we held two partner conferences, one for the Latin American partners in Argentina this time, in Buenos Aires, in February, and for our Asian partners, we gathered 45 of our Asian partners in Thailand in early March.
These are important to us because 65% of our sales is through our partner network, they are our sales people, we need to stay close with them. We need them to—to give us direct feedback what is needed on their specific market in their specific regions, and for that, these conferences are really important to us.
We also provide sales training, we do product launches, we do product trainings, and we train them how to demo our solutions, hardware and software. This—these groups have started to share between themselves customer cases and best practices as a way to learn from each other, and of course, it's also import—really important for us to—to build that network, to build those strong relationships between us and our sales channel.
Product highlights, innovation highlights in—in the quarter: we launched in the quarter something that we call the MALÅ MIRA Flex, and you can see that on the picture on the top. It's a 3D GPR solution suitable for mobile infrastructure surveys such as road investigations that you can see in the picture, and the solution is the box under the vehicle.
This is not a—a typical product for us. This is what we call an OEM product where we sell components.
We sell our radar antennas, we sell our software as components to a customer who integrates this into their full solution. This has been really well-received, and we started selling it a little bit before we launched it, and we re—we already have quite a number of—of vehicles like this driving around the world doing subsurface surveys.
The picture below is from the product ABEM GroundTEM Trek that we launched end of last year, and it's a mobile solution for water prospecting, groundwater prospecting. Really easy to use, really helps increase in-field productivity for water surveys, and you can see the result directly in your app while you're walking.
We took orders from end of last year, and we started shipping during the quarter, this is why I said that we saw a strong trend for the TEM business in Q1. That was partly due to the—the build-up sales order backlog of these.
In the US, in the quarter, we made a structural change internally. We've had three offices in the US, and for a small team, that has been a bit too large of a costume, we've been thinking about this for quite some time.
Due to a couple of reasons, a staff change was one of them, we, during Q1, we initiated to consolidate all sales, service, support, and the warehouse and administration to a new office in Denver, Colorado for our ABEM and MALÅ business. We'll move within the territory as you can see in the picture.
Our ambition is to strengthen the team by doing this, and we know this will increase our internal efficiency, and of course, we will also get some cost savings on top of that. In Q1, end of Q1, we moved out of our current office in South Carolina in Summerville, and in Q2, we will move into the new office in—in Golden in—in Colorado.
We will, though, keep our existing Reutech office, where we have our warehouse for the service in Salt Lake City in Utah. It's a small office.
The sustainability highlight for this quarter is around cables and around supply chain, because a core—a key cornerstone in our sustainability strategy is to have our supply chain as local to our manufacturing site as possible. That means close to our—close to Västerbotten in northern Sweden.
Geophysical cables, they are a key component to our ABEM product lines. We sell a lot of cables.
Customers can buy a kilometer of cables from us, and they're heavy, they're high-quality, and they're costly. During Q1, we validated a new supplier of these cables in Västerbotten, and that means that we have a dual sourcing of these important components going forward: our existing supplier in the US for that market and a Swedish-based supplier for the rest of the world.
This shortens transports, and we increase our rate—overall rate of local manufacturing of our parts. To summarize Q1, it was a good quarter.
Despite the geopolitical turbulence in the world, our global presence through our—our—our subsidiaries, but also through our partner networks, makes us stay strong. We saw a strong growth in the US this quarter.
I'm really glad to see that. We've also focused on the restructuring of our own US operations and initiated a—a consolidation of offices.
With that, I end the presentation and hand over to take any questions that you may have.
Operator
Yes, and the first question we have is that you mentioned two large orders from the mining industry. Can you elaborate around this, and can we expect this to continue?
Malin Siberg
Yes, these orders are about what you can see on the picture. They are about our Reutech solutions, where we are a distributor for all of North America, Canada, US, Mexico, for Reutech mining solutions.
It's radar solutions to make sure that the slopes in open-pit mines are stable, that you can drive and continue to develop that mine. One of the orders was to an existing customer for one more solution that we have delivered in Q1.
The other order was for a service agreement, a three-year service agreement, because these radars, they need to be maintained, proactively maintained, and also emergency maintained. Our office in Utah, we have three service technicians that continuously maintain and service these solutions.
Two big and important orders in Q1. I think I said that in the presentation, but important, last year, the Reutech business was really slow for us, partly because of the 40% import tax to import solutions from South Africa to the US, and that is now down to 10%, this market has opened up again for us.
That is really positive for us.
Operator
Next two questions are on the same topic. First, great to note your growth in the defense market.
What are your plans moving forward in this growth market? Also, the second question is, was this according to your expectations, the orders?
Malin Siberg
Yes, the defense sector is obviously a growth sector, of course we are looking into that very much as well. We were really happy to sign the OEM partner agreement that we did end of last year with a partner in that's industry who wanted to integrate our components into their solutions.
We think that was a very good way of addressing this market, because we don't have the sales channel ourselves towards that market, to join forces with that type of partner was strategically a good fit for us. That partnership has turned out really well so far, and as I said, we got multiple orders from them in Q1.
If you remember, last year, we got orders from them even before signing the partnership agreement. We're on track with our expectations here.
I think that's a good example how we address the defense sector. Then we also get the direct customers like the armed forces that we signed a frame agreement with in December last year, and they did a purchase, and now we've seen another purchase in Q1.
Again, when we sign these agreements, we expect revenue to come, and it's pleasing to see that it also is being executed on. Our plan is to continue on the direct sales, and also to go through these partnerships, OEM partnerships for the defense sector.
Operator
Last question right now is, what triggered your reconstruction in the US, and what is your expected outcome?
Malin Siberg
Yes, we have been thinking about this for quite some time. It is a small team in the US, and having three offices, I think everyone can see that that is not the most efficient way to organize it.
What triggered this was an employee change. One of our service technicians for ABEM and MALÅ wanted to try out new job, she moved to our Utah office to start working with the Reutech business instead.
That meant that we were decreasing the number of people working from our South Carolina office. We thought that was good timing to actually close down that office and consolidate office to Colorado, which is our main office in the US.
That was the timing reason. We have pretty high hopes on this.
There's always some turbulence when you do this type of consolidation, but we know that this will strengthen the team to be working from one office together, both product lines, sales, warehouse, service and support, and admin in the same office. When you are a small team, that matters.
It will strengthen the team, it will increase our internal efficiency, and of course, we expect a cost reduction because we're shutting down a pretty large office.
Operator
I think that finalizes the questions.
Malin Siberg
All right. Thank you for listening in, and see you again for the next quarter.
Already premium?