Kempower Stock price
📊 Peer Group
📈 What is it?
The peer group consists of the companies with the most similar business model. They serve as a benchmark for putting a stock into context.
🧮 How is it selected?
Based on similarity of business model, meaning companies from the same industry with comparable products and a similar customer base. That's the only way to compare apples to apples.
🏛️ Why does it matter?
Whether a stock is cheap or expensive is best judged by comparison. A P/E of 18 or an EV/FCF of 20 can look cheap or expensive depending on the yardstick. The peer group gives you the most accurate one: companies with a similar business model that operate under the same conditions.
🎯 What does it mean for investors?
When a metric sits below the peer average, the stock is valued more cheaply relative to its competitors, and above the average more expensively. A discount to the peer group can be an opportunity, but it can also have a reason (for example lower growth). The comparison is a starting point, not a verdict.
Is Kempower a Top Scorer Stock based on the Dividend, High-Growth-Investing or Leverman Strategy?
As a Free StocksGuide user, you can view scores for all 9,127 stocks worldwide.
StocksGuide Premium
StocksGuide Unlimited
Key metrics
📘 Market Capitalization
📈 What is it?
Market capitalization shows how much a company is currently worth on the stock market.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It helps classify companies by size (Large, Mid, Small Cap) and indicates their market presence and relative stability.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Large-cap companies tend to be more stable, often pay dividends, but may grow more slowly.
- Smaller firms may offer higher growth potential but come with more volatility.
- Market capitalization is a useful indicator of company size — but not a measure of whether a stock is undervalued or overvalued.
📘 Enterprise Value (EV)
📈 What is it?
Enterprise Value represents the total cost to acquire a company — including its debt and excluding its cash reserves.
🧮 How is it calculated?
(= Market Cap + Net Debt)
🏛️ Why is it important?
EV gives a more complete picture of a company's value than market cap alone and is used in key valuation ratios like EV/FCF or EV/Sales.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Enterprise Value shows the true cost of buying a company, including all financial obligations.
- It is more accurate than just looking at market cap, especially when comparing companies with different levels of debt or cash.
- Professional investors prefer EV-based multiples because they better reflect the company’s full financial footprint.
📘 Net Debt
📈 What is it?
Net Debt shows how much debt remains after subtracting a company’s available cash reserves.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It indicates how dependent a company is on borrowed money and how easily it can service its debt in the short term.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Low or negative net debt signals financial strength and flexibility.
- Companies with strong cash positions are better positioned in crises.
- High net debt increases financial risk — especially in environments with rising interest rates or economic downturns.
📘 Cash
📈 What is it?
Cash represents all liquid assets a company can access immediately — including cash, bank deposits, and short-term investments.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It reflects a company’s financial flexibility and resilience — enabling investments, buybacks, or buffer in downturns.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A strong cash position means greater room for maneuver and crisis resistance.
- Cash-rich companies can invest, pay down debt, or repurchase shares.
- But excess idle cash might indicate a lack of growth opportunities.
📘 Shares Outstanding
📈 What is it?
Shares outstanding represent the total number of a company’s shares currently held by investors — excluding treasury stock.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It’s the basis for key metrics like Earnings Per Share (EPS), Market Capitalization, or the Price/Earnings ratio (P/E).
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Fewer shares in circulation typically increase earnings per share — making each share more valuable.
- Share buybacks reduce the number of shares and boost per-share metrics.
- Issuing new shares does the opposite — diluting shareholder value and lowering per-share figures.
📘 Price-to-Earnings Ratio (P/E)
📈 What is it?
The P/E ratio shows how many times a company's earnings per share are reflected in its current share price — in other words, how "expensive" the stock appears relative to its profits.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The P/E ratio is one of the most widely used valuation metrics. It helps investors assess whether a stock appears cheap or expensive compared to its earnings power.
🧮 Calculation
📊 P/E (TTM) = Based on earnings from the last 12 months (Trailing Twelve Months):🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low P/E may indicate undervaluation — or signal underlying issues.
- A high P/E may reflect strong growth expectations — or an overvalued stock.
📘 Price-to-Sales Ratio (P/S)
📈 What is it?
The P/S ratio shows how much investors are paying for $1 of the company’s revenue – regardless of profitability.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
P/S is especially useful for evaluating growth companies or businesses not yet profitable. It reflects how the market values the company’s sales.
🧮 Calculation
Market Cap = €541.54m | Revenue (TTM) = €281.00m
Market Cap = €541.54m | Estimated Revenue = €302.27m
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low P/S may indicate undervaluation — or low profitability.
- A high P/S can reflect strong growth expectations — or excessive optimism.
- Especially helpful when evaluating companies where profits are low, volatile, or negative.
📘 Enterprise Value to Sales (EV/Sales)
📈 What is it?
EV/Sales shows how much investors are paying for $1 of revenue — considering not just equity, but also debt and cash. It’s the capital structure–adjusted version of the P/S ratio.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It’s ideal for comparing companies with different levels of debt. It reflects a company's true cost relative to its revenue.
🧮 Calculation
Enterprise Value = €542.74m | Revenue (TTM) = €281.00m
Enterprise Value = €542.74m | Forward Revenue = €302.27m
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- EV/Sales allows for capital structure–neutral company comparisons.
- A lower ratio may indicate undervaluation; a higher one may signal strong growth expectations or overvaluation.
- Especially helpful when evaluating high-growth companies with low or negative earnings.
📘 Enterprise Value to Free Cash Flow (EV/FCF)
📈 What is it?
EV/FCF shows how many years it would take for a company to "pay back" its enterprise value using its free cash flow.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It focuses on real cash generation, ignoring accounting noise — ideal for assessing profitability and value based on liquidity, not earnings.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low EV/FCF may signal undervaluation and strong cash generation.
- A high EV/FCF might reflect weak recent cash flow or aggressive growth expectations.
- Best suited for stable, mature businesses with predictable free cash flows.
📘 Price-to-Book Ratio (P/B)
📈 What is it?
The P/B ratio compares a company’s market value to its book value — showing how much investors are paying for each dollar of net assets.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
P/B is commonly used for asset-heavy industries like banks or industrials. It helps assess whether a stock is trading above or below its net asset value.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A P/B below 1 may signal undervaluation — or weak profitability.
- A P/B above 1 implies the market expects future value creation (e.g., brand, IP, growth).
- Best used for companies with tangible assets and strong balance sheets.
📘 Equity Ratio
📈 What is it?
The equity ratio indicates what portion of a company’s total assets is financed by shareholders’ equity – in other words, how much it relies on its own capital.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
A high equity ratio reflects financial strength and stability, especially during downturns. It’s a key indicator of a company’s solvency and long-term risk profile.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Companies with high equity ratios are generally more resilient and less dependent on external debt.
- Low equity ratios can signal higher risk or aggressive financial strategies.
- Important: Always assess the equity ratio in combination with the return on equity (ROE). This shows not just how stable the company is – but also how efficiently it uses shareholder capital.
📘 Return on Equity (ROE)
📈 What is it?
Return on equity (ROE) shows how efficiently a company uses its shareholders’ equity to generate profit. In other words: how much net income is earned per dollar of equity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROE is a core profitability metric. It helps investors understand whether a company delivers attractive returns on the capital provided by its shareholders.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROE indicates that the company is using its capital efficiently and profitably.
- It’s especially meaningful for capital-intensive businesses or firms with high equity bases.
- Important: A very high ROE can also result from high debt levels – always interpret it alongside the equity ratio to assess financial health.
📘 Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)
📈 What is it?
ROCE measures how efficiently a company generates profits from its total capital – including both equity and interest-bearing debt.
🧮 How is it calculated?
It evaluates the return on all capital employed, regardless of how it’s financed.
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROCE is ideal for comparing companies with different financing structures. It shows how well management uses capital to create value for both shareholders and creditors.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROCE means the company uses its capital efficiently – regardless of whether it's funded by debt or equity.
- The higher the ROCE compared to peers, the more value the company creates with its invested capital.
- Especially relevant for capital-intensive sectors like industrials, energy, or infrastructure.
📘 Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)
📈 What is it?
ROIC measures how efficiently a company generates returns from the capital invested in its core operations – regardless of whether the capital comes from equity or debt.
🧮 How is it calculated?
- NOPAT = Net Operating Profit After Taxes
- Invested Capital = Operating assets minus non-interest-bearing liabilities
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROIC is one of the most accurate indicators of capital efficiency. Unlike return on equity, it is not distorted by leverage and shows how much value is created for all capital providers.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROIC shows how effectively a company uses the capital that is truly invested in its core operations.
- Unlike ROCE, ROIC focuses only on the capital that is actively used to run the business – and that requires a return (i.e. interest-bearing).
- Especially useful when comparing companies with large amounts of excess cash or non-interest-bearing liabilities – giving a more realistic picture of capital efficiency.
📘 Leverage Ratio (Debt-to-Equity)
📈 What is it?
The leverage ratio indicates how much a company relies on interest-bearing debt (such as loans and bonds) relative to its shareholders’ equity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
This ratio helps assess a company’s financial structure and risk profile. High leverage can enhance returns – but also increases exposure to interest rate changes and financial stress.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low leverage ratio signals financial strength and independence.
- A higher ratio can improve returns in good times but increases risk during downturns or rising interest rate periods.
- 👉 Always interpret in the context of industry, capital intensity, and interest rate environment.
📘 Revenue
📈 What is it?
Revenue shows how much a company earns in total from selling its products and services – the gross income before any costs are deducted.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Revenue is one of the key figures to assess a company’s size, market position, and growth potential.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growing revenue indicates rising demand and can be an early signal of future earnings growth.
- Comparing actual and expected revenue reveals trends in the market environment and analyst sentiment.
- Note: Strong revenue alone isn’t enough – margins and profitability matter just as much.
📘 EBITDA
📈 What is it?
EBITDA stands for “Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization.” It reflects a company’s operating profit before the effects of financing, taxes, and accounting depreciation.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBITDA is widely used to evaluate a company’s operating performance – especially across capital-intensive sectors or international comparisons.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high or growing EBITDA indicates strong operational profitability – independent of taxes, interest, or accounting methods.
- It’s especially useful for comparing companies across sectors or geographies.
- Important: EBITDA is not a net income figure – it excludes key costs like depreciation and interest.
📘 EBIT
📈 What is it?
EBIT stands for “Earnings Before Interest and Taxes.” It reflects a company’s operating profit after depreciation, but before interest and tax expenses.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBIT is a core profitability metric that shows how well the company performs in its main business operations – independent of capital structure and tax environment.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBIT indicates strong profitability from the company’s core business – before financial and tax effects.
- It allows better comparison between companies with different debt levels or tax structures.
- Compared to EBITDA, EBIT already accounts for depreciation and reflects capital intensity more clearly.
📘 Net Income
📈 What is it?
Net income is the company’s total profit – the amount left after all expenses, taxes, interest, and depreciation have been deducted.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net income is the most comprehensive measure of a company’s profitability – showing how much actual profit remains after all business and financing costs.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growing net income indicates that the company is managing all of its costs efficiently.
- It directly influences valuation metrics like P/E ratio and the company’s dividend capacity.
- Over time, net income trends reveal how resilient and profitable the business model really is.
📘 Free Cash Flow (FCF)
📈 What is it?
Free Cash Flow shows how much actual cash remains after a company covers its operating expenses and capital expenditures.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
FCF reflects a company’s real financial strength – regardless of accounting profits. It shows how much flexibility a company has for dividends, share buybacks, or debt reduction.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- High free cash flow means the company generates real, usable cash – independent of reported net income.
- It’s often the most reliable base for sustainable dividends and buybacks.
- Declining FCF can be an early warning sign – even when profits appear stable.
📘 Revenue Growth
📈 What is it?
Revenue growth shows how much a company’s sales have changed compared to the previous year – both on a trailing basis (TTM) and based on forward projections.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected revenue ÷ Revenue in prior year − 1) × 100
Forward growth is based on analyst estimates for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Rising revenue signals growing demand, business expansion, and market share gains – especially important for growth-oriented companies.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growth is the engine of long-term value creation – especially in tech and growth sectors.
- What matters is not just current growth, but its sustainability.
- Forward projections reflect whether analysts expect continued momentum – or a slowdown.
📘 EBITDA Growth
📈 What is it?
EBITDA growth shows how much a company’s operating profit (before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) has increased or decreased compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected EBITDA ÷ EBITDA from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate is based on analyst projections for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Growing EBITDA indicates improving operational profitability – regardless of financing or accounting effects.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Strong EBITDA growth signals operational efficiency and scalability – especially during growth phases.
- EBITDA growth can be an early indicator of margin and earnings expansion – but should be assessed alongside revenue and EBIT.
📘 EBIT Growth
📈 What is it?
EBIT growth shows how much a company’s operating profit (after depreciation, but before interest and taxes) has increased compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected EBIT ÷ EBIT from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate is based on analyst projections for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBIT growth is a direct indicator of a company’s business performance – taking into account capital intensity through depreciation.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Rising EBIT signals improving operating profitability – even after accounting for depreciation.
- It’s especially important for evaluating companies with significant capital expenditures.
- Combined with revenue and EBITDA growth, EBIT growth provides a well-rounded view of operational progress.
📘 Net Income Growth
📈 What is it?
Net income growth shows how much a company’s bottom-line profit has increased or decreased compared to the previous year – both on a trailing basis (TTM) and based on analyst projections.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected net income ÷ Net income from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate reflects analysts’ expectations for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net income is the ultimate measure of profitability. Growing net income signals stronger efficiency, cost control, and sustainable earnings power.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Stronger net income boosts valuation, dividend potential, and investor confidence.
- If profits stall while revenue grows, it may signal margin pressure.
📘 Free Cash Flow Growth
📈 What is it?
Free cash flow (FCF) growth shows how a company’s available cash – after covering operating expenses and capital expenditures – has changed compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Free cash flow reflects real financial strength. Growing FCF indicates more flexibility for dividends, share buybacks, and reinvestment.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Declining FCF may point to rising investments, increasing costs, or weaker operating performance.
- Especially for dividend investors, FCF growth is critical – since dividends are paid from actual available cash.
- A negative trend isn't always bad, but it deserves closer attention.
📘 Gross Margin
📈 What is it?
Gross margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains after deducting the direct costs of goods sold (like materials and production). It represents the company’s “raw profit” before fixed costs, taxes, and interest.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Or simply: Gross Margin = Gross Profit ÷ Revenue × 100
🏛️ Why is it important?
Gross margin indicates how efficiently a company can produce or procure what it sells. It is a key measure of product-level profitability and pricing power.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high gross margin suggests strong pricing power and efficient production.
- Falling margins may signal rising input costs or competitive pressure.
- Compared to peers, gross margin offers insights into the quality of a business model.
📘 EBITDA Margin
📈 What is it?
The EBITDA margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as operating profit before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.It reflects operating efficiency without being distorted by financing or accounting factors.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The EBITDA margin reveals how much operating income a company generates per dollar of revenue – independent of capital structure and tax effects.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBITDA margin reflects strong core profitability – before accounting distortions.
- It allows for effective comparisons across companies and sectors.
- A stable or growing margin signals efficient cost control and business scalability.
📘 EBIT Margin
📈 What is it?
The EBIT margin shows what percentage of revenue remains as operating profit after depreciation but before interest and taxes.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The EBIT margin reflects a company’s core profitability while accounting for capital intensity (e.g. machinery, infrastructure). It’s especially useful for comparing businesses with different levels of depreciation.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBIT margin shows that the company remains efficient even after factoring in depreciation.
- It’s especially relevant for capital-intensive industries.
- Stable or rising EBIT margins over time are a strong indicator of pricing power and business quality.
📘 Net margin
📈 What is it?
Net margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as bottom-line profit after deducting all costs, interest, taxes, and depreciation.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net margin reflects a company’s overall efficiency – across operations, financing, and taxation. It shows how much actual profit is generated from each dollar of revenue.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high net margin means the company is not only strong operationally but also manages financing and taxes efficiently.
- Peer comparisons reveal business quality and competitiveness.
- Declining margins despite revenue growth can be a red flag for rising costs or inefficiencies.
📘 Free cash flow margin
📈 What is it?
The free cash flow (FCF) margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as actual free cash after covering all operating expenses and capital expenditures.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
This margin reflects the true liquidity generated by the business – independent of accounting rules or depreciation. It’s especially relevant for dividends, buybacks, and reinvestment decisions.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high FCF margin means a company consistently generates strong cash flow.
- It’s a positive signal for financial stability and shareholder returns.
- The long-term trend is key – a declining margin may indicate rising investments or weakening operating efficiency.
📘 Earnings per share (EPS)
📈 What is it?
Earnings per Share (EPS) shows how much profit is attributable to a single share – and is one of the most important metrics for evaluating a company's performance.
🧮 How is it calculated?
The diluted share count reflects potential new shares that could be issued through options, convertible bonds, or other rights.
🏛️ Why is it important?
EPS is the basis for many key valuation metrics like P/E ratio, PEG ratio, or payout ratio. It enables comparisons of profitability across companies, regardless of their size.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- EPS captures per-share profitability and is especially useful for comparisons over time or with analyst estimates.
- Rising EPS may signal consistent growth or share buybacks.
- Important: Always use diluted EPS for more realistic valuations – especially in companies with stock-based compensation.
📘 Free cash flow per share (FCF per share)
📈 What is it?
Free Cash Flow per Share shows how much free cash flow a company generates per outstanding share – after investments, but before dividends or debt repayments.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Free cash flow is calculated as operating cash flow minus capital expenditures (CapEx).
🏛️ Why is it important?
FCF per Share reveals how much real cash is available per share – useful for dividends, buybacks, or reducing debt. Unlike net income, free cash flow is harder to manipulate and often seen as a more reliable metric.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- High FCF per share signals strong financial flexibility.
- It shows how much capital the company can effectively reinvest or return to shareholders.
- Particularly relevant for dividend payers and capital-efficient businesses.
📘 Short interest
📈 What is it?
Short interest indicates how many shares of a company are currently sold short – that is, borrowed and sold by investors who expect the price to decline.
🧮 How is it calculated?
It reflects the percentage of a company’s shares that are being shorted relative to the total shares available.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Short interest serves as a sentiment indicator: A high value may signal skepticism or bearish expectations – but also increases the potential for a short squeeze if prices rise unexpectedly.
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Low short interest usually indicates market confidence in the company.
- High short interest can be a warning sign – or an opportunity if sentiment shifts.
- Especially relevant in volatile markets or ahead of key earnings releases.
📘 Employees
📈 What is it?
The employee count shows how many people a company employs worldwide – offering insights into its size, structure, and business model.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It helps assess operational scale, labor intensity, and cost structure. Combined with revenue and profit, it enables key metrics like revenue per employee or productivity.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high headcount can signal operational complexity – but also significant growth capacity.
- Revenue per employee is a key indicator of efficiency.
- Especially useful for comparing tech, industrial, or service-heavy companies.
📘 Turnover per employee
📈 What is it?
Revenue per employee indicates how much revenue a company generates on average per employee – a key measure of efficiency and productivity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
The employee count is typically taken from the most recent annual report.
🏛️ Why is it important?
This metric helps compare business models – especially between labor-intensive and technology-driven companies. A high value suggests automation, operational efficiency, or strong value creation per head.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high revenue per employee indicates a scalable and margin-strong business model.
- A low figure may reflect labor-intensive operations or lower value-add.
- Especially helpful when comparing tech companies to industrial or service sectors.
Kempower Stock Analysis
Analyst Opinions
12 Analysts have issued a Kempower forecast:
Analyst Opinions
12 Analysts have issued a Kempower forecast:
Kempower Events
Past Events
|
JUL
23
Q2 2026 Earnings Call
2 months ago
|
|
MAY
26
Analyst/Investor Day - Kempower Oyj
4 months ago
|
|
APR
29
Q1 2026 Earnings Call
5 months ago
|
|
FEB
11
Q4 2025 Earnings Call
8 months ago
|
|
OCT
29
Q3 2025 Earnings Call
11 months ago
|
StocksGuide Free
Kempower — Q2 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Kempowers' Q2 2026 Results Presentation. My name is Calle Loikkanen, I'm Director of Investor Relations. And it is my pleasure to introduce today's speakers: CEO, Bhasker Kaushal; and CFO, Jukka Kainulainen. The gentleman will walk us through the highlights and results of the quarter and the first half of the year. And after the presentation, we will, as always, end with a Q&A session.
But without any further ado, let's begin. So let me hand over to Bhasker. Bhasker, please, the floor is yours.
Well, thank you, Calle, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to be with us today. Starting with the key messages for the second quarter. We delivered double-digit revenue growth. Our gross margins improved sequentially. And we enter the third quarter with 18% higher backlog. Revenue was up 10% in Q2, and up 28% for the first half of the year. Now where is this growth coming from? North America, up 54% in the quarter and more than doubled for the first half. Aftermarket, up 35% in Q2 and up 40% in the first half.
Next, gross margins. And this is one that I'm most pleased with. We came in at 47.2%, up almost 2 percentage points sequentially versus the first quarter. And that's a strong signal that our product cost reduction program is working, it's ramping up and delivering results. We've achieved around EUR 4 million of savings in the first half, which is helping us absorb and offset real price pressure.
On profitability, we've improved 40% in the first half year-on-year. Operative EBIT went from minus EUR 9 million in the first half last year to minus EUR 5.4 million this year. Now we're closing the gap to breakeven while continuing to grow our top line. Further, we've launched a fixed cost calibration program to calibrate our cost base to the market conditions and to the new strategic priorities that we announced in May. Now I'll talk a little bit more about this program later today.
And lastly, the order backlog is EUR 138 million, up 18% versus same time last year. So that's a solid platform going into the coming quarters. We have refined the top end of our revenue growth guidance. Now it is 10% to 25%, and the EBIT improvement guidance is unchanged.
Now let's look at the financial highlights next. Let me walk through the four buckets very quickly. First, order intake, EUR 69.8 million, which is down 6% year-on-year in Q2. Now that's partly because of timing, a couple of large deals that have shifted out, and some of it is softness on the CPO side. But we still have strong momentum in adding new customers, 14 new customers acquired in the quarter. So a bit of an order timing story here in the quarter, but for the first half of the year, order intake is still up 4%.
Second, revenues, EUR 68.6 million, up 10%. Our growth was broad-based. Strong momentum in APAC, in North America and aftermarket up 35%. Third, profitability. Operative EBIT was minus EUR 1.9 million, essentially flat versus last year. Overall, when you look at what we are doing, we grew the top line 28% through the first half. We've absorbed real price pressure, and we've held profitability steady in the second quarter while our cost programs are ramping up underneath. So that drives an upward trajectory from here.
And finally, cash flow. Operating cash flow was minus EUR 11.7 million. And working capital was temporarily higher this quarter, mostly due to the higher receivables tied to some longer payment terms that we have from some bigger strategic partners. Now it's great that we're driving strong growth with these strategic partners. But in the quarter, this shift in mix drove temporarily higher receivables. Overall, cash management, it's a key focus area for us, and we expect cash flow to improve in the coming quarters. Overall, our liquidity remains solid at EUR 102 million.
Next, let's look at the market context as that also explains our guidance move. So let me talk a little bit about the leading indicators and the lagging indicator. The main leading indicator for our demand is battery electric vehicle registrations and sales. And for passenger cars, the underlying BEV growth is diverging by region. Europe, up 27% in the quarter and for the first half. So that's quite strong fundamental growth in the electric vehicles. North America is going the other way. It's down 24% in the first half. And on commercial vehicles, e-truck and e-bus registrations, the data comes with a 1 quarter lag, but that grew 37% in the first quarter of the year. That means that the heavy-duty market also continues to show quite strong growth.
Then the lagging indicator, which is the public DC fast charging new installs. Now this was down 14% in the quarter overall. North America up, but Europe down 19% in Q2. So what's happening in Europe? There is some market consolidation taking place in the CPO segment. We've seen a slew of announcements here in the last quarter, plus the operators are focused a bit more on utilization and profitability in this moment versus accelerating their network expansion.
But if you step back, it's a very healthy growth signal on electric vehicle growth, which is the key leading indicator that drives the charging infrastructure market. So that network capacity gets built, driven based on the strong growth in the number of electric vehicles on the road. But in the near term, we're seeing some quarter-to-quarter fluctuation in terms of the new installs. So it's really a question of timing, and there's some lag between when we see registration growth in EVs to the charger installations.
So that's why we've refined the top end of our revenue guidance based on what we're seeing in the market and how we are responding to that. One, our diversification into Europe outside the Nordics has been strong, and our aftermarket growth partly offset that. And importantly, the cost programs that I will talk about mean that we are holding our EBIT improvement guidance regardless.
So next, let me talk about our performance in Europe. So in Europe, we're continuing to execute on our strategy. We talked about we want to grow across Continental Europe, and we did a solid job in this quarter. Europe outside Nordics, order intake up 16% and revenues up 9%. We have strong wins in France and Germany. We've added 12 new customers in the quarter. The Nordics came down, but the context is important here. I mean, the Nordics were 32% of revenue this quarter, down from what was 40% a year ago. So the rest of Europe is growing into a much bigger share for us.
A couple of customer highlights that I really want to call out. We signed a global framework agreement with APM Terminals to supply charging infrastructure for port terminals, one of the largest port operators in the world. And that's heavy-duty charging, that's global, that's exactly where we want to be, and we're very excited about this partnership. And next, also the First Lidl in Finland with Kempower charging. It's retail destination charging with a premier retailer. And it's a segment that we are quite bullish about, and we have some real runway for growth, and this win gives us some wind in our sails.
Next, let's look at North America. So we've talked about North America as one of our growth engines, and we can see it in our revenue numbers. Revenue was up 54% from EUR 7.7 million to EUR 11.8 million. Strong growth across both public charging and fleet. Now order intake was down 37% in the quarter. It's timing, pure and simple demand shifting between quarters, not demand loss. We've added two new customers. Our pipeline is healthy, and we remain optimistic. I mean, the proof of that is that the wins that we're seeing, the North America team put up.
A couple of examples, Blink Charging, expanding 14 sites across the U.S. East Coast through the course of 2026. And EV Realty's truck charging hub in California, one that I visited, 74 Kempower satellites and 2 mega satellites. I mean the second one tells you where the puck is going, heavy-duty truck charging at scale in North America. And that's a segment that's our strong suit and that we're very excited about.
Next, a quick one on how we're doing on our strategic priorities that we talked about at our Capital Markets Day in Oslo in May. Five priorities, and we've made real progress on all. First, winning with customers, 14 new customers added. APM Terminals global framework signed. An extended partnership with Circle K across Europe. We're really grateful for the trust these blue chip customers are placing in us.
Second, technology leadership. We had two launches in the quarter. Mega Satellite Flex, which is our first dispenser that charges with CCS and MCS, and I'll spend a minute on that next. And ChargEye, we launched an analytics dashboard that helps the operators run their networks more optimally. That directly serves the focus on utilization that I just talked about that CPOs have.
Third, lifecycle solutions. This is aftermarket for us. Service levels are up. We've got 35% growth in aftermarket in the quarter, 40% up for the first half. These are higher margin, higher recurring revenues, stickier revenues. We talked about that, and we're very excited to see this growth come through. Fourth, operational excellence. Our cost program is on track, around EUR 4 million achieved through the first half of the year, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. And underneath it all, it's the foundation of building and continue to build a winning culture and a team. And we think about -- we strengthened the leadership team with the hiring of a CIO and a CTO to continue to help scale the organization. And our Kempower 2.0 strategy that we shared in May, it's being rolled out actively across the company.
So one minute on the Mega Satellite Flex product because this is a really exciting one. In very simple terms, this product can charge either high-power CCS up to 560 kilowatts or megawatt charging up to 1.2 megawatts. And the beauty is it's one asset, it's one product that addresses both standards for our customers. It works with both new and existing distributed systems, and it's on sale now. Why this matters for our customers? Because you look at fleet operators and charge point operators, they're looking at a mixed future, which is CCS today and MCS coming for heavy trucks in the future. And this product lets them serve both from a single asset. It's a simpler transition for them, it drives higher uptime, it lowers the total cost of ownership for our customers. And for us, it continues to expand our reach into the truck and heavy-duty charging without building a completely separate product line. And that's the beauty of our modular platform. So very excited about that product rolling out.
Now next, I do want to pivot and talk a little bit about our cost architecture. We have two programs running. In the first one that we've talked about, it focuses on the cost of the products that we build. And the second one that I'll talk about today, it's what it costs to run the company. And we're addressing both cost structures. So first, the product cost reduction. Our target that we shared is EUR 10 million plus for 2026, and we banked already around EUR 4 million year-to-date, and the program is still ramping up. So we're on track to hit or beat this target. How? It's coming from procurement, where we have new RFQ rounds to get lower prices on things like PCBAs. And this is, by the way, is despite increase in the cost of some raw materials.
And then we're driving subcontractor consolidation in our production environments where our R&D teams are constantly redesigning parts that, by the way, help cost, but also help our greenhouse emission. So a lower footprint on that as well. Now the results of these actions and savings, they're already becoming visible in our financials. You can see that in our gross margins. Gross margins up from 45.3% in Q1 to 47.2% in Q2. And we expect more of this impact to come through in the second half of the year.
Now second to the right, this is the new program. It's fixed cost streamlining. And we're launching this program to align our overhead cost base with what we see as the current market conditions and also our new priorities that we announced. We're targeting more than EUR 5 million in fixed cost savings, savings begin towards the end of the 2026 and they really ramp up through the first half of 2027.
At the bottom of this, this is about creating a leaner, more agile organization. Lean processes, tighter operating model, better spend management to drive all of this. But look together, these two programs are why the EBIT improvement path for us is unchanged even as we trim the top end of our revenue guidance.
And with that, I'll hand it over to Jukka to take you through the financials in a bit more detail. Jukka?
Thank you, Bhasker, and let's move on to quarterly financials. So overall, I would say we had quite a mixed performance when looking the quarter 2 overall. Of course, some negative areas of development, but some positive highlights as well like always.
But starting from order intake, like Bhasker commented, it was down by 6%, not due to demand, but due to timing of orders. But when looking overall in H1, orders grew by 4% year-on-year. When looking revenue, we continued growing revenue, 10% in quarter 2, 28% when looking to H1. So strong results when looking the revenue progress overall. Also one highlight regarding the revenue was our aftermarket growth 35% growth when looking the quarter 2 overall.
Positive highlight also, our sequential improvement in gross profit margin. We are now more than 47%, 47.2%. So we were able to improve; thanks to unit cost reduction program. And then when looking the operative EBIT, it was around flat when looking the quarter 2, but we were improving it significantly year-on-year from negative EUR 9 million last year to negative EUR 5.4 million in quarter 2 2026.
So overall, like I mentioned, a little bit mixed results, but positive highlights, continued revenue growth, improved margins. And overall, in the profitability wise, even though we are not there where we want to be, we are in the improving trend, which is important as well.
Then let's move to orders. So orders for the quarter 2 was soft, so down 6%. Of course, our order generation overall is a little bit volatile. It's up to customer decision-making. And it's good to remember that we were actually able to grow our orders 6 quarters in a row before this quarter. So timing of orders, especially in the North America resulted decline in orders of 6% for the quarter. But overall, H1, like you see, we are up in order intake by 4% overall.
And highlights of the regions was the Europe outside Nordics, especially countries, big EV countries, Germany and France, where we were able to grow the orders during the quarter. And really important one is also order backlog, really strong order backlog, EUR 138 million, 18% up year-on-year, which is really positive when looking our revenue development for H2 2026 overall.
Then moving to revenue. A little bit repeating, but the 10% growth in quarter 2, 28% growth in H1. So really strong result in that sense. All the other regions grew the revenue, except the Nordics, what we have been expecting and planning a whole year. Strongest growth, North America more than 50% growth in revenue. APAC, Middle East, Africa doubling the revenue as well during the quarter 2. And then highlighting again, our recurring revenue, so revenue from services growing 35% in quarter 2, 40% in H1. And we have already 6% of our revenue base as recurring when looking quarter 2 numbers.
Then moving to the profitability. It was a good change in our gross margin trend, we were able to now sequentially improve our gross margin. So it's up from 45.3% in quarter 1 to 47.2% in quarter 2; thanks to our successful execution of unit cost savings program, which generated around EUR 4 million savings in our unit cost in H1. Of course, we are still down year-on-year, but this is when looking the progress going forward and our trends overall in the margin, really positive results. Operative EBIT flat year-on-year, but this EUR 3.6 million improvement year-over-year when looking H1 operative EBIT is a good development as well. Even though we are not yet there in the profitability, of course, where we want to be. But the direction is good, and that also matters.
Then let's look at the cash flow and liquidity. Cash flow, operating cash flow negative by EUR 12 million for the quarter. And main driver for that was increased net working capital. And in the increased net working capital, our accounts receivable increased. And what was the reason for that? Share of our sales in the strategic partners have increased and that customer group was driving up our accounts receivables and causing the temporary negative cash flow, operating cash flow for the company.
This is something we also addressed a lot, and we expect the net working capital to come down significantly when looking quarter 3 and quarter 4. Overall, our liquidity remains strong EUR 102 million, and we actually just renewed one of our RCF, EUR 40 million for next 4 years.
Then at the end, I would ask Bhasker to join here.
Thank you, Jukka. So perhaps just a quick summary of Q2. So we've specified our outlook for 2026. We now expect 10% to 25% growth over the course of the year versus the previous range of 10% to 30%. So this is on our 2025 base of EUR 251 million. And we've lowered only the top end because of the slightly slower market development that I talked about in the CPO customers that we see in the near term. So that market softened on what was the more ambitious end of the range. But our activity with fleet customers has remained very strong. Some of our -- actually our long-standing CPO customers, we see them gradually increasing their level of investment. That gives us confidence for the back half.
And the outlook for operative EBIT is unchanged. In 2025, it was minus EUR 12.4 million. We still expect to deliver a significant improvement versus last year. And we're committed to the profitability improvement trajectory. And as I stated earlier, the cost programs that we've launched, we're actively ramping those up that supports that.
So to summarize the quarter, three things to take away. First, we're continuing to grow and our growth is broadening. Revenue up 10% in the quarter, up 28% in the first half. North America, up 54%; APAC and EMEA, up 166% and EUR 138 million backlog going into the third quarter. Second, we're executing the strategy well. 14 new customers acquired, Mega Satellite Flex launched, aftermarket up 35%, the product cost programs delivering as planned. All of these are good proof points of the strong progress that we're making as a company.
Third, our margin and cost architecture is improving. Gross margin up sequentially 2 percentage points and the fixed cost program launched to build a leaner, more agile company and business. So broadening growth, strong strategic progress and an improving cost base, that summarizes our quarter.
And with that, let us open it up for questions. So I'll invite Calle and Jukka to join me on the stage. Thank you. Calle?
Thank you, Bhasker, and thank you Jukka as well for the presentation. Now let's continue with Q&A. We will first take the questions from the conference call line and then move on to questions through the webcast. So if you have any questions on the webcast, please do type in them already now. But now let me hand over to the operator for the instructions. So operator, please go ahead.
[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Pauli Lohi from Inderes.
2. Question Answer
You mentioned some shift in expected deal closings in the second quarter. And you also mentioned that the increased EV adoption is growing the market going forward. So should we expect the demand to revive in the second half? Or should we expect this kind of new reality where CPO customers are more profitability-oriented and cautious?
Thank you, Pauli. Great question, and welcome back from your time off. Good to hear from you. I'd say, look, fundamentally, I mean, the strong electric vehicle growth that we see, it's great. That's the fundamental driver for our business. So Europe up 27%; North America is going the other direction. We know the reasons here that we've talked about with the policy, but Europe. One in five vehicles that are being sold today is an electric vehicle, and in Europe, right? So that's a very positive sign. So I think that gives us confidence.
Now we've seen I mean, on the consolidation front -- by the way, consolidation, I see some industry consolidation is as healthy. The industry needs very profitable and healthy players to grow in the market. So I think in the near term, we may see some volatility here. I mean that's -- we've seen that already here in the last quarter. So the fundamental underlying drivers point to a growth trajectory. We need to come to -- get through kind of the near-term volatility. So we expect a continued growth trend, notwithstanding some near-term volatility. I mean we've seen this market be volatile quarter-to-quarter, but also bounced back really strong. So that's what we're hoping happens here. But the timing, obviously, varies a little bit. There's a bit of a lag between the electric vehicle growth and then the charging installs.
And you mentioned in the CMD that you are developing a new satellite. So do you think that will the new like satellites have a negative impact on orders before the rollout, like if the customers are waiting for the new products? Do you expect any of that?
Look, that's a great question. And yes, we're targeting to launch that towards the end of the year and we're very excited about it. I mean, our customers are very excited about it. So the timing -- pending the timing, I think we'll see how the order book plays out on that. But I'll tell you, I mean, there's a lot of excitement about the product from our customers. So again, without getting caught up in the quarter-to-quarter, that's something that can really help us gain further share in the CPO segment, in the retail segment with some of the things that Jussi had talked about in the CMD. A lot of the features, functionality, performance, cost, how we built that product is very much targeted towards addressing the needs of our customers around user experience and total cost of ownership.
So we're very excited about the product. And now I think, yes, to your question on order book, I mean, we expect the order book to grow as a result of that pending the timing of the exact release.
Then a technical question regarding the cost savings. Is this EUR 4 million run rate figure in the end of June? Or is it so that you already got that fully reflected in your P&L, that EUR 4 million?
Yes. It's already in our H1 numbers, and that's visible in the gross margin percent what we reported out in our financials.
The next question comes from Nikko Ruokangas from SEB.
This is Nikko Ruokangas from SEB. I have three questions, and I'd like to go one by one. Starting with orders in North America, which declined clearly from the level where you have shown in the last 4 quarters, and you highlighted there were some order delays. But without these delays, would orders in North America have grown? And if we think about kind of the underlying level of demand you are experiencing in North America, are we currently closer to the EUR 10 million quarter level or closer to EUR 20 million if you think about your market position there?
Thank you, Nikko. Good question. Look, I mean, in North America, if you look at the numbers, I mean, in quarter revenues, we grew 54% for the first half of the year. We're up -- we've more than doubled the revenues in North America. So the trajectory is upwards now. Yes, addressing kind of the order intake point, absolutely. I mean that's the indicator for future growth. And yes, the sales cycle has elongated. Now having said that, what we are pursuing our team, Monil and the team there, Monil talked about in the Capital Markets Day, we're getting to substantially larger sites, larger deals, which also funding tied to those deals needs to be secured by our customers.
So it becomes a slightly longer elongated sales cycle. But the pipeline is very healthy. And we haven't had any losses, more just demand shift. So we remain very bullish about our North America growth prospects, notwithstanding the market. We still have ample runway for share gain and share growth.
I'll go with this number question. Yes, actually, it would have grown the orders more or less without this timing topic in North America.
All right. Then on the CPO topic already discussed a bit about. So how big share are currently CPOs of your sales and in which geographical areas have you seen this kind of a slower development?
Yes. So of course, it depends on the year and the quarter, but it has been between 20% to 30% of our sales, when looking at the history. And we had the slowness in the CPO segments, both in North America and Europe. So both key regions were impacted.
Yes. And just building on that, our sales to end CPO customers is higher because we also sell through partners and those partners may be selling to a smaller CPO. So our end customer that may be a bit -- that's actually a bit higher than what Jukka just stated.
Yes. Makes sense. Then last one, a bit more technical on order book. So how big share of the current order book are you expecting to deliver after 2026?
More than 2/3 of that is for 2026.
The next question comes from Patrick Campbell from Nordea.
It's Patrick Campbell from Nordea. Just a couple of questions. First, related to the customers and the CPO specifically. So it seems that you've been granting a bit longer payment terms for some customers, which I assume includes CPOs as well. Does this mean that the financing conditions along CPOs is deteriorating?
Yes, I can take it. Yes, in some extent, CPO is impacting there as well, but it's mainly the strategic partners and partner sales, which is impacting on our accounts receivables and longer payment terms. So relatively less the CPO segment, it's more the partners.
So if I may follow up, who are the strategic partners and what kind of customers are we talking about here?
Yes. So we have quite a lot of partner sales in both key regions, Europe and North America as well. They are the partners where we do a cooperation, of course, they take care of installation quite often to our clients. And then we, of course, sell our hardware to them. So there's quite a plenty of those. It's quite a sizable amount of our sales. We are talking about more than half of our sales coming through the partners altogether.
All right. Clear. Then just a second question, perhaps a more generic question. Are you seeing competition intensifying and how has the pricing environment developed maybe compared to last year? How much is kind of pricing down?
Yes. Perhaps I can dig in. Patrick, look, competition is intense. That's the bottom line in this market, right? It's not an easy market from that standpoint. So it is quite intense. I mean, you could say mid- to high single-digit pricing pressure is normal in this market. So volume growth helps us offset that. Our productivity programs that we are driving helps us offset -- more than offset that. But yes, I mean I'd say that's kind of the level that we see on the pricing pressure.
And perhaps to your previous question on the terms, look, I mean, just building on what Jukka said. There's quarter-to-quarter mix shift between the mix of our customers. So in this quarter, just the mix of strategic partner sales was just significantly higher than what we've seen, which temporarily affected our payment terms. But again, it's good news that, hey, look, with some of the largest partners, we're really growing at a very strong level. But temporarily, it affected that.
[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Paul de Froment from Stifel.
Two questions for me. The first one is regarding CPO market consolidation. What could be the impact for Kempower over the next quarters? And the second question is related to the fast charging points installations. How do you explain this decline over Q2? And what are your views for Q3 and Q4?
Paul, on your first one, look, I mean, the CPO consolidation, some of this is in the rearview mirror already. So I mean, it is a bit of noise. The signal is that, look, there's still strong growth and then with stronger CPO players in the market. We already see the stronger players amongst our mix as well. They're actually increasing their investment level. And the ones that are even the consolidators, the ones that are acquiring to get to the higher quality assets there in case -- in many cases, replacing some of the equipment so that they're acquiring, the assets that they're acquiring, they're replacing the charges. So that also helps.
So it's hard to kind of pinpoint how every month, quarterly development works, but we're already seeing signs that this is actually, in some cases, favorable with stronger players increasing their levels of investment. So we'll keep a close eye and then that's a watch item for us in the next couple of quarters.
Yes. And I would add also about our customers, CPO customers. Some of them had done the acquisition, and we know that some of them are planning the acquisition. So that is, of course, positive for Kempower's future business.
Yes. And those very customers, we see very strong growth actually in the quarter. So Paul, I missed your second question, if you could repeat it, please?
Yes. How do you explain the decline in fast charging point installations over Q2? And what are your views for Q3 and Q4?
Yes, that's a little bit of a crystal ball question. But I think, yes, partly explained by what we've talked about, the two factors, the consolidation and a bit of the focus on the utilization and profitability. But again, I think that's some fluctuation from quarter-to-quarter. The clear trend that we see is stronger players investing in infrastructure development, driven fundamentally by the growth in electric vehicles. That is the most important indicator, which is up 27%. And as I mentioned, 1 out of 5 vehicles in Europe -- more than 1 out of 5 vehicles in Europe is an electric vehicle, which is a very strong trend. Comes on the back of 2025, where we saw 30% growth in new vehicle sales. So that trend is continuing. And I think that's the key indicator that we need to look for the growth of the infrastructure as well.
And also clarifying, North America, installations actually grew 11% during the quarter 2. So yes, Europe were down, but North America was up.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers.
All right. Thank you, operator. We have actually a bunch of questions coming through the webcast. Most of them have already been answered, but there's a few additional ones. So we start with the orders which were delayed, how confident are you that you are able to get the orders, which face delays in Q2?
Yes. Look, our teams are working day and night to be able to convert those. But what's most important is doing right for the customer, matching their timing, matching their funding, doing and we work very, very closely with our customers and our partners. So we expect a number of those deals that have already been closed here in the first couple of weeks, and we expect that to continue through Q3 and beyond.
Perfect. Then a question on the loan covenants, maybe Jukka to you then. You now fell into net debt for the first time since the IPO. Can you please inform us what loan covenants you have?
Yes, it's a great question. So we are gearing as our covenant in all the RCFs basically. So that's an answer. Yes, there's quite a lot of room to play in that gearing level where we can be. So that's the answer on the question.
All right. And then about the market shares, should we interpret 10% sales growth versus the public DC fast charging installations being down 14% as a sign of market share gains in your view. And has this been a constant recurring theme?
Yes, it's a great question, something that we look at very closely. And yes, you could obviously make the interpretation that, look, when the market is at 10% and we are at 28% through the first half of the year. That's what we look at as a clear sign of us gaining share. But we also know there's volatility. But yes, I would say, yes, I mean, that's an indicator that we look at very closely as a measure of our success. But there's accounting for all factors amongst volume growth, price as well as the mix between different segments, but probably the most closest indicator of share gain, yes.
All right. And then finally, regarding the gross margin. Gross margin improved from Q1. What should we expect for the coming quarters?
Yes. Look, I mean, our cost programs, I talked about the product cost reduction program, they're still ramping up. We're -- that EUR 4 million that's been banked. The curve when you look at what it costs for us and how much is our cost target to take out, we're only halfway through that. So that program only ramps up. So yes, we expect more. We expect higher gross margins, but we also play that against continued revenue expansion and above-market revenue growth. So as we think about that price becomes a factor, there are certain deals, especially in certain regions that we're looking to grow and get a foothold. The entry point on those may be slightly dilutive margins. So we constantly play with the effect, but our goal is over a period of time to be able to expand -- defend and expand our gross margins.
Very good. Thank you. That was all the questions that we had for today. So thank you, of course, for the active participation, and thank you for the answers. Now before we close the line, we want to end with a customer video. And this time, the video is about the Malaga Bus Depot in Western Australia. It's playing a key role in moving public transport towards zero emissions by installing one of Australia's largest electric bus charging systems.
With that, have a good rest of the day. Enjoy the video and see you next time.
Kempower — Q2 2026 Earnings Call
Kempower — Analyst/Investor Day - Kempower Oyj
1. Management Discussion
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Kempower's Capital Markets Day 2026. My name is Calle Loikkanen, I'm Director of Investor Relations. It's truly a pleasure to have you here, both those of you joining us in person and those tuning in remotely. Yesterday morning, we announced our updated strategy, Kempower 2.0 and financial targets for the period 2026 to 2030. Today, we'll go deeper into that strategy and explain how we plan to deliver against our targets.
Before we begin, just a quick housekeeping note. Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. So please refer to the disclaimer in the materials. And in the unlikely event of an emergency here at the venue, follow the instructions from the venue staff and use the marked exits.
With that, let's turn to today's agenda. And we have a strong lineup of presentations for you today. We'll start off with an overview of the strategy by Kempower's CEO, Bhasker Kaushal. We'll then move to the technology part with Jussi Vanhanen, Chief Product Officer, before then going into the regions, starting with Europe and Asia Pacific with Mathias Wiklund, who is the Chief Sales Officer; and then the North America bit with Monil Malhotra, President of North America and Digital Solutions leader.
Following these presentations, we will have a Q&A session and a short break. And after the break, we'll continue with our aftermarket operations presented by Katri Piirtola, Chief Aftermarket Officer, together with Monil Malhotra. After that, we'll have a look at the operational excellence by Sanna Otava, Chief Operating Officer, before then moving on to the financials with Jukka Kainulainen, CFO.
At the end, we'll open the floor for a final Q&A before the closing words by Bhasker Kaushal. With that, let's get started. So once again, welcome. And now let me hand over to Kempower's CEO, Bhasker Kaushal.
Well, thank you, Calle, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Kempower's 2026 Capital Markets Day, and thanks to everyone who's joining on the webcast as well.
Well, today is a very exciting and an important day for us. It's for the first time that I'm standing here as the CEO of Kempower presenting the Capital Markets Day, as is for a number of the management team members that are joined here today as well. And we will, for the first time, lay out in full as this management team, where we are taking Kempower over the next 5 years.
So reflecting back, a little more than 5 years back, Kempower was a Finnish startup that made one big bet that DC fast charging can be better done with a distributed architecture. 35,000 chargers in the ground in 60-plus countries, 350 customers later, that's a good start. That's a great start and a solid foundation.
Now the world has changed. The EV transition is still going on, but at a different pace. Investors are scrutinizing every euro and every dollar that they are putting to work. And our customers expect more from us. They expect us to be more than just a hardware provider. They expect support through the life cycle for a decade or more.
So now in light of that, today is about Kempower 2.0. 1.0 was about building the foundation and 2.0 is about scaling Kempower to be a global leader in DC fast charging. It's the same mission, sharper playbook and a higher bar for us. And by the end of the day today, I want you to leave with one conviction that in what is one of the fastest and the biggest infrastructure rollouts in our generation, Kempower is the company that will lead DC fast charging and will deliver compounding results.
So let's get started. And let me start with why we exist. It's a simple mission, accelerate the electric mobility transition, and it hasn't changed since day 1, and it won't change. And we're here in Oslo, which is giving you a glimpse of the future. 95% plus vehicles that are being sold are electric vehicles. Look at the chargers, really good penetration of chargers. So that mission is going to translate into all of the -- all over the world.
Our vision and ambition, our ambition is to be a top 3 global leader in DC fast charging, trusted by customers and build to compound. And these phrases are important for us. Trusted by customers because market leadership starts with building great trust and partnership with our customers and build to compound because we are a company that aspire to deliver compounding results quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year, not just one heroic quarter over year. So everything that we do is focused on this mission and vision.
Now let me start with why do we think Kempower 2.0 is an exciting and a credible investment. Four points that you will hear consistently today. Number one, we're in an attractive, fast-growing market. The total addressable market doubles from roughly EUR 4.5 billion to EUR 10-plus billion over the next 5 years.
Second, we're a proven leader. We're a leader in distributed architecture. We have the industry's strongest combination of hardware, software services. And third is we're expanding from just what we were previously a hardware manufacturer to more of a full life cycle solution provider, and we'll talk more about that.
And fourth, we're going from growth at all costs to a focus on sustained, profitable growth. And we target to deliver 15% to 25% revenue compound annual growth rate over the next 5 years and 10% to 15% EBIT margin. And this range is intentional. It's calibrated to different market scenarios. It's not just internal hedging, and we'll talk about that.
So just a quick overview of who we are. So Kempower, in 2025, EUR 251 million in revenues, 48% in gross margins. We've got over 800 employees headquartered in Finland, 60-plus countries where our chargers are, 35,000 chargers, as I mentioned. In terms of revenue composition, a little over 80% of our sales come from Europe, 12% from North America and 7% from Asia Pacific.
And in terms of the mix, 95% of our sales in '25 came from hardware and only 5% from aftermarket. And that's an important number to remember. We will come back to that as one of the transformations that we're going to be driving. We have been recognized as one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe by Financial Times 1000.
So what are we focused on? We're 100% focused on DC fast charging, not AC. We're a focused play. We are not a portfolio play. DC charging is where the differentiation is. That's where the margin lies. AC is commoditized. And in particular, in DC, we're focused on DC ultrafast charging, 150-kilowatt or more, which allows you to go from -- for most vehicles to go from 10% state of charge to 80% or more in about 30 minutes. That's important.
Now how do we do this? We do this with a full stack product, not just hardware. It's a full stack product. On the hardware front, we have the distributed architecture, which really means a modular power unit plus different kinds of dispensers that can adapt to different use cases that you see passenger cars, trucks, buses, ports, off-highway. These are all different segments that are all growing fast, and we can address this through one hardware platform plus software.
We have Kempower ChargeEye. You're going to hear more about that today. It's our Software as a Service. It's a charging platform that allows customers to use it to operate, maintain and optimize their charging operations. So this combination of hardware plus software, we believe, drives a lot of stickiness with our customers.
Now we are an ESG leader, and we've delivered 1.7 billion kilowatt hours of energy through Kempower chargers. And you look at the tonnes avoided, 1.4 million tonnes of CO2 avoided. I was born and raised in Delhi. I've seen the emissions -- the impact of emissions firsthand. And that's the kind of environmental impact that we need to drive throughout the world today.
If you look at -- we've been validated by independent rating and standards bodies. We like to call it gold, green and trusted. We're EcoVadis gold. That puts us in the top 5% of companies globally based on benchmarks such as environment, labor, procurement. NASDAQ has awarded us the green equity designation. That means for companies that have revenues more than 50% focused on green. Ours is 100%, and that was the second year running.
When I say trusted, on cybersecurity, we're one of the few players that has ISO 27001 certification. Charging is increasingly becoming critical infrastructure. That is a major requirement for our customers now when they're looking for procurement.
Next, our view on the DC fast charging market. It's a EUR 4.5 billion market today, growing to over EUR 10 billion over the next 5 years. Quick point. This excludes China. China, we believe China is a captive market for Chinese suppliers. So we've deliberately excluded that from our estimates here. So this includes North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.
If you look at the scenarios, the EUR 10 billion is the base scenario, which we believe is kind of the midpoint, about 18% compound annual growth rate for the market. The low and the high, that could be about 10% to 25%. And I'll talk about what drives that in a second.
What's important here to know is that we've built our value creation model and our targets to work across all 3 scenarios, and I'll talk about that. So, fundamentally, I want to address the market reset directly. This market has changed. So fundamentally, the DC fast charging market is driven by battery electric vehicle adoption. And the forecast for battery electric vehicle adoption a few years back were unrealistic, right? Those numbers were too optimistic. And over the last 2 years or over the last year, the projections are much more realistic.
So that reset is 40%. What you saw in 2023, that old projection of 16 million BEVs projected on the road in 2030, that's come down by 40%. A large majority of that reset is driven by North America, as you see, and that's driven by some of the policy shift in North America.
But if you look over on the right-hand side, even after this reset, the battery electric vehicle market is still set to roughly triple. 4 million new BEVs sold in 2025 from that baseline, we still expect 9 million to 10 million passenger cars being sold in 2030. Much more realistic, but very much possible and very much in line with what we see today.
On commercial vehicles, the same story, light, medium, heavy duty, we see the take rate is a little bit lower than passenger cars. It's obviously dependent on the availability of vehicles at the right price point. So you look at those BEV share ranges as a percent of the total new vehicle sales, passenger cars estimated to be 30% to 35%, Europe leading with much higher and North America with about half that range over the next 5 years and commercial vehicles at 25% to 30%.
So now that recalibration was painful, but we've recalibrated our target to this new estimate of the BEV market. So bottom line, it was the market normalization that has reset our targets, not our ambition level as a company. So what is supporting this market? It's 4 things: Total cost of ownership advantage of the battery electric vehicles, it's regulations, it's public and private funding and energy security as a security imperative.
When you look at BEVs, the economics of battery electric vehicles are more advantaged versus internal combustion engines for most use cases now. So that's what's driving the adoption. It's the economics. It is no longer a subsidy-driven story.
CO2. OEMs have to electrify. They have no choice. This is a regulatory requirement in Europe. And the governments and the regulators, they're not reversing course on that.
Public and private funding, there's ample amount of public and private funding. You look at all the announcements over the last couple of years, we believe there's $10-plus billion in funding that has been announced over the last 2 years. Our customers, they're well capitalized.
Lastly, the recent war in the Middle East has just shown how volatile the oil prices can be. Importantly, it highlighted a risk for countries and companies that, that kind of an oil price shock can totally destabilize their environments. So countries and companies are now accelerating their electrification targets to derisk themselves. And that's very important to know.
Shifting to the DC fast charging market. Let's look at our position there. Today, we are a global -- top 5 global player. We believe we are the leader in distributed charging. That's where the market is converging, by the way. You look at a couple of peers that are ahead of us in terms of installed base. We rank them by installed base here. They're concentrated in the all-in-one hardware, the station charger. It's a different architecture. It's a different business model.
And we and our customers, we believe that Kempower has the strongest combination of the hardware, of the software and the services platform. And we are the only pure-play publicly traded DC fast charging player. So great time to own DC fast charging exposure.
All right. So as we turn the page, how are we evolving? How will we be different? Kempower 2.0. 1.0 was about building the platform. 2.0 is about scaling the platform profitably. And there are 3 key areas where we will evolve, and we'll focus on these.
First is geographic focus. Second is the business model; and third is the operating model and the focus. Geography, we're looking to become a much more balanced global player, growing from more than 80% exposure in Europe to being much more balanced across the key geographies, North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Business model. Today, only 5% of our revenues come from aftermarket. We're looking to become much more balanced with materially higher share of recurring revenues that can come often at higher margins and much better predictability.
And third, in terms of operating focus, we were a startup. We were in scale-up mode, heavy scale-up mode, and our focus was building the platform. And here, we shift to a more profitable, sustained profitable growth focus. So really, we're evolving from a regional hardware-focused player to a global life cycle solution provider that is going to be disciplined to drive sustained profitable growth.
Now to achieve these visions and our targets that we've set, how will we do it? There's 4 pillars and a foundational enabler. These 4 pillars are what we do and the enabler, winning culture and team, is how we do it at scale. We'll talk a little bit about it, and you're going to see that throughout the course of the day today and hear about these presentations.
Win with customers. We just don't win orders. We build partnerships with our customers. We earn their trust every day, and we build partnerships. The second pillar, technology leadership through innovation. This is a very competitive market. For us to differentiate, it starts with technology and starts with the full product stack, not just hardware.
Third, life cycle solutions, allows us to play both defense and offense. This is where our customers are increasingly looking for solutions across the whole life cycle, not just treat us as a hardware vendor and see us later. Operational excellence, something that we pride ourselves in, and that's something that we'll talk about is asset-light productivity-driven operations.
And what you see here as the foundational enabler, the winning culture and team, this is something that I'm really proud of and really we focus on these things, high-performance model, disciplined execution, startup speed, industry, these are not just slogans. This is how we operate. This is how we operate and behave every day.
So starting with winning with customers. Look, we win when our customers win in their respective markets. That's our belief. We call this motto winning with customers. And today, we're trusted by leading operators across segments and regions. You look at some of the names here on this page, CIRCLE K as a CPO in retail, EV Realty, Fleet Trucks, Thomas Bus, DP WORLD in ports, the largest port operator. And these are some marquee names.
Overall, we have 350-plus customers globally and 135-plus customers acquired over the last 2 years. And our top 25 accounts account for about 50% of our revenues. So we have deep relationships and deep multi-account, multisite relationships there as well.
Last point on this page, 75% of our installed base is doing public charging for cars and then 25% is fleet. So we're diversified in terms of our focus and also diversified in terms of the revenue streams that we see. We are not dependent just on public charging or just on fleet. One of the things that I have enjoyed the most about our teams since I joined is how customer-centric our teams are. It can often be just a slogan, but really, our teams get to the heart of what the customers need to win in their markets, truly understanding it and solving the problems of our customers.
And there are different customer segments. They have different needs. You look at the CPOs, every day, they're focused on revenue maximization, revenue per site per day. The fleets, they're focused on total cost of ownership over the life cycle, by the way. So how do we do it? We do it through one platform. For the CPOs, our distributed architecture, you've got a limited grid connection. You want to be able to give that to maximize that to the maximum number of cars or vehicles available, and our distributed architecture does that very well. By the way, it's scalable. As you grow, as you see your demand grow, you can scale.
For fleet operators, they're buying on total cost of ownership. And you look at things like what's important to them. It's uptime, the redundancy in our system. It's uptime, it's SLA-driven service level-driven contracts. Again, the distributed architecture helps the depot economics. They want telematics integrations, integrations with their fleet management systems. We do that.
So same hardware, same platform, 2 different value propositions that we are serving. And that's the power of the distributed platform. And Mathias and Monil will share real customer examples of why we win and why this kind of value is translated to our customers.
Next, on technology. I'd say innovation is in Kempower's DNA, right? And the industry is shifting from what was basic charging to now more advanced charging today to really intelligent energy management. And our focus, we in a way -- and also it's also going from peak power. Everybody was fixated on, hey, 200 kilowatts, 400 kilowatts, 1,000 a megawatt. It's no longer about just nameplate power. It's about total cost of ownership. And you look at that, it's -- what does that drive? Our focus is both TCO and intelligence.
We differentiate with our hardware, looking at cost per kilowatt hour. And on the intelligence, we want to be able to drive outcomes for our customers. We'll talk more about that, cloud, AI-driven uptime, energy, predictive service. These are the kind of things that drive value to our customers. So we will focus on that.
We're investing in R&D. 25% of our total workforce is focused on R&D and product. We have a unique and a patented IP portfolio across power conversion as well as the electricity delivery through the cable support mechanisms and the dynamic charging. That is really our secret sauce, and we'll talk a little bit more about that. And we are also constantly looking around the corner for what is the next technology. And that's where we partner with universities. Universities such as LUT in Finland and North Carolina State University in the U.S., the FREEDM Center there to again get access to the next-generation technology. And Jussi is going to talk about this in more detail overall our technology view.
I have to say a word on AI. AI is not just a road map item or a slogan for us. We have 20-plus agents that we're deploying at scale today. And the way we look at AI is through 3 lenses. AI helps us deliver differentiation, product differentiation, so how we infuse AI into that and the dynamic charging algorithms that we talked about.
Look, we've been working on those algorithms over the last 5 years. Now we are infusing AI. How do we extend our lead and extend our advantage. It's not just going to be hardware, it's those algorithms. So that's the differentiation bit.
Growth. We focus on revenue expansion. We have the Kempower ChargeEye platform. Monil is going to speak about that and share a couple of examples of how we're doing that. And productivity, apply AI to everyday task. It's become one of my favorite friends for sure, and I know for a lot of folks around our company as well. And there's real examples of how that is driving productivity. For software developers, 8-plus hours per FTE per week reduced. And order handling, we're getting 20%-plus efficiencies in our order handling, and we're just scratching the surface. So these are real things and numbers that we're delivering through AI.
Next, life cycle solutions. As our installed base grows and customers increasingly want solutions across the life cycle, we have a great opportunity to build a recurring revenue business. Our offerings that we have, parts, service contracts, modernization and upgrades and software, each comes with their different revenue and margin profile.
Katri is going to talk about that in more detail. But look, it's fundamentally driven by a growing installed base, 2.5x plus. 2.5 is the exact sort of absolute lower end of the estimate, quite frankly. You look at a much higher opportunity for us to grow our installed base, very conservative estimate there.
And every charger, every unit that we sell is an aftermarket revenue stream for the next decade or more. And every charger is also connected to our Kempower ChargeEye Cloud in real time. Every charger turns into a data feed. We know when to service that equipment, when to upgrade that equipment, what to upsell to our customers next time before a customer ever asks us.
So this recurring revenue stream, as we build it out, it's hard work, but we will build it out. This provides much better predictability, much higher margin and also improves our earnings quality.
Operational excellence, I mentioned we pride ourselves on that, leading industry performance around things like order to delivery, lead time, configure to order, we got a scalable model. When we think about the investments that we've made in factory capacity and equipment, we're 3x ready. Labor obviously scales with volume.
And we're very focused on productivity. Late last -- earlier this year, I shared that we started a unit cost improvement program. Just this year, our target is to get $10-plus million productivity savings. We do see price pressure. Jukka is going to talk about that, right? This is a price-sensitive market. We are going to our unit cost reduction and our productivity program to offset and improve -- offset that.
Now we will also stay disciplined on operational expenses, and I'll talk about that in a second here. Sanna will go through this in much more detail in a later presentation. So overall, look, our goal is to build a balanced business. Different regions are at different stages in their EV adoption curve, right? As these regions get ready for their inflection points, we aim to be there, and we're already there.
So we have a well-defined approach for each region. Nordics, we lead that today. Our goal is to protect and deepen our position and defend our share. Rest of Europe, we're gaining share. We continue to acquire new customers, gain share of wallet. North America, Monil will talk about, that's a share gain story. Whatever the market does, we're going to outpace the market. We're already doing that today. We can continue to do that.
And Asia Pacific, it's a very competitive market. We scale selectively. We pick and choose our markets, pick and choose our customers, and it's going to be a targeted entry with local partners. So how does all of this come together to deliver value for our shareholders. I said our goal is to deliver sustained profitable growth and compounding value. And we've got a 4-part formula: disciplined above-market growth, we gain share, but margin protected and balanced global expansion. On the life cycle front, again, I talked about materially higher aftermarket revenues.
Third, operating profit expansion, the operating leverage that we get and the aftermarket mix and productivity help us there. And then disciplined selective reinvestment. We're still investing selectively in areas that are tied to our strategic priorities. But what we will target -- the OpEx growth, we are targeting that to be less than half of what the revenue growth rate is. That is -- we're going to stay disciplined on that. We will not let OpEx grow ahead of our revenues.
So as we execute this strategy and this value creation model, what are we targeting? In terms of revenues, we're targeting 15% to 25% compound annual growth rate through 2030. 10% to 15% in operative EBIT by 2030. The revenue range is tied to the market scenarios. It is not internal hedging, right? You've seen this market be dynamic. It can go up and down. And in a slow market, our approach is -- we are targeting the lower end of the range. So that's what that means. In a base market, we have calibrated to the midpoint well. And in an accelerated market, we go to the upper end.
And look, our goal -- end goal is sustained profitable growth on the EBIT -- operative EBIT. And the way we're going to do that is also use the reinvestment as a lever. So it's tighter in a slower market. It's balanced in a base market, and we lean into investments as we grow faster than what we -- on the top end of that. So no dividends on the short term as we focus on reinvestments, and we think that drives more value, at least in the near term, but we reassess that. So we don't think we're sandbagging or promising this moonshot with these scenarios. We're just giving you a very honest conditional architecture, right? It's honest, it's credible and it's conditional to what the market does.
All right. Coming down to the home stretch here. Look, strategy targets are easy, right? Execution is what differentiates real companies. So what I'm really proud of is what we're building internally, the culture here.
We've already got a really solid base, a start-up orientation, bias for action, fast decision-making, and we're building on that. And all of this with a view that we can lead and we can deliver results for years and decades to come.
So we're building high performance into the fabric of our company. It starts with clarity of role, ensuring people know what they're accountable for, right, investing in developing talent, giving them the tools and the coaching that they need to grow and deliver their results. And when they achieve their results, raise the performance bar, get to the next level. And then disciplined execution at start-up speed, this is all about discipline without losing the speed.
I've talked about how we'll be disciplined on capital allocation. We drive this through KPIs. We have KPIs and targets. This strategy that we talked about, it's been translated into very specific initiatives. We have targets. We have dashboards. We operationalize it. We don't wait for a year. We review this every month. We are taking action. So it's accountability, it's transparency top to bottom and its speed of decision-making.
I do humbly believe that we've got the best team in the industry, 800-plus people delivering results, right? 60-plus nationalities, very diverse, very global team already, 40% plus female representation in the leadership. And look, we're a team of industrial technology and electrification leaders. We're all assembled on that same mission that I talked about.
Sanna, Jussi, Jukka have been around since the early days. You see Monil joined ex-Emerson leading large software businesses. Katri joined aftermarket from KONE and Ahlstrom heritage. And you look at Mathias, Chief Sales Officer, ABB, Universal Robots and Ane from Valmet.
So we've got a good mix of depth and experience in this leadership team to deliver what I talked about. All right. Well, in closing, let me leave you with why we believe Kempower 2.0 is a very exciting and credible investment. Four things to remember. We're in an attractive, fast-growing market. It's going to double or estimated to double over the next 5 years.
Second, we're a proven leader. Third, look, we're evolving from this regional hardware focus to more of a global and a life cycle focus.
And from a profitability standpoint, we're focused on discipline, on sustained profitable growth. These are not aspirations. This is how we run the company, right?
So we believe Kempower is built to lead and built to deliver sustained compounding results, and we're very excited about it. So the rest of the day, we'll be talking about these themes. So now I will turn it over to Calle for the rest of the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Bhasker, for setting the scene and outlining the strategy. Now let's turn to how this strategy has been enabled by our technology. So let me welcome Jussi Vanhanen, Chief Product Officer to the stage.
All right. Welcome to this back to the future experience for Norway and Oslo. So excited to be here. I will talk today about the technology and product leadership. And why this matter is dear to me, of course, that Bhasker is paying me for it, but also I'm so excited to work with our customers. And that's the key for our innovation and how we understand the customer needs and how we create the value for our customers. And this is a story I tried to highlight to you today.
Before we go to the topic, I would like to know you a little bit better. So put the hands up that who are the EV drivers. It's quite good, almost everybody. Hands down, who is the want-to-be EV driver? -- rest of the group. So great. Awesome. So I know my audience now, good to see you. You know what I'm talking about now.
All right. Let's go back to the past from the future, 3 years ago that we had at Capital Markets Day. We were talking about the industry where the industry is. It was about the peak powers like Bhasker said, that who makes the biggest charger, who can make the DC charger and most important, who can deliver the DC charger.
And it was about the static systems, peak powers, euro per kilowatt and all that kind of old-fashioned way to look at it. Then Kempower came to the market, we started to define the charging for something better. We analyzed what is the charging business, what is the user experience at the sites and how we can bring something better.
We created the intelligent platform with the full stack of hardware, software and also services that time because there, you're getting stronger all the time. Now as already there, the strategy was to create the customer value and collaborate deeply with our customers.
Kempower 2.0, we go stronger to that direction. We go for total cost of ownership and optimizing all the elements of the TCO calculation there what I'm stating. You guys, you know the equation quite well. Minimizing the CapEx, how to minimize the hardware cost compared to energy that customers are charging, how to make a faster deployment with less staff, higher efficiencies, planned OpEx, that's what all the customers said that they want to plan their operations. They want to plan their EBIT. Maximum uptime that they earn the money all the time. We go for the euro per kilowatt hour. That's the transition for the TCO.
Let's still look at the evolution of Kempower. 2019, when we came to the market, the very fundamental things that we were bringing to the market was our own in-house power electronics and our power source. So crucial that it was -- that design in Finland, made in Finland architecture.
Number two was the charging controls. We created the charging controls from the beginning that we knew exactly what was happening between car battery and our charger.
And number three, we were introducing the charger already there 6, 7 years ago that we started to accumulate the data and information and the customer experience at our sites.
2020, that was the time we were bringing the distributed system, really disrupted the market. I think all of you still remember that crazy Tesla Bjorn video that made us very, very famous. If you haven't seen it, I will send it to all of you from YouTube.
Same time, we were bringing the station charger, all-in-one charger that many competitors have also. There is a specific use case for that, but still the bread and butter differentiation was a distributed system. 2020, we came to North America with full compliance of North American standards. '24 with the total redesign of the power electronics, change for silicon carbide technology and boosting the efficiency of our charger. It still looks the same from outside, inside totally new.
And now last year, this year, we are bringing the MCS, 1.2 megawatt and 12. That was the first in the industry charging 1.2 megawatt for the electric vehicle. It was an amazing journey and still continues. Same time, when we develop the hardware stack, you see the amazing AI-driven Kempower ChargeEye that has been disrupting the business. Now the latest developments are the Kempower EMS, the site analytics and the state of health analysis of the fleets.
And this is where we are at the moment. This is the strongest distributed DC charging system in the market with the 50 to 1.2 megawatt power units, satellite systems up to 12 bays. Here is the standard satellite, the MCS satellite, still the station charger and Kempower ChargeEye with the Service Cloud, Energy Cloud and Operations Cloud.
Let's still dig in a little bit the Kempower differentiation. The 5 elements where really the Kempower differentiates from the competition and creates a better customer value.
Number one, distributed; number two, dynamic; number three, modular; four, intelligent; and number five, the best user experience. All the EV drivers know how good the Kempower chargers are.
Let's go one by one. Distributed. So it really means that we have a centralized power unit, and we distribute the cable management and user interface away from the power electronics. Here, you see the MCS satellite charging the truck, the satellite system there charging the cars and then even the depot overhead charging. So one power electronics, multiple use cases.
This makes the site layout design so much easier and flexible placement of the charging ports, reducing the space. You know how much the space costs, especially in the parking lots. It's more than the apartments and flat prices, especially in places like California, New York and the center of Oslo. So 50% of space savings and maximizing the grid utilization.
When you look at the stories of EV charging that what is holding us back to have more rollout, it's the limitations of the grid connection and how fast the grids are even for the different sites. Kempower system is maximizing the utilization of the grid connection. And with the same grid connection, we can charge even 30% more energy than the traditional system. So 3 unique values of the distributed systems.
Dynamic power sharing that I had here a real site example for you, 12 bays, 1.2 megawatt. I was presenting for our team in rehearsals and the guy said that Jussi, this is way too complicated, but there is so much happening in your site. I don't know where you are in your story. So I made this very simplified version now, but the real version of this story is in the YouTube animation. We can link you to that one also. Probably you have seen it.
So total 600-kilowatt capacity. That's one basic charger. And we look at the utilization a little bit. Let's imagine this is a calm and easy Tuesday morning in Kempower site. First, Mathias comes with the Volvo there. Volvo XC40 -- it's slightly slow charging. Mathias comes early and he's the first one because safety is so important for Mathias. Safety comes first, so does Mathias. Mathias is the early bird. Slowly charging.
What happens next? Sanna comes with the BMW. Sanna knows that the most efficient charging, you charge from 10% to 80%. Sanna comes there with the 11% because he's a little bit saving. And you see that the same power is now accumulated to the same power unit. And Sanna is getting that full power and is in and out very fast.
Next, Sanna's power curve is going down already. What happens at that point? Monil comes in with the Tesla Model S. Monil is reading the mantra for himself. This is going to be the Monil Malhotra EV charging success story. I'm going to make it. I'm going to charge high powers, and I will do it now. Let's do this Jussi.
So Monil comes, bang, 250 kilowatt. Monil goes there, takes a Facebook photo and sits in the car, the window open.
And all you see there, the Mathias is getting power, powers are getting down, Sanna power getting a little bit lower already. Sanna is getting ready. Still, Monil is getting the full power. And what happens next is the ambulance is coming to the site. And this site is agreed that there is an emergency priority for police and ambulances. So we allocate most of the power to the emergency charging. These are the most advanced features in the Kempower dynamic power sharing.
What this really means for our customers and as a user experience. Again, high power utilization because of using the same power electronics here, 30% higher utilization, improved system availability because of the modular structure, leading to 99% or better uptime and then intelligent charging priorities. One priority can be emergency, one can be Gold card member. So it depends on the CPO how they want to do that. That was the dynamic power sharing. Let's move on.
Modular and scalable. One platform, this story I told you already. One simple power electronics platform. And then with the different dispensers, we vary the user experience and the usage in different segments. Public charging, it's typically those satellite systems. Bus and fleet, this is a buscraft solution. Port, this is now MCS, high power and truck fleet, overhead charging.
These are our strong use cases, and it's great to show these to you tomorrow in real life. We will visit all these sites, and we can dig into this functionality better. Intelligent. 100% of all the charging and all the chargers and charging sessions are connected to the Kempower ChargeEye Cloud system from the beginning. Service Cloud, Energy Cloud and Operations Cloud.
This allows us to optimize the service quality, optimizing the energy usage and assuring the mission-critical operations. These examples are here the AI-driven features that we have created to our system. Monil will have a deep dive on this. I'll leave the rest of that for Monil's presentation. 100% intelligent, 100% connected. So powerful.
Number five, the user experience loved by EV drivers. You know that you are -- most of you, you are the EV drivers. You know what a relief it is to arrive to a Kempower site. These are the EV chargers designed by EV drivers. 100% of our own fleet is electric. We need to charge our cars at the sites all the time to learn what works and what doesn't.
One that the users really love is our UI. And this is the typical picture, giving a prediction of the charging times. This is the ChargeEye feature and then follow on mobile. You can beam the UI with you. I think you have been using that. This -- if you want to try that example, it takes you to the demo site.
Also, the cable management with the reach that all the users we have been interviewing and testing our system, they say that they love it. It's compact, it's light and you have a beautiful reach with the cable. So those 2 features make a very, very different product that the EV drivers love. And because the drivers, they love the Kempower sites, the Kempower sites are busier. That's why our customers, they make better profits.
Those were the 5 differentiating features of Kempower system. Let's look at a little bit about the future, where we are going next, what we are innovating at the moment. So number one, megawatt charging. I will show you a couple of examples there. Number two, we go more for the advanced satellite structures, go for the microgrids with the energy storage integrations, automated charging, wireless.
At the same time, we continue investing in the digital services, predictive maintenance, advertisement, ChargeEye for ports, microgrid energy management and self-optimizing depot charging. Let's dig in a few of the most important topics here.
The MCS truck charging, this is an example of the truck charging site last year, and this was the first world premiere for 1-megawatt charging in real life. And there, Kempower is really pioneering and differentiating from the competition.
On the right-hand side, a similar site from the U.S. California at the first MCS installation on American soil. I think this proves how much ahead Kempower is in the technology.
Why I'm talking about the MCS when we have done that, like is there a room for innovation still? I think this is just the beginning of what will happen. MCS standard is now ready. This is concretizing the road map now to go forward. These chargers are developed together with the leading OEMs, a few examples in the picture here. So good collaboration. We know that the trucks are now ready for the rollout. During the break, we were discussing about this already a little bit, and we can continue. But a great journey ahead of us.
Number two, the microgrid installations. These are a few site examples where the battery energy storage is connected to charger. Some sites are integrated even with renewables. And this is the direction where the industry is going. And Kempower is on top of the innovation there. We are getting to the end of my presentation. I still have a couple of slides to show you. The next one is our next-generation satellite that we will introduce to the market next autumn.
This is just a sneak peek for you, so keep the information just for you. We are bringing the next-generation satellite system. And the crazy thing when we started the project was how you can make something that is almost perfect even better. So the project was perfecting the perfect.
We were developing this together with the leading CPOs in Europe and in the U.S.A., and they say they need a faster installation and deployment. It's one of the key features here. It's even easier. I'm so proud of the user interface that we are bringing to the market now.
All new, it's communicating better, so much cleaner and nicer, even that I love the existing one, but I'm so excited when we are getting this out. And number three, great branding options for our customers, the total branding of the hardware and full branding of the UI also. The CPOs are so excited about the product. If you come to the exhibitions in Europe and U.S. next autumn, you can see and touch and try this product.
All right. Let's go to the summary of my presentation. So really, the Kempower differentiation and how we keep ahead of our competition is that we are innovating together with our customers, and we deliver more value to our customers. That's what we study every day in our relationship with them, and this is where we want to perfect our operations.
Bhasker was talking about the customer centricity of Kempower. Better uptime, 99%. This is the industry-leading uptime with the modular structure we have.
100% intelligent. This will give huge opportunities for our digital services and aftersales market, where Katri will -- in a few minutes, she will dig in.
And as a conclusion, we can give up to 20% better TCO for our customers in the full stack of CapEx, OpEx, high efficiency.
That was all what I wanted to say today for you. Let's continue after the break and enjoy the show. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Jussi. And with that, let's continue with how we are executing across our regions. So first, let's start with Europe and Asia Pacific. So let me hand over to Chief Sales Officer, Mathias.
So thank you, Calle. Thank you, Bhasker as well, and thank you, Jussi, for highlighting my safe Volvo driving when I'm charging. So my name is Mathias Wiklund. I'm going to talk a little bit about winning with customers. But before I do that, I think it's important to think about where you are. You're actually in Norway, and I think Norway is really good at a lot of things, and I'm talking about winter sports now.
Norway is really the frontrunner, the future when it comes to electrification. Look at renewables, 98% is actually coming from renewables here when it comes to the energy. 96% of all cars, passenger cars in Norway, 2025 were EVs. That's quite impressive. Their fleet on passenger cars is over 50% EVs.
So think about that when you go out and look at every second car will be an EV. This is the only market where that has happened. But what I think we're seeing, and I think that's an important thing because we have certain things that are moving in the world today. Look at the oil prices, how that is changing. Look at how the Germans now are Googling EVs about 3x more than they did before the war. So there is a transition that is happening here.
And that, of course, is going to help us on our transition into making charging a bigger business and a more interesting thing for the future as well. I think there are 2 things I want to show with this slide, and I think this is always good when you're working in sales. There are challenges and there are opportunities. And really, when I'm looking at this, this is a huge opportunity.
When you look at these numbers, looking from a market point of view, you will see the electrical cars are going to grow by 3x to about 7 million or 8 million from 2.6 million. You will see the fleet side, the truck sites and buses and those will grow as well 5x. And then you know that a bus or a truck will require more DC charging than the passenger car does because the factor is almost 1:1, vehicle, 1 charger.
This is a very good market to be in. Looking at that as well, you're going to have a EUR 3 billion increase in the overall market. That means Kempower can grow with this in Europe, EUR 3 billion. And of course, we can fight for the other EUR 3 billion where we will take market shares from our competitors.
The other thing that is good with this slide, and I think it's important as well, is actually the tailwind we have because you will see that there is funding of over EUR 3 billion here as well, trying to drive the electrification journey to our benefit. I already mentioned the increased oil prices where people are strategic focused on energy. How do we keep costs low. And with the oil and the diesel or gasoline going as it's going today, this becomes a saver in some way.
Then in Europe, you also have the emission regulations, you're trying to drive those down, and you also have cultural values. And those are going to play into our opportunities in making sure that we are driving the market for the better.
If I then look at Kempower, Kempower started in Finland. We have been very strong in Nordics. We're in Norway now. So you see these things, done a very good job here. Our challenge and our transition, which already started, is to make sure we're doing this journey as well in Central Europe and the South of Europe.
You can see here our sales numbers, and you can see that we're actually starting our expansion in South and Central. Those markets are very, very big. We haven't done our homework from the past. It's time that we're doing it today, and we have a lot of benefits with us here. We have a very strong Nordic situation. Our challenge is to make sure that we maintain. We need to maintain our Nordic stronghold, but we need to make sure we're also expanding in the South and Central.
You have some big countries there where we have the right products. We've been learning. We've been evolving as well. Talk about the DACH market, talk about Benelux, France, Spain, Italy, U.K., enormous potential. That's what you want when you are in sales. You want potential, and we have huge potential.
Kempower has another thing that is really a benefit for us. I will show you a slide later on, but we're talking about a lot of big customers. And those customers are global. A lot of them are actually playing on the global scale. Our job is to make sure we do a better job going forward and playing with them where they want to play.
Bhasker was also showing on one of his slides that we have added 135 new customers to our portfolio during 2 years' time. That's something we need to continue doing. You should never be satisfied with the amount of eggs you have in the basket. Always make sure you add more because that is something that will pay off in the long run.
The EV business is going up and down when it comes to potential. We just need to make sure we have as many players as possible because we can't predict who will be winners and who will be not. But if we get most of them in our portfolio as a customer, the potential is there. Sales can't do this on their own. I think this is an important thing. I think you listened to Jussi, he was talking about the benefits with our product, numerous both in public and in fleets. But it's also another journey that is going to be important for us to make sure that we are giving the customer the best of the best experience. And it really becomes important now when we're talking fleet business big time, and that's the service, the lifetime product support. And Katri will talk about that one.
If you look at this, my intention is not to go through all of these customers, so you can rest assured on that one. But I think it's important to see where Kempower is. And if you look at this one, you will see we're in public charging, we're in fleet. We're working with the ones selling the energy. We're working also on the retailing side on the public. Both are extremely important, making sure that we give them the best of the best experience.
You can see global brands here, you can see European brands, you might see local brands, but they are big players and a lot of them will help on our continued journey. Then if you're looking on the fleet side, you have trucks and you have logistic customers there, a lot of them really on a global basis. I'm not even able to show some of them because we're not allowed to put their names up there, but they are big players.
Bus, very much a big thing for Kempower at the moment, will continue being a big thing. And now ports is kicking in as well, where we're signing some of the contracts lately with APM TERMINALS and so on, where they will go quite heavily on becoming green. And this is requiring mega charging big time. This is really an interesting field for all of us where we're talking huge deployment of energy.
Whatever you do, I think it's important to think about what customers want and listening to the customers and hearing the customers. So instead of me doing all the talking here today, I thought it would make sense to bring in one of the customers in public charging to talk about what is key for them and why they are choosing Kempower on their journey. So if we start the video.
Good. So Zunder is one of the bigger players operating out of Spain, Portugal and France. And I think you could see some of their -- or they could mention some of their benefits they see with Kempower.
But I think there's one thing they're not talking about, which is also essential, and that is to make sure it is easy for customers coming to their site and doing charging. The second one is that things are working when they're coming there. Those are really 2 essential things as well. And I think that's what we're giving them with our software, hardware and also our service.
Now talked about the CPO. The fleet operators are also an important thing for us going forward. And who can talk better about fleets than the fleet themselves. So therefore, we have a short video from Tper in Bologna talking about fleet operations and why they choose Kempower. So let's play the next video.
I think this is just an important thing to understand. This is a company that is transporting 150 million passengers per year. Their buses are rolling 44 million kilometers. They are depending on making sure that people are moving from A to B. They can't afford being down.
And I think here is where Kempower offers additional value in the form of Kempower ChargeEye, where you will actually be sure that the bus is charged in the morning, that the bus is leaving to the customer in the morning and picking the people up on the road. Because if you don't, you're going to pay like EUR 15,000 every time the bus doesn't leave. That can be quite expensive.
But with the Kempower ChargeEye software, you are safe, you know that the charging is done. It's okay on all of your buses because some of these bus depots, they can be enormous, to be honest with you. So imagine if the bus doesn't go and using the software from Kempower securing that they are leaving, then there are other additional benefits with Kempower ChargeEye. You can actually reduce your cost of energy as well. You can actually control your cost because you're charging at an optimal time because the prices always vary.
So if I'm looking at that into Europe, what is it that we're trying to do? Just concluding that one. Well, I don't think it's rocket science. It's quite simple and safe in some way. We need to make sure we're keeping Nordics. We're not going to drop Nordics. We're going to maintain being the leader here because Nordic is also the frontrunner and we're learning a lot from it.
But we need to move to Central and South Europe because that's where there is huge potential at the moment. They are far behind on the deployment of electrical vehicles and fleet is coming as well. So we need to make sure that we are expanding our presence in those areas. And last but not least, we have big customers, and we're also going to have new customers that we need to make sure we're continuing working with. The big customers will help us in Europe, but they will also help us outside of Europe because we shouldn't forget outside of Europe. That's why we're going to talk a little bit about Asia Pacific as well.
If you look at Asia Pacific, I think there are 2 things that are important here. If you look at the market growth in Europe, well, this is much bigger potential, huge growth potential, 29% CAGR from EUR 0.5 billion to EUR 1.8 billion. And what I think is really the best here is we are already there and having people operating. Yes, they're small numbers, but they're 7% of our order intake from '25, and it will grow. One of the most important things when you want to enter a new market is actually to be there to have the presence. And we have that.
What we need to do here, we need to be selective in some way. It's not just about running everywhere and hoping we're going to be successful. We're actually trying to surgically do this business in a very structured way. But we will also have the opportunities of big customers coming in and starting their electrification journey in Asia as well, where we already do business with them in Europe. That will, of course, give us an opportunity to make an active decision. Do we follow them? Do we actively put people there? Or do we use our partner network that we are building up in Asia because there is no way we can do this on our own. We need the partners. But with partners, our access and reachability is tremendously bigger.
And then, of course, we need to make sure we're doing this cost efficient as well, which we always need to do to secure that the distributed system has a good fit and the TCO is in line with what the customer wants. I already talked about that we're there. And yes, we are. We've been in Australia for a while, New Zealand as well. We have established a lot of people there or not a lot of people, we have people in there. We have opened up Malaysia. We're opening India, Singapore and Thailand as well, and you can see some of the references. Of course, we will get more reference there.
But all of these markets have a huge potential for us, not always in the same area because if you look at Singapore, it might be the biggest opportunity coming through ports. And we're actually heavily working with the port side from Europe on a global basis. So the ports will also help us to enter some of these areas, which I think is a nice thing here, how things work together in the end, how you tie the whole package, and we're going to be able to expand in the whole of Asia. You look at this picture again with all of these blue-chip big companies. There are a lot of these companies that you had on the first list that are actually also operating in Asia. We haven't accessed this enough. We haven't worked this enough. This is what we need to do.
This is what I'm talking about opportunities. It's for us to make sure we become the global player with these players as well. I thought, talking about partners, what I really think is important when it comes to partner business is to figure out this win-win. How do we make them stronger and they make us stronger. And I think with this example here with Charge Hub Group, that's what we're talking about. We have figured out and we have a very effective partner program where you have trust, transparency and they have the reach and opportunity to expand out of Australia, which they've actually done. So now they're also in U.K., which I think is a fascinating thing with this one that we can actually work together and we can expand our business.
This is my last slide. Let me conclude this with this one, once again, talking about Asia Pacific. It's a huge market for us. We are a very small player there, but we are there and we have the opportunity to actually, in a very surgical way, make sure that we keep focus, but also finding with the blue-chip manufacturers or companies coming there, opportunities to expand should we want to. And then not to be forgotten, really making sure that we use the partners. If we do this, we will be very, very successful in Asia as well as in Europe. And with that, I want to thank you from me.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mathias, for the presentation. Now let's turn to North America. So let me welcome Monil Malhotra, President of North America and Digital Solutions Leader, to the stage.
All right. Good afternoon. Good to be here. I'm going to talk about the North America business, but I'll start with -- Jussi had made fun of my Tesla Model S and my charging characteristics, but I'll tell you this. I joined Kempower about 16 months ago. So it's been almost 1.5 years. And before that, I was with a Fortune 200 global company for almost 20 years. So it was a big decision to make the move. And the biggest decision was, if I joined Kempower, is this company really committed to North America? Is it just going to be a hobby of the day? Or is there a true commitment to grow the North America business in the long term?
And during the entire interview and selection process, it was very clear that this was a key strategic initiative for Kempower. And the first sign was just how rigorous the interview process was, by the way. I think there were 9 or 10 sets of interviews. There was personality assessments. There were psychological tests. My wife still jokes. She says, after all that, they still selected you. So anyway, at least I think she jokes. But it was really clear that North America is one of the key focus areas for the company. And today, I can stand up here and say North America is one of the largest, if not the largest growth engine that this company has today. And it has us really excited about the future.
As you've heard, we entered the North American market back in 2022. In 2023, the site selection was made and our headquarters for North America, the city was Durham in the state of North Carolina. And this site also houses our manufacturing hub for all of North America. In 2024, we shipped our first products made from this facility to our customers in North America. And in 2025, we saw a rapid expansion, both from an order intake standpoint as well as a revenue standpoint, which greatly accelerated our market share growth in this world area. So super exciting.
I joined, like I said, in February of 2025, and I consider myself really lucky because when I joined, we already had a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in place. We had a best-in-class team of over 100 people already in place, and we were working closely with customers in this world area. So again, talk about being at the right place at the right time. We're really lucky to have been there.
Numbers. Since entering the market, 2022 to 2025, our orders have grown north of 150%. And at the same time, our revenue has grown almost 170%, and I'm talking on an annual basis. I don't have to tell you that this means we far outpaced the market growth and picked up market share. So we're very proud of what we've done in these 3 years. But more exciting is the wins that we've had in these 3 years, they are extremely well diversified.
From a geographic standpoint, we've got wins from Canada in the north all the way down to Texas in the south. We've grown our installed base on the East Coast all the way from New York down to Florida. And of course, we have a significant installed base in the rapidly growing West Coast from an electrification standpoint. So super excited. From a segment standpoint, we've got significant wins both in the public charging space for passenger vehicles. We've got wins in behind-the-fence fleet charging. And now Mathias talked about the port segment, which is another rapidly growing area, and we've got some strategic wins in North America in the port segment as well.
So as excited and as proud as we are of our growth over the past 3 years, our funnel of opportunities that we have has us even more excited about the next 3 years and beyond. When I talk about the next 3 years and beyond the next 5 years, here's a glimpse into what the market is projected to do. So Bhasker shared some of these numbers in his presentation. But if you look at the market, from a BEV registration standpoint, we have an 18% projected annual growth rate for passenger vehicles from 2025 to 2030. Over the same time frame, commercial vehicles are expected to grow at a 50% annual clip. That is pretty significant.
I understand that the number of commercial electric vehicles on the road today are fairly limited, but that number is projected to grow exponentially over the next 5 years. So that's pretty exciting. From a euro standpoint, that means a EUR 700 million market in 2025 is projected to reach about EUR 2.5 billion by 2030 with an annual growth rate of 30%. There are a lot of industries that would kill to have a market growth rate of 30%. So even after the reset, even after the adjustments to the market size, the 30% annual growth rate is still pretty aggressive and pretty significant.
And by 2030, this market of EUR 2.5 billion gets even more diversified and gets even more spread between the CPO segment, the fleet segment and the port segment. So a lot of good things in play. And I understand I cannot talk about North America without talking at least about some of the funding and incentives in place. And there's a lot of noise about that. But the facts are NEVI funding is being reactivated in North America in the U.S., which means there's another $2 billion of spend that's going to occur over the next few years. Multiple states have state-level funding available for electrification, and this includes -- and this funding is pretty significant.
And this list of states includes California, New York, Colorado, Illinois and the list goes on and on. And then we've got the port segment where we have over almost $3 billion of EPA funding that's allocated specifically for electrification. So once again, big market, growing at a pretty nice rate with plenty of tailwinds in place. So all segments looking pretty solid for the next few years.
In addition to the funding, in addition to these growth drivers, here are some other facts that really help us understand the full picture and make us feel really optimistic about the future. There is still -- the demand for charging today in North America, especially in the U.S., far exceeds what the current charging infrastructure can supply. So if you look at the ratio of electric vehicles per DC fast charger, that ratio in the U.S. today is pretty high and high is not good. So there's still a lot of room. There's a lot of opportunity for us to meet the electrification needs of the vehicles that are just currently on the road. I'm not even talking about all the electric vehicles, a couple of million that are added to the road every year. These are just the current vehicles that are on the road today that need to be charged. It's a huge potential on that front.
Speaking of new cars being added, in 2026, there's over 30 new models of EVs that are projected to be added to the road. Prices of EVs continues to ramp down. The price gap between internal combustion engine cars and EVs, that gap is starting to close. The energy density of batteries continues to increase, which means cars now have a longer range, which in a country like the U.S. is really important. So you've got those tailwinds. And then you've all read about the high production capacity that is already set for the heavy-duty trucks that are set to be released in 2026, and the market is really looking forward to that. So tons of things happening there.
And from an environmental standpoint, if you look at the port segment, it's no secret that the ports contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions globally, and the same is true in North America. So if we can reduce by electrification, if we can reduce these emissions in the ports, it's going to have a huge impact on the carbon footprint reduction. And this is really important to all port operators, public sector, private sector. And now we've reached a point where mandates and the economics don't necessarily have to be in conflict. The electrification of ports is starting to make economic sense because the total cost of ownership at these ports for electric vehicles, for electric equipment is starting to reduce by the day.
So again, if you look at the drivers in place today, plus the gap in the supply versus demand, there's a lot of reason for us to be optimistic in North America. You saw this slide in terms of -- Jussi shared some of this. But from a North America standpoint, we understand for us, okay, you've got the drivers in place. You've got the funding in place, and there's all these tailwinds. But for us to be successful, we have to have sustainable competitive differentiators in place, things that separate us from the pack. We have to meet the most urgent needs of our customers today.
In North America, one of the most pressing needs for our customers is making sure that their sites are ready to meet the peak power demand of tomorrow. But meeting the peak demand of tomorrow cannot come at the expense of today's utilization. Sites must have high utilization today so that metrics such as revenue and profitability continue to be favorable. And this is where things like flexibility, scalability, modularity, intelligence become absolutely critical needs for the charging ecosystem. And this is exactly what we bring to the table.
With our hardware architecture, with our software, with our intelligence, we can improve utilization of sites by 30%, reduce real estate requirements because of our small hardware footprint, reduce TCO by, again, optimizing the power that's drawn from the grid and the list goes on and on, over 99% uptime. These are all key features and requirements of our customers today. And last but not the least, we manufacture in North America. We have a local supply chain, which ensures once again, that we meet the needs of the market, both from a design as well as a compliance standpoint.
Here are a couple of examples that I'll talk about, which show how well the market has accepted these differentiators. These are 2 customers. First one is blink, a major player in the electrification space, operating in multiple countries. They've got over 100,000 chargers in the ground globally. When they were selecting a DC fast charging supplier, they had 3 main criteria: Number one, who can provide the highest uptime across their high-utilization dense urban sites; who can provide the intelligence to reduce the amount of power that they draw from the grid; and who can provide a true scalable and modular architecture that keeps pace with their aggressive site rollout plan.
Same concept applied to OnPoint EV Solutions, another major player in the EV space, they're setting up charging infrastructure in the northwestern part of the U.S. And their criteria are very similar, who can provide the maximum reliability in these high utilization sites, who can provide the best-in-class service capabilities so that should something go wrong, there's a fast response provided to these sites based on the needs; and who can once again provide the maximum power throughput from the grid to these vehicles. So we are really proud. We're really humbled that players like these are choosing Kempower after they go through all these criteria. And it really validates all the investment that we've made in technology over the past several years. This didn't happen overnight. There's a lot of work that's gone behind this. And again, it's really pleasing. It's really humbling to see our customers accept this and give us this feedback.
I can stand up here all day and tell you how good our technology is, how good our hardware is. But I think it's really important for us, very impactful to hear straight from our customers. So you're going to hear from Josh Turner, CEO of PowerUp America, and they are setting up charging infrastructure throughout the eastern part of the U.S. So let's see what Josh has to say.
[Presentation]
And this is another one that you This is EV realty. EV realty is setting up charging infrastructure for trucks through the high density freight corridors across all of California. They just opened up a site that has 76 chargers at this one site, including 2 megawatt chargers. site provides 9 megawatts of power to our customers. One of the biggest sites that you will see globally. Let's see what has to say.
[Presentation]
great to hear from our customers. And we understand as we go forward for us to be successful, we must continue to listen to the market, must continue to listen to what our customers have to say because this
Let's because this is still a fairly new market that's evolving really rapidly. And listening to customers is what's enabled us to sign over 120 new customers over the last 3 years. It's what's enabled us to grow at 170% annual growth rate from a revenue standpoint. It's what's enabled us to create and maintain our competitive differentiators. And we are so excited for the future because we're going to team up with market leaders in our quest to be stewards of the electrification journey in North America. So again, absolute pleasure to be here, and thank you again. Thanks.
Thank you, Monil. And now we'll open the floor for questions on the presentations so far. So may I ask Bhasker, Jussi, Monil, Mathias to join me on the stage. We'll be taking questions from the audience. So if you have a question, please raise your hand and wait for the microphone to be handed to you. All right. Great. So I see we have a few questions. Maybe we'll start here at the back.
Yes. This is Thomas Gogman from DNB Carnegie. I realize you exclude China as a market, but can you open up a bit what is the price level of these products in China compared to in Europe? And why would they not come to Europe and perhaps the U.S. longer term?
Bhasker, maybe you want to...
Yes. Look, frankly, we don't operate in the China market. So kind of the price and the market intelligence is limited there. But one safely can assume that, yes, the pricing and the costing is a little bit lower. Look, I mean, Chinese players are coming to the European market. There's a whole host of reasons why we are still able to outcompete all the things that we've talked about.
There's not one single thing. It's the package. It starts with the technology, having a differentiated technology, you could say, okay, hey, they can be there with the Chinese players. But really working with the customers, understanding the problems, having a full stack product, then solving their needs, the aftermarket. So I think that whole package, cybersecurity, very critical infrastructure, those are things that are really important for our customers today.
So we see Chinese players in the market, and we are able to still compete well and win because this is not just a market. This is a maturing market where whatever we are hearing is it's not just focused on cost. It was till a few years back, the cheapest charger, not anymore. It's the TCO. Customers are getting increasingly more sophisticated. The bids that we see are based on total cost of ownership, no longer cost per kilowatt upfront.
Great. More questions?
2. Question Answer
This is Nikko from SEB. Thank you for the presentations so far. I could continue a bit on what you answered on price per kilowatt. So you discussed about kind of changing the approach to kind of focus on kilowatt hours, not kilowatts and kind of intelligent platform approach. So what does that mean to you from kind of an R&D point of view? Does it require a lot of you? Or does it mean that you just package it differently, price it differently and so on?
Jussi, do you want to start?
Yes. When you analyze the site TCOs, our customer TCOs become very interesting because then you really can calculate where the cost lies during the life cycle. So first is to analyze and then start actions to develop towards it. So yes, so upfront cost, the CapEx and the OpEx, then later, it's like this calculation, it gives us a tool to make the compromises. So R&D is always kind of like how you compromise that where to put the pressure and where to put the development.
How much we invest on developing the efficiency or how much we develop the reliability of the product. So the TCO calculations gives us a way forward to do the development and how to make the compromises. This has been the approach from the beginning. So it's not a big change in the direction, but it's like more for the accuracy and precision how we are targeting our development. So it's a good question. Thank you.
Perhaps just building on Jussi. Look, I mean, yes, Jussi walked through the total cost of ownership, it's the CapEx and then OpEx. OpEx further breaks down. You look at energy efficiency and then maintenance and repair-related costs and other operating costs around that. So from your question on how do we tie this to investment, we tie this to our priority areas.
From a technology perspective, hardware, software is an area of importance, and that's why we are investing in it. We talked about some of the -- Jukka will talk about some of the averages. I mean, we invest 7.5% of our sales into R&D. It's not just to maintain today, it's also to ensure that we can continue to lead in the future. And then the services piece is important from a repair and maintenance perspective. We invest in that to be able to optimize that part of the equation as well.
Yes. I understand. So I guess that also kind of changes how you approach the sales bit for new clients. I'd like to then ask about the market modeling you have been doing. So I appreciate the scenarios you are showing, base, high, low. Could you kind of describe a bit what the high-low scenarios lean on? What kind of scenarios will happen if this is the case, the high market or the low market? And then is it relying on subsidies or something else? And then maybe a bit comments on what kind of a pricing environment are you expecting?
Yes. Bhasker, maybe you can take that?
Yes. So just to unpack that question. Number one, market scenarios and then second, kind of the pricing. Look, number one, on the market scenarios, as I said, it's not a subsidy-driven market anymore. That's our strong belief. That's what we see. It's an economics-driven market now. Total cost of ownership wins, the EV wins across most use cases. We're seeing that even in commercial vehicles, heavy duty. That's where the electric mile is cheaper than the gas mile. So not a subsidy-driven story anymore.
We look at the range. I mean, we've modeled the range. I mean the base case is what we have a high confidence on from a market standpoint. So that would be what we say, hey, the market grows about 17%, 18%, and we're saying above-market growth is our focus. So in our base case, we're saying middle of our range is 20%. That's one way to kind of look at, hey, our range is.
And from a pricing standpoint, look, it is a highly competitive market. Pricing pressure is there. But as I said, I think the customers are getting increasingly more sophisticated on the total cost of ownership. So that's coming into the equation. So pricing is becoming more nuanced. It's not just the upfront price of the charger. That is still the case, but it's more nuanced.
So yes, I mean, it is a competitive market, and Sanna will talk a little bit about productivity, how we use that as a lever, aftermarket mix as a lever to be able to offset and mitigate some of the erosion that we see on price.
All right. So -- but you are including price erosion there?
Yes, absolutely. I mean that is just the nature of the industry. And I mean, we have been including, I think you covered there in the '23 Capital Markets Day, I think we shared some price erosion numbers and some similar modeling that we have.
That's helpful. Then one last for me and especially focused now on Europe. You talked about that you want to grow with the customers. But if you think about growth in Europe, so does it lean more on kind of growing with the existing customers or kind of getting new ones?
Mathias?
Yes. No, I think it's a base of both. I think we have existing customers. You can see those that we're showing. I think we're going to grow with them. But of course, the job in sales is always to capture new customers, securing that you have a broader base of customers overall. But I think that's what I'm talking about, moving our presence and our focus into some of these areas as well. We will find new customers, but of course, some of the old ones will be there on the journey as well. So it's not about just looking for new. You need to protect what you have and you need to drive for the new ones as well.
And I think we have a question there in the middle.
Mir from Danske Bank. Concerning your market size estimates, how much of that is expected to arise from the aftermarket operations?
Bhasker?
Our growth rates, yes, look, and Jukka will share a bit more around kind of the breakdown of our growth and how we see versus Kempower average. But aftermarket will be above average, above our average. So let's say, if we're at the midpoint of the estimate, we expect aftermarket to be actually amongst the highest in terms of our portfolio in terms of the mix. So highest growth average in aftermarket. And again, it's driven by the installed base. And then as we said, increasingly, we see opportunities with the customers across the 4 ends of those 4 offerings, which is a great segue into Katri's presentation after the break.
And if -- I think we have time for one more question. So maybe here in the front, please.
Pablo, Stifel. Two questions on Kempower ChargeEye. The first one is, do you plan to include maintenance in your Kempower ChargeEye offer? And the second question, how do you plan to compete with other software providers like Virta, Driivz, for example?
I can take that. So as far as whether we include maintenance in software, and you will see this presentation after the break, software is a big piece of our aftermarket positioning. So we've got maintenance, diagnostics, service as well as all the software capabilities all into tiered packages that we put together. So yes, it's part of it. Software helps us do the diagnosis and the maintenance a lot better, cost effective and at much better value for our customers.
As far as the competition, right now, we're focused on our hardware that we've got. We've got a huge installed base. We have a very high ceiling in terms of making sure that our software is on all of our hardware and providing the maximum value. So right now, we're focused on our hardware and the software offerings on it.
All right. Thank you. Unfortunately, that's the time we have for Q&A now. We have more Q&A coming later on during the day. So thank you for your questions for now. We'll take a short break, 10 minutes, and let's continue at 3:00 sharp local time. Thank you.
Welcome back, everyone. I hope you had a refreshing break. Now let's continue with our aftermarket operations, which is an increasingly important part of our business. This is a joint presentation by Katri Piirtola, Chief Aftermarket Officer; and Monil Malhotra, President of North America and Digital Solutions Leader. First, let's start with Katri. Katri is the latest addition to our global executive team. But without further ado, let me hand over to Katri for the start.
Thank you, Calle, and good afternoon, everyone. Pleasure to be here in Oslo and actually, especially because of all of you in the room and the ones online. As Calle mentioned, I'm the fresh one in the company, and I actually hope that you all feel very fresh after the break because our topic is so exciting, so good to have some energy for that.
How I look at aftermarket is that one could say that it's a little bit like the little brother. But as you know, also in real life, the little brothers, at some point, they grow, they grow stronger, they grow bigger. And that's why it's right now a really exciting time to discuss aftermarket.
My plan is to share with you first the current situation, where we are, about some of the trends we see and of course, how we plan to address the situation. And then finally, my colleague, Monil, will share some of the exciting things that are happening in the software space. Great. Let's get started.
So starting on the kind of current situation where we are. The first great news is that we have an aftermarket business. And actually, the second thing is that it's been growing greatly in the past years. But at the same time, yes, it's fair to say it's really the little brother. It was -- last year, it was only 5% out of the total company revenue. But then on the other hand, if we look at Q1, it was already 7%. So it is growing.
Then on the other hand, we have quite a nice base of service team available. We have our in-house service teams and then we work through our partners. How our model works is that we have the deep technical expertise in-house, are present in over 20 countries, whereas then the scaling arm of the field service that comes through our carefully selected partners, and they are present in over 60 countries. So quite an impressive team ready to do service for Kempower equipment.
And thirdly, I would like to highlight in the current situation when thinking of aftermarket, our digital capabilities. Already Jussi mentioned Kempower ChargeEye, but Kempower ChargeEye is an important enabler when it comes to aftermarket, especially because when you think about it, what is really excellent in it is that all our equipment are connected, 100%. It's in-built connectivity that enables the discussion and of course, the data that will help us then to have the insights and help the customers throughout the aftermarket. And of course, we have quite a lot of data already and more coming to learn and use that forward. So I would say that a nice current position to start with.
But next, let's have a quick look at some of the trends that impact us. And I would share there that, of course, there are many things impacting the aftermarket. But if we think about a couple. First of all, like Jussi mentioned, earlier, customers were very much after the power, more kilowatts, more power, bigger chargers. But what we really see now is that as the charging levels are already on a good level, it has so much more turned to the outcomes and to the customers having the confidence in the operations, how to ensure that the uptime is there. And this kind of transition is, of course, opening much more the thinking towards aftermarket.
Secondly, we have, of course, the growing installed base. Bhasker was talking about it. And this is important for us, of course, as a total for Kempower. But as we also know that normally, the chargers are around 2 to 3 years in warranty. So it again is working as the installed base grows. Also, we will see growingly the base for aftermarket growing in conjunction as the electric transition continues.
And thirdly, if we look at aftermarket in our industry, the focus has been -- given the newness of the industry, the focus has been more on hardware for good reasons. But now as the industry matures, also, it becomes more and more evident the impact of aftermarket. When we do look at similar industries, we know that the aftermarket plays a sizable role when thinking about the whole lifetime spend of equipment and the whole lifetime of it. And what is, of course, kind of what changes the logic is that hardware is onetime, whereas aftermarket is recurring and often also of higher margin. So I think these kinds of premises make it an exciting moment for aftermarket and an exciting situation to look at.
So now you must be already thinking that, hey, how are we then at Kempower, how do we want to address aftermarket? It's very simple. We want to ensure that every step of the life cycle, we are there to best support the customers. That's how we want to approach it.
We have here kind of put a simple illustration. In blue, you see what are the steps that the customers are taking throughout their life cycle of operations. And in orange, there are the aspects of how we, as Kempower, want to bring the customer-centric approach and support our customers throughout the different steps of the lifetime. Let me share a couple of examples.
When we think about aftermarket for us, it does not start when the equipment is in operations. No. It actually starts well before that, already in product development. Like Jussi was sharing about the modular approaches, how we are thinking already since product development, how to make the equipment easy to install, how to make them easy to service. And we are thinking this throughout the lifetime and really taking that thinking throughout the time.
Of course, when it comes then to the times of commissioning, again, there we want to be there to make it easy to commission and get started on the operations, either at site or then remotely. And of course, then when it comes to the time of operations, either during warranty or then, of course, after warranty, our approach is that we can really bring with our data a lot of insights to the customer so that they can operate in the best possible way their equipment. And based on the data insights that we have, make the right decisions.
But also, as you know, with our charging equipment, the uptime is over 99%. And that's the way how we want to keep it. So it is very important that we can really secure the confidence in the operations. Then, of course, at some point of lifetime, like we also heard in one of the videos from the customers, they realized that they wanted to expand the power at their site. And that's when we have the modernization opportunities and upgrade opportunities, and we are again ready to support and deliver the best solutions for our customers.
And of course, even great equipment will, at some point, have end of life. And again, we want to be the partner to support customers to make that support and the right help also in the end of life and then to get, of course, to the next thing. But what is critical in all of our thinking really is the data, the connectivity, the in-built connectivity and what that enables and how we see that with that, we can help the customers throughout the different stages in the aftermarket to make a great experience.
Let's then next have a look quickly on what are the tactical offering elements that we today have and how we are supporting aftermarket. So we have basically 4 items. We have the spare parts, we have the service contracts, we have the modernizations and then software. Let me share a bit of each.
Spare parts, of course, it's very, very clear. We want -- our focus is to ensure that whenever there is something where spare parts are needed, that we can really assure to get them quickly to customers to ensure, again, the uptime. We want to keep that high uptime because that's critical for our customers. Most of our -- majority of our modules have proprietary IP. Of course, that's where the intelligence is. But we also want to offer the one-stop shop to the customers and have, of course, the tier-1 parts, but also offer refurbished, have the sustainability opportunities there to help the customers.
Secondly, our service contracts. There, it's really important that we are able to use the data insights to support the customers so that they are able to have high performance. If we look at today, given the in-built connectivity, there is a lot that can be done remotely, making it very efficient for the customers. Actually, almost all of the cases can be diagnosed remotely. And whereas then, of course, a very small part which will then actually need on-site field repair. But in a way, I think it's important to see that how we want to develop forward on the service agreements and take that based again on the data and support that.
Thirdly, I quickly mentioned already modernization as an approach. Depending on the customer needs, depending on what the data proposes, we can do different opportunities, power expansions, retrofit with payment terminals, with the idea that there is no need to scrap the whole equipment, but we can modernize parts of it and extend the lifetime of the equipment for the benefit of customers.
And lastly, our software, which has been already mentioned a couple of times, Kempower ChargeEye. That's, of course, an excellent base that we have there, where we have 3 cloud-based solutions, Energy Cloud, Operations Cloud and Service Cloud, which are there to optimize the fleet cost and the operations efficiency. And again, that is something that we can -- where we can really use the data and the insights for the best use cases of the customers. And of course, all of these are aftermarket side of the offering, so changing the mindset towards more of the recurring revenues.
This is, of course, now the theory. So why don't we now next share a couple of practical examples from customers because that maybe gives you insight into how these aftermarket solutions are coming to life. Let's start with a case example on modernization.
So in this case, we have our CPO customer powerdot, which is a large CPO operating in the Southern European countries. Basically, what happened was that our data was showing that some of the plugs were, in a way, underperforming. So they were below average in operations. Actually, the reason was that these plugs had the old plug standard CHAdeMO. So what was done was that it was upgraded to the new standard CCS2.
By doing that, it was not only great news for our customer, the CPO, that they were getting more revenue per plug, but also their customers noticed it as to the customer satisfaction: fewer queues, quicker charging times. And this way, it's a real win-win case. And even more, it's a sustainable case as well. No need to scrap the whole equipment, just modernize the parts that are needed.
The second case is about the service contracts. In this case, we have a major global retail customer that we are working with. They have such a situation that, yes, they provide customer charging as a service. But they also have -- they are very far with their own fleet electrification. So their fleet is electrified.
Now as you know, retail customers, it's about minutes. The fleet needs to be there on time when needed. So it's not like it can come 1 hour later. It's critical that the equipment are fully charged. What we are doing with this customer is that we are providing them both their fleet operations service as well as the customer service. And this way, we are guaranteeing them a certain service level.
Of course, for them, it's easy. They know it's a one-stop shop where they are getting the support. And when you do think about it, who is better to service the Kempower equipment than us. So these were a couple of examples to give you a little bit of flavor as to what is happening on the aftermarket side. And next, I would like to give the word to Monil, who will shed light on what's happening in software. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Katri. Good afternoon again. Let's talk a little bit about our software capabilities and how our software perfectly fits in the value creation journey across the entire life cycle. I have to start by saying, don't get me wrong, we love our hardware. We really do. The modularity, the scalability, the flexibility, as Katri said, the serviceability. These are all differentiators for us in the marketplace. But we truly believe that our software on top of our hardware is what's going to cement our long-term sustainable differentiators. So it's extremely critical for us, really important for us.
In case you haven't heard, our software is called Kempower ChargeEye. And this is the central system that monitors all aspects of the charging ecosystem. So all the way from the user interface and the user experience to the grid variables, site variables, fleet management and the list goes on and on. And this is all made possible by a very solid dedicated team of 50-plus software engineers that we have in the organization. And we have a 3-tiered software solutions offering for our customers, which I'll talk about in a minute.
What Kempower ChargeEye does, based on our current installed base, is store about 120 terabytes of data on an annual basis. What all that means, I'm not really sure. But here's what I do know, what that data does. It means this software processes all the data that it has so that our customers don't have to process that data. So Kempower ChargeEye provides actionable information to the right people at the right time so that the right decisions can be made, extremely critical. Those days in this market space are gone of just a hardware-only business or a hardware-only offering. Software is a must.
And I'm not talking just generic software loaded on hardware. With our 3-tiered software approach, we feel we have now segmented the software market in the EV charging space. So this is a space above the hardware. And this tiered offering approach allows us to create and deliver customized tailor-made solutions for our customers across all segments.
So if I dive a little deeper into these segments, if you look at Tier 1, which is the basic offering, Kempower ChargeEye Basic offers our customers diagnostic and monitoring capabilities. It provides information about performance of a site or a vehicle. Again, really critical to monitor variables such as uptime, etc.
If you look at Tier 2, now we kick it up a notch. The advanced version performs advanced analytics. I've always debated why you need the word advanced in front of analytics, but that's the way it is in the industry. But the advanced analytics provides operational intelligence to our customers. And what that means is our customers can now look at site patterns: what are the utilization patterns, what kind of vehicles come into a site, what types of batteries come in, which allows our customers to make their operations even more efficient.
In addition, it provides reports on compliance. So if there are certain compliance requirements that have to be met to maximize incentives or grants or funds, the software ensures that there are documented reports that show the compliance with those requirements. And then you've got the Kempower ChargeEye Pro, which now gets into specific vehicle scheduling requirements. So in the fleet segment, Mathias referred to this, in the fleet segment, extremely critical to ensure 100% on-time vehicle readiness so that there are no costs incurred because of delays.
Kempower ChargeEye Pro also performs energy optimization or power optimization. And once again, this optimization is based on a number of variables. What are the energy rates, what's the time of charge, what's the dwell time of a vehicle, what are the power requirements of a vehicle? All these variables are taken into account so our customers can optimize their operations once again. So again, a very solid set of solutions that works across all segments and all types of customers.
And again, in keeping with the theme, I'll give you a couple of examples of customers where Kempower ChargeEye is in action. This is a customer in the U.K., a CPO that charges thousands of vehicles, and they use -- they have over 1,000 plugs connected with Kempower ChargeEye. And they use the monitoring and diagnostic features of Kempower ChargeEye Basic.
What that's done for them is ensure that their sites operate at over 99% uptime. It's also ensured that their maintenance costs have been significantly reduced by reducing the number of trips to the site by over 50%. So think about all the trips to site, all the maintenance costs, all gone because of all these advanced diagnostics and monitoring. Tremendous, tremendous value add for our customers.
Here's another example of a customer using Kempower ChargeEye Pro. Over 300 plugs connected via Kempower ChargeEye. In this particular case, the customer has used Kempower ChargeEye Pro. They've already got the monitoring and the diagnostic dashboards, but now they make sure that all of the vehicles are ready when they need to be so that there are no penalties, there are no opportunity costs. There are no costs related to delays because a vehicle wasn't ready at the right time.
The power optimization feature of Kempower ChargeEye Pro for this customer, what did that do for them? They shifted a bunch of charging of vehicles during peak hours to off-peak hours. In euros, that means they saved to the tune of EUR 1 million on an annual basis just in energy cost. So once again, a tremendous example of how the software leads to TCO reduction for our customers, both, again, across segments and across various tiers of offering.
And I'll just wrap up by saying, again, listening to everything on the service side, the time for a digitally enabled aftermarket portfolio has arrived. And this is what is going to provide value generation through the entire life cycle. At Kempower, we're ready to scale. And we, again, very passionately believe that our data-centric and software-centric approach is going to continue to differentiate us into the future. Thank you so much, and I'll hand it back to Calle.
Thank you, Monil. Thank you, Katri, as well. And now we'll turn to operational excellence with Sanna Otava, Chief Operating Officer. So Sanna, please, the floor is yours.
Hello, you all, and thanks, Calle. Great to be here. So my topic is operational excellence, and that's pretty natural because I think I'm the lucky one since I have been part of the Kempower story from the very beginning. So for the past over 6 years, I've been building the operations, leading the operations.
So my plan today is that first, we recap where we are today, what is our manufacturing footprint, what is our operation model. And after that, I will deep dive into how our operational excellence is our competitive advantage. What are the key elements in that. But let's start.
So where we are today, our manufacturing footprint. We started from Finland. So the main factories in Finland, European factories. We are capable of producing all the products for all the markets, and we are near R&D, so capable to introduce new products fast enough to the markets. And like Monil told, in North America, the factory is scaling fast.
So the same technology, the same processes used in Finland, we are using in North America, and of course, products targeting the local markets and scaling. Then the Asia Pacific. We do not have our own factories in Asia. However, there is an increasing amount of activities in that area. We are sourcing components for the rest of the factories. And also, we are screening potential partners on how in the future, who is doing the contract manufacturing so that we keep that open opportunity that we are producing locally for local markets, screening that at the moment.
So that's our footprint at the moment. And then thinking about the model. The model is what we are doing in-house, what we are outsourcing. From the very beginning, we created our operation model so that we are capable to scale and we are flexible. And why flexible? Because like Jussi told, we have very strong own IP, own product design from the hardware and electronics point of view as well.
So therefore, you need to think from the operation point of view, manufacturing point of view, how fast, how capable you are at introducing the new features, new products to the market. And that's why what we do in-house, we are focusing on final assembly. So we are doing so that based on the customer orders, we are configuring our products, doing the assembly, testing and shipments. That's our focus.
And the rest of the manufacturing chain, those early phases are outsourced to our supply chain. So we are scaling through the supply chain. For example, the supply chain is producing, based on our design, the metal parts, plastic parts and also electronics. So assembling those printed circuit boards based on our design, but we are not focusing on that kind of production methods. We are outsourcing that.
And the combination of this, what we are keeping in-house, what we are outsourcing, results in that asset-light model that we are referring to here today a lot. So this is our existing setup. Then the topic. Operational excellence, our competitive advantage. We have 4 focus areas where we want to be the best in class. Next, I will deep dive into each and every one of these 4 areas.
The first one is delivery excellence. The second one is productivity, huge importance nowadays. The third one is quality. Quality includes sustainability, cybersecurity as the full umbrella. And then the fourth one is how we are capable to scale. But let's start from the first one, delivery excellence.
So delivery excellence, it's hugely important from the operation point of view that we understand what our customers are requesting from us. And now thinking of our customers, they are building a charging infrastructure. So they are running projects, building projects. So we are delivering products, and we don't want to impact negatively. If we have delays, of course, there's negative impact to customers' building projects. So that's why on-time delivery is the main KPI we are measuring, the main metric because when we tell, when we receive the customer order, then we will tell this will be the ship-by date. This will be the date we will do the shipment of the products. And that promise we want to keep, and that we are measuring.
We have been very successful with that metric, and we will be in the future as well. One base element why we have succeeded with that on-time delivery, thinking the history, there was the COVID virus situation, some problems in global logistics and so on. But how we manage even if we have faced quite many times a lack of materials, components or whatsoever, we have this, like I told earlier, that we have European factories, then we have North American factories, and we use exactly the same processes, technology and products.
So we have this kind of regional manufacturing redundancy in place. So if something happens in one factory, we are capable to transfer the customer orders to another factory. And that's helping a lot in this kind of environment when the market is totally new, technology is new and all the politics that is happening. So that's the key from the customer point of view.
Another topic which is important when we think of our customers and operations is the flexibility. And that's again coming from that new technology, new markets, new product features. Customers want that we can optimize enough and provide short lead times so that they can really decide what they need. So providing short lead times and being capable to even pilot with the customers.
From the operational point of view, it's not only mass production. We need to be capable to deliver products, produce products even for the piloting so that the good cooperation with the R&D and customers is possible. So that's the flexibility from the operational point of view.
Then the second element is cost excellence and productivity. If you won't remember anything else from my presentation, please remember this because I see that it's hugely important that how good you can run your productivity is how good you can keep your market position today and also in the future. There was a very good question earlier about price pressure. It's related to that.
But how to do it? How we keep our productivity so that we are improving, improving, improving and that we can really say that there's cost excellence in place. The starting point is R&D because when you do the design, then you create the costs. So that's why it's as important as it is to innovate new features, new products, as it is important to innovate costs.
So design to cost, understand that when you are designing, for example, a new layout, for example, how can you do it so that you are using fewer components because when you are finding a solution using fewer components, there's less cost, less unit cost. And then when you are using fewer components, you are not compromising the quality because fewer components mean also that there's less potential failures.
And there's one additional advantage. If you are capable to design a solution using fewer components, then you are also using fewer materials and actually from the sustainability point of view, fewer emissions. So there's a lot of advantage if you really are capable to do the cost innovations as well.
So starting from the design, then you create the costs. And then when the design is ready, then sourcing, procurement, sourcing, purchasing. One key element, how you can achieve those targets that we have set is the should-cost method. I want to highlight the should-cost method because it's hugely important that you know when you take your product structure, all the components, you need to know what is the correct price level for each and every component.
So should costing is analyzing what is the correct market price for each and every component or each and every production tenancy when you are doing outsourcing for the design. So understanding and when you have that knowledge, then you are much more capable to go into negotiations with the suppliers. And when you are adding new suppliers, you really know that you are not paying over price. So that's why I'm highlighting should costing.
And nowadays, should costing is much easier, thanks to those AI tools that we are using. So a very practical way to run the costs. And then the last one, not the least one, those 2 first phases are mainly related to materials. But of course, when we think product costs, there are labor costs as well. So own operations, you need to optimize that as well.
And on operations, how to do it. It's always that constant improvement, how you optimize your methods, operation methods, those labor works and all the material flows. And here as well, traditionally, we have used adding automation, adding digital tooling. But nowadays, it's very common to use more and more AI agents.
So having an AI agent network so that either those agents are taking care of certain tasks on behalf of manual work or agents are analyzing, proposing better proposals for decisions so that decisions on a daily basis, which happen a lot when you run the operations, those decisions are faster and more precise. So either analyzing or doing the tasks. That's on a daily basis from the operational point of view.
And all this together, these 3 elements where we are focusing in order to increase productivity, reduce the product costs. Our targets here, of course, vary year-to-year. But we are giving here so that you get the ballpark that average annualized reduction, productivity improvement, is 7%. And this year, like Bhasker mentioned earlier, we are targeting more than EUR 10 million savings.
And how do you use this? Jukka will explain this a little bit more carefully. But of course, that price pressure, how we protect our margin, that's one tool against that. So cost excellence and productivity.
But then there was the third one. The third one was quality. It was quality and sustainability. First quality, then sustainability. So quality, now thinking of our model that most of the manufacturing value is coming from the supply chain because if we take that manufacturing process, we do final assembly in-house, but most of the work is done by our suppliers. Understanding that it's important that we understand quality, not only controlling in-house quality, but also from the very beginning from our suppliers, we control the full chain. So even when we are selecting the supplier, and when the selected supplier is producing, we control the quality.
So starting from the suppliers all around our own manufacturing, final testing and then shipments to the customers. How to do it is that we are providing one data backbone. So we have a system so that we are providing a testing platform to our suppliers when they are producing critical components like electronics. We are providing the testing platform so that we are capable to trace and follow online what they are doing, all the testing, all the manufacturing methods our suppliers are doing, we are capable to follow as well in our own in-house manufacturing. We use the same platform. So there's very good traceability and reporting capabilities through that system.
Then the sustainability. Overall, if we think Kempower's sustainability strategy, it's so that we want to create value to our customers because their customers, they have the same sustainable journey that we are having. So we are focusing on those assignments and task areas where we can impact mostly so that we can support our customers. Here, I have highlighted from the operational point of view, the main elements, starting from that environmental aspect, how to reduce emissions. Of course, Scope 2 own emissions, we want to reduce, but as well Scope 3. Scope 3, we all know, that's the full value chain, not only our own operations, the full value chain, especially supply chain.
And I think we all know that there is no one silver bullet on how to reduce the emissions in the whole value chain. Instead, we trust that when we analyze and identify each and every year 3 to 5 critical projects, and then we run those projects. So action oriented. We analyze, we identify, we select actions each year and by running those projects, we know that step by step, we are capable to reduce even the Scope 3 emissions. That's our idea and strategy. Another I want to highlight here related to environmental actions is refurbishment. So giving the second lifetime for the components and modules.
And the volumes are so that in our factories, we are refurbishing components and modules. We started that last year, and we are gradually increasing the volumes so that we can impact positively environmentally. Then social and governance, both those topics are again about how we can be transparent enough to our customers because we are one supplier when we think from a customer point of view. Customers need to know that their value chain and supply chain is responsible enough. So that's why, of course, our main topic there is safety, in-house safety, safety in our supply chain, also how responsible our own supply chain is.
The human rights due diligence, all those legislations coming. So we need to know what the conditions are in our supply chain. So we are putting the focus there. Then the governance, of course, it's not only processes and company, it's so that our products meet the full compliance requirements. And we are used to using third-party validation, having certification for the products, validating our processes, having certifications for the processes, cybersecurity here as well. And then, of course, reporting according to current regulation and standards. So being as transparent as we can be so that our customers can trust us and it's easier for them to get all the data they need to report forward.
So that's sustainability from the operational point of view. Then the fourth one, that the basis for everything, was scalability. And I think this is something we are very good at because if you think of our history, as a start-up scaling, it was just our mindset, our culture because in those early years, we needed to scale from that zero revenue level up to that EUR 300 million revenue level in less than 3 years. That was our history. So that's why I somewhat say that it's our mindset or our culture that we need to scale. But let's check what is our situation today.
When we think scaling from the operational point of view, we are meaning the capacity. And when you are saying production capacity, typically, it's a combination of your assets, meaning what facilities, what production lines you have, and then plus what is your workforce, what available workforce, a combination of those 2 elements. That's the capacity. Thinking of the first one, the asset, so facility, production lines. Where we are, like I showed, our manufacturing footprint in Europe and in North America, plus our supply chain. At the moment, we are so that asset-wise, we are capable to triple the capacity without major investments.
That's the key takeaway. Using our existing footprint, increasing the productivity, optimizing the existing assets, we are capable to triple the capacity so we can reach our financial targets. That's what I'm saying. But then, of course, the workforce because you don't want to keep too much workforce if not needed. So therefore, we need to optimize that whenever there is demand, there's the correct amount of workforce. And how to do it so that fast enough when there's demand, when you need to scale, then you can do it.
There are 2 elements I want to highlight here why we can say that we can double our capacity from the workforce point of view within 12 weeks. There are 2 main elements. First, because part of our labor is coming from the rental partners. So we use rental workforce. So what kind of contracts and partners you are using has a huge impact. And the second one is how good you keep the training. When new employees are onboarding, how fast you can train them. What is your training method, how can you make sure that in a short time period the new employee can produce products with the highest quality. So the training method is the second topic here.
So the key takeaway, existing footprint, no major investment asset-wise and balancing the workforce. That's our scalability. In conclusion, our operational excellence is Kempower's competitive advantage and why. Because we focus. We focus on 3 key elements. We need to understand what customers want, that delivery excellence, keeping those promises. That's the first. Then driving that cost excellence and productivity while scaling, but still keeping very good focus, cost discipline and increasing productivity. And then the last, like I mentioned quite many times, scalability. We need to be capable to scale even further. Thank you. That was my topic today.
Thank you, Sanna. And with that, let's move to the financials. So let me welcome CFO, Jukka Kainulainen to the stage. Jukka, please.
Thanks a lot, Calle, and nice to be here. Nice to see actually so many investors and analysts present and of course, all the retail investors and others online as well. And I have to just agree with what Mathias was saying, what Bhasker was saying, being here in Oslo in Norway, really forerunner of electrification. When you look on the streets, the amount of battery electric vehicles, the amount of chargers, what you see here, it's so impressive. All the new technologies, you can see battery swapping stations when you go a little bit further away from the downtown. So really great to be here.
About my presentation, basically 3 sections. First one, how did we get here from the historical track as a company, a little bit looking at the history. Second section, what is our revenue plan, how do we make the targets happen, of course, our profitability plan, how do we make our operative EBIT targets happen. And then, of course, at the end, our financial targets. But let's go to the first slide from 0 to a leading industry player.
Look at the track in less than 10 years. We basically didn't exist in 2019. And what happened? We grew the revenue from EUR 300,000 close to EUR 300 million. It's quite a unique performance even in the European wide, whatever company you look at. In the same timeframe, we have been able to keep a healthy gross margin. And what is driving that? Jussi's presentation, we have the forerunner technology point of view.
Of course, it's visible in gross margins and also our overall business model, what we have created, is contributing to those numbers. Then our liquidity development, which includes the cash and our debt facilities. We did the IPO in '21, around EUR 100 million IPO. And even though there has been quite a lot of headwinds in this industry, like there is in any new industry always, we have been able actually to increase our liquidity, which makes us a really strong company wherever you look in this field in Europe and North America.
So this enables us also in the future to continue growing, taking the market and excelling in this industry. The next slide, this is the peer group analysis. Manufacturing companies, DC charging manufacturing companies, CPOs, Europe, North America. Y-axis, revenue over the years, X-axis, profitability development over the years. When you look at Kempower, we are there in the northeast. We have been one of the most successful companies when you look at the revenue growth and profitability development over the years.
So this is really important to remember because this is also creating a really strong foundation for Kempower for the future as well. Next one, a little bit continuing what Bhasker was highlighting also, how do we create value to shareholders in our new strategy period. As being a growth company, of course, we continue growing the top line, our revenue growth. We grow quicker than the market, which we have basically been doing all the time.
Second thing, our aftermarket, what Katri was highlighting and Monil as well, our services and software, really critical area in the future. And not only for bringing better margins for the company, but also bringing a more predictable business model, more recurring revenue, less volatility overall for Kempower and investors as well. And that is a great bridge to the operating profit expansion. We already have, like Sanna was highlighting, quite a good amount of capacity. We have quite a good amount of people. We have operational leverage in the company to grow the top line without massive investments.
And then when the aftermarket brings nice improvement in the profitability, and we continue doing the productivity, what Sanna was highlighting, this brings us to the operating EBIT target. And then, of course, at the end, we need to continue investing, which is mainly OpEx-driven investments. We are quite selective in investments. It will be technology, our go-to-market and, of course, the services as well, as I will highlight. So this is the way we generate value to our shareholders.
Next one, regarding our revenue plan and how we grow our revenue quicker than the market overall. So looking at different areas. First of all, we have really great opportunities like Mathias was highlighting and Monil as well in all the areas where Kempower is operating. But where we target to grow highest, of course, is the aftermarket side, services and software, also North America and Asia because, in absolute terms, those are still smaller markets in relation to Europe. But in Europe, we will continue growing as well in the future.
So all these areas, we will be growing quicker than the market. And that's the way we will reach the revenue compound annual growth rate between 15% up to 25%. Then one important thing just to highlight to you. We have several customer groups like we are highlighting in Mathias' presentations, Monil’s presentations. But looking at the charge point operators customer group. These customers have been raising in the last 2 years, EUR 10 billion of private funding in North America and Europe.
So this is now private funding. We were talking about public funding earlier in the presentation by Bhasker. And why this is relevant? This is relevant because that is creating the funding runway for those charging point operators over the next 2 to 5 years, which they can use and they will use on investing in the charging infrastructure, both in Europe and North America.
And a few examples there. Many of you know a big CPO company in Germany, raising EUR 600 million last year, a big CPO company in France, raising EUR 300 million, a big CPO in Nordics, raising more than EUR 100 million, a big CPO in U.K., raising more than EUR 100 million and a big CPO in California had a massive ticket as well. And some of those are actually our customers. But really relevant for that customer group for continuing the investments, which is supporting, of course, our demand plan as well.
Then the next one, what's our opportunity in services and aftermarket. Like Katri was highlighting, we already have quite a sizable amount of revenue coming from the aftermarket. It was 5% of the total revenue in 2025. So EUR 12 million altogether. In quarter 1, we already grew it to 7% altogether from the total revenue. And it's, of course, still quite a lot of spare parts driven. We get some nice revenue from Kempower ChargeEye side as well. But we have really nice opportunities there like Katri was highlighting, looking at the spare parts, continuing growth, service contracts, modernization and, of course, the Kempower ChargeEye side overall.
So this is really a big opportunity for Kempower as a company. Next one, our profitability target. How do we make the 10% to 15% operating EBIT target happen? Around 2/3 of that impact comes from our operational leverage. Like we already have been highlighting, we have enough scale and capacity to grow the business further, even though we believe also that this sales price erosion will continue, but that will bring anyway most of the improvement. Then adding on top of that, our impact coming from the aftermarket, services and software, productivity savings, this 7% annualized savings, what we also bring to the table this year.
And then, of course, like I was highlighting, we also are going to use OpEx for the new investments. So these are the elements to make our operating EBIT target happen. One highlight, continuing what Sanna was saying already about our productivity improvement. Last year, we started the program in our company, having up to 10 people involved to target this EUR 10 million annualized savings in our direct costs overall. And why did we start it? Price pressure, which is ongoing in the market already since last year, we had to, of course, take action on that.
So this unit cost savings program, like Sanna was highlighting, focusing on these areas, 2 to 3: procurement savings, cost analysis and, of course, the design selection, what we do in our offering altogether. But not that you get too excited about this EUR 10 million what we highlight here. What's the outcome of that savings program and productivity improvement. We will defend our gross margin level. That's really critical for you to remember. But that's really critical defensive game anyway also in the coming years as well.
Then the next one about our capital allocation in the new strategic period. Like Sanna was highlighting, we actually are quite asset-light as a business. We are using around 3% of our revenue to CapEx. And now when we have facilities, we have done the investments, we can actually -- we expect that ratio even to come down over the years. So there are 3 areas where we are going to invest, and these are actually mainly the OpEx investments.
So first one, fully linked to Jussi's presentation. We are forerunner in the technology in satellite charging systems and will be also in the future, but it means that we will continue investing in R&D as well. Last year, EUR 19 million when rounding up, 7.5% of revenue as a technology company, and we will continue keeping it on a high level.
Then the second thing cannot be highlighted more. This is how you see the development in our aftermarket revenue, like I was mentioning around 5% last year, quite a nice actual development over the years from 1.6% in '22. This is the place we will continue investing definitely to bring in these nice margins, nice shareholder value as well at the end of the day.
And the third thing, our go-to-market investments. And what does it mean? You see the bar there how our salespeople, our sales team has been developing during the years from '22, around 30 people to more than 80 people in 2025. And the important thing is there how it's split between different geographies. '22, it was mainly in the Nordics when looking at the whole team. And like Mathias and Monil were presenting today, now we have North America, we have Europe, we have all the key countries in Europe represented as well in order to service the customers and in order to find the new clients as well.
So these are the investment areas we need in order to make the financial targets happen. And then, of course, at the end, the off-the-shelf financial targets, top line growth, revenue growth between 15% up to 25% compound annual growth rate by 2030. Operating EBIT target between 10% to 15% by the year 2030. And in dividend side, we continue the growth company dividend policy, no dividends in the short term because we allocate all the capital to the company's growth.
And then another thing, you see there the different market scenarios. If market growth doesn't happen as we expect, we can always manage and control our OpEx investments and our OpEx plan, like Bhasker has mentioned. And that's the way we bring the operative EBIT target on the table. But overall, top line-wise, we grow quicker than the market. We are a growth company. We continue to be a growth company, but we also will be a profitable company, like we have been actually in the past. We have -- like in '23, we did 13% operating EBIT. But in the new strategy period, we target the 10% to 15% operating EBIT.
Thank you. And now I hand over to Calle.
Thank you, Jukka. Now we'll open up the floor for final questions. So I would like to ask Jukka, Katri, Monil, Sanna and also Bhasker to join me on the stage so that we can start with the Q&A. So please join me here.
All right. And if you want to ask, please raise your hand and wait for the microphone. So we have a first question there at the back.
It's Patrick Cambor from Nordea. Perhaps going to the outlook by 2030, could you perhaps quantify how important the ports subsegment will be?
Bhasker, do you want to take this?
Yes. Look, when we look at ports, it is one of the fastest-growing segments. I would say, amongst the subsegments, it's one of the smaller ones, but fastest growing. And I'll tell you, we went out to California. You have to go to a port to really believe it. You immediately smell the emissions. And ports are driven by mandates.
You look at California, you look at other places and at some of the port terminal operators really driving it actively. It's also not just emissions-driven now, it's TCO-driven. And you can see that the ports are electrifying across that end-to-end value chain. Everything from when the ship comes into the transporter to then the UTRs, the utility trucks that are in there. So we are very excited.
I mean, we just announced a deal so that we can share that with APM TERMINALS. We do a lot of work with DP WORLD. So these are 2 of the largest port operators. You saw some of the other logos as well. So we are very excited, I mean, about ports. And fundamentally, the team has been doing a great job for years actually in that segment. So one of the fastest-growing segments, growing off of a small base, but I would say into a EUR 1 billion-plus opportunity over the next few years.
All right. And then perhaps going to margins. You seem to be assuming about 7% annual cost savings, and that seems to be quite close to the annual depreciation of charger prices. So will productivity gains actually support margins? And if so, how much?
Yes, I can take it. Like I've tried to highlight, we want to defend the gross margin levels and gross margin is something we forecast and target. We target this operative EBIT between 10% to 15%. The 7% is, of course, what we aim this year and going further. But that's the way we defend the existing level. It doesn't mean that we couldn't even some years reach higher levels as well. But don't take it as an upside. It's just a way to defend the existing levels.
All right. And then just a final one on the aftermarket side. So what kind of margin levels are you currently doing on the aftermarket side? And what are you kind of penciling in for the coming years?
Maybe to start off, we only disclose the margins on group level, so we can't really comment on the margins. But perhaps any commentary around the services versus equipment?
Yes. I can comment slightly on that. But as said, unfortunately, we don't disclose those numbers. But I think, of course, as we look and as I mentioned earlier, we do see the benefits of the aftermarket bringing the recurring revenue as well as what we see from many other industries. So it is often the higher margin with aftermarket than with hardware.
I'd say in line with industry benchmarks.
Any further questions? Yes, there in the middle, please.
This is Thomas Gogman from DNB Carnegie again. In the aftermarket business, can you just highlight the key kind of spares and wears? I guess the AC drive should be like a big item with kind of limited lifetime, for instance, but others as well.
Yes, I can start and Monil is close to it. I'd say a couple of the examples that actually Katri shared. So spares is, yes, recurring things that could break with wear and tear and use. And yes, drives could be one, but typically, that's got a little longer life. I would say one of the things that we get excited about is modernizations, for example, as well. Those are very -- as you think about newer technologies that are coming in that can improve the life cycle, especially improve the life of the equipment as well as the efficiency of the equipment and the usability of the equipment, there's tons of modernization opportunities that come up.
And then contracts as well. But Monil, do you want to share some?
From a specific part standpoint, what we see customers really wanting to store in terms of spares are dynamic modules, your power modules, cables. You'll come into specific smaller items like filters in the cabinet, etc. Those are typical spare parts, the top 4 that we start to see. But then as you go to modernization, now you're starting to delve into software and some of the parts, but those are the 4 most widely used spare parts that we see.
So your model is scalable and modular and you have warranty periods, remind me how long it is. What happens to the warranties if the customer goes out shopping off-the-shelf AC drives or how protected is the model long term to just buy a pirate part in a small part basically?
Sanna actually pointed out, I would say that, look, we have -- we own our own IP. And for example, the AC to DC converters that we have, the conversion -- those power modules, those are IP-protected. I mean we have also dynamic control modules. So Sanna, I don't know if you want to comment. But yes, those are all IP-protected, and that protects us against -- and the fact that we also do our refurbishment, that also helps us.
For the customers that are at different price levels, different warranty expectations, etc., we are able to cater to those customers across their needs depending on their appetite at that point in time on the price and where in the life cycle that particular product is.
And how long is the warranty?
Yes. So we have standard 2 years, but in some cases, some customers, it might be longer, but the standard is 2.
And talking about these warranties, it's been like a big burden to the earnings. So what has been the reason to this? Is it some certain component that has failed? And you have just guided that the warranty costs will decline significantly starting from next year. Why should we believe this?
Jukka, do you want to start?
So first of all, we all the time come out with new product versions, new revisions, which have even better performance than the earlier ones. And if you remember '24, we actually launched the new product portfolio, which had a lot better performance metrics. And this was the really key milestone when looking from the warranty cost point of view.
But even on top of that, we all the time come out with the new product revisions. So that's why this cost, what we have in the P&L, it will be there in the short period of time, but it's really an opportunity in the midterm and long term. And actually, when looking at quarter 1 numbers, we already reduced the level from last year, even though the installed base has been increasing.
But has the issue been that the chargers have not worked or not worked at the kind of promised performance levels, uptime levels? What has been the issue?
Maybe, Bhasker.
Yes. Looking outside-in, I'd say I came in and looked at some of the numbers. And look, I would say when you look at this particular product and the use case, it's still a relatively young industry. I came from an industry with truck and trailer refrigeration units that existed for 60-plus years where the products had been perfected, components had been perfected, all issues.
You look at this industry where there's the product interacting with the vehicle, interacting with the grid, interacting with the environment. So there's still a lot of work across all these variables improving. So I would say that from a warranty perspective, accounting for all of those variables, how do you then keep improving the product design, working very closely with your customers in different use cases at different levels of product intensity, by the way, ports and fleets and in a CPO environment being used differently.
But I see a very good trajectory of improvement. And perhaps, Sanna, you can comment on, yes, I mean, you've been around for...
Yes, just to add that there is no one single root cause, but like Bhasker said, young, new market, new technology. So different root causes, but I think it's what we pointed out already, you need to identify correctly so that you prevent that in the future. But new technology, I think that's the common topic.
Then finally, how large could service or aftermarket share of sales be by 2030? Just roughly, are you talking about 10% or 25% of sales, it was 5% last year.
I can take it. So no official targets for that, but I think continuing the development from last year, 5% of revenue, 7% already in quarter 1. So closer to double-digit percentage of the revenue. That's the journey that would be a good first milestone over there. But like you said, we don't have any official financial targets for that.
This is Nikko from SEB again. I'd like to continue on Tom's question on aftermarket. And as you just said about kind of some guidelines or what you are thinking about how much aftermarket is out of sales in the future. But how would you thematically open how that will be divided between aftermarket and services and spare parts and so on? And then if you think about your broader services, aftermarket offering, are you focusing on more new equipment sold or also the existing fleet?
Bhasker, do you want to start?
Yes. Look, I think we see such rich opportunities across each element of those 4 areas that Katri walked through. So I think it's hard to kind of predict a mix at this point. This is, again, not a fully mature industry. If I were to ask that question from the previous industry, I could get it to you to a decimal point. But I think it's going to really depend on a lot of the technology evolution as well.
So I would say I wouldn't peg a number, but there are tremendous opportunities across, especially when you look at service contracts. Customers increasingly, we went out to the U.S., there's customers saying, we want to focus on our core operation, that is to deliver energy. You manage the rest, everything in between. And we want to be able to also predictably manage our costs. So you give us a price ticket and then we manage that.
So I think we see a lot of that, and we're building out the capabilities already to be able to cater to that. Katri shared modernization as an example. Monil shared the software potential. So we see tremendous opportunities across all of those. And look, I mean, we said the installed base is going to grow 2.5x plus. That's kind of the very conservative estimate. So you could reasonably expect multiples of that in terms of growth rate on aftermarket.
Yes. And are you now kind of targeting to go to your current existing fleet to sell more aftermarket service business? Or are you kind of focusing on new equipment out there?
Yes. I think it's, of course, natural because when thinking about the installed base and how also more and more equipment are coming out of warranty. So in that way, it's natural, of course, that there will be in numbers more of the opportunities to offer different aftermarket services. So I think in that sense, thinking about the service.
And also when we -- what I was sharing also earlier about the data. So I think we have a lot that we can offer on the insights, but it's also an area where we will most certainly, if looking towards the future, find new ways to use it even better for the customers.
All right. Great. Then one last from me regarding the profitability target. So are you kind of planning that to come basically linearly hand-in-hand with sales scale? Or are you kind of planning for already clearly positive earnings in the first years of the strategic period?
Jukka, do you want to start?
Great question about even the short-term guidance, this year's guidance, improving significantly the profitability. That is where we stick to. And like you see on the long term, of course, 10% to 15%. So it's quite an improvement, quite well aligned with what we have been doing also in the history in the best years.
So unfortunately, I cannot comment next year's profitability. You need to wait a little bit less than 1 year when we come out with the '27 guidance. But nothing in this industry happens linearly, but we continue improving year by year. We continue growing revenue year by year. We continue improving the profitability by...
Sustained profitable growth. That's going to be the mantra for us.
All right. Any further questions? Maybe just a reminder, you are allowed to ask questions from all the speakers and all the presentations. So you don't just have to stick to the ones on the stage. But yes, please go ahead.
Mika from Danske. Concerning the spare part sales, during the life cycle of the charger, how many times, for example, do you need to change the power modules or cables on average, some kind of rule of thumb if the chargers are used properly?
Perhaps I take that. I'd say, look, 5 years in, I mean, the life cycle is 10 to 15, so we need to be able to see that. But I mean, we design for life is pretty long. I would say at this point, it's still a very young installed base. Across the industry, I wouldn't even say for ourselves. So I think those are some of the numbers that are still being worked through still with the early generations.
That's always natural. With the early generations, you see more failure. I mean we have much more mature products. So it's much more stable at this point. But with 5 years in, say, 1/3 of perhaps the life cycle, it's still very, very early to kind of put very hard numbers to that.
And maybe to add there, I think the good news is also, of course, the data insights. So in a way that if it's kind of a busy place where it's constantly in use versus if it's a bit more remote location. So again, it's not kind of only elapsed time, but it's really on the usage time. And again, we can kind of help on these insights then to customers as well.
And maybe if I can continue on top of that. It's good to remember the industry, how quickly it's evolving because in Nordics, we already see quite a lot of the 50-kilowatt chargers from plus 5 years ago implemented at different sites. It's operational, I guess, in theory, but those are the ones that are actually interesting replacement opportunities. So it's just the industry is developing so quickly, so that's important to note.
We see Mika, aftermarket as a good balanced mix, not one particular thing that will overarchingly drive. So I think that would be the approach.
All right. Any further questions? One here in front.
Melanie Brooks from here and also from PM. Two questions actually. So one is that I see it's obviously a different industry, but a few parallels with another company in my portfolio, and that's Vestas. So we have some issues with warranty provisions there that are well known. So there's a little bit about that when launching new products all the time, you end up having a lot of warranties.
And then the other one with the aftermarket segment. So kind of Vestas has notoriously spoken about higher-margin services business and the data that they gather and have yet not really been able to monetize well. And so I see a little bit of that here. There's a really strong narrative, and it's kind of intuitive that you're going to be able to grow this area with a larger installed base.
But I think it's important to kind of maintain credibility in that to be able to give more granular breakdowns of the amount of revenue coming from the different segments and the margins that you're getting from those areas and the development there. So if you can do that moving forward, I think it would be really, really good for investors to understand. So it's maybe more of a comment than a question.
And then the second one, so I've looked and I really -- I'm concerned with sustainability and circularity. So it's great. I've seen 99% of the hardware can be recycled and you're talking about -- you've been talking about refurbishment. But I wonder who's actually responsible for kind of end-of-life management of the hardware.
If you have a product that lasts 10 to 15 years, you're still very early in that journey, and there could be a lot of really valuable components there as well. So do you have any kind of formal take-back mechanisms? And are there any kind of evolutions, especially with European legislation for extended producer responsibility that you'll need to think about and plan for?
Maybe Sanna, you want to...
Yes. At the moment, we have very simple take-back services. But actually, I think that's one in Katri's road map, how to improve because we have a huge opportunity there as well. So yes, doing it already now, but we see that it can be a more and more wider package in the future because I truly believe that when we think about the factory and the production volumes, when we think about the future, there's more and more refurbishment and not original production, but refurbishment because that's a very high trend at the moment.
All right. Thank you. Any more questions at this time? If not, then that ends the Q&A session for now.
And now we'll move to the closing words by Bhasker, so the rest of us may return to our seats while I hand over to Bhasker for one final time.
Well, thank you, Calle. Thank you to all the presenters. I'd say in closing, first of all, we really appreciate you all visiting and traveling here and joining us. Hopefully, I'll go where I started, that we would like you to leave with the conviction that, hey, look, this EV charging build-out, the infrastructure build-out, is one of the largest infrastructure build-outs of our generation. So it is such an exciting and an important opportunity.
So if you think about what Kempower 2.0 is about and why it's exciting and credible, these 4 things. Number one, we are mission-driven, accelerating the electric mobility transition. We're committed to that. You see a glimpse of that here in Oslo, you'll see that tomorrow when we go out to the sites.
Our vision is to be a top 3 global leader in DC fast charging, trusted by customers, built to compound. Trusted by customers, you heard numerous examples today of how we are developing deep relationships and partnerships with our customers. As they scale, we scale. And built to compound, this is about compounding results, right?
And then what drives this? We're in an attractive fast-growing market. We looked at the different scenarios, low, medium, high. In the base scenario, the midpoint, this EUR 4.5 billion market grows to EUR 10 billion plus. How many industrial tech segments are growing at this clip. So it's a great market to be in. It has reset from previous expectations, but still a great market where the BEVs even after resetting are expected to triple in terms of the number of BEV sales.
In this market, we're a global leader. We have the distributed architecture that we bet on early. We're doubling down on that. And we're continuing to lead that with the strongest combination of hardware, software, services. It's all about the full stack for us, right?
And then, as we are expanding to full life cycle solutions, I appreciated all the questions and a lot of the interest. We feel very excited about this. And again, the full mix of the opportunity across the 4 levers. And really, that evolution has started already, and it's going to pick up steam and pace over the course of the next few years.
And then sustained profitable growth. So our revenue target, 15% to 25%, again, not hedging. This is a conditional architecture tied to the different market scenarios. And then in terms of the profitability, it's about sustained profitable growth. Not about a heroic quarter, not about a heroic year, it's sustained profitable growth. That's going to be our focus.
There are so many things at play here. This is still a bit of a land grab opportunity. So we focus on the top line and we focus on the bottom line, and there are so many levers that we are managing in between: the margins, the reinvestment levels, warranties, mix between different product lines. But that's what we target and we commit to, the 10% to 15% EBIT margin by 2030.
So in conclusion, that was our strategy and our new financial targets. We are super excited. And again, thank you all for joining and wish you -- for the ones that are returning, wish you all safe travels back. And for the ones that are staying, we look forward to further engaging with you.
Thank you all, and thanks to everyone who joined on the webcast. Appreciate it. Take care. Thank you.
Kempower — Analyst/Investor Day - Kempower Oyj
Kempower — Q1 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Kempower's Q1 2026 Results Presentation. My name is Calle Loikkanen. I'm Director of Investor Relations, and it is my pleasure to introduce today's speakers, CEO, Bhasker Kaushal; and CFO, Jukka Kainulainen.
The gentlemen will walk us through the highlights and results of the quarter. And after the presentation, we will end with a Q&A session. But without any further ado, let me hand over to Bhasker. So Bhasker, please, the floor is yours.
Well, thank you, Calle, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to be with us today for Kempower's first quarter results in 2026. We have good news to share this morning, and let me start with the headline.
Q1 was a strong start to the year. Revenue grew 54% year-on-year. North America tripled -- more than tripled, up 230%. And these are share gains, and we are outperforming the market. Gross margin held flat sequentially versus the fourth quarter of 2025. Our product cost reduction program is offsetting the price pressure, and we expect that program to ramp up further in the second half.
Significant operative EBIT margin improvement, which is up 11.6 percentage points, and this was driven by revenue being up 54% versus the fixed cost being up just 20%. Now this is the operating leverage model working as designed.
And finally, the order book. Our backlog stands at EUR 141 million, which is up 32% year-on-year. And order intake of EUR 69 million is a record for the first quarter. And this gives us a strong foundation for the rest of 2026.
Next, let's look at the financial highlights. And let me take you through the 4 headline metrics. I'll start with order intake first, which is up 16% year-on-year and driven by continued momentum across key European markets. Second, revenue, up 54% year-on-year. Our growth has been broad-based. North America more than tripled. We see strong growth in Europe outside the Nordics and services revenue up 45%.
Third, profitability. Revenue grew 54% versus the fixed cost up just 20%, which is the operating leverage that I referenced. Gross margin was a key contributor. It was 45.3%, which is flat quarter-on-quarter, but lower year-on-year. Our operative EBIT margin improved by 11.6 percentage points overall.
And finally, cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities improved by EUR 6.4 million year-on-year, and this was driven by the improved profitability. Our liquidity position also remained strong. And I'd say, overall, a very solid set of numbers across the board.
Next, let me put our performance in the context of the market. So let's start looking at the growth in BEVs and new public fast charging installations. New BEV registrations, which is the chart on the left, Europe up 26% with North America down 27%. The new public DC fast charging installations, the chart on the right, Europe up 56% and North America down 1%.
So you see 2 very different market backdrops. In Europe, the policy environment is supportive. Around EUR 5 billion of new public funding has been announced in the beginning of 2026, EUR 3 billion in Germany and GBP 1 billion in the U.K. In North America, the picture is a bit more mixed. We see the slowdown in EV passenger car sales, which is somewhat expected, given the federal subsidy expiration in September of 2025 and the surge in EV demand prior to that expiration.
But even in a soft registration market, the funding fundamentals have been intact. We see the federal NEVI program rules have been streamlined and the funding is available. It's actively being dispersed, being actually used by a number of our customers. California introduced a new voucher program to drive the adoption of clean trucks and buses. Now in North America, for Kempower, our focus has been to grow faster than the market, and that's through share gain, given that we entered the market about 2 years back.
And we are doing this very well. We're gaining share, and I'll talk more about that in a minute. A quick note on commercial vehicles. E-truck and e-bus registrations grew 52% in the fourth quarter of 2025. Now that market data is published with a bit of lag, but this reflects the acceleration in the heavy-duty market.
Next, let me go a little bit deeper into our regional performance. I'll start with Europe, and our strategy there has been clear; grow across Continental Europe and diversify beyond the Nordics. Q1 shows that our strategy is working. Revenue in Europe outside the Nordics is up 87% and order intake in Europe outside Nordics up 16%. We've seen strong growth across France, the U.K. and Germany.
In Q1, Nordics is now about 24% of our revenue. And a year ago, it was 32%. So year-over-year, Nordics revenues and order intake declined, which is somewhat expected as the demand in that market has somewhat normalized in passenger cars. But we are seeing signs of acceleration in e-trucks and the next wave of charging infrastructure for heavy-duty vehicles.
A couple of customer highlights in Europe. We strengthened our airport presence with an installation with Hilton Heathrow Terminal 5. And our partner, Plugit, deployed Finland's first public MCS site for electric trucks, and that's at the Port of HaminaKotka. And that's a real sign that heavy-duty charging is moving from concept to deployment now.
On to North America. And there, our strategy has been clear that we outpaced the market through share gains. And the headline number, which is revenue up 230%, shows that we're executing on our strategy. That revenue growth has more than tripled year-on-year. Order intake is up 16% and the underlying momentum there remains strong. I mean growth is coming from across our customer base, including public charging and fleet customers. And we added 4 new customers in the quarter.
The standout in North America was our partnership with EV Realty. We supplied their multi-fleet truck charging hub in San Bernardino, California. And I was there at the site 2 weeks back and what a tremendous site, more than 70 plugs, and that site is ready to help drive the adoption and scaling of e-trucks in that market. And as we've been talking about, heavy-duty fleet electrification is a major opportunity for us in addition to public charging. And this deployment validates our position in that segment.
We also showcased our products at the EV Charging Summit in Las Vegas, which I attended as well. And there was strong engagement with charge point operators and fleet customers. And our booth had one of the best attendance and footfall at the show. So, overall, in North America, our pipeline is healthy. We see strong opportunities to continue to gain share.
Now let me step back and talk about our strategic priorities. It's 4 pillars, all are progressing well, and we are making measurable gains there. First, winning with customers. We acquired 8 new customers in Q1. Our MCS deployments are transitioning from pilots to full-scale orders now in both Europe and North America. And as a reminder, Megawatt Charging Technology allows charging speeds of up to 1.2 megawatts, and it's the new standard for heavy-duty charging.
Second, on differentiated technology, we launched the analytics view of our ChargEye software in Q1. That gives operators uptime, performance and fault analytics. And we're very excited about continuing to bring more advanced analytics features to ChargEye. Also, in terms of the MORE Plugs solution that we launched late last year, customer deployments continue to advance there as well.
Third, operational excellence. On-time delivery performance was strong. That's what allowed us to deliver 54% revenue growth year-on-year. And our product cost reduction program is on plan, and I'll talk more about that in a second here.
Fourth, winning culture and team. We rolled out a new organization structure during the quarter, which is focused on driving clearer accountability, faster decisions and aligned to our strategic priorities.
Next, gross margins deserves a closer look. This chart here on the left shows our trajectory over the last 3 years. And in Q1, gross margin held flat sequentially quarter-over-quarter at around 45%. And the story behind that number is important. There are 3 drivers at play here. First is the price, and there's continued pressure on price in the market given the intense competition.
Second, there's regional sales mix. As we are scaling into newer markets, the early phase in that carries a different margin profile than our established regions, which is very normal in any geographic expansion, and that margin will improve as we scale and optimize in those regions.
And third is productivity. Our unit cost reduction program is offsetting these price and mix headwinds. And that cost reduction program was launched in the second half of last year, as we talked about. It has 3 work streams. For example, in procurement, we ran multiple rounds of RFQs across categories in Q1 and seen cost reductions there. In production, we're consolidating subcontractors. We're rebalancing our workforce across factories to have labor productivity. In product design, we're running should-cost analysis, testing alternative components that are less expensive but still offer the same features, functionality. So these benefits will continue to ramp and materialize through the course of the year as these actions that I just talked about mature and the inventory turns. So we expect the gross margin to step up from there and improve.
Now, I'll hand it over to Jukka to take you through the financials in more detail.
Okay. Thank you, Bhasker. Okay. So let's look quarter 1 financials more in details. So we continued executing our growth strategy also in quarter 1. We had a strong performance in sales, like Bhasker already commented. We grew the order intake 16%. We grew the revenue 54% and driven by several regions outside Nordics, North America, Europe, actually our region APAC and EMEA was growing nicely orders as well. So really strong performance sales-wise.
Also, we were able to improve our profitability significantly. We improved the operative EBIT by EUR 3.8 million. which was a good result as well, even though still negative by EUR 3.5 million. Then at the same time, we also improved our cash flow from operating activities from EUR 7.5 million negative to EUR 1.1 million negative. So when summarizing quarter 1 financials, top line-wise, strong start for the year. And also at the same time, we improved operative EBIT significantly as we have been guiding for the whole year as well.
A little bit more about the order intake. So order intake growth, 16% for the quarter 1. Actually, it was the highest quarterly -- quarter 1 order intake in Kempower history, which is a nice milestone as well. And highlighting few areas where the growth was coming in Europe; DACH area, Eastern Europe was growing strongly, especially the public charging side. And like I highlighted already, the APAC and Middle East, Africa region actually growing nicely as well, more than 200% -- sorry, more than 100%. That was driven mainly by the bus charging segment in that region.
North America growing 16% in order intake-wise. But actually, if we look only the U.S., so U.S. orders were growing almost 200% during the quarter. So good result over there as well. And then, when looking at the coming quarters, our order backlog is 32% higher than the year-on-year. So that gives a good foundation for growing in the coming quarters as well.
Then about the revenue. Like I mentioned, significant growth, 54% in the revenue, and that was driven by the growth in North America, more than 200% growth over there and also Europe outside Nordics growing strongly as well. And then one highlight also when looking at our recurring revenue on our services and aftermarket, that revenue in quarter 1 grew also 45%, reaching almost EUR 5 million, EUR 4.6 million to be exact. This is 7% of our total revenue when looking at our quarter 1, 2026 numbers.
Then about the profitability. Regarding gross profit margin, sequentially, we kept that flat. So more or less on the same level than in quarter 4 2025. But year-on-year, that dropped by 4.2% units. And like Bhasker commented, there's price erosion ongoing in the market, which continues, and there was some regional mix impacting as well, and we had few little bit lower margin customer deals also impacting on the margin.
Operative EBIT, like I mentioned, improved significantly, almost EUR 4 million year-on-year, being negative by EUR 3.5 million. That was driven by increased volumes, but partly offsetting by the lower gross margin and higher fixed cost base, what we had during the quarter 1, 2026.
And when looking at our guidance and our targets, we, of course, continue focusing on our top line growth, revenue performance. But of course, at the same time, we continue controlling our fixed cost and managing the fixed cost in order to improve the profitability for the coming quarters as well.
Then going to cash flow and liquidity more in details, like I mentioned, cash flow from operating activities improved from negative EUR 8 million quarter 1, 2025 to negative EUR 1 million during quarter 1, 2026. So that was driven by improved profitability and the positive change in the net working capital altogether.
And then when looking at our liquidity level, which includes our cash, our money market investments and our RCFs, we actually improved our liquidity situation. So our liquidity has increased to EUR 119 million, so improvement year-on-year. And we are quite confident that this is one of the strongest liquidity levels among the peers in the DC charging industry in North America and Europe.
And now I hand over back to Bhasker.
Thank you, Jukka. Let me conclude with a summary. Our outlook for the full year is unchanged. We expect revenue to grow between 10% and 30% versus 2025. And for reference, 2025 revenue was EUR 251.3 million. Operative EBIT is expected to improve significantly versus 2025. Last year, operative EBIT was negative EUR 12.4 million.
We will continue to invest strategically in technology, in sales, in services because these investments strengthen our long-term position. We do recognize that these do weigh on profitability in the short term. And that's a deliberate choice that we are making to position us for the long run, and we believe it's the right one.
So 3 things to take away from the first quarter. First, strong organic growth and momentum. You see revenues are up 54%, North America up 230% and services up 45%, which is -- and the order intake for the first quarter is a record of EUR 69 million.
Second, we continue our execution of the strategic priorities. We are continuing to gain share in a competitive market. The 8 new customers in Q1 demonstrates that. North America outperforming the market demonstrates that. And we are leading in megawatt charging, and MCS is moving from pilots to commercial deployments.
Third, we are laser-focused on financial discipline and delivering to it. The operative EBIT improvement of EUR 3.8 million year-on-year shows that. We are continuing to balance gaining share with our focus on gross margins. And on that, our cost program is ramping up well. And our cost -- and our cash conversion is steady. So, overall, a strong start to the year, and we are executing our plan.
Now, before we move to the questions, a quick reminder. Our Capital Markets Day is coming up on the 26th and 27th of May in Oslo. We are hosting it at the MUNCH museum, and we will present our updated strategy and financial targets. Day 1 is presentations and dinner with the management team. You can join the presentations on site or via the webcast.
And day 2 is on-site only. This is customer site visits where we hope these will give you a glimpse into the future of electrification, and you will see the electric transition firsthand in one of the more advanced markets. So we hope to see many of you there. We're very excited about it. And for registration, the details are on the Investor Relations website.
And I would say with that, I think we are ready for Q&A.
So Calle, over to you, please.
Thank you. Thank you, Bhasker. Thank you, Jukka, as well for the presentation. And now let's continue with Q&A. We will start by taking the questions from the conference call line and then move on to questions through the webcast. So let me, at this point, hand over to the operator for the instructions.
Operator, please go ahead.
[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Nikko Ruokangas from SEB.
2. Question Answer
This is Nikko Ruokangas from SEB. I have 3 questions, and I'd like to go one by one, and starting with order intake and delivery times. So you had many orders last year with more than 1 year delivery time. If you now look at the Q1 orders, are you now trending towards shorter delivery times? Or do you continue to receive new orders with long, more than 1 year delivery time?
Yes. I can take that. Nikko, thank you for the question. Look, yes, order intake, there's different delivery times that we get in our order intake. Our total order backlog is now EUR 140 million. I would say this time around, more than 3/4 of that is for 2026 delivery. So yes, that's the trend that we're on. I think we were at about 1/3 of our -- or 2/3 of our backlog was for 2026 delivery at the end of 2025. So that's increased a little bit.
Okay. Then on profitability side and in fact, the fixed cost, as you already touched upon the gross margin quite a bit. So fixed costs were up now, so should we expect similar kind of a pace of fixed cost increasing in the coming quarters as well?
Nikko, thank you for the question. Regarding fixed cost, maybe few items to take into account. There's some bad debt provisions, which caused some costs now in quarter 1, close to EUR 1 million. And then when we look at our comparable period, actually those created income of EUR 1 million. So those created like EUR 2 million delta when you look at the fixed cost kind of year-on-year increase. And this is, of course, the -- we follow the IFRS 9 when we do the accounting. We don't see any major risk increases on that. So we expect to recover most of that.
And then, other items impacting our fixed costs, also our personnel costs were slightly higher now in quarter 1. So for us last year, quarter 1, we didn't account any bonuses. And this year, quarter 1, we account around EUR 1 million. So those -- I mean, when we -- when you look at the comparables are impacting when you look the higher fixed cost base now in quarter 1.
Yes, understand. That explains well. Then the last one from me and regarding the gross margin, you already discussed a bit about it. But now from kind of product mix perspective, so could you discuss how much has your sales split between commercial vehicles and personal vehicles changed during the past 1 to 2 years? And then how has this impacted your gross margin mix?
Yes, of course, good question. When looking over the years, so of course, the commercial vehicle segment has becoming also quite a big relevant segment for Kempower looking index-wise and revenue-wise. And we are, of course, really strong player in that segment when looking on distribution solutions, [ charging ] solutions also ChargEye overall, so which is a natural part in that sense.
But when looking at quarter 1 gross margin, that was not any reasons for our gross margin development, how it evolved. Like we have commented, there is continued price erosion on the market, there's some kind of regional mix impacting on our gross margin as well. And then there's certain customer deliveries with slightly lower margins also impacting quarter 1. But like we commented, we have this cost savings program ongoing, and we expect that to impact relevant amount to gross margin in quarter 2 and going further.
Yes. Perhaps Nikko, maybe I'll add to what Jukka just mentioned briefly. Look, I think from a mix perspective, for us, regional mix and then product versus aftermarket is more important than just product mix because if you look at our product, it's very modular. So the same modular platform is serving commercial vehicles as well as our public charging.
And MCS is an exception where MCS is dedicated to truck charging, but you look at the e-bus charging and even truck charging that we've been doing for years now, that's coming out of the same product platform. So, from that standpoint, there's not a big product mix shift. But regional and then over a period of time, product versus services, which we'll talk more at the CMD will -- is more of effect.
[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Paul de Froment from Stifel.
Two questions for me. The first one regarding the -- you mentioned pricing pressure. Is it coming from your competitors? Or is it related to new client discounts? And the second question is related to excess inventory on the market. What's your view on that? I mean if you could give us more color on potential excess inventory in 2026?
Yes. Perhaps I can take the pricing and then Jukka take the inventory question. On pricing -- Paul, good to hear from you. Thank you for the question. So look, on pricing, it is an intensely competitive market. And you see a number of players, a lot of players in this market and a number that are subscale that are also striving for relevance in the market.
So pricing for them when -- in an undifferentiated space is a lever that they use. But I think for us, we start with differentiated product and technology. And we -- but as we're looking to gain share and in markets that -- in newer markets for us, yes, we do go up against those competitors and some of those are more localized competitors in those spaces. But it starts with customers loving our technology and to start having them get a taste of that technology, we want to first show them the ROI.
So yes, we do see pricing pressure. It's intense, and there's a lot of local competitors in now the markets that we are entering. And North America is a great example. The fact that we entered that market just 2 years back, and we are gaining share through a great product, through a great team and price is not the only lever there. I mean we are leading with our product and team and our capabilities. So we see success there, and we will improve margins even there over a period of time.
And Paul, was your another question about the excess inventory? Sorry, I partly missed that. So Paul, if you're still on the line.
Just -- what -- do you still observe excess inventory on the market?
Okay. When we look -- because we can see only our own customers' inventory situation. And what we can comment is that it starts to be quite normalized from our point of view. We see that from the chart data. And another thing we see from the customer behavior and discussion. We have several, let's say, old customers back in ordering, back in normal business as usual kind of discussion. We can comment from our point of view, of course, we cannot comment totally market at the same time. But the situation has normalized from our point of view.
There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers.
All right. Thank you very much for the questions. Now we'll continue with questions through the webcast. And we have a number of questions already coming in. A bit of overlap, so I'll try to filter through those. But if we start with the first one, what kind of growth investments did you make in Q1 considering the clear increase in cost structure? And how much of this is recurring and how much is onetime?
Well, if you look at our investments over our OpEx, CapEx, we, of course, continue to invest in quite a lot on technology. We have quite a all the time critical product development, new features, products, we are investing heavily and want to get those out to the markets. And that's a one critical thing. And about this kind of onetime items, we don't want to call it that way, but like I already commented about the bad debt, like EUR 2 million year-on-year increase. It was income 1 year back. Now it was cost in our P&L. That was the one item. And then the bonuses also, which we didn't accrue in quarter 1, '25, and now we did EUR 1 million. So that's a big picture from our point of view.
Yes, good. And then actually to continue with the bad debt or the credit loss provisions. There's a question that, has some of your customers gone bankrupt? Or why did these credit loss provisions increase?
Yes. So that's based on this IFRS 9 model, what we are following. We are following the payment behavior in different customer groups and in different stages, how overdue the payment is. So, of course, there's all the time risk that some customers go to default. We have own process in place for that. We are using credit insurance. We are using advanced payment as well. Our credit -- our bad debt provision is EUR 4 million at the moment. And of course, there is always some cases which might end up on the default. But regarding quarter 1, we expect to recover most of the impact.
Yes. Then on the gross margin side, what kind of improvement do you expect in the gross margin during the year 2026?
Jukka, do you want to comment?
I can comment. So we don't guide the gross margin. We guide the top line growth between 10% to 30% for the year. Operative EBIT improved significantly. But Bhasker commented the -- our unit cost savings program. So of course, we expect to get the good results from there. So that's, I think, all we can comment.
Yes. Look, I mean, maybe just to add on what Jukka said. Look, we look at all 3; price, mix, cost productivity. And bottom line is our goal is price/cost neutral or positive. And especially as the cost program ramps up, our goal is to be able to improve gross margin. So at the end of it, we are balancing a number of factors here, growing market share, growing our overall operative EBIT profitability and continuing to invest in areas that we think are strategically very important in the long run. We've talked about technology, services, sales. So we always try to balance between those and achieve the plan and the targets that we've set for ourselves.
Yes, absolutely. And then maybe the last one on the kind of fixed costs and the cost side. There's a question that should we pencil in a new higher level of fixed costs in the coming quarters? And also about the warranty cost that what should we expect with the warranty costs going forward?
Yes. So fixed cost and new run rate, of course, good to take into account the comments I mentioned back as an example. Warranty cost we recorded also in our quarter 1 report, EUR 4.1 million warranty cost. This is actually going down year-on-year. It was EUR 4.4 million 1 year before. So we work also, of course, heavily on that area. And then what positive impact on that area, of course, going further is that we, of course, have an asset base, which is all the time with the newer and newer generation of the products and the better and better quality metrics. So we expect that to go down over the time.
Yes. Very good. Then if we move to the guidance range. So there's a question that the -- why is the guidance range for revenue growth still 10% to 30% when growth in Q1 exceeded 50%?
Yes. Perhaps I can comment on that. Look, yes, the first quarter, we had a strong first quarter, up 54%. But I would say, especially in the second half of the year, the comparables get tougher for us. As you saw in the second half of last year, we grew 17% year-on-year. So our comparables are tougher in the second half.
The second thing I'll say is the market is dynamic. We have seen that, and we've just completed the first quarter. So we'll reassess after the first half. Second quarter quite important, of course. And -- but at this moment, we feel good about the range that we provided.
Absolutely. And then the final question, this is more kind of a longer-term question. How are you scaling production capacity to address the anticipated growth in global demand for fast charging infrastructure?
Yes. Perhaps I can say, look, we'll talk more about it in our Capital Markets Day here coming up in a few weeks. So I encourage folks who are interested in that to attend. But at a high level, look, we -- especially in -- we have [ capacitized ] for growth. And that is a lever that we continue to use that a lot of the investments that were put in were based on the previous targets, the targets that we've set. So we have plenty of capacity to incorporate for growth, and we'll talk more about specific levels in the CMD.
Perfect. That's all the questions that we have for today. So we can conclude the event. Thank you, Bhasker. Thank you, Jukka, for the presentation. Thank you all the participants for the questions and the activity. And as a reminder, please do sign up for our kind of exciting CMD. I hope to see many of you in Oslo in May.
And then finally, before we close the line, we want to end with a short customer video. This time around, the video is related to our operations in North America, and it's about our partnership with PowerUp.
And with that, have a good rest of the day. So, thank you very much.
Kempower — Q1 2026 Earnings Call
Kempower — Q4 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Hi, everyone, and welcome to this webcast where we present Kempower's financial results for the fourth quarter 2025. My name is Paula Savonen. I am the VP of Marketing and Communications and also the host for today's webcast. And today, we're actually streaming live from one of our factories in Lahti, Finland.
Today, we have two presenters. We start with our CEO, Bhasker Kaushal; and continue with our CFO, Jukka Kainulainen. [Operator Instructions] I hope you enjoy the presentations and now over to Bhasker.
Thanks, Paula, and good afternoon, everyone. It's great to be here in Lahti doing our earnings call for the fourth quarter. Look, overall, 2025 was a pivotal year for Kempower. We returned to growth with revenues up double digit. We strengthened our market position with great customer wins, and we advanced our technology leadership in DC fast charging. And a good performance in the fourth quarter helped us finish 2025 on a strong note. The main highlight is the record highest quarterly and full year order intake in company history.
In Q4, order intake was EUR 95 million, up 40% versus prior year. And for the full year, it was EUR 303 million, up 39% versus prior year. This record order intake shows the growing trust and confidence customers are placing in Kempower. It also demonstrates the strength of our competitiveness in the DC fast charging market. Now regarding revenues, Q4 revenue growth was flat, largely due to comparison period effects and customer order delivery timing.
And for the full year, our revenues grew by 12% versus the prior year. This shows that despite the quarterly fluctuations, our growth trajectory remains strong. Regarding operative EBIT, in Q4, operative EBIT was negative due to a combination of lower gross margins and temporary fixed cost factors that are associated with just scaling up our business. But for the full year, we improved operative EBIT by EUR 14 million versus last year. So a significant year-on-year improvement as per our guidance.
We generated positive operating cash flow for the third consecutive quarter. By doing so, we have strengthened our financial position while continuing to invest in growth for the future. And another strong quarter for North America. We recorded EUR 21.3 million in order intake and EUR 8.3 million in revenues in Q4, which is up 122% and 24% versus last year. Now these results show our strengthening market share in the North American market. And finally, I'd say we're entering 2026 with a robust backlog of EUR 141 million.
Now turning to some quick market updates. What we see is that the underlying demand drivers for DC fast charging infrastructure remain robust despite different market conditions across regions. In Europe, we saw very strong growth in BEV registrations and continued expansion of the DC fast charging infrastructure. Passenger car registrations were up 40% versus last year in Q4 and up 30% for the full year 2025. E-bus and e-truck registrations were up 58% in Q4 and up 56% for the full year. Now new legislation such as the new EU grids package can help fast track EV infrastructure growth, meaning shorter lead times from permit to power. It's currently in the proposal phase, and we expect that to go through.
In North America, the market evolved a bit more unevenly. In Q4, new BEV registrations declined 36% in Q4 and 2% for the year, reflecting shifts in the federal incentives for EVs. However, NEVI program rules have been streamlined to help states push the projects forward faster. And as a result, public fast charging installations grew 39% versus last year. So overall, the strong growth in new BEVs and public fast charging installations, it shows that there's a clear and sustained shift towards electric mobility.
Now shifting to the priorities that we are focused on and how we are doing on those. In 2025, we defined and drove focus on our 4 key priorities: first, winning with customers; second, being a technology leader with differentiated products by innovating; third, driving operational excellence; and fourth, building a winning team and culture. And these are the 4 priorities that are critical for Kempower to deliver now and to position us for long-term success. Now we've defined very clear initiatives, KPIs, targets for each of these priority areas. We track these through dashboards. We're improving our execution discipline on these. And as we deliver against these targets that we set, we're building credibility internally and also externally. And I'm very proud that our team has shown that through strong progress across all 4 priorities in the fourth quarter.
Next, I'd like to share a few examples of the progress we are making. Starting with winning with customers. That's at the heart of our growth strategy. We're gaining share by acquiring new customers and winning with strategic accounts. In Q4, we acquired 19 new customers totaling 71 for the full year. In the U.S., we won business with Blink Charging, a fast-growing nationwide charging network. And this win validates our competitiveness in this key market and accelerates our expansion with a partner that is scaling coast to coast. In Europe, we secured new business with E.ON, which is one of the continent's largest energy and charging operators. And their scale and strong presence across the key EV markets makes this a high-impact partnership for us.
In Asia Pacific, we added Ampol, Australia's leading fuel and convenience operator transitioning into EV charging. And this win broadens our geographic reach and positions us early in what is a fast emerging region. Second, I'd say our growth is now more global and broad-based beyond the Nordics, which has historically been our strongest market. If you look at in 2025, almost 70% of our sales are now from regions outside the Nordics. This shows our growing global reach and impact. And specifically, we have strong momentum in Continental Europe and North America.
In 2025, our order intake in Europe outside Nordics is up 58%, and it's up 137% in North America. Now in the Nordics, order intake declined 17% year-on-year as the CPO market has slowed a bit, but we're already starting to see a clear transition underway. Truck and depot charging is now picking up fast, and we expect this segment to drive the next wave of demand in the Nordics just as [indiscernible]. In addition to building strong customer relationships around the globe, we're driving electrification across all key segments. This spans from retail sites like Circle K's fully electric forecourt to major public networks like GET Charged in New York. And we're also doing this at scale with some of the largest bus and fleet charging hubs in Europe, including sites such as Australia's largest bus charging hub that has 50-plus DC charging points and room to expand further. We're doing this at airports like Amsterdam Schiphol, where we have a large hub with 28 DC charging points that keeps critical transport moving in a key location.
Next, I'll talk about technology, which is the lifeblood of our business and innovation is rooted in Kempower's DNA. We're constantly striving to lead the industry. And during this quarter, the megawatt charging system moved from validation into scaled real-world use. You can actually see the MCS product right behind me in our showroom here at Lahti. And more than 350 successful MCS charging sessions were completed in Q4 across several locations. A few other highlights. And Kempower has now delivered MCS charging units across most Nordic countries and all these charging sites, like the one in -- with Circle K in Sweden have distributed charging system using both CCS and MCS. Now this gives flexibility to the operators to use it for trucks or for passenger vehicles.
We've also installed the first Mega Satellite unit in France. With DP World, we have one of the world's largest port-based MCS deployments at the London Gateway Port, where there's 12 Kempower MCS units that are powering Kalmar electric straddle carriers. So all of these examples demonstrate that we are very well positioned to lead in the e-truck and megawatt charging technology.
Next, I'll talk about operational excellence, which is the foundation of our business. We're embedding cost excellence in everything we do across the end-to-end value chain. Now in the second half of 2025, we launched a comprehensive product cost reduction program. This program is aimed at improving our unit cost economics, it's going to help us defend and eventually grow our margins. Our approach is to stay price cost neutral or positive. And it's a broad-based effort that covers the end-to-end value chain. It includes optimizing our supply chain, our assembly operations and product design. We saw initial results already and savings starting in Q4 at a small scale, and we expect these benefits to ramp up through the course of 2026.
Now we pride ourselves on being a green and a sustainable company, and I'm pleased to share that Kempower received the EcoVadis Gold sustainability rating in Q4. This places us amongst the top 5% of 130,000-plus companies that are assessed globally. We also successfully renewed our ISO 27001 certification, which confirms and shows our focus on cybersecurity and data protection. Now all of these things and milestones, they reflect our commitment for responsible growth and also are positioned as a trusted partner for our customers.
And finally, I want to take a moment to talk about the impact we are delivering. In 2025, we doubled the electricity delivered through our chargers versus 2024. Now this reflects the growing impact that Kempower is having on the electrification transition across the globe.
Next, looking ahead as we turn the page into 2026 and our outlook. We're actively monitoring the market, and we see that market dynamics are a little bit different across regions, but the long-term electrification trend is clear and sustained. For 2026, we expect to grow revenues between 10% to 30% versus 2025 and improve operative EBIT significantly versus the negative EUR 12.4 million that we ended in 2025. We are very focused on continuing to build Kempower into a very strong platform for sustained profitable growth, growth not just in 1 or 2 quarters, but sustained quarter after quarter, year after year. And we'll continue to invest selectively in areas that are aligned to our strategic priorities, technology, sales and services. And we strongly believe that these investments are required for our long-term success while we, in the near term, navigate market variability with discipline.
Now to summarize, I want to highlight 3 points. First, we're building momentum going into 2026. We returned to growth in '25, and we've delivered record order intake to go into '26 with a solid backlog. Second, we're strengthening our strategic position. We have a stronger market position in all the key markets through continued customer wins. And we're doing this while continuing to invest for the future. And third, we're doing this while being financially disciplined. We significantly improved our operative EBIT in 2025, and we're driving cost excellence across everything we do.
So we enter 2026 with building momentum, clear priorities and a sharp focus on execution. Kempower is well positioned for the next phase of growth. And I really want to thank our teams and our customers all around the world for their efforts, commitment and trust.
Now with that, I will hand it over to Jukka for the financials. Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Bhasker. All right. Let's go to quarter 4 2025 financials. Yes. When looking at the quarter 4 and full year financials, of course, clearly so the best highlight was our strong sales performance. So like Pascal highlighted, EUR 95 million of orders quarter 4, and we reached a great milestone as a company, EUR 300 million in orders for the full year, so EUR 304 million when routing up. That was, of course, a great achievement. And considering us being the growth company and growing orders around 40%, it's, of course, significant growth rate overall for the company.
When looking at the revenue, quarter 4 revenue was growing 0.2%. So basically it was flat -- excluding the foreign exchange impact, the growth was 2%. And that was, of course, driven by really strong comparison period being the flat number for the quarter. When looking at the whole year, revenue was growing 12%. Excluding the foreign exchange impact, the growth was 14%. So we were around midpoint in our revenue guidance with these numbers. Operating EBIT was negative. And like Pascal highlighted, it was driven by lower gross margin for the quarter and temporarily higher personnel costs for the quarter 4.
When looking at the cash flow, it was also positive that we generated positive operating cash flow for the quarter, EUR 3.1 million and also for the whole year, positive cash flow of EUR 3.4 million. So overall, strong sales performance for the year, significantly improved profitability. We improved the profitability by EUR 40 million for the year, and we generated positive cash flow.
All right. Let's look a little bit more order intake in details, already highlighting the quarter 4 orders, full year orders, reaching the important milestone of EUR 300 million in orders. And it was great to see when looking at the orders for quarter 4, we are growing almost in all regions in quarter 4 in orders, except the APAC and Middle East and Africa, which was down 9%, even though they were up whole year 45%. At the same time, Nordics, which has been dropping in orders 70% for the year, was up in quarter 4 by 25%. Adding on top of that, we ended up the year with a record high order backlog of EUR 141 million, and that is recognized as a revenue during the years 2026 and 2027.
Then looking at the revenue, just repeating around flat revenue for the quarter, 12% growth for the year. Also, we are clearly back on the growth track when looking at our revenue for the year and also highlighting different regions. Our biggest region is at the moment, Europe outside Nordics, which is more than 50% of our revenue when looking at quarter 4 numbers. Also North America's share is increasing. It was only 11% in quarter 4. And when looking the sales metrics, both orders and revenue and whole year, we actually grew in all the other regions significantly, both in orders and revenue except in the Nordics. So that is quite a good sign how broadly in different geographies, we have been able to grow during the 2025. And that is, of course, building a great basis for us to continue executing our strategy also in 2026 and going forward.
Then looking a little bit gross margin. Gross margin declined in quarter 4. It was 45.6% for the quarter. But when looking at the same time whole year, it was 47.6%. So it's still quite a healthy level overall. When looking at the quarter 4 numbers, the decrease was driven by the sales price erosion. So there is still some price pressure ongoing in certain markets. And then we had some sales mix -- product mix impacts impacting on the gross margin and some temporary operational inefficiencies also which impacted on the quarter 4 results. At the same time, like we communicated in connection to quarter 3 and Bhasker also mentioned, we have started this unit cost savings program, and we target, of course, the material cost savings during the 2026, and we already saw some results in our numbers in 2025.
And that's the way, of course, how we will defend in our existing healthy gross margin levels. Then about our operating cash flow and the profitability, like I highlighted, we generated after first time after year 2023, positive operating cash flow, EUR 3.4 million. So that is a good result, definitely. When looking at the operating EBIT, we also improved our operative EBIT significantly. It was EUR 14 million improvement year-on-year, even though still being negative EUR 12 million for the year. And specifically for quarter 4, when we generated negative operative EBIT by EUR 3.6 million, like I mentioned, was driven by this gross margin decline, but also we accounted a little bit higher bonus accrual of EUR 3.3 million for the quarter in connection to the great sales performance in quarter 4 and whole year overall.
And as a conclusion, when looking the whole year, we are really back in the growth track strong sales results. We improved significantly our profitability like we guided to the market, and we generated positive operating cash flow.
So I think this is the good way to end the year 2025. Thank you.
Thank you, Jukka. Thank you, Bhasker. And now we go to the questions, and you can still type in your questions if you have some. Let's start with you, Bhasker. What drove the record fourth quarter order intake?
Yes. Thank you, Paula. Look, our fourth quarter order intake of $95 million, first of all, we had a target of $300 million order intake for the full year, and the team achieved it. We beat that, and we achieved $303 million courtesy with $95 million order intake in Q4. So great achievement by the team and really proud of their efforts. What drove it? First, look, we see customer confidence and there's customers that are investing. It's supported by the BEV new registration growth, especially in Europe that you see that and up 30% for the full year, up 40% for Q4. So I think that translates into continued investments.
Second, I'd say our strategy of new customer acquisitions. We acquired 19 new customers, 71 for the full year. So that's really helping us continue our growth. And then third, you look at our growth, I mean, we -- you and I talked about how much more broad-based our growth is. And we are growing across the world and especially in regions outside the Nordics. So you look at our growth in Europe outside Nordics was very strong also in North America. So that -- those are the things that really fueled the order intake growth and helped us get over the line of that EUR 300 million target.
Thank you, Bhasker. And then there's a question about the guidance, the growth guidance. So what is Kempower's 2026 growth guidance based on?
Yes. Another great question. Look, I'd say 3 things. One is we obviously -- market conditions. Second is the backlog that we are entering the market with. And third, what we see in terms of the pipeline and our continued share gains. So starting with the market, look, a bit of a balanced outlook of the market. There are some real positives, the BEV growth in Europe, the continued public fast charging installation numbers that we shared, that gives us confidence. There are some watch items as well. North America, you look at the pullback a little bit in the BEV adoption rates. So that's a watch item. I think we expect that to bounce back and also Nordics. I think that's a watch item for us. We did show strong growth in Q4 in order intake in the Nordics, but that's still -- that market has led in the BEV adoption of passenger cars.
We're just taking a pause to see how that evolves. But we see that the truck market will evolve the earliest in Nordics. So on the balance, we're cautiously optimistic about the market, but the top end of our range is absolutely something that we can achieve should market conditions hold. And then backlog, yes, I mean, we're entering with roughly $140 million in backlog. About 2/3 of that is for this year delivery. We're starting to see customers commit to more longer-term orders as well. So that's good, but a part of that backlog is for 2027.
And then I think the third is, yes, we've got a very strong pipeline, and we expect to be able to convert that, continue on our new customer acquisition spree. We're growing across segments. We -- so that gives us the confidence that -- and by the way, the growth in ports, the growth in other segments such as trucks, those are the things that have informed our guidance, the 10% to 30% -- and, yes.
Thank you, Bhasker. Then over to the gross margin, Jukka. How is the gross margin evolving? And what are the main factors?
Of course, 45.6% for the quarter 4 and around 47% for the whole year. So whole year still quite on a healthy level. But we have taken quite a lot of actions now to improve the level and defend the existing healthy level what we have. So like we mentioned, this cost savings program, unit cost saving program. So we focus quite a lot on that, that the healthy level overall. So factors impacting what like we have communicated earlier. So there is the existing price pressure ongoing in the certain markets, especially in Europe, that's impacting. And there's some work to do also internally. We had some production inefficiencies impacting on the margin. And on top of that, some geographical mix, product mix also impacted in quarter 4. So there's lots of ways to improve it as well. But luckily, we are in a good position with that at the moment.
Thank you, Jukka. Then about the profitability. What are the main causes of declining profitability? And how are we addressing them?
Yes. Good question. When looking whole year, we actually improved our EBIT by EUR 14 million. So it's a significant improvement, but maybe the question was more related to the quarter 4. Yes, it was down by EUR 3.6 million. So like we communicated, the gross margin drop impacted negatively on our EBIT. And also, we accounted higher bonus accruals. Remember the great sales performance, which is, of course, benefiting us a great way in 2026, especially. So those were the drivers.
Thank you, Jukka. The next question is about the BEV registrations in Europe. The BEV new registrations grew 30% in Europe. So does this signal growing CPO investment activity? What would you say?
Yes. Look, overall, we do see growing investment activity. If you look at the data around DC fast charging installations or the number of charge points, they grew 9% for the full year in 2025. And that's good that, that recovery is there after a tough 2024. So we see that. But when you compare that to the BEV adoption rates, BEV adoption rates, as you pointed out, were 30% -- up 30% versus prior year. So there's a bit of a gap there. And there's many factors. So we see that, look, CPOs are -- the utilization levels are improving for -- especially for the larger at-scale CPOs that helps their business model become more self-funding -- where funding is needed to scale up, we see CPOs being able to raise funds.
I mean great examples of Osprey and Electra having raised substantial funding. So there's still funding available in the market for CPOs to expand. So that's a really good positive sign. And look, on the watch item, I would say the -- when you look at the permitting to power time, that is a constraint. That is a bit of a bottleneck. It is a long time. But the good news is the EU is coming up with a new grids package, which streamlines that process and reduces that time from permitting to power. So we hope that, that will help accelerate, which is holding back some of the CPO rollouts of the installation. So as that comes online, I think that's going to help accelerate. So overall, look, we're positive and bullish that, yes, there is continued investment, but there are offsetting factors as well.
Thank you. Then we have a question from Paul de Froment. Actually, 2 questions. And the first one is about the component costs. Do you see any decline of component costs that could improve Kempower's gross margin? What would you say?
Yes. Of course, that's part of our cost savings program. So we definitely have a high focus on that in our [indiscernible] team and their negotiation. So definitely, that's something with what we foresee impacting positively in our gross margins in '26.
And then Paul is also asking about the U.S. and Canada demand. So how do you see U.S. and Canada demand in 2026?
Yes. Paul, thanks for the question. Yes, it looks a little bit of gazing into the crystal ball there. But look, U.S., the subsidies that were available, the incentives that were available were pulled back in -- at the end of Q3. So we did see an impact of that in Q4 with lower BEV registrations and sales. So that is a bit of a watch item, how that progresses next year. But I mean, we see that automakers are already offsetting that with price reductions.
There's a lot more number of models that are available, so more affordable EVs that are available. So again, we're cautiously optimistic on the U.S. market. I think Canada could actually accelerate. If you look at some of the announcements more recently with Canada opening up for EV investments, and more affordable vehicles, including from China. So I think there is more bullishness there in Canada, and we could see an acceleration of BEV adoption in Canada here in the near term.
Thanks, Bhasker. And then we have [indiscernible] we have a couple of...
By the way, sorry, I missed that. For North America, I think sorry. For us, what is very important for North America and for the U.S. in particular, we were a late entrant into that market. And for us, it's a share gain story. Whatever the market is doing in terms of growth, we will outpace that growth by a fair bit because we started operations in North America in late 2023. So for us, I mean, you look at our order intake in North America, very strong, up 137% we expect strong continued growth there in that market because of our share gain story. So I just wanted to mention that, that's our outlook, and we feel bullish about the North American market, a little bit disconnected to what might the market might by itself to.
Yes, very valuable insight. Thank you, Bhasker. Then Nikko Ruokangas has also sent a couple of very good questions. The next one is about order backlog. So your order intake -- order intake improved clearly in Q4, and the backlog is up almost 50%. Why are you not expecting stronger sales growth in 2026?
Okay. So revenue growth between 10% up to 30%, of course, midpoint being the 20%. So that's debatable that what is strong growth, what is not. But good to remember that like we have always communicated, our order backlog is quite short. And this order backlog is even split between the years '26 and '27. So I mean, it's -- that's good to remember when looking our backlog overall. Of course, it's a good situation now to start the year, customer acquisition where we have been really successful overall.
We have been -- make a breakthrough in North America as well, which is really great. But then at the same time, how we see the Europe, it's not yet the full market. It's getting better. Overall, our existing customers continue to start to now invest step by step, which is great, great, but there's still some room to improvement in the market conditions overall. And then considering overall, it's a new industry, volatile industry also. So based on all these facts, we came out with the guidance we submitted this morning.
Thank you, Jukka. Then Nikko has also a question about the Nordics. We talked about the Nordics compared to Europe. So Nikko's question is that you said in the report that activity in Nordics remains moderate. On the other hand, your orders in Nordics increased 25% year-on-year in Q4. So does the comment on the market mean that the order growth in Nordics should not be extrapolated?
Yes. Thanks for the question. Look, I think, yes, Q4 did give us confidence that the market recovery may be there. Look, the truck charging, that gives us confidence in the Nordics market. But when we look at some of the BEV to charger ratios, Nordics seems pretty healthy. So I think it's a watch item. As we -- as they say, I think in Britain, one swan doesn't make a summer, we have to look at a few more data points of how that evolves and the next few months will be critical. So we'll keep an eye out on the Nordics market. But yes, Q4 gave us confidence, and we're looking forward to how Q1 is shaping up. And again, we see very strong activity, especially on the truck charging side. So we'll see after Q1.
Thank you, Bhasker. Let's stay in Europe. The next question is also about the Europe, and this is about the EV models, different car models entering the markets. The question is from [indiscernible]. How do you see upcoming smaller and cheaper EVs entering European market in H2? Are customers already accounting this in their orders?
So overall, of course, there will be every year more and more affordable EVs in the Europe, which is great because it hasn't been affordable in the past. So that enables the whole population to start using the EV. So that is great. And that is, of course, overall speeding up our industry and e-mobility. So that's, of course, only the positive thing. But that's something what's seen and what is expected also on our side.
Thank you, Jukka. Then there is a question about the sales. And actually, we go back a little bit to the years '24, '25. So in 2024 and 2025, the first quarter has been the smallest quarter in terms of sales. Should we expect similar seasonality in 2026?
It's actually a great question. And what I can say that now we didn't guide quarter 1 separately. But yes, there is this cycle seasonality in our business between different quarters. So that's the fact. So that's something I can reply on that without guiding anything on quarter 1.
Thank you, Jukka. And -- another question about the profitability. So you mentioned temporary operational inefficiencies pressuring your profitability. Could you open and quantify those?
Yes. So this relates to normal sales and operational planning. So of course, in our current business model, we don't have stable deliveries inside the quarter, might be 1 month when you have a high peak in deliveries, then the following month when those are down. So we just continue improving that, how we plan the resources and our materials, et cetera, so that it matches better to demand. So it was question -- that's actually the topic we are addressing and improving. And yes, it had some impact on the quarter 4 numbers, numbers in the margin. So I don't want to quantify the number, but it had a, let's say, material...
More generally, just to build on what Jukka said and to the previous question as well, when you look at the seasonality between the quarters and even within the quarter, kind of the loading, ideally, you want to level load as much as possible across quarters and within quarter. We don't see that demand yet. I mean I think that's tied to demand -- just inherent demand from the customers. We try to align to our customer order timing, right? I mean we are starting to see, at least historically, what I learned was customers were doing prebuys and because of component shortages. We're starting to see customers align deliveries much closer to when it is actually going to be installed.
So I think because of that, we try to align our deliveries. And then when we do that, it doesn't allow us to fully level load. But with more broad-based demand, I think quarter-to-quarter seasonality should be less of -- should be lesser, I think, going forward into the future than it has been, but that's something for us to keep working both what we can control from a forecasting standpoint.
There is also a question about the order backlog from '25 to be scheduled to 2026. So what is the reason for even 1/3 of the order backlog from 2025 to be scheduled post to 2026? Have the delivery or client preference times increased recently?
Yes. Well, look, I mean, we are starting to see when customers are committing to the order, they have an outlay of their expenditure and their installation. Some of these installation time lines are based on getting permitting, various kinds of permitting through the electricity providers and the utilities to the cities to land grants, et cetera. So that timing is really what drives the outlay.
So -- which is great -- what's great is that the customers are trusting us and putting the confidence that they are placing longer-term orders as well, which is great for our outlook as well. But yes, I mean, that's certainly a shift from what we saw, I guess, in previous years, which was much more of a shorter cycle business.
We have time for one more question, and now we go to North America. And this is about the order intake. Your sales have been lagging order intake in North America. Could you open that? Why are the delivery times long in North America? How do you see this?
I mean, similar answer, but yes.
Yes. Okay. I can start. Yes. Well, when looking at North America, when look at 2025, let's say, more positive market environment overall to us. And that's usually what's also happening that you get orders a little bit earlier before the delivery time. And that's normal in the growth market when looking at the book-to-bill, it's more than 2, so indicating quite strong growth on that market. So that would be my answer on that.
Thank you, Jukka, and thank you, Bhasker, and thank you for all the questions. And we'll be back soon, for example, announcing the date for the Capital Markets Day later in the spring in May, June.
Before we go, we want to show you a very new video. This is actually the first time we show this. Two weeks ago, we organized MCS Live Days in Sweden, where we showcased MCS charging to our customers together with our partners. So check it out. Thank you, and bye-bye.
Kempower — Q3 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Hi, everyone, and welcome to this webcast where we present Kempower's financial results for the third quarter of 2025. My name is Paula Savonen. I am the VP of Communications at Kempower and also the host for today's webcast.
Today, we have 2 presenters. We start with our CEO, Bhasker Kaushal, and continue with our CFO, Jukka Kainulainen. [Operator Instructions] I hope you enjoy the presentations. And now over to Bhasker.
Thanks, Paula, and good afternoon, everyone. So Q3 was my first full quarter as the CEO. And 5 months in, I'm very pleased with the progress we're making as a team. We're focused on the 4 priorities that I talked about 3 months back. We're building good execution discipline and momentum in those priority areas. And through that focus and discipline, we have delivered a strong growth and performance in Q3.
Some quick highlights. Strong order intake growth in the quarter, up 45% versus last year, which was driven by new customer acquisitions across segments and regions. The order intake of EUR 74.7 million is the second-highest quarterly order intake in our company history. Strong revenue growth, which is up 41% versus last year. This was driven by exceptional growth in North America and Europe outside Nordics.
Now in Q3, we did benefit from a softer comparable versus last year, a relatively soft Q3, and a strong Q4 in 2024. On gross margins, we are holding steady. Year-to-date, we're at 48.4%, which is in line with last year's margins at this point. Operative EBIT was positive. So, this quarter marks a return to profitability for us as a company. We improved EBIT by EUR 8 million versus last year and by EUR 1.9 million sequentially versus Q2. We maintained positive operating cash flow for the second consecutive quarter. And lastly, another solid performance by North America, where our strategic investments are bringing very good results.
Now turning to some quick market updates. We saw strong growth in both new BEV registrations and new public fast charging installations across Europe and North America. In Q3, new BEV registrations grew 29% versus last year in North America and by 28% in Europe. Year-to-date, the new registrations are up 20% versus last year combined across these 2 regions. New public fast charging installations also saw strong growth in Q3, up 112% versus last year in North America and up 23% in Europe. Year-to-date, combined across these 2 regions, the new installations are up 7% versus last year.
Also, very strong growth in e-trucks and e-buses. That market data comes with a bit of lag. It's not on the page. But through the first half of this year, new e-truck registrations were up 48% versus last year, and new e-bus registrations were up 38% versus last year. So, the strong growth in new BEVs that we see across the vehicle segments shows an accelerating shift towards electric mobility. And tied to that is the increasing importance of reliable fast-charging solutions and infrastructure.
Next, a quick update on some market trends. And around the world, we're seeing growing BEV sales driven by several factors: one, emissions reduction targets, particularly in Europe, falling battery prices, more affordable battery electric vehicles in the market, and a lot more options for customers to choose from across different price tiers. In the U.S., we saw a mini boom in the sales of BEVs in the third quarter. Now that was partially driven by the expiration of the federal government subsidies in September. Those subsidies effectively reduced prices by up to $7,500 for select models. Now we're seeing a number of OEMs respond to that subsidy expiration with offsetting price reductions.
In terms of infrastructure funding in the U.S., NEVI, which is the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program, is open again. They're granting funds. They're taking applications. There's over $3 billion of funding still available to be granted from that program. So overall, we firmly believe that while policies and subsidies can help accelerate the transition, the favorable total cost of ownership and the economics remain the fundamental and lasting driver of the shift to electrification. And as one of our customers put it best, the electric mile is cheaper than the diesel mile.
Now shifting to where we are focused and how we are doing. Let me start with a quick reminder of our priorities, the 4 key pillars. 3 months back, shortly after I started as the CEO, I talked about the 4 priorities that are critical for Kempower to deliver now and to position us for long-term success. Now these priorities are rooted in winning with customers, innovation, operational excellence, and building a winning culture.
We've been defining clear initiative targets within each of these priority areas. We're improving our execution discipline, our say-do ratios. And as we deliver against the targets that we set; we build credibility. And I'm proud that the team has shown that through strong performance in the third quarter.
Starting with winning customers. That's at the heart of our growth strategy. We are gaining share by acquiring new customers and winning with strategic accounts. In Q3, we brought in 26 new customers. Approximately 40% of our order intake is from the new customers that we've added since the beginning of 2024. And these are industry-leading customers such as Circle K, ASCO, and Allego. Our growth is also now more global and broad-based beyond the Nordics. Year-to-date, approximately 2/3 of our sales are from regions outside the Nordics. Now that shows our growing global reach and impact.
Specifically, we've had strong momentum in North America. In Q3, revenues were up 242% and order intake up 149% versus last year. And one of the highlights was the multiple-site order we received from PowerUp America, which is a NEVI-funded charge point operator. We're focused on continuing to build very strong and enduring customer relationships and supporting their evolving needs.
Next, I want to talk briefly about our partners. In addition to our customers, we're building a strong ecosystem of sales and service partners around the world. They are very important in supporting our growing global reach and installed base. In Q3, we hosted 100-plus participants from 63 partners from across the world, from Europe and North America to Asia and Africa. We spent 3 days together. We held training for our partners. We shared notes on all the market developments from different regions, different vehicle segments. We talked about new use cases that are emerging. And we also did some great team building. We had an unforgettable karaoke, probably the best rendition of Slim Shady that I've heard, better than Eminem himself could do. Now we're stronger as a company by building these enduring relationships with our partners.
Next, I'll talk about technology, which is the lifeblood of our business. And innovation is rooted in Kempower's DNA. We're constantly striving to lead the industry. I want to share a couple of examples of how we are leading now in the electric truck charging with our megawatt charging system, which we call MCS. In Q3, our Swedish customer, Alfredsson, completed the world's first public MCS charging session in Sweden using Kempower's megawatt charging unit. That's a really proud moment for our Kempower and Alfredsson team. In Norway, we opened ASCO's first MCS public truck charging site with a distributed charging system. This is the first of its kind in Norway.
In the U.S., we also delivered our first MCS units to EV Realty in California. They're setting up a truck charging site that will be the largest grid-connected site in the U.S. Our technology is also enabling new use cases in the truck segment. And a good example is the fully electric heavy-duty Posti e-truck that is hauling packages in the Finland area. Now all of these examples highlight the momentum that we are building in e-truck charging with our MCS technology in addition to everything that we're doing on the public charging for passenger cars. Now Kempower is very well-positioned to support this upcoming growth in the e-truck charging segment as well.
Next, I'll talk about operational excellence, which is one of the foundational elements of our business. In Q3, our operations team delivered 41% growth in revenues versus last year through very strong execution and best-in-class on-time delivery performance. In addition to the operations at our facilities, we're also improving our capabilities and execution in the field. In Q3, we opened a new spare parts hub in France, which enables delivery of critical components across Mainland Europe within 2 working days. And by bringing these spare parts closer to our customers, we're improving delivery times and responsiveness. Along with the strong performance, safety and well-being of our employees is a top priority for us.
And I'm pleased to share that we had 0 accidents or lost time in our operations in Q3. And we'll continue to focus on this, keep improving our safety processes as we strive to maintain this record. We're also actively building our unit cost reduction program to drive productivity through our operations and supply chain. And all of these initiatives reflect the ongoing focus that we have on productivity, operational agility and continuous improvement.
Next, I want to take a moment to bring it back to our mission, our purpose, what drives us, and that is to drive emissions reduction and transition to sustainable energy, which we believe are 2 of the biggest challenges that we need to solve for our people and planet. And Kempower does this by driving the electric mobility transition through best-in-class fast charging solutions. We pride ourselves on being a green company, and NASDAQ agrees with us. I'm very pleased to share that Kempower received the Green Equity Designation Renewal from NASDAQ in September.
To remind you, the Green Equity Designation is given to companies that have more than 50% of their turnover from activities considered green, ours is 100%, by the way. And more than 50% of the company's investments must be allocated to activities considered green. And we achieved these criteria with flying colors. Now this designation is great for us as it gives visibility and transparency for investors looking for sustainable green investments.
Now as I conclude, I'll first address the updated outlook for the year. On revenues, we're tightening our full year guidance range, reducing the upper end to 15% to better reflect the backlog delivery timing. Entering Q4 this year, we have strong backlog, but a good portion of that is for 2026 deliveries based on the timing of customer installations and order deliveries.
Now overall, to summarize our third quarter, I want to highlight 3 points. First, we're building positive momentum. The growth in sales and order intake demonstrates that. Second, we're in a strong strategic position. We are well-positioned to capitalize on this growing market across different segments and regions. And we're continuing to invest for the future. And third, we're doing this while being financially disciplined. We have returned to positive operating EBIT in this quarter, and we continue to focus on profitable growth and executing on our priorities.
Lastly, looking ahead, what is our strategy going forward? Over the last couple of months, I've been working very closely with our team on this. We're making excellent progress in shaping the next phase of our strategy. We're laying the groundwork. We're launching a range of initiatives to drive market-leading growth, margin improvements, productivity, what are the next-generation technologies, building a winning team and culture. And we're looking at adjustments to our operating model to operate more effectively and efficiently wherever necessary. And all of this is with a view to drive strong value creation as a company. We're planning to present this updated strategy in our Capital Markets Day in the second quarter of 2026, and we'll share the exact date and location early in the new year.
So overall, I'm excited about the progress we're making as a team. And I want to take a moment to thank all Kempower employees around the globe for delivering a strong quarter and for driving us forward as a company. And with that, I will hand it over to Jukka for a deep dive on the financials. Thank you.
Thank you, Bhasker. And let's go to quarterly financials. And of course, as being the growth company, top line growth is most important for us. And this is what we delivered. We grew the order intake 45% during the quarter 3. We grew the revenue 41% during the quarter 3. At the same time, we delivered positive operating EBIT and positive cash flow as well. So really strong result overall as a company, which we are, of course, happy overall.
Let's look more in details. Order intake, we continue growing. That was actually fourth quarter in a row when we were able to grow our orders. So, order growth, 45% for the quarter, like I commented in the previous slide and also year-to-date growth, 38%. So really strong performance over there.
And regions driving the growth in our orders is the Europe outside Nordics, which were growing more than 80% in the orders and North America as well, growing almost 150% in orders, reaching EUR 16.7 million on quarterly order intake. And that already starts to be quite a significant number from the group point of view, around 1/5 of our quarterly orders came from the North America.
And another highlight regarding North America, when we look at the year-to-date orders of EUR 43 million from North America and compare that to our home market of Nordics, EUR 45 million, starts to be already quite on the same level than the Nordics. So, our investment what we have taken regarding North America start to now pay off for us as a company.
Regarding order backlog, like Bhasker commented, we are around 17% up year-on-year in EUR 117 million. But at the same time, our order backlog has a relatively high amount of orders, which will be delivered to customers in 2026 and recognized then as a revenue 2026, with impact on our guidance, which I will show you later on in this presentation.
Then about the revenue. Also, like I commented earlier, really strong revenue growth for the quarter, 41%. Also, first 9 months revenue growth also strong 18%. And this was also the third quarter in a row when we were able to grow revenue year-on-year. And actually, same regions which were driving growth in the order intake were, of course, driving the growth in revenue as well. So, Europe outside Nordics, North America and actually Southeast Asia as well. Also highlighting our success as a growth company, we have been able to increase the share of revenue outside Nordics. It's already 71% overall.
And if you look on the left-hand side, the graph, you look at the red box over there, which is North America, and you see over the years how that share is all the time increasing and contributing more revenue for us as a company. And that's a really important milestone and highlight as well.
Then going to gross profit margin. Quarter 3 gross profit margin was 45.8% compared to 51.3% 1 year back, so down year-on-year. But at the same time, when we look first 9 months gross margin, we're actually slightly up comparing the last year first 9 months, so 48.4%. And if you look at our gross profit margin over the years, it has been deviating between 46.5% and 52.1% in that range. So, we are quite aligned with our historical trend. Of course, history doesn't tell about the future. And we, of course, recognize the factors which were dropping our margin now in quarter 3 relating to the inventory scrapping, some shift in the sales mix, there is price competition ongoing. And that's why we have taken targeted actions to improve our unit costing, and we already expect some results on our unit cost and gross margin to be visible in our quarter 4 numbers this year. But overall, we have been able to maintain healthy gross profit margin, and we continue defending that also in the future.
Then going to the operating EBIT and cash flow, like I commented, it was great to deliver the positive operating EBIT despite the fact that we had to book additional EUR 3 million costs regarding scrapping, regarding fulfilling aftersales customer commitments. But despite that, we delivered positive operating EBIT for the quarter, driven by also increased revenue cost savings actions we took 1 year back in autumn 2024. Then at the same time, positive operating cash flow also for the quarter, EUR 3.9 million, significant improvement year-on-year as well. And even taking into account that actually our working capital increased during the quarter by EUR 9 million, driven by increased accounts receivables. But despite that, we delivered positive operating cash flow. And actually, when looking year-to-date, our cash flow, we have been delivering positive operating cash flow for whole year as well. So, it's EUR 300,000 positive. So, it's really great result, especially looking at the improvement year-on-year from the 2024. So really, really strong performance in both of these metrics as well.
Then let's go to specified outlook, what also Bhasker already commented. Just reminding about this year, we have been able to grow the orders 38%. We have been able to grow our revenue. We delivered positive operative EBIT for this quarter. Our operating cash flow has been positive. It has been a great turnaround year. But at the same time, we need to take into account that the big portion of the orders and backlog we have at the moment will be delivered to customers in 2026. And that's why we revised our guidance maximum, and our new revised revenue guidance is between 10% to 15% revenue growth for the year. For operative EBIT, we keep the profitability guidance on the same, improving significantly from 2024. Regarding financial targets, no changes in financial targets, growth in revenue, EUR 750 million under the year 2028. And in the same time frame, delivering operative EBIT margin between 10% up to 15%. Thank you.
And now we go to the questions and answers. We have received plenty of questions, and you can still type those in, let's see how many questions we have time to take. Okay. Let's go. First, we go to the gross margin. What was behind the decreasing gross margin? Is that a trend?
I can take that. So, look, gross margins, as I mentioned, year-to-date, we're at 48.4%, which is right in line with where we were last year, actually 10 basis points above. We were 48.3% last year. So, we're holding steady, as Jukka also showed in his chart. Look, within quarters, there can be fluctuations. In Q3, we were hit with onetime operational expenses related to some obsolescence costs. We did see some price and mix effects but what's important is the trend. And overall, look, on the gross margins, we look to be price/cost neutral as if we see price effects, we look to offset or more than offset those with cost reductions. We've launched a range of programs to go drive that. As Jukka mentioned, we're going to start to see some effects of those already in Q4. So that will be our goal, and we'll keep a close eye on that.
Then we go to the revised guidance. As you have had a good level of order intake, why have you decreased the high-end of revenue guidance? Yes.
Yes. Perhaps, look, as we enter Q4, our backlog is strong. We're at EUR 117 million, which is 17% higher than where we were last year. As Jukka commented, a good chunk of that backlog is for 2026 deliveries based on customer order deliveries, the installations that they're doing for their sites. And so that gives us a good tailwind. I mean just to remind you, in the second half of the year, even with this new guidance, we're going to be in the range of 13% to 21% growth for the second half of the year. So that's what we are driving towards.
Then the next question is from North America and the U.S. So how do you see the North America developing?
Yes. Look, good momentum in that market. The North America team, just as a reminder for everyone, we started operating in North America less than 2 years back. So, the team has made great strides. Since then, we see great commercial activity, a very solid pipeline. The customers that we signed up thus far are fast growing and leading the charge in terms of electrification charging infrastructure in the U.S., names such as Revel, Skycharger, EV Realty, we shared PowerUp that we acquired as a new customer in the third quarter. A number of these NEVI-funded. So, we see good tailwinds in the North America market. And for us, the focus is to grow share in the North America market, having just started 2 years back. And the team is doing an excellent job, and we see really strong opportunities there.
There is a follow-up question from North America. So, in the presentation, we highlighted that there has been changes in the subsidies in the U.S., which may create volatility in the short-term. So, what about the client behavior? Have you seen impacts on client behavior from subsidy changes in the U.S.?
Yes. Thus far, the data that we see and, on the ground, the commercial activity that we see, we are very -- that's all very positive. As I shared New BEV registrations were up close to 30% in North America in the third quarter. When we look at a big driver being NEVI funding, there's that program, which was originally $5 billion. There's still about $3 billion that can be dispersed out of that program. That was paused for a period of time. Now it's back open. They're taking applications. They're granting funds, which is going to help drive the North America charging infrastructure market. So, the data that we see and the commercial activity gives us really good confidence, as well as the fact that, look, having started late in the market, we have ample amount of opportunity to grow by growing share, market share. So thus far, I mean, we see good opportunities there.
And the next question goes to Jukka. It's about the order intake. So, how big a share of your Q3 order intake was explained by single large orders. Did single large orders contribute as much or less, or more in Q3 compared to Q2 and Q1 this year?
Yes. I can comment, of course, that the majority came from the, let's say, smaller order size, but there was a few larger ones as well. And what we can see that the orders in North America is actually relatively higher as order size comparing the, let's say, the Europe where we are operating as well, as one of the main markets as well. But majority came from the, let's say, smaller orders.
The next question is also about orders, but about order trends in the Nordics compared to other Europe. So, you have pretty different order trends in Nordics compared to other Europe. Can you open drivers behind those? Do you expect similar trends to continue?
I can start. So of course, the orders are always a little bit fluctuating between the regions and between the quarters. So that's a normal trend. A little bit the orders and the revenue, like you have seen from our historical trends, are impacting, especially in the Nordics, the climate and how it impacts on installations in the wintertime. So that's impacting on the order behavior, revenue recognition, and deliveries as well. And of course, when we grow the share in the revenue in the other regions, so that impact is less in the future. So, it will stabilize more. But it's always in every business that you might have certain big orders slipping for the following quarter, or you get it on time for that quarter. So, it's changing the numbers quite easily, quite a lot.
Just to add a point on that. Look, I think Nordics, what we saw was Nordics led the charge in terms of BEV adoption and the charging infrastructure over the course of the last 5 years for passenger cars. And we're seeing a little bit of stabilization of that. So, we're not seeing the same kind of growth rates that we saw over the course of the last 5 years. But BEV adoption continues to be pretty solid there. So, we feel that's the fundamental driver. But what's very interesting is we're starting to see Nordics now take the lead in the truck charging and the e-truck adoption as well. So, we believe that, look, I mean, as that picks up, that will ultimately help the Nordics market again grow to the levels, but sort of we see that sort of transitionary period right now.
So, let's continue with the Nordic countries and the trends. So, sales in Nordic countries is falling. Is it falling in all countries? What has happened to market shares? What is the underlying reason for falling sales? Is the growth period already over?
Yes. This is what we have seen for this year, especially Finland, Norway, there's a little bit over investment in the past on those markets, and that's why our orders, our revenue has been declining there. And this is what we also expected. We saw that when we were entering that year. So, there is nothing exceptional over there. It's actually usually changes quite quickly when you get new amount of vehicles on the road, 1 year or even more than that. So, it's quite quickly changing that there is an investment that already. But at the moment, there is a high investment capacity coming from the past years, impacting on the demand.
Then the next question is about the lower sales guidance. So, given the lower sales guidance, how do you expect the Q4 to progress in comparison to Q3?
Yes. Look, last year, as I mentioned upfront, the comparables in 2024, we had a soft Q3 and a strong Q4 last year. So that's a little bit of what's affecting. But in the second half of this year, even based on the new guidance, we expect to see between 13% to 21% growth in revenues entering new year. So, the midpoint of that sort of leads to high teens growth, mid-to-high teens. And that's what we're seeing in terms of the backlog and the order delivery. I mean, what gives us great confidence is that the order backlog continues to grow, and we have good line of sight to that.
We stay in this same topic about the delivery times, delivery times and the new orders. Has average delivery time in new orders been increasing in 2025?
What I can comment on that, I think we have commented that earlier also, that what we see relatively higher amount now that amount of orders and order intake we get, which will be delivered to customers inside the quarter. So that has changed quite a lot in 1 year or even in 2 years. But then at the same time, actually North America is slightly different. So there, the customers make quite a lot more orders earlier than they do in Europe. So, a slightly different behavior in North America. But overall, when looking from a group point of view, that's what we see that quite a big portion of orders are coming inside quarter at the moment.
I think we still have time for a couple of more questions. There is actually a follow-up question about the gross margin. So, your gross margin came down clearly. Can you open the reason behind that more? Have the orders received in Q3 been taken in with similar gross margin profile?
So, what we can comment on the gross margin is that we need to repeat a little bit the same messages we have been repeating, that there is a price pressure ongoing, especially in the Europe at the moment. So that is driving down around the pricing and margins as well. Then at the same time, in quarter 3, we had some scrapping costs and some product mix, which impacted on the margin. So, we don't see this price competition to go away. But at the same time, like we commented, we have taken the targeted actions to reduce the unit costs, improve the gross margin, and we expect the results to be visible already in quarter 4.
Just to add, I mean, look, our goal will be to be price cost neutral or positive. And where we see any kind of offsetting effects on price, we'll look to more than offset that through cost reductions. And look, our operations team has built out a number of range of productivity initiatives that I mentioned earlier, as well across within the 4 walls of our facilities, how do we be more productive and within supply chain, how do we be more productive in terms of our cost and the leverage that we have over our suppliers as we are a growing business. So, we'll continue to focus on that, and cost and productivity is going to be a key focus to keep us price cost neutral or positive.
Then, about the warranty. How long is the warranty on Kempower's chargers? And how does it compare to other charging equipment manufacturers?
I can start. Yes, we have standard 2 years, and we're quite competitive with the market. There are some exceptions depending on the customers. So of course, we can agree something else as well.
And one more question, and this is in seasonally high order intake, a little bit of what you touched upon already. In history, Q4 has been a quarter with seasonally high order intake compared to Q1, Q3. Is this something we should expect also this year?
Yes. It's a nice question. It would be great if we would guide the order intake, which we don't do. Then of course, as a growth company, we continue targeting growth in orders, growth in revenue. So that's what I can answer on that question.
Thank you, Bhasker. Thank you, Jukka, and thank you for all the questions and the discussion. We will publish the webcast on Kempower's website later on. And if there are any questions that we didn't have time to answer, we will publish the answers to those 2. Before we close the lines, we want to showcase you how we drive the MCS transformation globally and in different countries. So here is a video about that. Thank you. Goodbye.
Thanks, Paula.
Thank you.
Kempower — Q3 2025 Earnings Call
Financial data from Kempower
Revenue
Revenue is the sum of all sales generated by a company, e.g. for its products or services.
Revenue (TTM) metric explainedDirect Costs
Direct costs are the costs incurred directly in connection with the manufacture of the product or service.
Gross Profit
Gross Profit indicates how much of the revenue remains in the company after deducting direct production costs. If the percentage share of sales is calculated, this is referred to as the gross margin.
Gross Profit metric explainedSelling and Administrative Expenses
Selling, general and administrative expenses (SG&A) include all expenses for marketing and sales as well as the general administration of the company.
Research and Development Expense
Research and development costs (R&D) provide information on how much the company invests in the research and development of its products. The costs are particularly interesting as a percentage of revenue and in comparison to direct competitors.
EBITDA
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) is the company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The EBITDA margin is calculated as a percentage of sales.
Depreciation and Amortization
Depreciation represents reductions in the value of the company's assets (e.g. due to wear and tear on machinery).
EBIT (Operating Income)
EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) is the company's profit before interest and taxes, also known as the operating income. The EBIT Margin is calculated as a percentage of sales at
.
Net Profit
Net Profit represents the profit or loss after deduction of all costs.
Net Profit metric explainedStocksGuide Premium
| Jun '26 |
+/-
%
|
||
| Revenue | 281 281 |
22%
22%
100%
|
|
| - Direct Costs | 143 143 |
34%
34%
51%
|
|
| Gross Profit | 138 138 |
12%
12%
49%
|
|
| - Selling and Administrative Expenses | 78 78 |
10%
10%
28%
|
|
| - Research and Development Expense | - - |
-
-
|
|
| EBITDA | 4.09 4.09 |
168%
168%
1%
|
|
| - Depreciation and Amortization | 14 14 |
11%
11%
5%
|
|
| EBIT (Operating Income) EBIT | -9.97 -9.97 |
47%
47%
-4%
|
|
| Net Profit | -8.79 -8.79 |
43%
43%
-3%
|
|
In millions EUR.
Don't miss a Thing! We will send you all news about Kempower directly to your mailbox free of charge.
If you wish, we will send you an e-mail every morning with news on stocks of your portfolios.
Kempower Stock News
Company Profile
Kempower Oyj engages in the manufacture and sale of fast charging equipment and solutions for electric vehicles (EV) such as personal and commercial vehicles, mobile off-highway machinery, and electric marine vessels and boats. It offers movable DC-fast charging, modular and scalable charging power unit, advanced EV charging system with satellite post, and compact charging stations. It operates under the following geographical segments: Nordics, Rest of Europe, and Rest of the World. The company was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Lahti, Finland.
StocksGuide Premium
| Head office | Finland |
| CEO | Tomi Ristimäki |
| Employees | 770 |
| Founded | 2012 |
| Website | kempower.com |


