Asker Healthcare Group AB

Thank you and welcome to our Q4 presentation for Asker. I'm happy to present this another robust earning growth quarter for us. You know, I usually say that one of the best markets to be in is medical supplies, device and equipment. And regardless how nervous the world is or financially hard the climate is in the world, We never give up helping our loved ones. From we're born to we pass away, we need these supplies and that's what gives this fantastic market very stable. Q4 isolated, if we just summarize it first, we had a good quarter despite the headwind from tough comps in North. and FX. Net sales were up 9% to 4.7 billion. Adjusted EBIT A increased by 16% to 470 million, driven by strong performance in Western Central especially. We have some tough comps, as I mentioned, in North. The underlying business to regions, municipalities and private players in Nordic are still very strong but once in a while you get these extra orders from different areas this time 2024 we had deliveries to the Ukraine war and the preparedness across the Nordic regions so the comps were a bit tough but the underlying business is performing well I'm happy to say that we reached the EBITDA margin of 10%, as you know, that's one of our financial targets. Q4 is the strongest quarter of the year, so we will see some weaker numbers for a while, but it's always good to feel that you can break the ceiling of 10%, so we're very proud of that. Our cash flow was very good in the quarter as well. Even though we did four acquisitions in the quarter and a total of 14 during the full year, our leverage maintained at 2.26, which is good. And we have a very, very strong pipeline for new acquisitions coming the next year. Thank you. All right, looking at the full year then, the best way to follow Asker as an investor or if you're interested in our company is to look at the rolling 12 months. I would say it's a stable, slow moving, but in the right direction. And we're proud to see that we're exceeding our financial targets. The most important promise I have to you as investors is the adjusted EBITDA growth of over 15%. And despite the headwind and tough comps, we have 17% growth, which I'm very happy to see. The R over RK and the operational important measure to be a working capital light company. And we have 67% on a stable level. On the rolling 12 month, even though we reached 10% in Q4, rolling 12 is 9.5 and continue to increase, which is good to see. Net debt 2.26, giving us headroom together with a strong cash flow to continue our M&A journey. For the first time as a listed company, the board proposed a dividend of 30%, which is 39 öre per share. Looking at the longer time series, which I like to do because this is I've been in our many, many years and hopefully many years to come as well. We have a very exciting future ahead of us consolidating this market. And we have seen well above 15% CAGR over the years, quarter by quarter. And I know that some people are a bit nervous with one quarter and tough comps coming in, but the underlying business is performing very well. The twin engine, as we call it, with organic growth as the highest priority to grow faster than the market and get some efficiency gain. together then fueling the second engine of M&A has delivered quarter by quarter growth above 15%, which we're looking forward to deliver as well going forward. So that's the summer of the quarter. I'll leave the word to you, Tom, to go through the detailed financials.

Great. Thanks, Johan. Let's let's go through the numbers in a bit more detail. Just add some some color to what Johan has said. So if I start with the group as a whole net sales in Q4 up 9% of which minus 1% organic minus 4% from FX and the adjusted EBITDA in Q4 up 16% minus three organic minus three from FX. I'll come back to the different regions in a little bit more detail in a second. But as Johan said, the big picture, the big story is, of course, good, solid performance, both in West and Central and moderated by those tough comps in North. I think the important thing from our perspective is to be comfortable that the underlying organic growth is very much for us to deliver on that target to be faster than the market. And if we make that adjustment for those tough comps in 2024, we're confident that we're still doing that. The other headline note, perhaps a new one touched on it, the EBITDA margin reaching 10% for the first time. There's always some variation between the quarters and Q4 tends to be the strongest quarter of the year. But even so, a nice milestone for us to reach. And then if I turn to the right-hand side of this picture, the full year, very much in line with what we've seen all the way through the year and what we see in Q4. Organic growth of adjusted EBITDA at 4%, strong contribution from acquired growth, 16%. FX headwind that we've had all year and was particularly strong towards the end of the year of minus three. But overall, we're delivering adjusted EBITDA growth of plus 17%. And as Johan said, above our 15% external target. If I turn to the business areas one by one, let's start with business area north. Also, here important for us to be comfortable and confident that the core business, as Johan mentioned, continues to perform well. Obviously, the growth rate figures are significantly affected by the lower project-based sales that we've talked about a lot through the course of the year. And we estimate those to have been around 350 million of lower sales year on year. as a result of that, but also important for us to repeat that we remain optimistic. We see this as an area of lots of activity going forward and lots of opportunity for us, but the timing remains uncertain. Also in North, we should just touch on the new distribution center that we've talked about progressing very nicely down in Gothenburg, putting in some of the automation and some of the other technical installations during the quarter. and going very well. We expect the operations to be up and running towards the second half of 2026, and then us really starting to get the efficiency gains and the benefits into the P&L during 2027. And then if we look at the full year numbers on the far right-hand side, again, I think no great surprise, the adjusted EBITDA growth down at 9% for the negative reasons that I've described, and net sales down 4% in the region full year. Business Area West, strong performance from Region West, net sales up 20%, adjusted EBITDA up 36% in Q4, and the margin moving nicely above 9%. And actually, when we look at Region West, we see a very broad base of activity and improvements across the countries and across the companies in the region, both that strong focus on organic growth and operational improvements, plus of course the very positive contributions that we've got from the M&As that we've done, particularly the larger deals HSL that we did at the beginning of 2025 and scan module that came in during the middle of 2025. Both of those and all the other M&As contributing very strongly to the region. Small note, we did have some one-off cost relating to warehouse reorganization in the Netherlands. That money has now been spent and was a temporary effect just here in Q4. So that affects the organic EBITDA growth a little in the quarter, but we expect to see the efficiency benefits of that coming through during 2026. Full year figures on the right hand side. Good to see adjusted EBITDA growth at 39%, net sales growing at 20% on a full year basis. And then turning to our third region, Region Central, also a strong performance in Region Central, net sales up 17, adjusted EBITDA up 44% in the quarter, and also pleasing to see that the margin moving again above 9%. As I've talked about before, we've really focused on driving margin in Region Central and it's good to see that both the newly acquired companies have performed strongly. They really help improving the margin mix, but they also of course help with the top line and the growth in the region. But actually the organic focus on margin improvements in some of our older businesses in the region is also bearing fruit. We see those efficiency benefits coming through and a bit of a focus on phasing out some lower margin product categories in some of our companies. On a full year basis, adjusted EBITDA growth up 52%, with a big chunk of that, of course, coming from the acquired growth, but organic growth also delivering very strongly for Region Central during the year. And then net sales growth, a little slower and a little slower on the organic growth you see there. But as I've said, we are occasionally happy to sacrifice a little bit of growth to get the margins up. And that's what we've seen in Region Central. A brief word on RO over RK, EBITDA over Networking Capital, our key internal performance metric, keeping the organization, keeping the operations focused on cash and cash delivery. Happy to see that that is maintained at a high level. I've talked about it before, but we're always pulled in two directions on this metric because the M&As that we do tend to have a lower working capital efficiency, working capital utilization efficiency, and we're constantly diluting the overall group picture. But we're working to improve things the whole time. And so as those two things pull in different directions to deliver a flat result on an ongoing basis is actually something that we're very happy with. It shows that the business is working and focusing on the right things and generating plenty of cash that we use to fuel the M&A engine that Johan mentioned and actually that we can see a little bit of here on the next page when we look at the cash flow. Solid cash flow, full year and in Q4. The good performance on the top line, of course, contributing to that, but also, as we keep emphasising, this real focus on working capital efficiency, delivering. fully a capex running at a slightly higher run rate than I think is normal for this business. But we've talked about that as well, where we have the big new investment in the warehouse in Gothenburg, which as I say, is progressing nicely. And then you also see on this page, we had a relatively high level of acquisitions in 2025 post IPO, but that was funded to some extent by the equity that we took in during the IPO that you see on the financing line on this slide. And then just one more from me before I hand it back to Johan. Stable leverage just below 2.3. Also pleasing to see that this part of the model is working well for us, giving us the capacity to continue to drive the acquisition agenda using our own cash flow. We obviously remain extremely committed to our 2.5x threshold. and we're confident that we can manage that continued acquisition agenda and use our strong own cash flows to continue to buy interesting and exciting businesses around Europe. And with that, I hand it back to you, Jan.

Thanks, Tom. Okay, talking a little bit more about acquisition, our second engine then. 2025 was an exceptional year. We had a little bit extra cash coming from the IPO, where we used this to buy three platform acquisitions, as you know. So the activity had been a little bit above normal, but 14 signed acquisition in 2025. We entered into four new countries, four new markets, and continuing with this strong pipeline going forward. So I think we now have come, I don't know, half the way to the fully consolidated Europe. We are now present in 19 markets and a very, very nice and interesting years ahead of us. continue our journey. Being the market leader in this market, it has been very good to see how we can attract the best niche players across Europe in different markets and being very disciplined when it comes to quality of the business, quality of management, and also being disciplined on multiples. As we have mentioned before, we pay usually six to eight times for normal deals. a little bit more for a bigger platform. But that has been very, very good to see that our strategy continues to deliver. If we dig down into two examples, which is good to do, I mean, it's all about numbers in this quarterly report, but for us it's delivering some 70,000 boxes per day ending up at the nurses, doctors offices with critical products and solutions. and one of those companies is Van Heek Medicals. The first one I'm going to present is in the same area that we are very strong already in the Netherlands. They are a leading provider of medical supplies in the Benelux region. They've been around for a very long time, actually since 1926. This is a good example how we buy sometimes three-generation companies with very, very good and stable business in their own niche. And this company are providing branded and private label medical supplies for diabetes, incontinence and wound care, primarily to home care, pharmacists and nursing homes in the Benelux region. Some 350 million SEK in revenue a little bit more than 60 employees. So it's a good representation of how an acquisition can look like. Also a positive addition to our EBITDA margin. The next example is Inomedicus. This is a more niche company, highly niche actually, with the urology and prostate cancer selling to specialists across Europe. and here is a good example of how it's not only about supplies, device and equipment, but rather the competence in a therapeutical area where you need a mix of products, a mix of services and also expertise in software and solutions. So being a partner to healthcare, you need to be an expert in understanding the nurses and doctors everyday life and put together a basket and the competencies that makes their life easier. and that's the type of company we buy and together we're now more than 60 companies. We're becoming stronger as a group using the efficiency and scale to be able to attract more companies and help the healthcare sector in a good way. So two good examples and we're very happy to have them on board. So if I just would summarize the Q4 then. Solid quarter with an adjusted EBITDA growth over 16%, reaching the EBITDA margin of 10%, which is great to see. Strong development in West and Central, driven by acquisitions and operational improvements. And as Tom and I have mentioned, the tough comps in North is of course disappointing that we didn't get those deals that we got in 24. But going ahead, we think that this area could come in with some very attractive deals in the future as well. 14 signed acquisitions, all of them margin accretive. So we're happy to see that the companies we buy actually have a positive mix effect on our EBITDA margin as well. So all in all, a good year and we continue to deliver on our twin engine and with a strong cash flow, which is very, very important. We see no reason why 2026 shouldn't be as exciting as previous years as well. So with that, I think we stop the summarizing part and go to Q&A.