Hexagon Ab B Shs New

Good morning. Thank you very much for attending the call. We are pleased to report a strong third quarter with organic growth of 8%, very solid back to back across most divisions. Innovation has been a key driver for us in Q3. We see progress with the investments in cloud platforms, good adoption for autonomy solutions, automated inspection, newly launched product, having good reception from customers, very differentiated reality capture technologies growing very solidly in double digits. All of this gives us a good competitive momentum in most areas. And of course, innovation is also helping us offset the macro weakness that we see in some of the verticals and the regions that we are exposed to. Growth margin came in resilient at 65%, operating margin at 29%, but net of effects, we saw incremental volumes coming in at very good marginal profitability, as we will see later. Also, thanks to the initial savings from the rationalization program that we just launched, we managed to trigger more than 40 million in annualized savings. I'll give you a little more detail on this a few slides later. Cash from operations grew in line with revenue, while cash conversion was negatively impacted by working capital and impact that will reverse. In the quarter, we announced the acquisition of Hardline, Canadian based, a provider of technology solutions for remote control, roughly 12 million in sales, strengthening our portfolio for the mining industries. In slide five, we give you more detail about the breakdown of growth as it came in through the reporting segment and the divisions. The start of the showing Q3 was certainly on the right hand side, autonomy and positioning, growing at 41%, driven by defense, by agriculture, by autonomy and ADAS solutions in automotive. Geosystems grew at six, very solidly, considering the macro environment when it comes to construction and infrastructure. The SIG division declined by five percentage points as we keep redefining the perimeter of our core business in SIG and keep it as much as possible focused on software and recurring revenue rather than unrelated and dilutive services. In IES, manufacturing intelligence grew by eight percentage points, a continuation of the good momentum that we've seen this year. And ALI grew by 10 percentage points, both in the core design areas, as well as in asset management. If we're moving on to slide six, an update on the rationalization program that we just launched. In summary, three months ago, we announced an investment of 198.6 million, which we fully recognize in our Q3 P&L to support the creation of 160 to 170 million of annualized savings, fully realized by 2025. A quick reminder of what are we addressing with this investment is about GNA synergies across the divisions, is about optimizing the real estate footprint of the group, tackling some of the areas of underperformance that we have within our operations, as well as making one-off investments in automation, digital and physical automation that are gonna create cost savings across the group. In Q3, the program had a cash impact of 16 million and triggered, as I said before, roughly 45 million of annualized savings. Six millions of savings were realized in Q3. In the quarter, we have also completed a small disposal within the SAG division, realizing a small gain, as we keep looking at opportunities for rationalization and better capital allocation.

Ben? Yeah, thanks, Paolo. Good morning. So onto the breakdown of organic growth by region and industry. We saw growth in every region, which is good, but a similar trend to last quarter, a slower development in North American Western Europe, with most segments growing but at low single-digit rates and declines in some construction markets. China still grew organically in the quarter at 6%, a little bit slower than Q2. What we see there is still weakness in construction markets, slightly slower demand than previously in automotive, but general industry and electronics still strong. Elsewhere, we still see good growth in the Middle East and rest of Asia, especially markets like India, South Korea, and Indonesia. By segments surveying, we see a weaker trend in North American Western Europe, but this is being offset at the moment by very good growth in the reality capture solutions, including the BLK lines. Power, energy, and mining, still very good momentum across the board. In discrete manufacturing, we see good growth globally in aerospace and defense, a solid development in electronics and general manufacturing, but as I said, we're seeing some slowdown in automotive markets after a very strong last few years. Next slide, please. In terms of geospatial enterprise solutions, they delivered sales of 666 million euros during the quarter, so that's organic growth of 7%, and an operating margin of 30.6, which is slightly down on last year. As David will come on to show, the underlying incremental margin was very good, but currency was a drag on the margin. If you look at it by subdivision, geosystems continues to gradually slow. We're seeing very good growth in mining and reality capture solutions offset the slowdown we see in surveying and construction products. Machine control, which is construction focused, was fairly stable overall. For geosystems overall, new products, so those products that we launched in the last 12 months, including the BLK360 Generation 2, that added around 3% to geosystems growth overall, so showing the payback we're getting on the investment. SIG, as Paolo mentioned, continues to have the drag from the exit of low margin defense contracts. We expect a similar development in Q4, and then we'd expect growth to resume as we start to lap easier comparatives. Public safety was flat in the quarter, but has very good order momentum, and they are building a good pipeline for next year. AMP, an exceptional quarter with 41% organic growth. This included a one-off perpetual deal, which accounted for around 25 points of the growth, so I would say it's probably mid-teens underlying. Still see very good underlying trends in their core markets, agriculture, aerospace and defense, and marine. We expect that to carry into the final quarter of the year. Next slide, please. In terms of industrial enterprise solutions, they had sales of 6.86 million euros, so that's organic growth of 9%. In terms of the margin of 28.7%, again, the negative drag on that was currency. By division, if you look at manufacturing intelligence, they did 8% organic growth. Good growth in aerospace and manufacturing, continued momentum in China, but automotive markets slowing. Order growth for MI during the quarter was slightly slower than revenues, was running at a mid-single digit growth rate. For ALI, 10% organic growth, a very good performance overall. Across industries and products, we continue to see a slow improvement in process industries, including oil and gas, and the benefits of the diversification efforts we've pushed as a strategy in that division for the last few years, with them having nice wins in both mining and pulp and paper segments. The quarter did benefit from a couple of large perpetual deals, which probably added a couple of percent to the growth rate, but we see good momentum in this business overall. And for IES, both EAM and ETQ had a good quarter, both growing at double-digit rates, with faster growth than that in the SAS segments. Over to you, David.

Thanks, Ben. So I'll just start with a brief summary of the elements that I would like to cover over the next five slides. That's an outline of the strong operational performance in the quarter, explaining how our diverse geographical footprint introduces some material currency movements from the comparative perspective, and finally to expand on the cashflow in the quarter. So just walking through the income statement, we reported ,352,1 operating net sales, which was a reported growth of 2%, had currency impact of 7%, 2% from structure, which was an organic therefore of 8%. The adjusted gross margin was 65.5, up 0.3 from the previous year. We delivered an EBIT of 393 million, which was an EBIT margin percentage of 29.1, again, up 2%, as in line with the reported sale. The earnings before taxes were 350 million, with the impact of the interest expense of 43 versus the prior year of nine. And the other lines that highlight is the adjustment line, which was 246.2 million, which includes the one-time charge of 198.6, the usual PPA amortization of 29, and the LTIP of 16. Moving on to the next slide, just to reiterate the strength of the margin performance, we have 65.5 to 65.2, as I mentioned, but this long-term graph shows that this is one of the underlying cornerstones of Hexagon's improved EBIT over a long time horizon, driven by a richer software mix, and the improved margins through next generation products and devices and launch. And on a rolling basis, this was increased by 1% from 65 to 66. Moving to the next slide, we have the profitability bridge. So here I introduce again, the significant currency impact. So on the top line, we had an 87 million currency impact on translation, which was driven by the devaluation of the CMY and the Japanese yen of 12%, and the US dollar of 7%. That forward through with it a 34 million translation impact on EBIT level. That was a significant dilution to group margin because our sales footprints in the US and in China exceed our cost footprint. So devaluation in that currency is a drag, and we also saw a small appreciation in the Swiss franc where we have the opposite, and that again added to the drag that we saw. In addition to the translation, we have a net transaction impact of seven on top of the 34 to take us to 41, which was 9.7 in the prior year and 2.9 in the current year. So all in all, the currency impact is a drag of 47%, or 1.1 on an accretion dilution perspective. Moving on to the next column, which is structure. That is the acquisitions that have been in the group for less than 12 months. We had a contribution in net sales of 20 million and operating earnings of six, and therefore a 30% margin. So just above the group's prior year, so adding a small amount on the accretive level. The result from that is the organic. That's the difference between those elements. And there you see that the delivered profit was 42 million. That's a 42% drop through on profitability. This is where the savings from the rationalization program would be reflected. And that would be an accretive of 0.9. So the overall conclusion of this is that without the FX impact, we would have seen a 1% improvement in the operating margin for the group. Moving on to the next slide. This is a cashflow analysis. Just wanted to start on the top line is the EBIT that we've already seen reported with the 2% growth. It's there for reference for the calculation of the cash conversion. The next line is the cashflow from operations before change in working capital excluding taxes, which is 489 million. That's a 6% increase. So the increase on that, the cashflow line at that level, exceeding the operating earnings, showing that we're actually leveraging, that's caused by an increase in the outback from the depreciation and amortization. The investment level was constant year over year at 141 million. So cashflow post investments increases to 8%. We could have introduced currency also in this slide, but to keep it simple, we didn't, but it would have had a material impact if you consider currency drag on these numbers. The dilution on the cash conversion comes from the next number, which is the change in working capital, where we saw a challenging 98 million absorption from that element. And that is the element that has reduced the cash conversion down to 64. I'll come back to that on the next slide, just to give some context around that 98. Flowing down through the rest of the cashflow statement, we have taxes paid of 61, which changes based on timing and the difference between estimated tax payments and actual tax payments. And as I mentioned on the first slide, we see that the high interest cost is diluting, which brings us down to the bottom of the cashflow statement. Moving on to the next slide, we have the working capital to sales trend. This is a long time horizon. So we see a very good development on the long-term working capital to roll in 12 months sales, decreasing downwards. That's as we improve the software mix through acquisition. You see the point where the 10% line dissects the curve. That is the point where we went into the COVID impact. And you see at that point, a significant reduction in the working capital as we had an impact on the hardware, more material to the more resilient software business that didn't decline as much. The ratio then slowly climbs back as we move into a more normalized range. And this was a protractive process as we were navigating the component sourcing issues, which are now largely resolved, but has caused that slow take back to the disexisting level. So now we feel that we're moved back to a more normalized element driven by the strong growth that we've seen over that time horizon. In the top right hand box, just to give some breakdown, I've split the 98 million change in working capital. So that was an increase in receivables of 35 million. We had a very strong closeout to the quarter. We saw some large perpetual deals, especially in the ALI division, which meant that billings were up 12 million in September. I don't have any concerns on the DSO side or on the receivable side that sits there at around the 84, which is in line with our average. We saw a small decrease in inventory, which I would have actually probably hoped would have been a little bit stronger. We're not trying to de-stock or anything like that, but I think we've reached a level of inventory that we should be able to operate with. And that has a consequence through on the liabilities line because we're actually slowing down the inventory purchasing. We see a reduction on the payable side. Obviously DPO is turned faster than DII, and therefore we see that impact before we see it into inventory. The movement on deferred revenue is the normal phasing we would have expected to see between Q2 and Q3 and the accrued expenses likewise. So just to conclude, the summary was a strong delivery quarter backed by the continued organic growth, improved operational performance in both EBIT and the cash from an operating perspective, masked by the FX and a cyclical tie-up in working capital.

Thank you, David. I wanna now take you through a couple of examples of innovations and good sales execution. We've talked about how innovation clearly came in in the quarter to help us compete well and help us offset some of the weakness in the core markets that we try and address. And at the same time, keep driving gross margin up over the long period. So if we look at slide 17, this is a story that comes from InterGio. InterGio is one of the world's leading trades fair for all aspects that are related to geo information and land management with 17,000 trade visitors from more than a hundred countries. So it's a very well attended event. Hexagon has been awarded first ever company, the software and the hardware innovation awards in the Wichman Innovations Award category for this year with two elements of innovation. On the one side, the Reality Cloud Studio that is powered by HXDR, which is a SaaS application that is really destined to consume in a very user friendly way, data from scanners and BLKs. And at the same time, we've won the Innovation Award for the BLK to Go Pulse that has been launched during the trade show for the hardware category. Just to give you an order of magnitude, we now have roughly 20,000 users of HXDR. This is our 3D platform to consume in a very seamless way. Data points from a multiplicity of sources, fuse the data and really build value across a multiplicity of applications from reality capture to geospatial content, the construction industry and industrial facilities thanks to our partnership with NVIDIA. The BLK family installed base keeps expanding as well. And every time that we have new, more rich usage of BLK, we create data that we can go and monetize through HXDR and ecosystems of applications that we're building on HXDR. On slide 18, if we move from the construction to the mining sector, let's talk about an expansion of our activities with Glencore. Glencore, of course, is one of the world's largest global natural resources companies. He's a major producer of more than 60 commodities, operates more than 60 mines and oil production assets in over 35 countries. Glencore and Hexagon have a strategic partnership. We have progressively rolled out our technologies to deliver productivity and safety through applications and solutions such as operator fatigue management, collision avoidance solutions, vehicle intervention systems. In Q3, this is the last commitment, the latest commitment of Glencore to our solutions in Chile. Glencore has acquired roughly 200 collision avoidance solutions for a deal value of more than 4 million over a couple of years. Still within the mining portfolio in slide 19, we did announce the acquisition, as I said before, of Hardline in the quarter. Hardline specializes in remote control solutions and network infrastructure. So this is where you allow tele-remote operation for heavy machinery from a control station that is located in a safe area on the surface or underground regardless of the distance. In this case, the technology of Hardline has been used to deliver safety and productivity for a dam operator. This is an existing Hexagon customer that is promptly adopting this newly acquired solution. Moving on to slide 20, if we move from the geosystems to our public safety portfolio, we have had a significant commercial success in Brazil in the quarter where Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city in the country with more than 9 million people has selected our own core solution. This is our newly developed computer-aided dispatch system. This is a five years long commitment for software implementation and support. Or other than our core dispatch capabilities, these agencies will also deploy our assistive AI to recognize and tackle security threats. I would say more in general when we look at SIG and a new focus on these applications, we see good uptake in terms of pipeline, trying to set the foundation for a good growth of public safety into 2024. In slide 21, ALI has added a ninth consecutive quarter of growth. So very good momentum here among other significant deals. We have closed a large SaaS agreement with one of the largest midstream oil and gas operators in Canada. In projects of this nature that are highly competitive, the benefit of offering design and asset management data combined through similar data models, fused, integrated is very important. We help customers create a reliable single source of truth and we see incrementally the benefits of having these technologies in the same portfolio and being able to take a customer on a digitalization journey from the point of design to maximizing the operations and asset utilization. Still within EES, if we move on slide 22, talk about manufacturing intelligence, MIS has another solid quarter of growth. We talked about software, we talked about automation as a key success factor. We are rolling out our platform Nexus. Now Nexus has little more than 6,000 active customer accounts. We keep on adding new applications on Nexus. We keep on adding capabilities to capitalize on our installed base and drive upselling and cross-selling processes. In this case, we're having good success with our connected worker capabilities. Miller, a North American producer of water infrastructure has selected Nexus connected worker tools for better data integrity, operational efficiency, quality control and inventory management across their plants. Here too, this is a SaaS commitment that is gonna materialize over a couple of years. Still within MI on slide 23, this is a commercial success with a company called Ork. This is an automation house, a family business, one of the critical suppliers to the VW Group for their local operations in Czech Republic. Ork has invested in our newly launched automated inspection cell called Presto. This is a family of products that are aided by the laser tracker capability to offer not only speed and productivity, but also unparalleled accuracy in the inspection. These are situations in which relatively expensive automation cells are justified and backed by customers by the trade off with speed and readiness of feedback that we offer with this next level sort of automation capabilities. This is really an enabler for productivity for these customers. So in conclusion, in slide 24, we're very pleased with recording another quarter of sustained continued growth. We think innovation has got a lot to do with the way we are competing and we are setting some of the slowness that we see in the end market. Margins were resilient. We've seen the substantial impact of effects in our reported e-buts, and we have seen a bridge to show strong operational leverage across the business. The rationalization plan is something that we're very focused on because it's gonna provide the next level of opportunity to gear and leverage as growth kicks in. Cash conversion came in slower than we wanted it, driven by working capital, but there's a lot of focus on it. And last but not least in terms of governance, from the nomination committee to the board to the leadership team, we're all very focused on this theme, both in terms of board composition and in terms of transparency of information to ease the access to Hexagon, to this broader community. So we look forward in slide 25 to welcoming as many of you as possible to the Capital Markets Day that we're gonna host on the 7th of December in London. And of course, we will focus on our vision for the group, new ways in which we want to build high fidelity digital twins and monetize them across our software centric solutions. We wanna talk more about our strategy, the goals, and how do we plan to achieve those goals. And last but not least, of course, share with you ideas in terms of additional disclosures and improve communication to help, again, this community map our journey in the best possible way. So please contact the Investor Relations team to register and find out more details. Thank

you very much. With that, we're ready for questions, please, operator.

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will take our first question. And the question comes from the line of Sven Mock from Barclays. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Great, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe we can start with the question on the working capital. Earlier you spoke about a more normalized working capital level now. Previously, you often talked about that you expect working capital to improve going forward. So it is right to assume that you don't expect a meaningful release in working capital going forward?

No, I think we would over the longer time horizon always look to drive down working capital. And I expect that over, as we did in the years up until the COVID point, we saw an improved process. It does get incrementally harder when you get down to the levels that we're achieving. But I would still expect that we would continue to drive an improvement process through the working capital.

Okay, but in the near term, we shouldn't expect a working capital release?

I mean, I think you have to look at the cyclical process over a period of time, I would. Whether it's one quarter, two quarters, that's always up for debate. But yeah, we would expect that we would see an improvement.

Okay, and then a question on the intangible capex. They stabilized around the level of 120 million compared to last level. Should we expect it to stay at this level or could it increase further?

No, I think that's now a stable level. We are an innovation company. We do look to invest. We need to continue to invest, but we also have to invest at the right level. And we feel that that is the right level at this moment in time. Perfect.

And then just the last question. You had some impairments in the quarter. Can you explain what they relate to?

Yeah, so the 17 million impairments in the quarter, that was related to overlapping technologies. And a small amount of the NRI we used was for some obsolete technology that we had. It was pretty much a 50-50 split.

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Alexander Vogo from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yeah, good morning, everybody. Thanks

for taking a question. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the dynamics of the reinvestment of your cost savings versus investment in the business. It's something that you've maybe slightly touched on in your answer to the previous question. But you talked when you initially announced that cost savings program, that you'd be reinvesting it in the business. So I just wanna make sure that we've understand the trajectory of savings, I guess, cadence of when you're expecting to come in and how supportive or otherwise that would be of margins more generally over the coming few quarters, I guess. And then the second question would be just around China. I was quite surprised at how strong your business has been there on the manufacturing side. I think the construction weakness you call out on the GES side is kind of makes sense. But the performance on manufacturing is quite strong relative to both what I would have expected from the market and what we've seen from other industrial end markets. So just wondering if you could comment a little bit on the dynamics around that, whether this is now something of a trend that we can see or whether it's a bit more of a one-off. Thank

you. Yeah, Alex, good morning. Thank you for your question. So on the first one in terms of the rationalization program, yeah, we are determined to keep as much as possible of those savings. We think that from an R&D perspective, we are trending on a good level. We're doing good work and putting that capital at work when it comes to G&A. We see opportunities for rationalization. So we think we are in a good place also to offset inflationary pressures into next year. We think that our areas of innovation in which we have front-loaded the technology work with respect to investment in sales and marketing. So on a smaller portion, we will re-utilize some of those savings to make sure that we get in the market the right level of momentum around newly released technologies, trying to create channels that are dedicated and trying to, again, spend in the marketplace the differentiation that we think we've earned from a technology development point of view. In terms of China, I agree with you. I mean, China's done very well in manufacturing. I mean, if you look at their performance in the last quarters, we've been always close to the double-digit mark for MI. Construction, as you know, is difficult. I think we're gonna have a good finish to the year, but it's a market that remains challenged. In the quarter, we have also shrunk our exposure to the AMP and the SIG portfolios within China. So we're basically trying to focus on technologies that we can localize and for which we can be very competitive across all customer profiles. I think we're gonna continue to have decent momentum in MI in China for the next three to six months, but I also think that it's a tough environment, so beyond that, it's hard to have some visibility.

Okay, great, thank you.

Thank

you.

We will take our next question. Your next question comes

from the line of Naiseng Neng from Berenberg. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for the questions. I've got two, if I may. Starting with the working capital movement or related to the working capital movement, I was wondering maybe if you could share directionally the progression in your aging profile of your receivables, please, and also the level of provisions against the ageing. Yeah, that's definitely there on your balance sheet. And the second question is around the slowdown that you've lacked in the auto market, in the MI segment. If we could get a little bit more color in terms of the geos and then the product segments that you saw the slowdown in, that'd be really helpful, thank you.

Yep, so just on the DSO side, I mean, we had a movement of one day on DSO. There was no material, it's at 84, it's within our normal range. So there's nothing really happening of a material nature. In terms of our bad debt provision, yeah, I mean, it's standing, it's fairly constant. I don't see any issues on that side. That's why I expressed it. I'm confident on the payable side. I think we had a strong invoicing period. It's a tough environment, so I won't shy away from that. There's clearly everybody is looking at the cash at the moment. The interest costs are high, and we do see a little bit more stickiness at times, and we definitely see our purchasing side, people want payment, but it's in a tough environment, but nothing of concern.

Yeah, and on the automotive side, as you can see in the arrows chart, and then we saw down arrows in North America and China. That market has been very strong for the last few years, A, you're hitting tougher comps, and B, we did see a couple of projects rolling off. That just meant it was sequentially a bit weaker. So I wouldn't say it's dramatic, which is calling out that that market is not growing, like general manufacturing, aerospace, electronics, and some of the others.

Shelford, thank you very much.

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Deberg from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Thank you, operator, and hello, Paolo Ben and David. Yeah, a question, if I may, on what you see in terms of the trend of reallocation of manufacturing facilities. We know obviously Vietnam, India, et cetera, are seeing some new buildups from parts of the world. Some of them are moving from China, et cetera. Can you comment on if you will need to do any major changes to your own geographical structure? Are you ramping up presence in these markets in any major level? Thanks.

Yeah, thank you. For the moment, we're very focused on the rationalization efforts that we've talked about. In terms of facilities broadly defined, we have a footprint that is wide, and as you know, we're relatively acquisitive, so those acquisitions tend to come in with real estate as collateral damage, so to speak. So we have roughly 500 facilities across the group. We've talked about the rationalization of 20 to 25%, and so that's occupying a lot of our calories. I mean, as you know, we have a good footprint in most regions. What we are trying to do is to become smarter in cross-using facilities and skill sets across divisions because currency plays in your strategy, growth and maturity of certain product categories play in your strategy, so we're trying to make the very best decisions for the future.

Perfect, thank you. If I may only follow up on the financial expense, Q3 totaling 46 million, interest coverage rate of 3.2 down from 31. Can you comment a little bit on how much of this was currency effects and how much is interest cost from your gross debt?

Yeah, the majority of it is interest cost from the growth debt,

yeah.

Okay,

thanks. Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Balaji

Tirupati from Citi, please go ahead, your line is open.

Thank you, Balaji Tirupati from Citi. Two questions from my side, if I may. Firstly, how would you characterize group's performance -to-date versus internal expectations? Which areas have surprised positively and where you have seen higher than anticipated? What are the anticipated weakness or need for improvement going forward? And second question would be on companies, software part of business, where Hicksagon has not talked much about subscription and SaaS strategy. Would it be possible to share group's current philosophy on the same?

Yeah, sure, hi there. On software and the strategy around a shift to subscription or SaaS, that's something we're gonna focus on at the Capital Market today. Give you information around where we are today and the plan we have for the next few years. As you know, the rough split for the group is 40% of revenues come from hardware. Around 20% is services and the rest of it is software and software maintenance. And within software, only around 10% of group sales are perpetual. And that's either perpetual licenses from pure software businesses or it's perpetual licenses that are sold with a piece of hardware. So there's not a huge piece of perpetual software that needs to shift. It's something we're doing already in specific businesses. If you look at ALI, for example, or ETQ or EAM. So we're not expecting a dramatic change. We obviously want to push the businesses in that direction. So we'll put more color around that at the Capital Market today in a few weeks time. In terms of growth, I mean, if you look back to last year, November, December, 2022, people were very cautious, I think, on the economy for 23. So we've been surprised, I think, all year how strong the growth momentum has been in discrete manufacturing, in geo systems, and across the group. And as Paolo mentioned, I think we do see markets deteriorating now in certain areas, particularly construction. But as expected, we've managed to offset that with good innovation and product launches.

Very helpful, thank you. Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question

comes from the line of Eric Goulrang from SEB. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Thank you, I have two questions. The first one on cash outlays related to restructuring program. We didn't see much of that in the quarter. Some more visibility on that. Could you guide for how to expect cash to be impacted over the next couple of quarters? And then the final question is more general on the outlook. What's the, in terms of sort of growth rates, exiting the quarter compared to average growth rates, what do you expect to see in the fourth quarter here, any notable slowdown in growth compared to what you saw in Q3? Thank

you. Okay, so I'll take the first one on the cash. So yeah, you have the 16 million cash impact that we put on the quarter from the NRI. I would expect it to increase. Yeah, the plan is moving, the plan is progressing well. Clearly, we're gonna see that number increasing over the next couple of quarters. So you can expect an increase in that number. Yeah,

and I think on growth rates, Eric, as I mentioned when we went through the divisions, there's not a dramatic shift underway. I think all the growth in MI was more mid-single digit, so it was a little bit lower than the revenue growth that we saw in the quarter. Geosystems has been on a slow decline through this year. That's probably fair that that continues, but we do expect the growth in reality capture and mining, geospatial content to offset the softness that we see in construction markets. For AMP, they obviously had an exceptional quarter because of the one-time order that we called out, so that won't recur. But we do see very good underlying momentum in the agriculture markets, aerospace and defense, and even marine coming back a little bit. SIG, the drag from the service contracts will be similar in Q4 as it was in Q3, but as I say, that will lap itself going into next year. We expected to get back to growth. And ALI, a couple of points of growth came from some larger perpetual deals, as Paolo mentioned, but we see good underlying momentum in that business into Q4 and good growth in EAM. So we'll have to see how the overall economy pans out through Q4, but as far as we see at the moment, that's the best commentary that we can give.

Very clear, thank you.

Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Ola Sidiho from ABG. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Hi, everyone, it's Ola from ABG. Just a question on pricing from here. Can you elaborate a bit on how much of your growth that came from, let's say, abnormal pricing, given the inflationary trends that we've seen? And that's the first one. And second one, if you could talk a little bit on how you see the restructuring savings phase out throughout the coming quarters. Will there be a significantly bigger effect in Q4, Q1, et cetera? How should we think about that? Thanks.

So in terms of pricing, I mean, I think there's two dynamics. In the, I mean, as you know, we have a portfolio now that is pretty evenly split in between hardware, software, with then services accounting for 20%. There's an incremental portion of our software portfolio that is tied to multi-year contracts. So I would say that the impact that you get from price actions is a little more diffused over the longer timeframe. In terms of hardware, just to give you an order of magnitude, I think the pricing played in the core geosystems devices for about two and a half to three percentage points, all in all. So we will see, but we're gonna keep on trying and being very proactive from a pricing perspective. Also, we think that we compete well. We tend to have devices that are on the premium side of the market. We have a lot of value to deliver. So we have to be very obsessive over pricing very well. And then in terms of the restructuring, I mean, I think we're gonna have a similar level of cash out in the next quarter, as we have had in Q3 or in a similar ballpark. We've talked about the four types of initiatives that we're working on. Not all of those will be actioned at the same time. We're trying to front load tackling underperforming businesses first. And then initiatives that have to do with facilities, initiatives that have to do with GNA optimization across divisions will probably be phased across the period that we have introduced at the moment of the announcement.

Excellent, thank you. And could I also follow up very quickly on how you see effects going forward now in Q4?

Yeah, I mean, obviously we have the 7% that we've talked about. I mean, there's still effects in Q4, but it is definitely coming down. Obviously that's as rates stands today. So I obviously can't predict where rates are going to end up, but based on where they stand today, it's reducing from the 6% that you've seen.

Thank you, appreciate it, thanks.

Thank you, we will take our final question. Your final question comes from the line of Victor Charleston from Danx. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Thank you very much, operator. So you mentioned that the reality capture and new product launches had a positive 3% growth impact in Q3, was this the first quarter with meaningful impact? I'll start there please.

Yeah, I know, I mean, the product was obviously launched a few quarters ago, but it takes a while to ramp up. So it had a smaller contribution last quarter than three, but yeah, we called it out this quarter because it was more material.

Okay, and then for, you know, basically for more color on the surveying business within your special, I guess, 3% growth on the full year special implies an 8% growth impact on the surveying part of the business. If I try to look on, you know, the underlying quality surveying market, if we exclude that impact from new product launches, it seems that organic growth was fairly negative from a historical perspective, you know, around 5% negative. Where, you know, would you say that, is this what we should sort of think about the coming quarters? Also, are you saying that we are, you know, on fairly low levels now, if you see my question?

And I understand, you know, there's a lot of moving parts within geosystems. I mean, the way I would cut it is you probably got 55, 60% of revenues that are exposed to construction. The larger part of that is surveying and construction products, but you also have machine control, you have construction software. But the surveying bit this quarter was weaker, and it was probably down, you know, similar magnitude to what you say, maybe a little bit more. But that's being offset by the 40 to 45% of geosystems, which is not tied to construction. So you have 20% or so which is mining, and we see very good growth momentum and expect that to continue in Q4. Reality capture is around 15% now, so it's a much bigger part of the pie, and we see very good momentum with products like the BLK360 Gen2. We have a geospatial content business in there where we sell map data, it's 5 to 10% of sales, mostly subscription or recurring. So, you know, I think at the moment, you do see a weaker trend on the construction driven products. It gets pulled forward a little bit because that's the area where we sell product via intermediaries, distributors, you know, so they react more quickly to a downturn, which is why you're seeing the weakness now. But as you saw in the quarter, the other products offset it, and we would expect the same for Q4.

Okay, that's clear. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back for closing remarks.

Yeah, thank you very much, operator. Thanks everyone for dialing in this morning. Again, we're very pleased about the progress that we made in the quarter, and we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in a couple of weeks time in London on the 7th of December. Thank you.