Beijer Alma AB (publ)

Thank you. Welcome to this webcast for the first quarter in 2025 of Bayer Alma. Myself I've been in position about less than one month, but I've been with the company on the board for a number of years. The picture you see now on the first page is actually from one of our latest acquisitions, Vemus, and they are their customer basis, the infrastructure, especially in Sweden. I guess most of you know who we are. We are listed since many years. Personally, I regard us as a serial acquirer, even though the market may not have been anticipated the company in that way. If we look at the figures, the market situation, as everyone knows, is very unstable and things happening from day to day. But in our case, the first quarter was a good quarter. If we look at the different regions, the Nordic region in general delivered good growth, combination of organic and acquire growth, and Lechefors that's working a lot with the Springs are working worldwide and have a mixed demand, but actually have some organic growth in sales and order bookings. Chassis Springs, so it's a separate business within Lechefors, was slightly lower than last year, but a little bit higher margin. Chassis Springs are springs to used cars. That's actually where you replace the factory managed springs with replacements. In the industry segment, Asian, Nordics, and US industrial contributed to growth. We have one acquisition we did a few years ago, Alcom X in Holland, and then we have some problems with their market of door springs because they are connected to the construction market. And that is, as everyone knows, on the low level in Europe. We are working on ways to solve the problem, but still we are negatively affected by this situation. Beatek, who is, can see an overall stable demand, but it varies with the markets, but Beatek are mainly working in Norway, Sweden, and Finland and partly in Denmark. But we had a very nice organic growth and also as I mentioned, acquisitions. Lechefors only acquired one company in the quarter, and that will be in service from our case from the 1st of April, so it has not affected the first quarter. But it's an interesting investment in India, which is a growing market for the future. So the order bookings increased with 9%. Now we should remember that Eastern was last year in the first quarter, and it comes in the second quarter this year. So we had an organic increase of 4% and the net revenue with 8% to almost 2 billion Swedish crowns. And the adjusted operating profit was 282 million Swedish crowns, and adjustment was related to the cost of the former MD when he left the company. We had an operating margin which is on the same level as last year. As you can see that Lechefors is a major part of the Beir Alma today with 68%. What we have seen in the past years is that the operating profit margin has been very stable, but as I see it now we have some opportunities for the future to increase this margin. And Lechefors, it was also order bookings increased organically as well as in revenue. An industry who is an area where we have been growing for the last years increased by 7%. And Chassis Springs decreased by 5%, but that is every year is a little bit different depending on how tough the winter are. So that means how much cars are affected by the hard roads and those things. So it's a minor change, and the margin was actually a little bit higher for Chassis Springs this first quarter. Baytech, we had also very nice figures of increase of the bookings of 15% and net revenue by 70%. And here you can really see nice growth for all the three business units we have. So mainly the main business here for Baytech are customers in the Nordic, but if some few of the companies are also exporting worldwide from Baytech. So financials, we had an increase in adjusted operating profit, the beta. And the EBITDA margin was 14.4%, same as last quarter last year. And the adjusted EBITDA margin was slightly higher than last year. So cash flow was more positive than last year. The profit increase that means also that we had a better profit per share than last year. Net debt increased also a bit depending on acquisitions, but we still have a good room for acquisitions in our balance sheet. And we are now on a net debt to adjust the EBITDA of two times. On its per share increase with 6% for the period. In acquisitions, as we mentioned earlier, we acquired one company in India, but it will be closing, our transaction was to be the 1st of April. And generally I think that now we have a time of consolidation and in looking for increased profit margin. Baytech, as is UPS Udeman in Finland, it was a small acquisition and will be connected to OPH in Finland we have. And they have contributed the first month. And Svemas also acquired in beginning of March has had a good contribution during the month to our group. And here you can see the acquisitions we've done over the years since 2018. And I think we should see Baytech as a serial acquirer or compounder, some people say. And we have today in two business areas. I should not be surprised if it's in the future, we'll be more business with more acquisitions and also general more international acquisitions in the Baytech area. So I think this is a nice group and I use once upon a time to be the MD of Indatrade for many years. And I think the group has a potential to have a performance in the future like Indatrade and other serial acquirers. But we will always be cautious with what we acquire and look at profitable business and also with the low risk on the demand side. By this short presentation I will open up for questions and answers. So please go ahead.

To ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. To enter the queue, if you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Carl Noren from Seb, please go ahead.

Yes, hello and good morning, a couple of questions from my side. Maybe we start like overall on a strategic planning here. It sounds a little bit like we should expect maybe more focus on organic growth and organic margin improvements in Lejkjöfors, while they are taking focus on growing both organic and through acquisitions. Is that how we should read it here in the near term?

That's a good conclusion, yes. But of course if there are interesting cases in Lejkjöfors, we should acquire there as well. But basically that's the trend we are looking at in the nearest future.

Yes, that's good. And then just on chassis brings here, I mean slightly down in the quarter compared to a tough comparison. I'm just wondering a little bit on the margin improvement there you had in the quarter. What is really the driver behind that?

It's minor and it's probably a mix depending on markets and customers and all things. I don't see it as a trend yet.

And overall the chassis season so to say, I mean Q2 is usually quite high season as well. Do you see Q2's similar demand trends as in Q1 or is it too early to say?

It's too early to say.

Good. And then another one on Alcomex where you stated in the report that you see some effects on the margins in the latter part of the quarter. I mean should we already expect to see some impacts of better margins in Alcomex in Q2 and then a gradual improvement throughout the year you think?

Yeah, I think we have some produce going on now so improved situation but we still have some cost reductions to do with the company. So but on a operational level I think we can expect a positive trend but we will have some structured changes on the cost level still in second quarter.

Okay, but will it take that as an adjustment or a one-off?

That will probably be a one-off,

yes. Okay, yeah. Okay, so slightly more to do there. That's clear. And then there's a final one on the Easter impact. I mean you mentioned that it could have been a little bit positive impact there. Do you have anything more to say regarding that? No. I think it was a mixed from different companies here regarding Easter.

This more working... I think it

was a slightly positive...

Yeah, it says more working days so I mean normally all over the years I experienced where Easter can affect there's a few more working days in March this year compared to last year. Then how it will end after second quarter we don't know yet. That's too early.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's good. And that's all for me. Thank you for taking your questions and have a good day.

The next question comes from Carl Korshedin from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, Jonny. Just a couple of questions from my side here. I know that this is the first quarter in quite a while that you didn't mention Europe as a region I guess underperforming. Does that mean that you are now I mean fairly satisfied with the European business if you perhaps exclude Alchomex just to get a sense of how underlying Europe is developing?

Well, fairly satisfied. That's a good expression, yes. But I think still there are more to do. But yes, we have made some changes in like in Germany so we are or less depending on the German market now.

And you mentioned also that general I guess industrial demand in the US was quite strong in the quarter. Do you think that could in any way be impacted by any sort of pre-buying effect here or are you feeling that I mean the demand there is holding up quite well overall?

Well, it is hard. I mean what we are selling in US is to 95% produced in US. Where the US market will go I guess you have to ask a person in US about with the president of the United States. So it's impossible to make any forecast for that.

Yeah, I see. It would be very helpful if I mean did you see any sort of shift here in the first part here of Q2 or any change in customer behavior or does it look today quite similar as in Q1 or?

With information I have today it looks similar, yes. But I mean it can be changed from day to day, week to week. But I mean we have a pretty wide customer base so it's more connected to the general market I think for industry in US than specific companies.

Got it and just on this fire there you mentioned on Innefors. It would be interesting to hear a little bit more on that and if you would expect to see any further negative P&L effects from that in the upcoming quarters or if that sort of has been handled now already?

We have it's a small unit it's in Finland and we have a full insurance coverage for it and we have not decided how to do next step here. We are supporting I think 60-70 percent of the products from other companies within the group and we are probably missing a little bit part but we are discussing what's the next step here. I don't expect any more than marginal effect maybe in the coming quarter.

Understood thank you very much that was all my questions.

The next question comes from Johan Dahl from Danske Bank please go ahead.

Yes good morning everyone and good morning Jonne. Just sort of a strategic sort of question. Did you talk in the report about focusing on margins in Läschö-Fors? I just wanted to sort of hear your view and also perhaps the board's view on where you see that potential in Läschö-Fors. What do you think sort of what is the untapped potential in Läschö-Fors and the sort of industrial springs franchise which you've built over the last couple of years and how do you think you can achieve those margin improvements? Is it level of integration or sort of level of cost synergy take out that you see as potential? Then secondly also if you look on the assets in Läschö-Fors today should we expect also possibly some sort of portfolio review where some assets may not fit that well into sort of a margin improvement profile?

Today Läschö-Fors is a group where 50 percent of the sales are from brands not named Läschö-Fors. We have 19 different brands Läschö-Fors is very much a Nordic brand but in Europe and US it's quite different brands. So I think we should really look for a decent more decent organized organization and see that we put a pressure on the individual MDs for the different small businesses. There could be some cost cutting also in some areas where the costs have been built up during the last years and eventually could be some spin-off also but that should be just a minor thing. I think the potential are in improving the existing business and as we talked about earlier we have AlcomX who is still a problem and when we solve that it will be have a good effect on the group level and we have maybe one or two other companies also that we are working with now.

So gotcha how big of a delta is AlcomX in your mind?

How much loss

making was it for example looking at last year?

No the first quarter was a few million.

Say again sorry I didn't hear.

A few million during the first quarter.

Gotcha gotcha a few million. A

few million I didn't take too many maybe two three four million something.

Gotcha very clear thanks so much.

Thank you. Finder if you wish to ask a question please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. I have more phone questions at this time so I hand the conference back to the speaker for any written questions or closing comments.

Okay so far I haven't seen any written questions. So I guess I can just say final words. My aim is to start a job as I said earlier to improve the margin in the group and that goes for both business areas or for both Bay of Tec and for Lyksefors. I think a reasonable goal for Lyksefors is to come back to the 20% where they were a few years ago and I can see the activities that is needed to do that. We have it on the map and for Bay of Tec it will be also challenged but I think if you compare to similar groups on the stock market I think we could increase the margin with three four percent units over some time also in Bay of Tec. And by that I want to say thank you and I guess we will see each other or hear each other in July next time. Bye bye.