Floris Jan Cuypers, CEO of NX Filtration, states:

“I am highly confident that we are on the right track for continued future growth, and that our outlook for the longer term is fully intact. Our technology is robust, and our operations in our new factory run smoothly. Therefore, we fully focus on supporting our strong sales teams, across all major regions, in further developing their OEM relationships and converting project opportunities in orders. Our pipeline is growing and strengthening, supporting substantial growth in 2025 and beyond. Therefore, we are looking ahead with full confidence, and are expected to further deep dive on our business at our Capital Markets Day in April.”

Financial and segmental review

Total revenues grew by 38% from €8,053k in 2023 to €11,084k in 2024. Revenues from the sale of goods increased by 39% from €7,238 thousand in 2023 to €10,085 thousand in 2024. Other income, primarily related to government grants for innovation projects and rental income from pilot projects, slightly increased from €815 thousand in 2023 to €999 thousand in 2024.

In our Clean Municipal Water business line, revenues were €3,724 thousand in 2024, compared to €2,613 thousand in 2023. We experienced a strong step-up in project sizes with, amongst others, our largest order to date for the world’s largest hollow fiber nanofiltration water treatment plant in Mexico with a capacity of 17 million liters per day. In Indonesia, we onboarded a new OEM that used our membrane technology in a project related to surface water treatment for decentral drinking water production, an application with which we have already demonstrated successful performance over the past years. In Europe we continue to make strong progress with several key OEMs that are increasingly offering NX Filtration’s products in various full-scale projects.

In our Sustainable Industrial Water business line, revenues were €6,361 thousand in 2024, compared to €4,625 thousand in 2023. We added Thermax, an Indian multinational engineering company involved in clean air, clean energy and clean water, to our customer base and received initial large orders from them. On the Food & Beverage side, we continued our work with PepsiCo (now supplying them across North America, Europe and Asia), and collaborated with Bucher Denwel (launching a new sustainable beer filtration solution to its customers).

Gross margin remained strong with 61.0% in 2024 compared to 59.6% in 2023, reflecting our strong technology position.

EBITDA loss was €15,659 thousand in 2024 compared to a loss of €11,936 thousand in 2023. The increase in EBITDA loss is mainly driven by additional investments in the organization ahead-of-the curve to facilitate future business, as well as specific cost related to the start-up of the new factory and the transfer from our previous facilities to the new factory. The loss before tax increased from € 14,347 thousand in 2023 to € 23,069 thousand in 2024, primarily driven by the initiation of depreciation for the new factory and related machinery. The net loss (after tax) was € 23,089 thousand in 2024 compared to a net loss of € 23,292 thousand in 2023. The 2023 net loss included an on-off derecognition of € 8,945 thousand in accumulated deferred tax losses.

Capital expenditures amounted to €25,933 thousand in 2024 as compared to €43,940 thousand in 2023. The capex mostly relates to the construction of our new factory, which was completed in 2024. Additionally, NX Filtration capitalized €1,061 thousand of development costs which demonstrates the company’s continued efforts to invest in innovations for the future.

Net cash position at 31 December 2024 amounted to €53.4 million, compared to a net cash position of €49.9 million at 31 December 2023. The cash position was positively influenced by NX Filtration’s newly secured combined equity and debt (real estate financing) package of approximately €50 million in March 2024. We expect our cash position to be sufficient to fund our growth ambitions well into the future.

Working capital² increased to €14,535 thousand at 31 December 2024 versus €9,046 thousand at 31 December 2023. This was driven by lower trade payables (reflecting the impact of outstanding capex payables at the end of 2023), higher inventory levels to support the transfer of UF and MF membrane production to the new factory in Hengelo in Q1 2025 and to meet anticipated growth in demand for 2025, partially offset by a reduction in receivables. 

Total FTE slightly increased to 169 at 31 December 2024 (versus 166 at 31 December 2023). We are able to benefit from efficiencies resulting from our larger scale operations and we continue shaping our global organization to position us well for the growth ahead of us.

Sustainability and ESG impact

Sustainability and a clear Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda are at the heart of NX Filtration’s business. We passionately believe we have a responsibility to contribute positively to society and the environment. We have externally certified science-based CO2 reduction targets, we are part of the United Nations Global Compact initiative, and have a formal ESG Committee comprised of the two independent Supervisory Board members to formalize governance and oversight responsibilities with regard to sustainability, environmental, social, corporate governance and human capital matters. We are truly honored that NX Filtration joined the global B Corp community in 2024 alongside other companies aiming to transform business into a force for good.

We continue to use our targeted ESG framework to address and monitor our impact along three pillars:

1. Clean water for all: Our membrane module sales in 2024 can enable the production of 457 billion liters of clean water³ , enabling access to clean water across 38 countries.
2. Avoiding emissions at our customers: With our membrane module sales in 2024, we enabled 4,300 ton CO2e savings during the deployment lifetime of our modules, by avoiding the use of 8.0 million kg of chemicals and saving 98 GWh energy compared to conventional technologies⁴.
3. Our internal initiatives: We have implemented various sustainability measures and initiatives around ESG related themes in our own operations, for our employees and our partners.

Market developments

Water scarcity and water quality remain key drivers for positive market development for hollow fiber nanofiltration in the years to come. According to the United Nations, global demand for freshwater will exceed supply by 40% by 2030 if no action is taken. To combat water scarcity, the European Parliament voted in April 2024 to introduce new EU rules for wider reuse of treated urban wastewater. The new rules for, among other things, removing micro-pollutants underline the need for new technologies. Also outside Europe, we observe strong trends around freshwater conservation and innovative wastewater reuse solutions, particularly in regions confronted with droughts and growing water consumption. The trend of municipal wastewater reuse is reflected in NX Filtration’s customer base, for instance with the sale of our hollow fiber nanofiltration membranes for indirect potable water reuse in Mexico.

Water reuse is not only at the top of the agenda of water treatment companies, water scarcity is also forcing industrial companies, particularly those in water-intensive industries, like the beverage and high-tech sectors, to set up strategies that reduce the risk of water supply issues and to become more self-sufficient. But contingency is not the only driver, a growing number of companies are demonstrating true water stewardship. This is driving the need for sustainable practices that offer opportunities for hollow fiber nanofiltration to make existing water treatment methods more sustainable.

In the field of water quality, governments around the world are adapting legislation to ensure water quality. With globally increasing concerns about PFAS levels in water, we expect stricter regulations for drinking water and wastewater discharge around the globe in the coming years.

Commercial roll-out

NX Filtration’s scalable commercial model is based on establishing relationships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), who are responsible for the design and delivery of the overall filtration system at the end-users facilities. To facilitate this process, from technology adoption to project realization, NX Filtration supports these OEMs with various tools, amongst which a large fleet of pilot systems (mobile units that are typically deployed at customers’ sites to test water treatment performance, or to establish optimal process parameters and conditions for a full-scale plant). Once these OEM customers have worked with NX Filtration’s membrane technology, they become an important element in the further commercial rollout of NX Filtration’s products, leading to repeat orders from existing clients, and periodic module replacements at existing plants.

In 2024 we delivered our hollow fiber nanofiltration (HFNF)⁵ modules for 14 full-scale projects, of which 7 were repeat orders from customers who had already worked with NX Filtration before. In 2024, NX Filtration received an additional 6 replacement orders for projects we delivered a first set of membrane modules in the past years.

One of our medium-term objectives at the time of our IPO related to growing to approximately 200 pilots per year, which we already achieved in 2023. As we further mature, and our OEMs become increasingly familiar with our technology, we expect this number to stabilize going forward. During 2024, NX Filtration initiated 207 pilot projects, approximately equal to the number of pilot projects initiated in 2023 (209). Also our fleet of pilot systems remained constant at 190 systems per 31 December 2024. We see increasing activity of OEMs and partners to deploy their own pilots, therewith shifting our focus from expanding our pilot fleet towards optimal deployment for near, medium and long-term commercial opportunities.

As our pilot program further matures, we are also becoming more confident about the success rate of our pilots. Since 2020, we have initiated 697 pilot projects. Of these, 92 have already converted in a demo or full-scale project. The vast majority of the initiated pilot projects are either still running, have been extended into a more extensive larger pilot project, or have been concluded successfully but are still in the process of decision making, financing, permitting or engineering. We estimate that less than 25% of the commercial pilot projects we initiated are no longer associated with a potential future project. This predominantly relates to pilot projects with our smaller Mexplorer pilot systems, and is in most cases caused by the project no longer being pursued by the customer (for example because of budget reasons), and in a limited number of cases by our technology not being selected as preferred option for the related project opportunity (for example because of risk averseness to work with a new technology or because of very specific treatment requirements outside the direct scope of our products).

Over the years we have obtained valuable insights from the deployment of our fleet of pilot systems, such as sweet spot product-market combinations for our technology. We are increasingly using these insights to optimize the way we channel OEMs through various phases towards the realization of full-scale projects. On the Capital Markets Day that we will host on 8 April 2025, we will provide further insights in our growing pipeline of OEM partners, and how we work with them from early stages towards project realization.

New factory

We are proud that in 2024 we have successfully started-up our new largescale factory for the production of our membrane modules according to schedule and within the anticipated Capex budget. ESG is strongly embedded in the design of this factory, with more than 1,350 solar panels for electricity generation, a unique peer-to-peer heat exchange system with neighboring datacenter Previder, an extensive heat energy management and reuse system, and an inhouse water treatment facility.

As communicated before, we are moving our entire operations into this new facility, in order to enable further efficiencies and optimizations in our operations. In July 2024 we already completed the transfer of our former module production operations from our previous location at the Josink Esweg in Enschede, the Netherlands. Preparations for the transfer of our former membrane production location at the Institutenweg in Enschede are well under way. This transfer is expected to be fully finalized during the first quarter of 2025.

Priorities and outlook for 2025

In recent years we have put strong building blocks in place for the growth journey ahead of us, amongst others related to our solid technology, expanded production capacity, strong ESG framework, our global sales organization, and our growing pipeline of commercial opportunities. Based on these building blocks, we have set clear priorities for 2025 that we will drive with full dedication.

First and foremost, we will continue our existing approach in developing OEM relationships and converting project opportunities in orders, and build on existing OEM relationships for repeat orders. Based on the learnings from prior years we are further pursuing our commercial focus towards high-yielding product-market combinations. 

In the context of the delayed roll-out of our business plan we have taken cost control measures without impacting our longer-term growth ambitions, that are unchanged. We are proactively aligning our cost levels to the timing of realizing our growth, therewith controlling our path towards break-even operations. We expect our current cash position (€53.4 million at the end of 2024), to be sufficient to fund our growth ambitions well into the future.

For 2025 we target a growth of total revenues in the range of 50% to 70%. We are reiterating our longer-term objectives on revenue growth and profitability. On the Capital Markets Day on 8 April 2025, we will provide further background to, amongst others, market developments, our commercial strategy, the strong progress we are making in developing our pipeline of OEM customers, and our continued growth prospects for the medium- and longer term.

1. Total revenues (defined as Gross income in the Annual Report) includes revenues from sale of goods in the Clean Municipal Water and Sustainable Industrial water business lines and other income
2. Working capital defined as inventories plus trade and other receivables minus trade and other payables
3. Based on NX Filtration’s sales of HFNF (dNF) and UF membrane modules multiplied by the expected capacity and lifetime of such modules. See Sustainability Report in the 2024 Annual Report for details, assumptions and methodologies
4. See Sustainability Chapter in the 2024 Annual Report for details, assumptions and methodologies
5. Equivalent to direct nanofiltration (dNF)