Contextvision (Oslo:CONTX) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Welcome to ContextVision and welcome to the first quarter twenty twenty six report. Today with Richard Hallstrom, our CFO myself, We have good news to share, really good news to share. For the first quarter, we're happy to report an underlying revenue growth of approximately 7.4%. And it is mainly due to continued execution on our portfolio and customer projects and a stabilizing market. In the first quarter, we have also announced a collaboration with Beamworks, an AI company for quantitative ultrasound based in South Korea. We show continued progress in our clinical development program at the University of Washington and we have strengthened our management team with the appointment of Marco Vermolen as CTO for ContextVision.

0:53 We've also successfully participated and had excellent customer engagement at the European Congress of Radiology in Vienna. Let's look into the details. Let's start with a market update. As I mentioned, driver behind the revenue growth that we have seen was mainly a market stabilization. And if we compare that to previous year, we should maybe take a look into the total of 2025, where we had estimated initially a market growth, but then also reflected in our actuals seen a decline and have also earlier on commented on the market decline. Now with 2025 being closed in the first quarter of twenty twenty six, we see the first official market reports coming in that underpin the comments that we have shared earlier, namely the Chinese market, which is a relevant market for our ultrasound business, has declined in 2025 by minus 8.5% compared to an initial growth expectation of around plus 3%.

2:05 So those numbers confirmed our comments that we've given earlier. And likewise, we see a stabilization now in the Chinese market and currency effects that help us with tailwinds in the first quarter so that we see the underlying growth in our license sale mainly. Maybe worth commenting that the root cause of the decline in the Chinese market was linked to a centralization of the procurement process in China and that stalled the market for the end user, namely hospitals. So it's not a reduction in underlying demand, it's more a temporal seasonality effect.

2:52 So the market should recover at some point in time and we're optimistic that that recovery starts happening with the positive signals that we're seeing now reflected in our license sale numbers. So having that said, let's look into the development of our business. As I said, a very strong customer engagement at ECR, and that's typically a good temperature check for the new products that we have developed and launched into the market. In particular, we see continued interest on high diagnostic image quality and for the leading and premium OEM customers, the focus is slightly moving to more robust performance expectations for complex cases, difficult patients that were not easy to diagnose earlier on, and obviously workflow simplifications.

3:51 So there is a slight change in the demand for image enhancement and image quality, which we had anticipated earlier in our development programs and are now able to deliver on those expectations. So quite a positive signal from those customer engagements at ECR twenty twenty six. I think the progress on our clinical study is also worth going a little bit deeper into and that is related to the study that we're running at University of Washington in Seattle with respect to developing a clinical biomarker to quantify liver diseases. There, according to plan, we have already enrolled nine patients.

4:40 That means they are being scanned and the data has been delivered to our R and D team in Linskoping where data analysis is going on and revealing interesting insights. Maybe worth to mention that based on that study, have during customer meetings both at the conferences but also in person received a high level of interest on that specific study in particular because paired imaging, so taking MR ultrasound exams, blood samples, patient data, all at the same point in time for a single individual is a very complex and difficult study to execute.

5:31 And that interest is also reflected by the richness of the data, which is revealing already now invaluable insights for us. So all in all, already now I would say this was worth the investment and the extra mile that the teams both from our partners as our own teams were taking. So well done so far. But we're not resting. We're taking it a step further. We have announced the collaboration with Beamworks, a software company in South Korea that is focused on AI powered quantitative ultrasound imaging. So a powerhouse of data scientists in quantitative imaging. And the huge opportunity here is really to combine the capabilities of BeamWorks with the quantitative measurement technologies in ultrasound engineering that ContextVision has built up into a combined offering that will deliver an unseen Cat E, Cat X and biomarker technology to the market.

6:42 So stay tuned for the progress in that collaboration. Last but not least, we have also strengthened our internal capabilities with the appointment of Marco Vermolen as CTO for ContextVision. Marco is a well known individual in the industry and even in the academic world based on his experience in working with major OEMs in the signal processing chain and ultrasound engineering. So we're grateful that he joins our team and we're already seeing lot of traction for executing our roadmap technically, but also in the collaboration with OEM in the image chain to drive those new solutions to the next level. Maybe that's a good segue to look a little bit more into the strategy that we're executing together with Marco.

7:44 So for those that have read the annual report, which was recently published in our marketing material, those of you who have seen that we have launched a new brand tech line for ContextVision. So that new brand tech line indicates and underpins our transformation into quantitative imaging. See more, know more. As simple as that, we will move into the second generation of ContextVision. So far, we have been focused on visualization, creating a better image that is easier to read. High image quality is the driving factor here. But since the launch of POCOSS, which is sometimes called from an accounting perspective, the data quality initiative, we are transforming into quantitative imaging.

8:38 So we will help clinicians to know more. To get there, we have decided on a stepwise

8:45 transformation. So today, as you can see in the infographic focused on helping clinicians to see more, to read an image better with visualization and image enhancement. So those products in the portfolio is typically tied to a business model where perpetual license revenue is linked to the OEM system costs where the software is built into. But once we move up the value ladder with our portfolio, we'll be able to tap into new revenue models and business models in line with the portfolio evolution. So, for example, once we detect abnormalities in an image or if we're even able to quantify the malignancy of the abnormality, then we can tap into reimbursement codes that are already available in the market and that will define our revenue potential. So just in terms of magnitudes, this represents a factor of around 1,000 compared to the perpetual model that we're running today. And once we can link the diagnostic scoring from what is called Cat E and Cat X to a specific treatment regime, then we can tap our revenue model into treatment related reimbursements.

10:10 And that can reach a magnitude of up to 50,000 per scan compared to a value per scan in the model today. So that should be music to your ears from a financial perspective and it's it's what we're striving for also from a technical perspective. Now this journey is not only fantastic in terms of new revenue and value pools that we're tapping into, but it will also require significant investments both from a regulatory side but also in terms of AI capabilities and as I mentioned that can be together with partners or organic investments. Now we're already at the beginning of the journey. We have launched at ECR the first product into the DETECT or CAT E model, which is called the MassLD setting, which is really able to help clinicians to better detect liver disease in at risk in individuals.

11:19 Now, I think I've talked a lot about the journey that we're on, that we're having ahead of us, and that obviously should be reflected in the numbers that we see. So maybe Richard if you want to give us a bit more meat on the bone for the first quarter. Yes, I will. Thank you, Gerald. Revenue for the first quarter amounted to 28,500,000 SEK compared with 26,300,000 Sikhs in quarter one of last year. This represents a growth of 8.5%. The main driver was increased license sales, together with additional contracts signed with customers. During the quarter, we refined our assessment of the timing of revenue recognition for certain customer contracts under IFRS 15.

12:05 This had a positive effect of SEK1.6 million. The effect was, however, largely offset by a translational FX effect of minus 1,300,000 SEK. However, overall we see a solid revenue performance in a cautiously stabilizing market with an underlying revenue growth of approximately 7.4%. Profitability improved clearly compared with the same quarter of last year. Adjusted EBITDA reached 5,800,000 sieq compared with 2,100,000 sieq in quarter one twenty twenty five. This corresponds to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.5% compared to 8.1% of last year. EBITDA amounted to 2,800,000 siek versus a negative 1,700,000 siek of last year, giving an EBITDA margin of 10%.

12:55 Adjusted earnings per share also improved to 0.05Z compared to 0.01Z in quarter one of last year. The improvement was mainly driven by increased revenue and continued cost control. As part of our transformation to quantitative imaging, we continued our investment into data quality, while a more efficient allocation of consultant resources contributed to the overall lower R and D costs. Cash flow from operating activities was SEK4.3 million after changes in working capital, compared to SEK0.3 million in quarter one of last year. Cash flow from financing activities was a negative SEK2.9 million, mainly including the share buyback and lease payments.

13:40 Total cash flow for the quarter was a negative SEK0.8 million versus a negative SEK3.7 million of last year. At the end of the period, the cash balance was SEK69 million, which means we continue to have a strong financial position. With that, I hand back to Gerald. Well, Richard, thank you. That was a wealth of positive information and I think that really confirms that we're on the right track executing both in our image quality business, but also embarking on our quantitative imaging journey. So in terms of looking ahead, I think we should remain confident that we're facing a stable market environment for the remainder of this year and that we're confident in executing our strategy in the long run while remaining agile to capture opportunities as they come along, being partnerships or commercial opportunities that we continue to focus on for this year. So, thank you for being with us today and stay tuned.