Xaar Aktie

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Xaar plc investor presentation.

[Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to John Mills, CEO. Good afternoon, sir.

Good afternoon, and welcome to everybody here. I'm John Mills, CEO of Xaar. I'm joined by Paul James, who's our CFO. Today, I'd like to take you through the 2026 interim results presentation and give you an overview of where we are. So I think so far this year has been a good year. We have seen some disruptions in markets due to the war in Iran. We have seen that when there's disruption or uncertainty in the world, capital equipment purchases are affected, and we sell printheads into OEMs who build equipment. And what happens is that they sell less machines and we sell less printheads. As a result of that, there are certain markets where we've actually seen some decline in the market. However, we'd be pleased to report that printhead revenue was actually up by 5.5%. And the reason for that is actually because there's quite a lot of new business that's come through.

So whilst we've seen some headwinds because of the global economic challenges, the growth has been there by these new applications that coming through. And we'll talk more about that later on in the presentation. And combined with that, Megnajet and EPS, we're pleased overall to report 9.2% increase like-for-like year-on-year. Also, we've continued to control expenditure and that's delivered a margin improvement of 2.2%. And one of the things that has been some frustrating and disappointing in the first half is that 6 months ago when we were doing the full year results, we were pretty sure that Flashforge will be launching the Desktop 3D within days, if not weeks, of that time.

Since that point, they've encountered a few technical issues that have delayed the launch. And we've helped them resolve those technical issues. And today, we have a team on site with them as they ramp up their premanufacturing launch. We're fairly confident that they will actually launch in the next couple of months. The remaining challenges, I think, have largely been resolved, and we're now supporting them in their production build. So we hopefully will see that launch happening before the end of this year.

And it's an interesting area because the opportunity with the Desktop 3D is significant, and we can talk about that later on. So the business, we are a small company. We compete against very large companies like Epson and Ricoh, Fuji, Canon, [indiscernible]. And these companies have huge geographical reach, they have huge reputations and significant manufacturing capabilities. And so how do we win? Well, we win as a small company by being able to print the fluids that no one else can print. And that, as many of you may have already heard from [indiscernible] that's about printing materials, which have a much higher viscosity or a higher pigment loading than our competitors.

So for instance, an Epson head can print 8 centipoise and 1 centipoise is water, and 20 centipoise is cream 50 centipoise olive oil. And so the thicker you get, the higher the number. And Epson tops out around about 8 centipoise. And what that means is they're limited to very low viscosity fluids. So if you wanted to print out an application where a low viscosity fluid is [indiscernible] absolutely go and choose Epson.

However, for us, what we focus on is the high viscosity applications where if the fluid that you need to deposit is much higher viscosity, then really you need to be using the Xaar. And that is the differentiation. And that differentiation capability comes from our fundamental architecture, which delivers a much broader operating window. And that architecture is protected by a significant number of patents, 30 years of manufacturing know-how and increasingly application expertise as well. So how do you actually use the printheads in a given application. And what that means is that for the printheads into [indiscernible] market, we can print with much higher pigment loading and we have a much wider range of fluids that we can print and we can operate at much higher temperature.

And so what that means is that customers can typically print the fluid that they want to print and ultimately means that they can print with reduced energy, reduced waste and higher precision. And the route to market is actually quite complex. And it's one of the things that I think if you look at Xaar and have followed us for a number of years, you might sort of say, well, we've been talking about certain applications for many years. And that's absolutely true. We sell a printhead into an OEM. They develop and build a machine. They then test it in that application. And in many cases, the application requires other regulatory approval and might require other investment in processes to adopt in a broader manufacturing sense.

And all of this means that the time frame to actually get the product into volume manufacturing in the OEM's application can be very difficult to predict and actually often sometimes many years. The benefit is that once you're in and once you're actually the printhead of choice, all of those things have made it difficult to get in and makes it very sticky. And so it's -- for us, we believe that as we enter these markets, then we believe that we can sustain the position within that market once we're in there.

And there's sort of 3 sources of revenue. There's printheads that we sell to OEMs to build machines that go into the application. And then as you build that installed base over time, there will be printhead replacement. And the replacement cycle depends on the application in more extreme applications like semiconductor, we might see a replacement on an annual cycle. In more of the less demanding areas, you might see a replacement every 6, 7 years. So if that -- if the replacement is every 5 years, then that means 20% of your installed base is actually effectively annuity revenue going forward.

So it's key to actually build that installed base and grow that replacement revenue. And increasingly, we're seeing us accessing the ink revenue if we've been involved in developing the solution, there's often an opportunity to share in some ink revenue in the application.

So with that, I'll hand over to Paul to take you through the financial summary.

Thank you, John. Yes. So I'm actually pleased to present these results for the first half, where we had year-on-year growth in all parts of our business with group revenues, as John said, up 9.2%. And I'm particularly pleased about the recovery in our U.S. business called EPS under new leadership, which has come with an ever-expanding pipeline. The core of our business is printhead, and that was up 5.5%, and that's prior to the launch of Flashforge's Desktop 3D offering. So that is actually in and of itself an impressive performance for the first half.

The revenue performance translates to a profitable first half really for the first time in at least 3 years, and we're in line to achieve consensus on profit. The balance sheet is -- balance sheet, sorry, is almost net neutral with a net debt position of GBP 0.1 million and an adjusted free cash outflow of GBP 4.3 million, and that was primarily driven by the need to build inventory to support the launch of Flashforge's Desktop 3D product. So that's the overall shape of the numbers.

Let's have a look now at the divisional performance. So as you can see, I'm pleased with the growth in printhead and with the expected launch of Flashforge Desktop 3D in the second half, year-year revenue performance for the second half is expected to be much stronger. The growth has been driven by new business, new applications and uses for our unique technology. Within all of this, we've seen the legacy ceramics market stabilize after many years decline, and that's been helped by the development of new so-called ceramic glaze technology. And as such, this decline that we've experienced for many -- for a long time now, for many years, no longer represents a headwind for us in our growth going forward.

Now there's a wider important point here. The Xaar today has broadened its appeal to many different sectors and continues to expand. And as such, there is now a derisked portfolio effect compared to the Xaar of old. Operational gearing effects show an enhanced adjusted profit before tax profitability. That's improved by some 100 basis points year-on-year. And Megnajet, gross margin up 120% -- sorry, 120 basis points, built on revenue increase of 27% year-on-year. And the Megnajet business underlies the importance of supporting systems or system components for our core offering, supporting our customer base. The growth comes from new customers as well as increased demand from the existing customer base.

And then back to EPS, much hard work has been done to rebuild a durable pipeline, address the cost base, and that's work that's been ongoing for some time now and solve some long-term intractable problems. So I expect EPS' recovery path to continue into next year.

So let's have a look at a little bit of detail at the adjusted income statement. So taking it as a whole, the group grew revenue by 9.2%, a performance that would be the envy of many companies in the current global climate and growing gross margin performance by 220 basis points. The development of operational expenditure is worthy of mention. Now it's up just 5.7% year-on-year, but this increase is driven by building and some would say rebuilding capability in the front end, sales and marketing and the sharp end, which is how I term research and development, and that's to drive growth in the innovation pipeline, which is our lifeblood after all.

So general and admin expenses have actually declined by 1.6% note, a contraction in the cost of back-office roles. Putting that all together, we now see a business that grew profitability substantially in the first half to achieve an adjusted profit before tax of GBP 0.2 million compared to a loss of GBP 0.7 million last year and similar losses, I must say, for the first half of the years before that.

Then just to take a look at cash flow and turning our attention to cash. The group's adjusted free cash flow was an outflow of GBP 4.3 million. This was primarily driven by temporarily building inventory to support the launch of Desktop 3D by Flashforge. And once this launch has happened, we expect this to sharply reverse. In addition, the group has upped capital expenditure in the first half compared to last year, again, driven by building out capability to support anticipated higher volume levels in the future, particularly with our new manufacturing facility in Dongguan, China, that is in itself enhancing supply chain resilience.

Now I want to emphasize, and I've done this many times already since I joined Xaar, that the days of storing large amounts of cash in what is essentially a current account are over. We have entered into an expanded rolling credit facility, increasing it from GBP 5 million to GBP 10 million with an EBITDA covenant of 3x, whereas previously, it was 2x. And in addition, we have an uncommitted accordion facility of GBP 5 million and an increased invoice discounting facility of GBP 5 million. So at the moment, our liquidity is substantial.

So that's it for me for now. I'll hand back to John.

Okay. Thanks, Paul. So in terms of the strategy going forward, we -- as I said earlier, we compete against very large Japanese companies. And our key strategy is to maintain a differential in capability to be able to print fluids that no one else can. And the real competitive advantage is based around our technology. And therefore, one of the key things that we will do is continue to actually invest in engineering and R&D to maintain this advantage.

The other key thing is that if you go back 10, 15 years, Xaar was pretty much a single product in a single market of ceramics. When I joined 6, 7 years ago, there was very, very few applications for our technology. What we've done over the last 5, 6 years is really to focus on how we diversify and have a broader set of market applications. And today, I'm pleased to say we have 21 separate markets where we are generating revenue across the many territories and many applications.

And so the route to market through the OEMs, OEMs build machines and sell them into a particular application. We have another category user developer integrators. So these are companies that actually buy the printers or systems for their own use. And we see that increasingly as large -- very large companies start to adopt our technology in their process and that's particularly true in the semiconductor space. And what we typically do as we enter into a new market is that we have a halo partner, somebody where who will give preferential pricing and significant support to get them to market, knowing that once they're in the market and gaining market share because of the advantage of our printheads, then their competitors will come to Xaar and at that point, we will have much more flexibility on pricing and how we would charge for supporting them.

And so if you look overall, the 4 phases of development, we would work -- a company would come along saying, really want to use inkjet in this application, we would work with them to develop an ink that can jet through our printheads and our print has the widest range of premises that we can deploy. And then we move into a machine development phase. So they will actually develop a machine that will actually function and print whatever is the item that they need printing. Once they've done that, they can then use that to go into customer accreditation and that can vary significantly for the car battery application.

The machines were built, took about 1.5 years to build and develop the machines. Then they started producing batteries and those batteries went through a substantial amount of testing with the car manufacturers, putting them into cars, testing them, environmental test. So that took about another 1.5 years to do those testing before the batteries were actually accepted into the broader circulation. So from the point where we celebrate because the company has chosen our printhead to the point where they launch a number of machines and we get repeat orders for the printhead for those machines can be a number of years.

And so over the last 5, 6 years, we've built up a pipeline of applications that are starting to come through now. And we talked a lot about Desktop 3D and car batteries and spray paints for cars and wax. But there are others that are starting to come through and deliver revenue now. So conformal coating of PCBs. So this is putting a waterproof coating onto a PCB. So for instance, you might remember a number of years ago, if you drop your iPhone into water, it will probably never work again. Now if you drop it into water, it survives. And a lot of that is down to putting a conformal coating onto the PCB.

This is an increasing market and the same coating that's used in the car battery can be used on the PCBs and is much quicker and more efficient than the incumbent method, and we're starting to see that now grow in -- particularly in China. We've also developed a new method of putting structure on top of ceramic tiles to make the tiles look more like a natural stone or granite. That -- tiles that have that natural look currently really expensive to manufacture. With the high viscosity and high pigment loading, we're able to print a very heavily loaded fluid and put down significant amounts of crushed powders to recreate natural storm effects. And this is actually now 2 OEMs, one in China, one in Europe, are developing machines and the samples that they've been producing have been really well received by the industry.

Then in semiconductors, we're seeing a number of companies actually adopting our printhead largely for the replacement of spin coating. So spin coating is a very widely used then process in semiconductor manufacturing where to put a layer of fluid onto the silicon wafer, you would spin the wafer, you would then put the fluid in the middle of the wafer and then the forces basically move the material out and physics makes it -- gives you a very uniform fill. The challenge here is that when the fluid gets to the edge, a lot of it flies off the edge and is wasted. And some of these materials that we are working with now can be $50,000 per kilo.

So wasting fluids that expensive, you can see that with inkjet where the wastage is effectively zero, there's very attractive ROI in that sector. So the number of companies are testing it. The question will be, can we actually deliver the performance, the accuracy and the reliability needed for the semiconductor industry. And there are several machines now in large companies that are under test to determine that.

And similar in solar panels, we're actually now -- there's 3 test machines that have been developed that are in pilot lines, looking at how we can replace some of the laser patterning steps with Inkjet in solar panel manufacturing. So the thing that is consistent against those 4 applications is that the fluid that we're depositing, you can't compromise on the fluid. And the reason why they're using our head is because those fluids just will not print in any other printhead. And that's why they come in using our printhead for the applications into these sectors.

And those are 4, as I said earlier, there are 21 sectors altogether where we have revenue either -- revenue already from machines launched or machines actually in development to launch. And one of the key things is getting our customers to market as quickly as possible. And so what we have done is we've built a sort of ecosystem of supporting products around the printheads. So the customer now could buy a fully integrated print power print engine.

So instead of actually taking the individual printhead developing everything themselves, which would take many years, customers are now opting to buy a print power print engine from us to make sure that they get to market within months rather than years. And so particularly in the U.S. and with the semiconductor companies, they're actually just buying a print engine that they put into their machines. So if you look at the broad spectrum in China, pretty much buying printheads and ink systems and they do all the integration themselves, much more in the U.S., they're buying print engines and fully turnkey solutions.

And if you look at the numbers, the percentages look quite big. If you actually look in the actual numbers, some of these numbers are quite small. The categories are split up really by the type of ink that it's producing. So ceramics and glass up 11%, really pleasing because for the last 10 years, that market has been in decline as Xaar's reduced its installed base from the time in 2012 to 2013, where we had 100% market share and then unfortunately lost it all.

And we see going forward that the ceramic glaze application, we should see some growth within the ceramics market going forward. The coating marking, that negative there is really just timing around half year. There were some issues around payment with some of our key customers at the half year, so we didn't ship product to them. They've all caught up now, and we expect that to be on track by the end of the year. WiFi format graphics and labels up by 8%. But the real activity is in the 3D and advanced manufacturing, which is really where some of those applications we just talked about would sit.

Packaging textiles, small numbers, but one of our key customers bought a significant number of print systems at the back end of 2025, believe that they would install all of them. They went into the start of this year with still quite a few in stock and they've burnt through [indiscernible] in the first half. So that -- hence, they didn't actually purchase any more in the first half of the year, which is why it's down. We still expect it to be down at the end of the year compared to 2025, and then it will pick back up again as we go through into 2027. So overall, really pleased with the growth in the new markets.

So summary, we're seeing really strong demand across all these applications and the rate at which we are now being contacted for new applications is growing significantly. The Desktop 3D application with Flashforge is delayed, but we do expect that to launch in the coming months. And we have received initial orders for production volumes, and we're helping them with their production ramp-up with the team in China. And what this means is that I think, Xaar very much, as I said earlier, was a single product in a single application.

Now revenue stream is much broader. And as we build the installed base, that just builds an ongoing replacement revenue, which will grow as the installed base grows. So despite the economic headwinds, despite the turbulence in the markets, we -- with the new applications coming through, ourselves and the Board look forward to the future with some confidence.

And with that, we'll take any questions.

[Operator Instructions]

I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and published Q&A can be accessed via investor dashboard.

Can I please ask you to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

Okay. So we take the questions in order. So you recently opened an office in China. What's the reason for this and are you excited about the growth in the region?

So the -- we've opened a facility in China has multiple functions. It's a sales office, training center, engineering center plus demo center. And we've actually opened up a manufacturing facility. So the printhead that is in the Desktop 3D, the front end is actually built in the U.K., where we will retain all of the IP and all of the technology and then the assembly of the printhead with all of the PCBs and the tubes and the pipes and the cases is then done in the manufacturing facility in China, where we've got an automated lining. What that means is that as the volume for that product increases, we have the capacity and the margin will be substantially better out of the facility in China.

So the second question is which growth opportunity you're most excited about and why?

I think it's very much the Desktop 3D. The market size -- so Desktop 3D printers, there was 8.8 million Desktop 3D printers sold last year. And there are 4 companies now developing high-resolution full color machines using our printheads. And 2 of the significant ones, one obviously being Flashforge have told us that they expect 10% of the market to be switched to this product category, which is therefore about 880,000 heads.

Now our revenue from each machine is about GBP 500. So 800,000 machines times GBP 500 is GBP 400 million, which is a crazy number. So even if that number turns out to be 1%, that's GBP 40 million. And so I think that the Desktop 3D category, which is our first real B2C type application is potentially transformative for the company. And so we anticipate the launch over the next couple of months.

And we will see is the reception of the product, does the product work? Do the consumers love it and do they buy it? And if the answer to those questions are yes, then we'll do very well.

Question is what do investors most misunderstand about our business?

It's a tough question actually. I think the thing that's really difficult to get -- to really get your head around is tiny little company like Xaar has this capability to print this fluid that no one else can. Why on earth wouldn't a giant like Epson be able to just do the same thing. And the reality is that their technology, and I use the analogy that they've effectively developed a Formula 1 car. So all of the big companies, they develop Formula 1 car is very good at printing low viscosity fluids with high resolution and high speed, a bit like Formula 1 car.

What we've done is we've developed a Volvo estate which isn't as fast. It's not as good as going around the track. But if you want to actually take stuff down the recycling center or take the kids to school, then you've absolutely got the right car. And what you can't do is you can't start off with a Formula 1 car and evolve it into a Volvo estate. what you have to do is you have to start again and you have to develop a new product category. And if you do that, then you're going to trip over our IP.

So I think one of the -- I think that's the thing that is the hardest thing for investors to understand, is how different our IP and our product is compared to the big companies and how difficult it would be for them just to switch to do something like we do.

The next question is, do you expect further innovations come from internal R&D or external R&D collaborations.

Very much -- the innovation in the printhead is very much from us. So we have a very clear R&D pipeline of technology that moves our products significantly further forward. And so we can see what the market requires and we're developing products to meet those requirements. What's interesting is that our customers are finding new applications that we couldn't even have thought of. And it's not in the presentation, but there's 3 new applications that if everybody on this call, we all went down the pub and had a few beers and tried to think of things that you could use inkjet for, you just wouldn't have come up with these 3 application.

So it's quite extraordinary, the breadth of industries and the breadth of applications that we're now looking at. But it's pretty much anywhere where you have a deposit in a fluid and you want to reduce waste and you want to reduce costs or you want to actually do it more accurately. And so I think that's going to be extremely interesting.

Next question is, could you kindly expand on working capital dynamics as you work with customers towards product launches? Is there any use of customer upfront payments to invoice discounting to help alleviate any short-term stress on sales working capital? I am going to let Paul deal with that.

Microphones are back on. So you alluded to the fact that we grew inventory by GBP 3 million since January and GBP 29 million, GBP 30 million. And that was primarily driven by the need to support the Flashforge Desktop 3D launch, and we have about 27,000, 30,000 printheads in stock to support that. We do anticipate that once the launch happens, to reverse very sharply. So the first thing that happens is our Chinese customers are payment in advance. So really, as soon as the order comes in, the cash will come in, and then we'll be shipping those printheads quickly. So that will reverse quite quickly. So yes, selling to the Chinese is actually from a cash flow point of view, with PIA payment in advance, a very useful thing.

So the other thing I just want to emphasize is that at the start of the year, anticipating this growth, we did expand quite substantially our facilities. So our revolving credit facility was increased from GBP 5 million to GBP 10 million with an EBITDA gearing covenant increased from twice -- 2x EBITDA to 3. We have an uncommitted accordion facility of GBP 5 million, and we have an expanded invoice discounting facility from GBP 3 million to GBP 5 million. So our total facilities are GBP 20 million. So our liquidity is comfortable right now and sufficient to support this launch and others. And yes, it's a good position to be in. I'm sort of looking forward to this year -- this year and the launch, and I think it will be a transformative experience for us.

Okay. And then the final question, could you please provide a sense of the broader market opportunity within a painting given collaborations such as Axalta NextJet seem revolutionary. Yes, absolutely revolutionary. Again, this is like all of the applications. We have done the work with Axalta and the robot company. They provide 50% of the robots to car paints and around the world. And so they partnered with Axalta, and we worked with Axalta to develop an inkjet version of car paints, and we now have a range of colors and we've done -- they've done trials with pretty much every Western car manufacturer to look at how they can deploy the technology.

And I've seen pictures of cars with graphics on it, which I think are really cool. There are a couple of frontrunner projects, which are going to deploy this technology onto cars. And I think it's fair to say that we were already expecting that to be announced publicly. But I think that the challenge is that the first targets were all European car manufacturers. And I think the reality is that with the influx of Chinese cars, the European car industry is in a bit of turmoil at the moment.

And I don't think that investing in new technology as much as maybe some people might think that that's -- this is the time to do it to try and keep ahead. I think they've got other things to think about. So we are waiting for a public announcement of the first project, which we hope won't be too distant future. But the scale of it, the excitement from the car companies is real. The things you can do with it, I think, are going to change the look of certain car brands. And I think it will be big. But I think that the time frame that I will be looking more now in the 3- to 5-year time frame rather than any significant revenue over the next 12 to 18 months.

That's great. Thank you for answering all those questions you have from investors. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, John, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?

Yes. No, first of all, I really appreciate you all taking the time to come and listen to the story today. And hopefully, we'll be able to answer the questions. I think we're really excited about the future. I think there's a huge amount of opportunity here. And hopefully, when you'll see Flashforge launch that hopefully will be the start of the change of growth trajectory for the company. So again, thank you very much for your time, and hope to see you again. Thanks.

That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session and it will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Xaar plc investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to John Mills, CEO. Good afternoon, sir.

Thank you very much. And first of all, thank you, everybody, for taking the time to come on and listen to the story of Xaar. For some people who will have known Xaar from old, I just wanted to kind of quickly run through some of the history and some of the things that would have characterized Xaar historically and hopefully how Xaar today contrasts with that.

So if you go back to 2013, Xaar was a FTSE 250 company, had GBP 140 million of revenue, made GBP 42 million profit, market cap of around about $1 billion, but it was effectively a single product into a single market, and that was ceramics. And that market, Xaar lost that market for various reasons and left the company really with no other revenue streams. And over the last decade, it's really been recovering from that situation.

In contrast today, I've been with the company now for 6 years, and we've really focused on making sure that we have a broad portfolio of applications based around a value proposition, which is unique to Xaar. And really, what I would like you to take away with today is really two things. Firstly, that we have a unique capability to print fluids that no one else can and that we deploy that capability across a broad range of applications, which potentially give us significant revenue opportunity and indeed quite significant resilience against any individual market problems.

So in order to first of all, explain to you what the value proposition of the business is that we make industrial inkjet printers and printheads. And we compete with companies like Epson and Fuji, Kyocera, Ricoh, Konica and also Seiko. These are huge Japanese corporations with global reach and substantially lower manufacturing costs than we have. And I think that the challenge or the problem for Xaar over the previous 15, maybe 20 years is trying to compete with these companies on their home territory is incredibly difficult and ultimately, Xaar has lost.

And having joined the company in -- back in 2019, I, having known the company for many years, really focused on the attribute that Xaar had, which was unique, which is that we can print fluids that no one else can. And that parameter that's really important is viscosity. And viscosity is a measure of how thick the fluid is. So water has a viscosity of 1. Cream is 22. olive oil is 65 and yogurt all the way up at 1,000.

So if you take the global #1 Epson, they can go up to around about 8 center points. So -- and some of the other competitors may be able to get over 20 and approaching 30, but really, that will probably be a generous assessment. We've got applications well over 100. And therefore, we have this capability of printing fluids that no one else can print.

And the way to think about that is that if you have a fluid, if you want to add things into the fluid to add functionality to the fluid, the more you add in to the fluid, the more functionality you will have. But the more you add in, the more viscous or the thicker the material, the fluid is likely to become. So there is a correlation between functionality and viscosity. So the more functional the fluid, typically the thicker, more higher the viscosity is.

And therefore, what we are seeing at Xaar is we can print fluids that are far more functional than other printhead manufacturers. And so the question then remains is, well, what do you do with that? And what I'd like to do today is just share with you some of the applications that utilize this unique capability, so you can see the sort of the breadth of applications that we are currently operating in.

So the first one is decorating of cars. So today, if you want to put a graphic on a car, you need to use a sticker. If anybody has a mini or know somebody with a new mini, typically, they have some form of graphic on there that's a sticker. And those are not really well liked in the industry. So if you want to put graphics on there, that's pretty much the only way you can do that.

We started working with Axalta, who are one of the major global suppliers of car paint to the industry and also Durr who make robots and 50% of the world's paint shops have their robots in them. And collectively, we have created a technology called NextJet, and this allowed you to digitally print graphics onto cars. So if you see the bottom right-hand corner, we're printing on the side of a door. And you could imagine that if we had a low viscosity watery fluid, then that would actually just drip and run down the side of the car, you would not be able to print graphics on a vertical surface.

And so what I hope is clear from this that you actually need to have high viscosity capability to be able to print graphics onto vertical surfaces in this application. And so there's no other printhead that can do this, and we've enabled an industry to adopt digital technology through our ability to print high viscosity fluids.

Just to go through another application. So this is car batteries. So this is another application where we started working with the battery industry about 5 years ago. There are issues around battery safety. And one of the contributory factors to this is that the insulation layer, the blue plastic film that goes around the battery to provide electrical insulation can be damaged through mechanical rubbing or through heat cycling of the battery as it's charged and then utilized.

Having developed a fluid which is UV curable, you print on the battery, you shine UV light on it and it turns into plastic. This coating is nonflammable. It's much stronger. It doesn't crack and it has better peel strength away from the battery. So this is a better solution than the wrapping of the battery. As of today, we have 3 OEMs who we sell printheads to. They've built machines that print the battery. You see one of those operated on the bottom left-hand side of the video. And there are now 10 production lines in China that are making batteries on a daily basis for cars.

And to give you some sense of scale, we have about GBP 150,000 worth of revenue for each production line. There's 10 in there at the moment, and we expect another 10 to 15 going in this year. And overall, there are 1,300 production lines in China. And so if the industry adopts this fully and changes all of the production lines to this digital coating, that would represent around about GBP 200 million of revenue for us. And if they did that over a 5-year period, that would be a good volume of revenue per year.

For each of the applications that we have, there's a secondary revenue stream, which is from the replacement printhead cycle. So once you have an installed base, depending on the life of the printhead in that application, and that's a function of the type of fluid and the environment it works in. And in this application, the life of the battery may be -- may be, say, 4 years, then every year, you would expect to replace 25% of your printheads.

What that means is if you have an installed base of GBP 200 million worth of printheads, then 25% would get replaced on an annual basis. So -- and that's the same across all industries. So you have revenue of printheads going in for new machines. And then depending on the replacement cycle, you have an annuity revenue from the replacement and printheads. So that's the battery coating.

Change in tacks. If anybody has a desktop 3D printer, it's probably for those who recognize the term, an FDM printer, which is like a roll of fishing line that essentially goes through a nozzle and heats up and basically an arm scribes a path around and the fiber sticks to the fiber that was previously laid down and that way you build up a 3D model. And it typically is one color or a couple of colors and it's not very high resolution. And that's the typical 3D printer that's bought today, but there are 5 million of those printers bought every year.

If you want to print something high resolution in full color, so things like you see on the bottom of the screen, all the things on the table next to the machine and the little farm on the left-hand side, if you want to print high-resolution things of that nature, you probably have to pay somewhere between GBP 40,000 and GBP 150,000 for an industrial machine.

We've been working with Flashforge. They're one of the major suppliers of the desktop 3D printers. They sold 700 units last year. We have been working with them to develop the world's first desktop 3D printer. We estimate that, that printer will be on sale for around about GBP 2,500 to GBP 3,000. And with the occurrence now of AI, you can take a photograph of somebody or any object, AI will render that into a 3D model, and you can print it out on the printer. Equally, you can describe something into AI, and it will create the figure for you.

So hobbyists around the world will be able to print whatever they would like to fulfill their needs in their hobby. So just if you have opportunity if you were to Google Flashforge CJ270, you'll be able to see the pre-marketing -- prelaunch, which we expect to be in the next few months. It's actually been shown at multiple trade shows to date ahead of the launch later this year. So I'll just play you the promotional video for the product.

[Presentation]

Just to give you some sense of scale, the 500,000 desktop printers are sold each year, 1% of the market were to buy this machine that would represent GBP 25 million of revenue for Xaar. What we don't know because it's a brand-new product into the market is exactly how many units will be sold. So we're quite excited about this, so -- but the exact number is very difficult to predict, and so we will look forward to launch and see how many did sell.

One of the things that's really impacted the numbers this year, we started working with the wax industry about 3 years ago, 4 years ago. This is an industry which uses wax to create bespoke high-quality jewelry in gold and platinum. What happens here is that the wax is actually heated up with melts and then you inkjet print the wax onto a substrate and you build up the facsimile of whatever you want in the gold or platinum in the wax. You then take that wax model and in case in effect like a plaster of Paris and it dries.

And then once it's dried, you then heat up, the wax melts and then runs out and then you've left with the mold and then you can pour your gold and platinum into the mold. And then once it cools down, you break the mold and you've got your piece of jewelry. The -- we've taken that market very quickly because the -- again, the ability to print a wax that's much better, much stronger than the previous wax means that you can produce higher quality and more intricate jewelry.

So when this was actually launched by the first company, the quality of the jewelry that was produced was so differentiated that every single other OEM looked at that and said, "We need to use our printheads because we won't be able to compete". So we went from 0 revenue in '23, we had around about GBP 1 million revenue in '24 and then GBP 8 million of revenue in '25. So we think we've got a sizable share of that market now. So we expect some growth in '26, but that's an example of a market where, again, we've taken market share purely down to the fact that we can print a better fluid than what was previously printed.

The final application I'll show you today is on printing of cardboard. Probably all of you will receive Amazon packages. These are sort of cardboard boxes or sort of envelopes that you -- and they will all have a plastic -- a white plastic label with the address and the barcodes and other things on it. That's -- the plastic label that's on it is expensive, and it also makes it more challenging to recycle.

And the reason for that is you can't print white ink onto -- digitally on to cardboard because what happens is that it's low viscosity and it just soaks into the cardboard, which is what you see in the image at the top here. As it sinks in, it takes the pigment with it into the cardboard and you can't see any of the white pigment left. Closer to a slowdown, you see that by contrast, a high viscosity fluid and a high viscosity fluid has less water. It's thicker. It doesn't soak into the cardboard and therefore, the pigment stays on the surface.

So this gives us the opportunity to actually print digitally onto cardboard, which would be a significantly cheaper process, but also help with recycling. So again, this is just about the benefit of using a high viscosity fluid. So hopefully, that's been helpful.

What I'll do now is hand over to Paul, who can take you through some of the financials.

Thank you, John. Yes. Okay. I'm not going to plow through the slides, slide by slide. If you want to see that, it's available on our website, but what I would like to do is just highlight some key financial numbers that we've delivered and talk about the shape of the numbers going forward over the medium term.

So first of all, the group is organized into three divisions. The largest one, one of the greatest scale is Printhead, and then we have Megnajet, which is predominantly dealing in producing ink systems, and then we have EPS in the United States, which builds machines for high-speed single pass printing direct-to-shape purposes.

And then you look at how they performed in 2025 versus 2024. Overall, the group is up 12% year-on-year, but Printhead revenue standout performance of 22% up versus the prior year. And that performance is driven, as John has alluded to, primarily from the Wax segment, the growth there. And actually, that 22% revenue growth, over half of it was a volume increase. And so more about that and its effects on our numbers in a moment.

Megnajet broadly flat 2% and EPS down 10%. And the reason for that was they had a large multiyear contract to basically print on golf balls, and that came to a sudden unexpected end at the beginning of last year. And the then management team hadn't yet built a sufficient pipeline to backfill that loss of contract. So we have had a dip in performance there, but we brought in new management. And interestingly, despite that 10% reduction in revenue, the gross margin at EPS grew by 300 basis points, and that is as a result of restructuring, cost-out initiatives and so on and so forth.

So the new manager has dealt with that. He's dealt with a number of intractable issues, and he's also rebuilt that pipeline. And one of the attributes of EPS is the way revenue is recognized. You kind of know 6 months ahead of time how much revenue you're going to have. So EPS is very much back into growth mode and we will, I'm sure, continue growing, continue performing financially very well.

And then back to Printhead, as we said, 22% up, and that also came with 300 basis points increase in gross margin. And that is a key attribute of this business, which is that we have a very effective operational gearing effect. If volume does increase, then margin will increase too. So let's talk about first number, how that's -- we see that, how it's going to develop over the medium term.

40% gross margin overall. I had a look back -- by the way, I've been in Xaar just over a year. I had to look back over its history and the high watermark in terms of gross margin performance was probably about a decade ago where it was nudging 50%, high 40s certainly. Now you've got to be a bit careful making that comparison with then because, of course, it's apples and pears and revenue was made up of different constituent parts. But nevertheless, 50% does seem to be a laudable target to get back to. And so the current management team, we're now all working towards that over the medium term increasing that gross margin.

And yes, operational gearing will help. If the business grows, the volume increases. But also, we are looking at cost-out initiatives. We're looking at -- we'll be looking at procurement, better procurement initiatives. And we've also shifted part of our supply chain to China to be closer to our customers. I describe as sort of ancillary activities. It's not the core IP activities that go into China and the inkjet systems construction also in China.

So two benefits of that. We'll be close to the customer base, the Chinese customer base, but also it will take a lot of cost out of our base. So yes, 50% is we've set ourselves that medium-term goal to get as close to that as possible. I think another thing I'd like to talk about is the balance sheet and how that's shaping up. So it's true to say that in recent years, Xaar has held elevated levels of inventory. I'm not interested in why that was, but it's a fact, and it does need addressing. So we are setting ourselves the goal of -- and I've done this in other companies I worked in, of, if you like, a continuous improvement goal of increasing stock turn year in, year out, a minimum of half turn increase, preferably a 1 turn increase every year.

And rather than just obsessing about a particular absolute number, stock turn has the benefit of being linked to how the business is performing, how the business is growing. And I see that as a way to free up more cash and get into that sort of virtuous circle of investing more, growing more, et cetera, et cetera. So that's something else perhaps you should look out for going forward with Xaar.

In terms of investing in growth, a couple of things there. We spend about 8% to 10% of our revenue on R&D, and that feels about the right number at the right level. And in terms of capital expenditure, we have had last year elevated levels of CapEx, but that was investing in capability to basically speed up sales and to deal with some bottlenecks. And I think going forward, you can expect slightly higher elevated levels of CapEx, too, just to invest in growth, but also -- perhaps also to deal with some legacy issues in terms of replenishment of the asset base in the factory that we do need to address.

So I hope that gave a bit of a flavor for the business. And yes, I'll hand back to John.

Good. I mean it's quite difficult to judge these things when the -- you can't see the audience. So hopefully, that's given you a sense of the company. I think the summary for me about the business is that when I go around and talk to particularly institutional investors, many of them have -- know Xaar. And one of their concerns is that Xaar has historically been boom and bust, and very difficult to predict the future revenues.

I think what we'd say today is that we've worked hard on making sure that we have a very clear value proposition, and we only enter into markets where we have a unique and clear value proposition against the competition and that we now have 21 separate markets where we derive revenue. And we have in most of those many customers and a strong pipeline of applications that are coming through. So we feel confident about the business model, and we feel confident about the revenue growth over the coming years.

What's very difficult to predict is the detail of when any individual application tool will land. And therefore, we tried to avoid talking about specifics of timing. But I think the key thing is that over time, the ones that are in the pipeline will come through. So for those who've got a slightly longer time horizon in the sort of 3 to 5 years, I think where we are today, it's difficult to see how we're not going to grow revenue substantially over that time. And with the operational gearing, we should see some of that falling through to the bottom line.

So with that, I think we'll look at any questions that we have. So I can currently see four questions that have come through. So please write any questions in the thing, and we'll do our best to answer them. We have a bit of time left over, so we can hopefully answer those questions as we go through. So I'll take them.

First question, do we have any collaboration with [TeraView]? No, we don't at the moment. It's interesting that we're now starting to see companies coming to us once they understand our capabilities. So maybe that's something we should pursue.

The second question is that with the 22% increasing in Printhead revenues, how much is initial system adoption versus recurring?

That's from Matt. Matt, I think the revenues that we see coming in, we would describe as all recurring revenues. What we would normally see is that you have several years where you sell printheads into an OEM as they start developing machines and selling machines, then eventually, you get to a level of saturation where everybody who needs a machine has got one. And then you left to replacement recycle of the machine and you are left to growth within that market. And then the replacement heads for your installed base.

So the revenue would peak after a number of years and then would move into a steady state where there will be slower growth, it might fall back by 20%, 30%. So that's how we tend to think about it. And therefore, what we -- when we model revenues, we look at layering on different applications. And so we take sort of fairly modest views of growth after the initial market size and try and layer that on. So hopefully, that answers the question.

The second question is how visible are revenue levels over coming years from the new application areas?

And again, this is a really good question and one of the fundamental ones for understanding the business. We sell printheads to OEMs. And if you take the battery situation, we sell printheads to OEMs who make the digital printers. They sell the digital printers to companies that develop production lines for the battery manufacturers and the battery manufacturers buy the production line. So we're three companies removed from the decision-makers in relation to the batteries.

And therefore, we're not having direct conversations with the battery companies. We take our information from a number of sources and try and integrate that together to create a picture of what we think is going to happen. So it's incomplete. We are not selling machines directly to an end user. So in many cases, our information is not perfect in that. We do our best to try and understand forecasting and we ask our OEMs' forecast and what they believe are going to happen, and we have to interpret that in the best way that we can for planning. Typically, things usually take longer. The numbers that get delivered are usually smaller. And we try to take that into account when we look at any forecast that we publish.

Next question I have is that the revenue opportunities for battery coating and 3D printing, are those annual revenue? How does the drop-through margins in each section differ?

Yes, very good question. I think on the 3D -- on all of the -- as I said earlier, on all of the applications, we really are looking at recurring revenue. We don't see any revenue that comes in for a single year and then stops. So the revenues we talk about should be recurring revenues. The margins are quite different across different market sectors. The wax and the battery coating, the margins are quite strong. If you look at the consumer market, the desktop 3D, the margins are much lower in those areas.

So we tend to try and price to value rather than looking at competitive pricing. And we try to maintain margins on the basis that we are enabling industries to do things they previously couldn't do. We're not competing on price in many of these markets. So -- and in terms of drop-through, this year, we did GBP 0.8 million profit on the revenues. As the top line grows, we should have -- we're now at that kind of breakeven point with the factory. So as we go forward, we should see more of that revenue dropping through.

Okay. Next question is around IP from Paul. The IP protection, particularly as we are exposing the technology in China.

Yes, really good question. We have very strong IP, but our strategy is to patent in -- according to GBP. So we take the top 6, 7 countries, excluding China, and we patent in those countries. And the reason we do that is that I think if we have a Chinese company, for instance, that did infringe our IP, we may find it difficult to enforce our IP in China. However, if those companies then build a printhead and sell that printhead outside of China into a territory where we have IP, then whoever uses that printhead is infringing our IP, and therefore, we can send the cease and desist. So our strategy is to enforce it in territories where we are able to kind of follow up and prosecute our IP effectively. So that's really what we would do.

Somehow all the questions have disappeared.

You've answered them, I think.

Hopefully, that -- is there any more questions that we could -- I'm going to let you take that one, Paul.

Yes. Okay. So we obviously have a medium-term strategic plan, which we've not yet...

Please go and state the questions, Paul, you probably have to read the question.

Sorry. Thanks for reminding. So the first question, what level of turnover and profitability would you target in 3 to 5 years?

So we obviously do have a medium-term strategic plan. It's been discussed at Board level and all signed up to. You would expect to see the growth levels we've achieved last year of 12% for the group, according to our plans, that's not inconsistent with the sort of annual growth levels you could expect to see going forward. And in fact, if you look at the consensus numbers that are out there, the revenue growth is broadly consistent with that. So a sort of 10 and a bit percent growth in revenue going forward.

And then as we've mentioned a couple of times, the operating leverage benefits will start to kick in as well with that volume growth. By the way, I expect at least half of that revenue growth will be volume at least. And so as I said earlier, I am pushing for gross margins to be heading towards as close to possible 50% and with an operating margin in the high teens. That would be the sort of place I'd like to be in terms of profit and revenue.

I think the next question is a congratulatory note, I think.

That's great. Thank you for answering all those questions you can from investors. And of course, the company can review all questions submitted today, and will publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which is particularly important to the company, John, could I please just ask you for a few closing comments?

Yes. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to come and listen to the story. We're quite excited about the business. It's been a bit of a grind for 5 years to build the pipeline and to do that. We do feel we're in a position now where we're at a kind of inflection point. And we can see growth coming over the coming years. It's important to say with any of these applications, it's very, very difficult for us to predict the exact timing or volume of any individual applications.

So I wouldn't buy our shares on the basis of one particular application, but I think I'd encourage everybody to look at the broader value proposition of the unique capability of high viscosity fluids and the impact that has on industry and the breadth of the opportunity that we have because I think ultimately, that will be the thing that drives consistent revenue growth over the coming years.

So again, thank you very much for your attendance. And hopefully, we can see some of you joining the share register in the near future. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

That's great. Thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This may take a few moments to complete, and I'm sure will be greatly valued by the company.

On behalf of the management team, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.