Beijer Alma AB (publ)

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our webcast, where we today will present our second quarter of 2024, this beautiful summer morning. I am Henrik Perbeck, and with us is also Johan de Vermaak, our CFO. Good morning, everybody. So we will present today the overall performance and the recent developments of Beirama Group, In addition, we will discuss our reporting segments, our two main subsidiaries. These are Lecheforge, which is a full range supplier of standard and customized industrial springs and other wire and flat strip components. Lecheforge is acting globally with majority of sales in Europe and the USA. And it is Beotech. which acts mainly in the Nordics within specialized manufacturing, value-adding, industrial trading, and automation in profitable niches. And BayTech is also a platform for acquisitions into new industrial niches. So today, we'll present what I think is a solid report. Perhaps not super exciting, but in today's economy, words like solid and stable can be pretty good. We saw a second quarter with some organic growth. And overall, the group grew both organically and thanks to acquisitions. Of course, as we have seen in the last year, the demand was still quite varied within our diversified customer base. A big picture is that the Nordic region came back as our strongest region this quarter. The leisure force had a mixed demand picture but came out with the organic growth and the order booking side. The Chelsea spring business area has had a good year and the high season but it slowed down towards the end of the quarter or at least versus the strong comps from last year. But in industrial springs, the Nordics came back, as I said, as the strongest region and private growth, followed by UK. In the US, industrial segments were good, but deliveries to medical projects were somewhat lower. Central Europe and Asia were more disappointing with lower demand from our customers. For Baytech in the Nordics, demand was generally stable. And the newly formed business area, niche technologies, grew together with fluid technology. And just like last quarter, the Norwegian market stood out as the strongest, whereas Finland was a bit weaker. We have announced two new acquisitions since last call. Firstly, Beotech signed an agreement during the quarter to acquire Tlemco Norge. It's a well-managed niche player that strengthens Beotech's growing operations in Norway. And on July 1st, so actually after the end of the quarter, Lesapos acquired Clifford Springs, a UK energizer spring manufacturer. And this strengthens our focus on this attractive product area. And I will come back to these companies later in the presentation. And overall, we continue to feel that the activity level in the M&A market is good, which is interesting and creates opportunities to find new, attractive companies that could strengthen our group going forward. At the same time, of course, Economic uncertainty, including still high interest rates, leads us to a balancing act between investing for growth and the savings. Now, continuing with an overview of the group's financial performance. So looking at the performance, we see that order bookings grew by 5%, of which 2% was organic. Net revenues grew by 4%, of which 2% was organic. As I said up front, these are not the most exciting variations on group level, but it shows on stability for our group as a whole. The adjusted operating profit was 249 million kroner, which is a margin of 13.2%, a similar level as in Q1. And while I now will move over to the performance of our reporting segments, our subsidiaries, I can also point out, looking at the pie chart, that BayTech is now 33% of the group. And a year ago, this was 28%. So there's some shift there.

Starting with Les Reforges.

So our spring manufacturer, Lesch & Fors, is organized into two business areas. These are industry, but mainly customized products to a very diversified customer base globally. The other one is chassis springs, and these are standardized replacement springs sold to car part wholesalers, mainly in Europe. Order bookings for Leche Forge as a whole decreased by 1%, but grew 2% organically. And as the currency impact was neutral in the quarter, we have here actually for the first time a negative minus three impact from the acquisition and divestments made during the year. The net revenue also decreased overall by 4%. Organically, it was flat versus last year. Starting with the industry segment, the largest business area, growth was minus 3%, but actually positive organically. As mentioned, growth came from the Nordics and UK, whereas Central Europe, including Alcomex and Asia, was somewhat weaker. The US market was more of a mix. The industrial segments in the US grew, in fact, whereas deliveries within medical were lower than the high levels of last year. For Chassis Springs, the strong demand from first quarter continued in the beginning of the second quarter, but towards the end of the quarter, the high season slowed down. And all in all, we think it's been a good season, but in the second quarter, comps were high and revenues came in 6% below last year. Adjusted operating profit increased to 193 million kronor with an EBIT operating margin for the quarter of 15.2%.