Vaisala's Record Quarter Comes With a Receipt Attached
A 24.9% EBITA margin, the largest order in years, and a CFO who won't say how much of the profit is a tariff windfall
VAIAS.HE · Earnings Call · 2026-10-27
A quarter that looks like an inflection — if you can decompose it
Vaisala does not usually produce quarters that force a rewrite. Q3 2026 does. Orders received rose 38% year-on-year, pushing the order book to EUR 215 million, 16% above the level at the end of 2025. Net sales grew 6% to a group gross margin of 61.5%, and EBITA came in at 24.9% of sales — by the CEO's own description, “almost 25% EBITA margin in a quarter. I think that is something to be very proud of.” — Kai Öistämö · 2026-10-27 Return on capital employed was 23.3%, operating cash flow for January–September reached EUR 84.4 million versus EUR 58.9 million, and the balance sheet sits at a net cash position of roughly EUR 20 million — the twenty-sixth consecutive quarter under the same "strong financial position" slide heading, which the CFO now jokes is a legacy they cannot change. On October 12 the company narrowed sales guidance to EUR 610–630 million and reset EBITA to EUR 110–120 million. So the quarter was good enough to raise the profit line and narrow the top line. The interesting part is what sits underneath.The margin is real — but a slice of it is a refund
Group gross margin would have been 59.0% and EBITA 22.5% without the U.S. tariff refund received in the quarter, a EUR 4 million gross-margin credit. That is not a Vaisala invention: IEEPA refunds show up in filings across this reporting week — DECK, ACU, LIGHT.AS, FSKRS — and net tariff refunds were among the hottest global themes of the prior quarter. Vaisala is riding a market-wide wave, not creating one, which makes the accounting question everyone's problem rather than a company-specific quirk. Where it turns into a story is the refusal to bridge it forward. Analyst Matti Riikonen asked three separate times how much of the go-forward gross margin reflects tariffs now being *lower* than last year, given pricing was set against the higher regime. The answers escalated from deflection to a flat wall: “We certainly plan to keep it to ourselves.” — Kai Öistämö · 2026-10-27 and then, when pushed for the number, “No, we haven't commented.” — Heli Lindfors, Chief Financial Officer · 2026-10-27 Management's defense is that refunds were booked in group items, so the segment figures are clean — the Industrial Measurements gross margin of 65.8% and EBITA of 31.7% carry no refund. That holds for the one-off. It does not address the run-rate: if prices were raised to absorb a 15% duty that has since been partially unwound, the current margin contains a benefit that will neither repeat as a lump nor necessarily persist as a level. Add the CFO's reminder that Q3 is seasonally the strongest gross-margin quarter, and the record needs a discount rate applied.Industrial Measurements has quietly become a data center company
The engine is unmistakable. Industrial Measurements net sales rose 28%, orders 24%, across every region and every end market — with data centers, semiconductors, battery manufacturing and power called out as the drivers. data center is now the single highest-momentum keyword attached to this company, having gone from a mid-table mention two quarters ago to the head of the list. That is a genuine change in what Vaisala is, not boilerplate. The order book's shape is changing with it. Deliveries that used to be measured in weeks now stretch to months and, on larger services deals, to a year or more — and 69% of the Industrial Measurements order book still ships this year. Critically, the demand is greenfield: “Most of it comes from greenfields,” — Kai Öistämö · 2026-10-27 with no customer large enough to be material. Broad, not hyperscaler-concentrated — a healthier demand base, but a thinner recurring-revenue base. Here is the tension worth holding. Globally, the AI data center theme has turned: 43 advancers to 11 decliners over 360 days, but only 6 up against 48 down over the last 90. The equity tape has already begun pricing a capex peak while Vaisala's order intake accelerates into it. Pauli Lohi put the BNEF 2027 commissioning-peak forecast directly to the CEO — and got “It's way too early to comment on this.” — Kai Öistämö · 2026-10-27 Given that Vaisala ships roughly twelve months ahead of commissioning, the honest read is that the next four quarters of this segment may be the best visibility the company has ever had, while the market is already looking past them.The Indonesia order finally landed — and renewables quietly left the script
In February the EUR 25 million Indonesian airport weather modernization was explicitly *not* in the order book or the guidance, hostage to a public-financing backstop: “So it is not included in our order book or the guidance,” — Kai Öistämö · 2026-02-12 the CEO said then, with timing "extremely difficult to predict." It is now booked, to be delivered over three years. Weather, Energy and Environment orders grew even excluding it. That is where the good news stops for the segment. Net sales fell 11% against the Spanish radar comparison, EBITA slipped to 17.3%, and the renewable energy market outlook was formally cut to decline — still roughly a quarter of segment sales, and the CEO was blunt that the exposure is to early-stage wind resource verification, not to power demand. Notably, "renewable energy" has fallen out of the company's own top keyword list in the very quarter management downgraded it — the theme they stopped talking about is the one they just marked down.Xweather: cheap optionality, still no revenue
ARR reached EUR 60.9 million, up 9%, on insurance, developer and API customers, with the Atmo acquisition closing in Q4. The NVIDIA showcase — improving that company's AI weather model with Vaisala data — drew the sharpest analyst pushback of the call, probing whether Vaisala should own that business itself rather than showcase it. The answer was unambiguous: “It's not really a net revenue, anything that we can speak of.” — Kai Öistämö · 2026-10-27 What the company does have is the moat argument, and the CEO made it plainly:The proprietary data claim is being monetized in small, real steps — a weather derivatives scheme at CME built on Xweather data, API on-ramps into deeper engagements — but not yet in a way that moves a EUR 2.7 billion market cap.I believe that actually weather is going to be a streaming service in the future. Completely different type of a model, how to consume and build, and the capabilities with AI and AI-based weather forecasting model will change all the participants and their roles.