Asker Healthcare Group AB

Hello, thank you everyone taking some time of hopefully some vacation listening to Asker Healthcare Group's Q2 report. We are happy and proud to present a 24% adjusted EBITDA growth, of which 6% was organic for this quarter. We're also happy to see a 10% EBITDA margin for this quarter, so that's good. If we take in a few highlights one by one, the net sales was 4.7 billion this quarter, up with 18%, out of which five was organic. The adjusted EBITDA, 471 million, up with 24%, as I mentioned, 6% organic, and the margin 10%, which was up half a percentage point from last year. We have a good and robust both cash flow and efficient working capital. So our most important KPI R over RK or EBITDA over Networking Capital was 69%. We work hard, as you know, with ESG and sustainability and MSCI rated us AAA for the first time. So that's also something we're happy to see and it helps us winning tenders, especially in the Northern Europe. and it actually supports our business in a very good way. In terms of acquisitions, we had one new acquisition in Ireland in July and we have passed 50% of our annual targets in acquisitions which we'll touch upon a little bit later. As we usually say, the best way to follow us as a company is on a rolling 12-month basis and that's We have a target of delivering more than 15% of EBITDA growth. It's now on 21%. Our overall K is 69. And our margin on the rolling 12-month basis is now steadily growing to 9.8. Our leverage, as you know, important, staying under 2.5 times. And we're now at 2.37 times. So that's... giving us some headrooms upwards. We usually show these pictures as well. We have had many, many years of good growth in this company, and we have hopefully many years to come, both organically as well as via M&A. And now we're adding another bar to the right in this picture, also way above the 15% growth, which is good to see. I'll hand over to Tom.

Great. Thanks, Johan. Let's go into some of the numbers in a little bit more detail, but very much supporting the message that Johan gave there, continued solid growth across the group. So net sales in Q2 up 18%, 5% of that organic, as Johan mentioned, zero FX effect in this particular quarter. Adjusted EBITDA, again, as Johan mentioned, up 24%, of which 6%. organic and again no FX effect on the EBIT A line margins at 10% and I think for us what's pleasing to see is that we do see growth coming from all parts of the group all regions and the vast majority of companies performing very nicely and the newly acquired companies coming in in a good way supporting the growth of the group as a whole and also helping to drive that margin expansion that we see when we look at the overall figures If we look on the right hand side of this page, we see the half year picture, January to June, also very much in line with what we said at Q1. As you'll remember, we had a solid Q1, we back that up now with another good solid Q2 report. And so we see the half year effect of that 7% organic EBITDA growth and 23% total EBITDA growth so far this year. If I move to the business areas one by one, let's start with business area north. Also a good quarter performing nicely with the organic growth coming through. Net sales up 13%, EBITDA up 10%. And important for us to see that we're able to maintain those good margins in region north above 13% on the rolling 12-month basis. Worth also noting, we've talked about this before, the new distribution centre in Gothenburg, progressing well in line with our plans. And actually, we've started to drive some early stage operation activities through that system, which is going nicely. And we'll continue to ramp that up through the second half of the year. On the right hand side, the half year figures again very much in line with with the Q1 and Q2 stability and solid performance. We see adjusted EBITDA growth of 8% net sales growing at 10%. Turning to business area West, another strong quarter in West adjusted EBITDA up 32%. Nice to see that the margin is also rising as we hope and expect now up to 9.6% in Q2. and again, steady performance across the business area, very much in line with what we've been reporting from West in recent quarters. And also worth noting that the larger acquisitions that we've done in West in recent times also delivering very strongly and helping to support those scale business benefits and the growing home care business also driving that scale benefit across the region as well. And then our third region, Business Area Central, A very similar story actually to the one that we've presented on the other two regions, continuing the strength in the results, positive margin development, M&A is contributing strongly, so net sales up 33% in the quarter, adjusted EBITDA up 56%, and the margin again rising nicely in quarter two to 9.6%. And a very similar message to one that I've given on other regions and the group as a whole. Recent acquisitions coming in strongly, contributing nicely to the overall region and the trends that we've seen in recent quarters. And at the half year, adjusted EBITDA growth in central is now running at 52%, net sales growth of 29%. A brief mention of R over RK, EBITDA over net working capital. We always include this, our key internal metric, as Johan mentioned, make sure that we're focusing on that right balance between profit and also efficiency in terms of how we deploy our working capital. So good to see that we're maintaining good, strong performance on this metric. And then cash flow, I spent a little bit longer on cash flow in Q1. I will do the same again now, given that we had some significant one-off cash outflows in Q2. The good thing from our perspective is that they came in exactly as forecast, which continues to show that we have good visibility of our cash flow and the availability of that cash flow, which is so important to us. driving our M&A agenda and enabling us to use that great pipeline that we have going forwards. So the adjusted cash flow from the operating activities, 330 million in Q2, good solid performance from the group. CapEx, we continue to spend our biggest investment at the moment is the new warehouse in Gothenburg that I mentioned, very much in line with the plan, approximately 75 million remaining to be spent on CapEx in that facility during the remainder of 2026. The significant one of cash flows that I mentioned, both fully forecasted and anticipated the earnouts 463 million was paid for company and outs for deals that came to the end of their own out period in December 2025. And of course, the dividend, the first time we've paid that out. Cash conversion, I just add this as a note, it's not a KPI that we lift to the very highest level, but it's one that we actually monitor very, very closely internally. So good to see that that's running at a healthy level above 80%. And then final note on cash flow, we continue to look forward, we continue to want to make sure that we have good visibility of that. And it's worth just once again reflecting that the large, significant one-off cash outflows we had in Q2 this year were something of an exception. When we look forward to 2027, the earn-out payments are currently forecasted at a much lower level of only 150 million SEC. And then final slide for me, just a word or two on leverage. Naturally and again, as anticipated, the leverage was marginally and temporarily elevated because of those large cash outflows that I talked about. but still at a level that very much ensures that we can continue to have the capacity to drive the M&A agenda. 2.37 according to our external target definition, but also as we talked about a little bit at Q1, there are other ways of thinking about leverage. So I also continue to present the alternative leverage ratio that we look at which is really equivalent to our bank leverage covenant, which means that we include all of the earnouts and outstanding M&A payments that are due in the next 12 months. And we also include the 12-month pro forma EBITDA from the acquisitions that we've done. And that gives a figure of 2.43.

With that said, I think I hand it back to Jan. Thank you, Tom. Okay, so let's look into the M&A part of our business. We have done four acquisitions year to date and two of them once are a little bit on the upper side of our range, 300 and 350 million SEK. So we have the last one, Murray Certical was completed in July, adding some 73 million in annual sales. You might also have noticed that we discontinued an acquisition in Denmark. Kristin Hardam, due to competition authority, was dragging out in time and both us and the seller said that let's take a step back and focus on other things. So for us, it's important to be clear. It almost never happens. discontinued processes, but you should never continue something that you don't feel is 100% right. So we have now focused on our strong pipeline and are replacing that with another company. So all in all, very good operational performance in the M&A team and the pipeline with good visibility. Down to the left, we are showing what we talk about when we look at a full year in M&A. For us, it's important to, of course, deliver over 15% annual growth on EBITDA, which we have done for many years. And the biggest part of that is using our cash to buy new companies. And that usually is 10 to 12% of the annual growth. So for us now, when closing Q2, we're happy to see that we are a bit ahead of that acquisition curve. So for this year, we have a good visibility. So to continue to do acquisition during the fall is what we can look forward to. Going into one of our acquisitions, RMS Medical Device that we closed in April. It's a fast-growing medical device distributor serving hospitals and healthcare institutions across the Benelux. And they have different areas of expertise as all our companies that we buy. A little bit of artificial intelligence comes in here as well. More and more companies use that to be helping customers in a good way they have 40 years of experience in the Belgian market and they have roughly 170 million in annual sales with 25 employees and we expect them to contribute positively to our EBITDA margin as well so a good acquisition all right coming to an end to summarize this then I mean this quarter was a good middle of the road stable quarter So of course the 24% total growth out of which 6% organic EBITDA is something we're really proud of in the market that is growing with 3-4%. So this shows both that we can grow faster than the market and also use the group scale to see that we can grow faster on the bottom line and also have a 10% EBITDA margin now which is our target. So we continue to deliver a good and robust cash flow and the M&A process is according to plan. So with that, I think we can close this presentation and go into Q&A.