Year-end Report April 2025

Fourth-quarter sales rose 6% to SEK 120.2 million from SEK 113.3 million and were in line with expectations, but gross margin fell to 28% from 41% due to SEK 13 million in one-off items. OPEX was SEK 29.4 million versus SEK 23.6 million a year earlier, also in line. Management said next year’s growth will be hurt by launch delays, while logistics remain more difficult than expected because of geopolitical uncertainty.

Analysis

The miss is less about demand and more about execution quality deteriorating at the margin: when a company is still growing but has to absorb a large gross-profit one-off, the market usually reprices the durability of its operating leverage rather than the quarter itself. The more important signal is that logistics friction is now acting like a quasi-fixed tax on margins, which means even modest top-line growth can fail to translate into earnings power until supply-chain normalization is visible.

Second-order, this is the kind of setup that can widen the gap between operators with embedded inventory/logistics flexibility and those reliant on tighter routing or geopolitically exposed lanes. If peers in the same end-market are less exposed to transport volatility, they can defend share by maintaining service levels while this business is forced to either eat freight costs or accept longer lead times; that creates a potential share-loss narrative over the next 1-2 quarters, even if end-demand stays intact.

The guidance issue is more subtle than a simple downgrade: a launch delay pushes revenue into later periods, but the bigger risk is that delayed launches often coincide with higher working-capital needs and weaker mix, compressing cash conversion right when investor patience is thinnest. If management can prove the delay is purely timing and not a channel/qualification problem, sentiment can stabilize quickly; if not, estimates likely drift lower again over the next earnings cycle. The contrarian view is that the market may be overfocusing on near-term gross margin and underappreciating that one-offs can reverse faster than demand erosion, but only if logistics improve within the next 1-2 quarters.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Avoid initiating fresh longs until management quantifies how much of the margin pressure is non-recurring; if you want exposure, use only a starter position and wait for evidence that gross margin normalizes above the high-30s next quarter.
• If liquid and borrowable, consider a short against a peer with cleaner logistics exposure over the next 1-2 quarters; the relative trade works if this name keeps absorbing freight volatility while peers retain margin.
• Use any post-earnings bounce to fade via short-dated puts or put spreads, targeting the next catalyst window when guidance revisions typically reset expectations again.
• For patient capital, this becomes interesting only if the market prices in a longer-duration operational issue; in that case, wait for a 10-15% drawdown before considering a tactical long, with a strict stop if launch slippage expands beyond one quarter.