Atea (Oslo:ATEA) Q3 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Good morning and welcome to the Q3 presentation of the Atea numbers here from Oslo, Norway. And what numbers it is. But first, this is my 50th presentation here at the Stock Exchange. That is a milestone very few get to reach and it makes me proud but even more so when I look back at all the great numbers we have presented the last 15 years. But not enough about that. This quarter Q3 came in with a gross sales of 13.9 billion, up 21.7% in constant currency.

0:51 EBIT came in at 405 million, up 16.5%, and net profit at 279, up almost 24%. But as always, I leave it to Robert to give you all the great news. Thank you, Steinar.

1:16 Great to have the opportunity. ATEA reported high profit growth in the third quarter of 2026 based on strong sales of data center solutions and a flat trend in headcount and operating expenses. Gross sales in Q3 were 13.9 billion Norwegian krona, an increase of 12.6% from last year. Currency fluctuations had a negative impact on sales growth of 7.5%, as sales in foreign currencies were translated into a stronger Norwegian krona compared with last year. Adjusting for the currency impact, organic growth in constant currency was 21.7%. Hardware sales increased by 25.0%, representing about 35% growth in constant currency.

2:10 Hardware growth was driven by very strong demand for data center equipment, including servers, storage, and networking solutions. Software and cloud sales increased by 3.3% or about 12% in constant currency. Software growth was based on higher sales of data center and security solutions. Services sales fell by 1.9% in Norwegian krona, but grew by almost 6% in constant currency, mainly due to increased sales of product support services. Net revenue, according to IFRS, was 9.9 billion Norwegian krona, up 16.9% from last year.

2:56 Gross profit increased to 2.6 billion Norwegian krona, up from 2.5 billion krona last year, Gross margin was lower than last year due to a higher share of hardware in the revenue mix. Operating expenses fell by 0.3% to 2.2 billion Norwegian krona. Despite high growth in sales, the number of employees in Atea was in line with last year and was down sequentially from last quarter. Atea continues to improve efficiency through internal consolidation and through investments in systems and in AI-driven automation. With strong sales growth and flat operating expenses, EBIT increased by 16.5% to NOK 405 million. Net profit after tax increased by 23.4% to NOK 279 million.

3:55 We'll now take a closer look at sales and profit development across the countries in which we operate. Atea had double-digit sales growth across all countries in the third quarter. Growth was driven by the same trends in all markets, primarily very strong demand for data center solutions and higher hardware prices. In Norway, gross sales increased by 16.2% to 3.6 billion Norwegian krona. EBIT grew by 14.6% to 141 million Norwegian krona. In Sweden, gross sales grew by 23.6% to 5.6 billion Swedish krona. EBIT was 174 million Swedish krona, up 13.0% from last year. In Denmark, gross sales increased by 18.1% to 2.1 billion Danish krona.

4:56 EBIT grew by 17.8% to 18 million Danish krona. In Finland, gross sales grew by 12.9% to 108 million euro. EBIT was 2.5 million euro, up 50.5% from last year. In the Baltics, gross sales increased by 35.9% to €63 million. Due to a lower margin product mix, EBIT grew by 6.4% to €2.4 million. Atea Group Functions, which includes group shared services and group costs, had an operating profit of €14 million compared with an expense of €8 million last year.

5:48 The improvement came from significantly higher profitability in Atea Logistics due to an increased volume of hardware shipments compared with last year. Now we're on our cash flow and balance sheet. Atea's cash flow from operations was an inflow of 143 million krona in the third quarter of 2026. This compares with an inflow of 220 million Norwegian krona last year. In the first half of 2026, Atea increased its inventory balance to secure hardware deliveries and pricing to its customers amid supply constraints. In the third quarter, Atea reduced its inventory levels by over 400 million Norwegian krona. The company expects to continue to reduce inventory levels through year end.

6:41 This reduction of inventory in Q3 has a delayed impact on cash flow from operations, as Atea was still paying harder vendors for its Q2 inventory purchases during the third quarter. The impact of inventory reductions will become more visible in cash flow during Q4. As you can see on this chart, Atea's cash flow from operations is highly seasonal, with strong cash inflows in the fourth quarter due to increased public sector sales and reductions in working capital balances. In line with this pattern, Atea expects a strong operating cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2026, supported by further inventory reductions and seasonal improvements in working capital.

7:29 Now onto our balance sheet. At the end of Q3 2026, Atea had a net debt of 1.3 billion Norwegian krona, as defined by Atea's loan covenants. This corresponds to a net debt EBITDA ratio of 0.6. Atea's net debt balance at the end of Q3 2026 was 4.8 billion Norwegian krona below the maximum allowed by its loan covenants. Atea has a strong balance sheet and significant additional debt capacity before its loan covenants would be reached. That concludes the presentation of the third quarter financial results. I now hand the podium back over to Steinar to provide further detail on business trends and on the financial outlook.

8:21 Thank you, Robert. Let's take a closer look at some of the growth or the most important, I would say, growth trends in our industry now and going forward. But before I start looking at these four trends, I also want to say that we still have growth because of market share gain and because of general investment in IT for all. Let's start with defense. I don't think it's a surprise for anyone that companies and countries in Europe are worried about the geopolitical situation.

9:11 The uncertainty in society and real threats From East have increased awareness and spending in security in general, but also, of course, with defense sector. The defense sector is not only the national organization, but also the delivery system and suppliers to defense. but it also includes NATO that have taken a much stronger position in Europe over the last couple of years than the last couple of decades. We, as a trusted advisor and supplier, have taken a big position with both national defense and NATO.

10:02 During The next couple of months and the next handful of years, we will also supply NATO with their desktops and we do that as a service and we do it through our Danish subsidiary. The growth in defense is real and it's here to stay. AI has become an opportunity. It's real. It's not only something that people talk about. It's not only something that happens in a handful of data centers in the US. It's not only large language models or training on massive data.

10:52 It's real for customers in the Nordic and Baltic. And as Robert I want to explain to you the massive growth that we have in revenue is mostly coming from data center and networking in the data center. Not all of this, but a lot of it comes because large customers in the Nordics and Baltics have started to invest in AI and started to experiment, but also in real life using AI to improve both their income by increasing the speed of innovation, but also their efficiency through automation.

11:41 If you're not taking advantage of this technology already, I can truly say you are behind. IT security and data protection has been a topic for us for many, many years. It's something we have invested in, not only because it's been a trend, but because we knew that it would become a real situation. and friends, that's where we are right now. IT security is not about a single point solution or one incident.

12:26 It's more about a platform thinking. And let me use a very good example of what is happening. On Tuesday evening this week, It became clear to some that we had an issue in the world that are called the PHP problem, or the PHP shell problem, if you want to. Yesterday, this became obvious to most people working on IT. The problem has actually been in the source code for more than a decade, and it was the good guys finding it through use of AI.

13:11 The problem is it could as fast have been the bad guys finding it through use of AI. The whole world are now working to solve the problem either through patching or through actually taking system offline. The solution to this problem is not installing a new software or security patch. The solution actually is for many to change or upgrade their whole system. And this will drive investments in IT infrastructure in a very different way than some people think when they think that it's a new software or a patch that will solve problems going forward.

14:00 IT security is real and in Europe we will add sovereignty to this going forward. Hardware prices was mentioned by Robert as one of the reasons that revenue is increasing. And it's very clear to all our customers that prices have gone up massively. As an example, in Q3 alone, average PC prices sell out from us per unit were up 20%. And this is not the actual price increase because the actual price increase was higher.

14:46 Most customers are downgrading the spec to be able to handle the price increases within their budget. So the price increases were more than 20, but the average sell-out price for us was 20% higher. On server and storage, it's even more. The thing is, this will be with us for the next three to five years at least. The prices will not stop come up. What you will hear though, which is a good news also for Atea and Atea customers, is that the price increases will come more predictable. If you look at it in the period from February, March until the summer, the price increases came totally surprising and often while we had offers and contracts where we couldn't change the prices as quickly as the prices to us.

15:49 This is the change because now it's much more predictable. That means it's easier for us and it's easier for the customers going forward, both to plan and to budget and to work with it in today. But it should not be misunderstood as if price increases will not keep on coming because they will. We will be asked how much the price increases on hardware have contributed to the growth of hardware in Q3. And the answer to that, because we're not selling Apple versus Apple, is that it's a little hard to calculate completely exactly.

16:36 But our estimation is that about 50% of the growth in Q3 on hardware came from price increases. So, there you have it. After three quarters, Atea gross sales of 47.5 billion, up 17.4% in constant currency. An EBIT of more than 1.2 billion, up almost 34%, and a net profit of 886 million, up 62.6%. So the only question still hanging in the air is what we believe will happen in the future.

17:25 We don't normally give you a sharp guidance, but as there has been some really bad read-overs from other companies in these countries, we felt it was needed. In 2027, we feel very confident that we'll keep on growing and scaling. Robert alluded to how the scaling is happening. And of course, AI is an important part of our scaling and our cost efficiency. For Q4, we do not expect to grow in constant currency as fast as we have for the first three quarters. But we do expect to have growth in gross sales.

18:18 and the EBIT will land in the interval for the full year between 1.710 and 1.745. I hope you liked it. Very, very, very happy. And with that, we'll go to Q&A. Thank you, Steinar and Robert, for the presentation. First question we... Oh, sorry. Thank you very much for the presentation.

18:54 Just a second and we'll have the first question. Alright, I think we're ready to go. Sorry about that technical problem. Thank you Robert and Steinar for the presentation. Our first question is, how much did the defense budget grow for the business in Q3?

19:17 Yeah, so we sometimes have to be a little careful on how much we reveal of what we do sell and how much we sell to the defense. But in constant currency, our defense sector sales grew almost 40%. Great. Second question here is, so what is the real impact from AI on Atea in Q3?

19:44 I see around the world that a lot of companies are very precise in what AI contributes when it comes to sales out. We will not start giving those numbers as we will not start picking apart the whole business and give segmented numbers. But we see it's real and the hardware growth from data centers and core networking is coming largely from pre-investments or early investments in data centers for customers, mostly large public central government that are preparing or have started to use AI.

20:30 But at the same time, I want also All listeners or viewers of this podcast or this presentation and podcasts that we do to understand it also have a real and meaningful impact on Atea and the efficiency of how we drive the company. Over the last two or three years, revenue has grown more than 30% with the same number of people. We are taking advantage of this, friends, and it will have a real impact both on sales out and on our own efficiency. All right, so our final question for today. Denmark seems to be more robust. Can you add some comments to this, please?

21:19 Yes, I'm very happy with the development. I think it's now the fifth quarter in row that Denmark have growth in EBIT quarter over quarter, year over year. We have reconfigured our Danish business and gone from survival mode to investment mode. We're still investing and not getting full payback quarter by quarter, but we will when we go forward. And my expectations to Nicolai and the Danish team is that we will double EBIT in 2027 compared to 2026. So, that concludes the Q3 presentation here from Oslo.

22:08 We are proud. We hope you are too.