Materialise Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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April 24, 2025

There are 5 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Quarter twenty twenty five Materialise Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press 11 on your telephone.

Operator

You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Harriet Fried of Alliance Advisors. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you for joining us today for Materialise's quarterly conference call. With us on the call are Brigitte de Vet, Chief Executive Officer and Kuhn Bourges, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call and webcast are being accompanied by a slide presentation that reviews Materialise's strategic financial and operational performance for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. To access the slides if you haven't already done so, please go to the Investor Relations section of the company's website at www.materialise.com. The earnings press release issued earlier today can also be found on that page.

Speaker 1

Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that management may make forward looking statements regarding the company's plans, expectations and growth prospects, among other These forward looking statements are subject to known and unknown uncertainties and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed, including competitive dynamics and industry change. Any forward looking statements, including those related to the company's future results and activities, represent management's estimates as of today and should not be relied upon as representing their estimates as of any subsequent day. Management disclaims any duty to update or revise any forward looking statements to reflect future events or changes in expectations. A more detailed description of the risks and other factors that may impact the company's future business or financial results can be found in the company's most recent annual report on Form 20 F filed with the SEC. Finally, management will discuss certain non IFRS measures on today's call.

Speaker 1

A reconciliation table is contained in the earnings release and at the end of the slide presentation. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Brigitte Devett. Brigitte, please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Good morning and good afternoon, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. You can find the agenda for our call on slide three. First, I will summarize the business highlights for the first quarter of twenty twenty five. I will then pass the floor to Kun, who will take you through the first quarter financials in more detail. And finally, I will come back and explain what we expect for the remaining months of 2025.

Speaker 2

When we've completed our prepared remarks, we'll be happy to respond to questions. Now moving to slide four for the highlights of the first quarter twenty twenty five. To start with, we recently published our 2024 sustainability report, sharing our goals, actions and progress on our sustainability strategy. Since the start of Materialise, our key focus has been to make a real difference through additive technology, and sustainability has always been part of this mission. As we shared in the report, we set ourselves the target to cut absolute emissions by 55% by 2029 compared to the 2019 baseline.

Speaker 2

And in 2024, we reduced our emissions already by 32%, which represents a 3% reduction on the 2023 emissions. The most significant change from the previous year was a reduction of almost 700 tons of CO2 in raw materials, reflecting improved efficiency and our constant improvements in our operational processes. And this is a perfect example to show that profits and planets go hand in hand. Now, our key focus in the recent years has been to scale additive manufacturing, making additive easier, faster and more reliable, while enabling more applications of additives. In the first quarter, we've made meaningful progress on this journey, and I'm very proud that in the current challenging market environment, we managed to grow our revenue in this period by more than 4%.

Speaker 2

In our medical business, we continue to see strong uptake of our personalized solutions, driven by adoption in various anatomical areas across orthopedics, CMF, cardiac and respiratory. The strong growth in the first quarter, which comes on top of an already strong quarter last year, is evidence of this. To boost the adoption of personalized devices even further, we are continuously improving our segmentation planning and design software to make it faster and more user friendly. In our last earnings call, we discussed the launch of our cloud based Mimics platform called MimicsFlow, which makes it easier and faster to segment and plan cases, thanks to the access to AI based algorithms and which enables effortless collaboration among clinicians and engineers through real time file sharing, eliminating the need to upload or download files. In the first quarter, our customers reported significant efficiency gains with this product and confirmed that they value the access to a single integrated platform.

Speaker 2

Now, in addition to Mimics Flow, we've previously introduced specialized solutions for segmentation and planning workflows in specific applications, such as CMF or structural heart, all under the Mimics and In the first quarter of this year, Mimics and Light CMF was shortlisted as a finalist for the TCT Awards in the healthcare application category, and that is a testament to the value of this product line. Now, while we continuously make progress on our software offering, we also continue to expand our portfolio of personalized instrumentation and implants.

Speaker 2

In the first quarter, we announced the launch of a clinical trial led by the University of Michigan focused on a three d printed tracheal splint for infants with tracheobronchomalacia called TBM. TBM is a rare and potentially fatal condition where the airway collapses. And while most children outgrow the condition by age three, they often depend on ventilators in the meantime. This biresorbable splint allows babies to grow up at home until the disease is resolved and the implant dissolves. The trial will enroll 35 infants across multiple children's hospitals, with the goal of making this life changing personalized device widely accessible and opening the door to a new market for Materialise.

Speaker 2

Now in our Software division, our goal is to help customers scale additive manufacturing with advanced software solutions. Broader adoption of additive manufacturing depends on overcoming current barriers and reducing the cost of parts. At the recent RapidTCT Conference in Detroit, we announced two new products that address these challenges. The first was the 2025 release of Magics, our flagship software for data and build preparation. The user will now benefit from performance and functionality enhancements, as well as simplified licensing and automatic updates.

Speaker 2

As an example, the new release introduces seamless processing of nTop implicit geometries, a file format that can characterize very complex, high performance geometries at a fraction of traditional file formats. By pairing this capability with Materialise's next generation build processors, users can design and print parts that were previously too complex for three d printing. For example, DMG Mori, a leader in precision machining, used the new integration of Magics and NTop to process a high performance geometry file in seconds compared to days previously. In a second announcement, we introduced two next generation build processors developed through partnerships with RAPLAS and One Click Metal. Materialise's next gen build processor is a configurable software that translates three d design files into three d printable instructions, optimizing and managing the three d printing process from start to finish.

Speaker 2

The combination of RAPLAS' SLA three d printing technology with Materialize's Build Processor has already demonstrated remarkable results, including a 30% to 40% increase in printing speed. At the same time, the Build Processor integration with OneClick Metal supports the rapid growth of the mid market three d printing sector. These new capabilities complement our Magics SDK offerings, which we launched at the end of twenty twenty four. By giving users access to our algorithm base, which we've built over thirty five years, we allow them to create custom workflows for their unique manufacturing requirements. With these solutions in the market, we help customers overcome the barriers to adoption of AM, and we are confident in the growth that this will bring for Materialise.

Speaker 2

In our Manufacturing division, macroeconomic circumstances remained difficult in the first quarter. Nevertheless, I'm proud to say that we again made progress in our key segments, and in particular in our aerospace segment, where sales grew by 23% versus the first quarter twenty twenty four, and we were able to renew longer term contracts with key customers. In light of the current geopolitical landscape and the breakdown of traditional global alliances, we are also reassessing Materialise's involvement in the defense sector to extend our offering into this segment. We anticipate that a broader engagement in the defense sector will strengthen our position in the aerospace segment and create new opportunities in the future. I will now turn over to Kun, who will present the financial results.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Brigitte. Good morning or good afternoon to all of you on this call. I'll begin with a brief overview of our key financial results, as shown on slide five. Amidst the current macroeconomic and geopolitical turbulence in the first quarter of this year, we managed to increase total revenue year over year by more than 4% to €66,400,000 while EBIT for the first quarter of twenty twenty five amounted to €600,000 The net result for the quarter amounted to a loss of minus €500,000 or €01 per share, reflecting also the impact of significant unfavorable effects from exchange rate fluctuations. Driven by positive free cash flow, we reinforced our net cash position at the end of Q1 to €67,700,000 an increase of almost €7,000,000 versus the beginning of the quarter.

Speaker 3

In the following slides, I will further elaborate on these results. As a reminder, please note that unless stated otherwise, all comparisons are against our results for the first quarter of twenty twenty four. Turning now to slide six, you'll see an overview of our consolidated revenue. Materialise Medical continued nicely on its double digit growth path, increasing its revenue by almost 19%. On the other hand, revenues at our Software and Manufacturing segments were impacted by the uncertain market conditions, resulting in reported revenue decreases of around 6% each.

Speaker 3

At the same time, however, we managed to grow the deferred revenue related to software maintenance and license fees, coming both from our medical and software segments by €1,900,000 in this year's first quarter, bringing the total amount carried in our balance sheet to almost €49,000,000 As you can see in the graph on the right side of the page, Materialise Medical accounted for 47%, Materialise Software for 15% and Materialise Manufacturing for 39% for total revenue over the first quarter of twenty twenty five. On slide seven, you will see our consolidated adjusted EBIT and EBITDA figures for the first quarter of this year. Consolidated adjusted EBIT totaled EUR0.6 million compared to EUR2.7 million for the same period of last year, representing an adjusted EBIT margin of 1%. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter amounted to €6,100,000 decreasing from €8,100,000 in 2024, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 9.3%. In today's turbulent and rapidly changing market environment, it's also relevant though to compare our operational performance against the prior quarter, being the last quarter of twenty twenty four.

Speaker 3

We are happy to report that both the adjusted EBIT and EBITDA in the first quarter of this year improved significantly compared to Q4 of twenty twenty four. The increases of respectively 15443% reflect the impact of the measures we are taking to safeguard operational profitability in these challenging times. Moving now to slide eight, you will notice that the quarter's total revenue in our Materialise Medical segment increased as said almost 19% compared to an already strong first quarter of twenty twenty four. This solid growth was generated by both medical software and by revenue from medical devices sales, which grew respectively by 1421%. Within our medical devices and services activity, we saw continued growth both in our direct and in our partner sales.

Speaker 3

In line with top line growth, adjusted EBITDA grew further to over 9,000,000 at a stable adjusted EBITDA margin of 29%. Important R and D investments in our future growth and in the further integration of VeoPS continued as planned for the first three months of this year. Slide nine summarizes the results of our Materialise Software segments. Although sales in our Software segment increased by more than 2%, reported revenue declined by 6% to €9,800,000 as a result of more revenue deferral. This quarter, we generated a net buildup of €700,000 of deferred revenue in our Software segment, whereas in last year's corresponding period, we depleted the deferred revenue reserve on our balance sheets.

Speaker 3

This also reflects the continued transition to cloud and subscription based business model. In Q1 of this year and for the first time, more than 80% of our software revenue was of a recurring nature. As a result of the lower top line, adjusted EBITDA in our software segment decreased to €600,000 representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.1%. Now, let's turn to slide 10 for an overview of the performance of our Materialise manufacturing segments. In the first quarter of twenty twenty five, as expected, manufacturing continued to operate in a very challenging market environment, where macroeconomic uncertainty further impacted the investment climate in our core markets.

Speaker 3

As a result, revenues decreased by 5.5% in the first months of this year, compared to the corresponding period of 2024. When making the comparison against the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, however, revenue increased again by 12%. Also in the opening months of this year, we realized further growth in our strategic focus areas of aerospace and medtech, while the industrial and automotive segments continue to face serious headwinds. Adjusted EBITDA for the segment ended negatively at minus €400,000 but was significantly up from the adjusted EBITDA of minus €3,000,000 reported in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, reflecting the impact of operational optimizations we continue to implement in these business segments. Slide 11 provides the highlights of our consolidated income statement for the first quarter of this year.

Speaker 3

Over the first months, our gross profit margin decreased to 55.3%, compared to 56.5% in Q1 of twenty twenty four, while remaining roughly stable compared to the prior quarters. Our operating expenses in the quarter increased by €2,400,000 or 6.9% in aggregate, with the biggest increase coming from higher R and D spend, which grew by almost 12% compared to prior year. In the first quarter of this year, we spent more than €11,000,000 on R and D, the majority of which in our Medical segments. Net operating income in the quarter was €400,000 compared to €800,000 last year. And as a result of these elements, the group's operating result in the quarter was €600,000 compared to €2,600,000 last year.

Speaker 3

Now in Q1, net financial results amounted to a loss of EUR0.9 million, which includes interest income of EUR0.7 million from our cash reserves and interest expense on our financial debt of EUR0.2 million and significant negative impact from foreign exchange fluctuations of minus EUR1.3 million. In last year's corresponding period, the net financial result was positive by EUR1.5 million, as we benefited from favorable exchange rates effects at that time. Income tax expense in the quarter amounted to €200,000 compared to €500,000 last year. And as a result, the net loss of the first quarter was €500,000 representing €01 per share, compared to the net profit of €3,600,000 for the corresponding 2024 periods. Now please turn to slide 12 for a recap of balance sheet and cash flow highlights.

Speaker 3

In the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we further reinforced our balance sheet. Our cash reserve increased to 104,000,000 by the end of the quarter. Loan and lease repayments further reduced our gross debt to €36,000,000 The resulting net cash position at the end of the year as set was €67,700,000 up by almost €7,000,000 compared to the disposition at the beginning of the year. Trade receivables, inventory and trade payable positions all increased, reducing our net working capital. The total deferred income position increased to €61,000,000 out of which €49,000,000 was related to deferred revenue from software licenses and maintenance contracts, as I mentioned earlier.

Speaker 3

As you can see from the graphs on the right of the page, cash flow from operating activities for the first quarter was strong and and amounted to almost EUR 10,000,000. Capital expenditures for the quarter amounted to EUR 1,800,000.0, reflecting a more normalized level with the bulk of the investments in our new agtech plants behind us now. As a result of these, we generated once more a positive free cash flow, which amounted to EUR 8,000,000 over the quarter. And with that, I'd like to hand the call back to Brigitte.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Kun. Let's turn to Page 13. I'll conclude my remarks with a discussion of our full year 2025 guidance. The fundamentals of our business segments are strong. And while we expect the current uncertain macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions to weigh on our 2025 results, in particular in the second quarter, we anticipate a stabilization in the second half of the year and therefore expect to be able to deliver on our earlier guidance.

Speaker 2

As such, we continue to expect to report consolidated revenue for the full year 2025 within the $270,000,000 to €285,000,000 range we communicated in our prior year earnings call. We're also maintaining our adjusted EBIT guidance of EUR6 million to EUR10 million for the fiscal year. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we're now ready to open the call for questions.

Operator

Thank And our first question comes from Troy Jensen of Cantor Fitzgerald. Congrats

Speaker 4

on the better than expected Q1 results here.

Speaker 2

Yes. Good morning, Troy. Thank you. Yes, indeed.

Speaker 4

So Regatta, for you first, just tariff impact. To me, it's probably not much. I mean, I think about your European business, you print parts out of there and ship them into Europe. And probably for The U. S.

Speaker 4

Healthcare business, you print locally and ship from The U. S. But can you touch on kind of tariff impacts for Materialise?

Speaker 2

Yes, absolutely. So with what you just said, you're absolutely right. So in our so there's three things that I would set on the on the positive side. So, we have our healthcare business with The US manufacturing plant, which helps obviously in this situation, our manufacturing business focused on Europe, as you said, and then the third one is that software, as such at this point in time is not impacted. Now, where we do see the impact potentially is on our raw materials, because even in our US facility, will have raw materials that potentially are impacted.

Speaker 2

That's one. But the biggest impact is probably the impact of tariffs on our customers. And that is at this point in time very hard to say what the impact will be and how customers will react to the climate into their increased costs. So, but from our side, you're absolutely right with, you know, the focused operations of manufacturing in Europe and our healthcare business in The US. And I would add software as the one that is excluded from tariffs at this point in time.

Speaker 4

All right. Makes sense. And just how about you talked about Q2 being disruptive here and then kind of stabilizing or back to normal in the second half, so to speak. Can you just touch base on month to date? I mean, how does Q2 look?

Speaker 4

Are we going to be down sequentially, flattish? I mean, any insight on what you think Q2 could look like?

Speaker 2

Yes. So I mean, I obviously can only take the information that we have at this point in time. So the way we look at Q2 at this point in time is that it's going to be a bit more of a difficult quarter. The start of the month was okay. So overall, you know, I would expect us to be, you know, somewhere more or less flattish on the top line.

Speaker 2

But there's a lot of uncertainty in the market, which makes it very hard to predict, you know, what the rest will be. There will be pressure on our bottom line in the second quarter. Now, again, as I said earlier, we'll expect that to stabilize in the second half of the year us getting out of this. But again, at this point in time, hard to predict.

Speaker 4

Alright. Understood. And then maybe for Koon, I mean, know I hit this a lot, you know, frequently on these stories, quarterly calls, but software was below 10,000,000. That's the first time we've seen it at that level since kind of the beginning of COVID. Just thoughts on kind of growing that business.

Speaker 4

I do get deferred routes are growing. Then could you also confirm, did you say 80% of revenues in software are from recurring sales? Sorry for all the questions together there.

Speaker 3

Yes. No. Thank you, Troy. Indeed, for the first time, we passed the 80% threshold or milestone of our total software revenues within the software segment that were of recurring nature. Last quarter, indicated we were just north of 75%.

Speaker 3

So we made quite a big step up in the first quarter of the conversion to recurring revenue. And that is also translating into our reported revenue number. So compared to other quarters, we have deferred more of the sales of the revenue coming in on the balance sheet and that impacts also the top line and that's also one of the reasons why we see a lower reported revenue in the first quarter and Nida, as you said, just below the €10,000,000

Speaker 2

point. Now maybe just to add one more point on here, Troy. I mean, the fact that we are above the 80% now with our recurring also gives us an indication that we're getting closer to the endpoint of this transition. Now, by no way saying that the endpoint of this transition is in this year. We know that it takes a couple of years to go through this.

Speaker 2

But with, you know, the recurring revenue above 80%, at least, you know, the end of this is in sight somewhat.

Speaker 4

Understood. Alright. Well, keep up the good work. Good luck this year.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Troy.

Operator

Thank you. And as a reminder, if you have a question, please press 11. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn it back to Birgitta Devette for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Well, thanks again for joining us today. We look forward to continuing our dialogue as always through investor conferences or in one on ones, virtual meetings or calls, and please do reach out if you have any questions. With that, I want to thank you and say goodbye for now.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.

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Materialise Q1 2025
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