logo

Boreo

Q32025

10/29/2025

speaker
Kari
CEO

Good morning from the Vantaa Boreo headquarter and welcome to the Q3 2025 webcast presentation. I will discuss the events of Q3 and Outlook going forward together with our CFO Jesse here the next 30 minutes or so. Today we start the presentation with information that was disclosed to the market yesterday. So as you can see from the picture and the headline, Boreo has appointed a new CEO, a gentleman called Tuomas Kahri will assume the CEO position latest. on the 1st of May 2026. Tuomas' background is as you can see from the slide from various management consulting, private equity and operational leadership roles and I believe Tuomas with that skill set fits really well to take Boreo into the next growth stage. I will personally continue in the role until Tuomas starts and also I will be available to support Tuomas and the team thereafter during the transition as needed. So still for the next, at least for the next Q4 release and then coming then Q1, potentially it's myself taking and then leading the webcast, but then welcoming soon Tuomas to take over the responsibilities. So warm welcome from our side to Tuomas and looking forward getting Tuomas on board as well. Then we continue into Q3. I will start with the key highlights of the quarter, a bit of outlook going forward and then Jesse will complement with topics related to balance sheet returns and more specific business area comments. Please use as normal the Q&A function if you have any questions and we'll take those then after the meeting. Some key highlights from the quarter, as the headline said, we continue to grow on sales basis, so fourth consecutive quarter with organic sales growth. Also in this quarter the sales growth to 33 million euro was supported by the acquisitions of YERS, of the Alfa DistriLeg business from RS and the SpetsElectrode transaction done in Q2 2025. The operational EBIT on an operational basis was better than a year ago. However, in the last year's quarter, the releases of earn-out provisions made improved the result by €300,000 last year, so basically now we were €100,000 below last year's quarter, but recorded a stable 5% operating margin during the quarter. The result was also impacted by the startup phase of the YERS acquisition so whereas we saw an impact on the sales side from that acquisition now for two months in Q3 but given that the business is in setup and ramp up phase, pretty much no profits from that acquisition in Q3. Cash flow was strong as we expected, released working capital by roughly one and a half million euro during the quarter and the company's financial standing position is stable. We completed in Q2 10 million euro convertible hybrid bond transaction, and with the support of that and with the support of Decent, both profit generation and also cash flow generation, the company has liquidity to pursue acquisitions and also support existing businesses. In terms of outlook going forward, our order books grew from last year compared to last year, but also compared to Q2 2025. We do see positive signs in particular in our industrial businesses that the demand environment would be picking up somewhat. It has already picked up in in some of the businesses and as reflected with the growth of the order books. On the other hand, construction sector, which is also relevant for us, continues to be slow and we do expect the winter to be somewhat slow in our construction-related businesses, except for our Swedish Putschmeister business that continues to perform well, as well as businesses exposed to the infrastructure, the renovation construction industry, Mohtekolmio here in Finland in particular. Looking at a bit more the numbers on a trend basis, now here on this slide you see our sales, net sales development on a rolling 12-month basis for the group and for our divisions. As you see well from the graphs, we've seen the bottom, which was roughly a year ago, and now we've been able to the growth sales in the last four quarters. The development has been somewhat similar in both of the business areas, so electronics and technical trade. However, so that the electronics business as usual in this type of cycles is picking up somewhat earlier than the technical trade. business portfolio than we have. As noted already before, somewhat now supported the growth curves by acquisitions as well, but strong organic growth in the last 12 months. With regards to gross margins and profitability, so first of all, gross margins. Pleased to see, as you've already seen in the last year pretty much, that the gross margin profile of our businesses has improved. Rolling 12-month basis, 32% gross margin and a 7% increase versus the years of 22 and late 23. result of i mean as a result basically because of uh the the the acquisitions and improvement of the portfolio uh and quality in terms of looking at it from the point of view across margins also decisions we've taken to to close low margin businesses and stop operating those sort of businesses. And also in a downturn cycle, the share of our aftermarket activity is higher versus in a better cycle. So that also supports the development you see on this slide. Now, going forward, we do expect us to be able to perform at quite decent cross-margin levels. Then, on the other hand, once the market will improve, we do expect some level of decrease in the margins, given that higher volume machine deliveries will impact the margins, but not to return back to those 25% levels where we were a few years back. The profit curves on a relative basis have been quite stable in the last years between five to six percent. An end result we can be rather happy with now in the last two years given what's happened in the market. However, we do expect once the market demand starts to improve and we start to see the impacts and improvement impacts from our businesses that profitability with this portfolio can improve from where it is today. Cash flow generation, now looking at last 12 months, strong cash flow, operating cash flow, 11 million euro, cash conversion for the quarter was 151% on the back of and supported by reduction of working capital. Now we start to trade at, I mean, working capital is rather well managed in the company, but we do see still possibilities with these activity levels to reduce the level of working capital somewhat. Now, depending on how the pickup on the sales side will go and how the timing of that goes might be somewhat of a bumpy road downwards as well, In any case, given the current level of activity, there is potential to take some millions of euros or working cap downwards. But nothing dramatic here. Very pleased with the fact that in rather tough declining markets the last couple of years, we've been able to manage our balance sheet. and working capital, in particular, rather well. Finally, from my side, a couple of words on the outlook. This is exactly, I think, the same slide from the last Q2, so no revolution here, what we're going to do. the focus currently in the company is on two things one developing our and working with our existing businesses for the and developing them in the long run and number two screening for potential new companies that could join the group so working on the acquisition side there are quite a lot of initiatives in the portfolio and development related initiatives that we are currently pursuing in the current portfolio of companies. As we mentioned in the report, we've already completed now in the last year for renewal and modernization projects of ERP systems of our companies. good experiences out of those and also encouraged us to continue on this path for a couple of additional businesses so as we speak we have three of those projects ongoing At the same time we expect some additional cost from the development side from these projects now in Q4, Q1 and Q2 next year as well. However, providing reduction of fixed cost once implemented and also very importantly providing modern tools for our businesses to support growth in the future. Those are not the only ones, there are growth related initiatives ongoing in our businesses. Two things I would mention, especially one in our Milkon cable harness and electronics trading plus manufacturing business serving the the defense industry. Now we've already seen a significant growth of the revenue of the business in the last couple of years and the outlook for the future looks really promising. This might also mean that we will undertake some investments in the next 12 months into to building new production capabilities and continue to grow the organization as we've done this year, then to be able to grow in the coming years. Also to mention briefly the investment activity going on in our The only life sciences business we have in the portfolio, Delphin Technologies, which has been during the last couple of years investing heavily on the renewal of the product platform for which we get the first products out in the coming months. and also in the renewal of the global distribution network, meaning a new distribution setup in the markets of China, in a couple of the biggest European markets and also in the US. the type of activities we expect to provide potential for further growth in the coming years. So that's briefly on what the focus currently in the business is and I said order books are developing quite decently as we speak and we expect a rather stable and decent performance in the short term as well. That's it from my side and then I hand over for Jesse for further review.

speaker
Jesse
CFO

yes you could then go on to look at our strategic targets not much uh change from from what we said in in q2 on on general we are not where where we expect to be but as we continue on our back to growth plan and get our profits profits back back up towards where we believe this portfolio is capable of operating uh we believe these these will follow Follow suit, we are currently at roughly 7% of unrolling 12-month EBIT growth. Return on trade working capital remains at roughly 8% and net debt to operational EBITDA at 2.4 times, not including the hybrid bonds, the 20 million hybrid bond and our recent convertible hybrid bond, which was issued in Q2. And if we look at returns on trade working capital, which is what we track operationally in our operating businesses and on a business area level, the group remains at roughly 26%. There's some slight variation due to working capital fluctuations, but in general electronics is performing at a good level and where we expect our businesses to be technical trade is slightly below our expectations for that business some cyclicality there in terms of profit and then some build up in working capital as well but in general working capital is managed relatively well across the portfolio the improvement in these figures we expect to come through improvement in profitability going forward. Then having a look at our financial position here we remain on a solid basis after the convertible bond issuance in Q2 as Kari mentioned. If we look at our maturity structure for our instruments, we have our reset date for the 20 million hybrid bond in Q1 2027. And then we have rolled over our senior depth facilities with their maturity date to 2028, of which the current 19 million euros would be remaining. On the facility side situation remains unchanged from Q2 so we have total facilities of 76 million euros of which 59 million is used and on a short-term liquidity basis cash and our short-term facilities we are at a comfortable 20 million level 20 million euro level and that combined with our acquisition facility gives us firepower to also pursue our acquisition strategy in the coming six to 18 months. Then looking forward, going forward to our business area views electronics. had a solid quarter sales growth of roughly 20%. Of this, roughly half is attributable to the acquisition of the Elfa Distri Elect sales operations. EBIT 1.1 million, EBIT margin decreasing slightly due to some higher fixed costs and some investments in the companies, including recruitments. The rolling 12-month EBIT level remained at a solid 4.6 million euro and the corresponding return on trade working capital on a good level, as mentioned in the previous slides. In general, the outlook for the businesses and the operating environment remains stable, but there are still uncertainties which persist. Customers are quite cautious with investment decisions The order books declined slightly for the business area, but they remain at a reasonable level as well. And on the highlights, as Kari mentioned, especially Milk continued its strong performance and has a good outlook going forward. On the acquisition side, the Alphadis Relic sales operations was completed in August. The integration of the operations is ongoing and proceeding well operationally. The business is trading lower than we expected at transaction time, but in the months we've owned and integrated the business, the trend has been in the right direction and we are confident that the that the business is on the right path and the team is doing a good job there. Then finally, on the technical trade side, sales grew in the third quarter by roughly 13% of this. 5% is attributable to the Spets Electrode acquisition in Q2 and roughly 8% organic. EBIT remained quite flat from last year's levels at 1.2 million. EBIT margin also declining slightly here due to higher fixed costs and some investments taken on OPEC side and personnel side in the companies. Return on trade working capital continued on quite stable and flat levels from previous quarters and profitability on a rolling 12-month basis the same. Here I would highlight on the company level the strong continued performance of our process filtration and water treatment business filter it which is having a having a strong year and continuing on a good path which which the team has built on on the previous few years order books grew for the technical trade business some larger deliveries and some orders in the current order book however are for 26 already especially for machinery and PM Nordic in general we have some positive signs in the industrial environment but uncertainty continues and Some caution in investment decisions still remains and especially construction side of the technical trade business remains quite modest still. That's it for the Q3 review on my part.

speaker
Kari
CEO

Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, then we jump into questions. I've published all the questions which are there. If you continue, I'll do a couple of questions, I think, to you. First of all, a bit of technical question on the numbers. The question goes there are one fewer employees in the group's operations than in the comparison period and yet the operating profit was significantly weaker than in the comparison period. What exactly caused this?

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-

Investor presentation