Bergman & Beving AB (publ)

It's Magnus speaking here and I have Peter on my side here. So welcome to the interim report for the last of our quarter, the Q4 quarter, and this is actually also a full year report. So as normal, you are free to put up questions along the way here and we will try to answer them, of course. But just some highlights from the fourth quarter. I mean, we have some deteriorating market conditions, both within the construction and the industry, especially in the Nordic. But still, we are delivering positive earning trends in this quarter. And we now have 17 consecutive quarters with improved EBITDA profits. And we have a very strong development in two or three divisions. The building material and the tools and consumables division are really performing well. I would say both in terms of profit development, cash flow generation and margins and so forth. However, the workplace safety is not in line with our expectations. And I will come back later on to explain where we are on that. We have made six acquisitions during the fiscal year. We made two each quarter, Q1 to Q3, but no acquisition in Q4. You shouldn't read that we have lowered our acquisition ambition. It's more the result that we are very quality oriented in terms of what type of company we would like to acquire and to what type of uh ev levels and the multiples so that's more kind of a result of that so if we look then up on kind of the p l uh the revenue we we have a decline of two percent in the quarter and that is a combination of that we're still you know facing out low margin high volume products in combination with a weaker market them both within industrial and construction sector And you can see the phase out in the improved gross margin. We continue to improve the gross margin and we're now delivering a 48% gross margin in this quarter. That's 4% units higher than previous year quarter. And the majority of this improvement is organically But of course, a little bit spiced of the acquisition were made that have high margins, typically above the 48% that we have on average on the group level. We also have taken efficiency measures and lower cost in some of our companies. It's really strategy company by company. Some companies we invest for growth and actually do some investments. But companies that doesn't have the profitability that we expect, they should work on improving the product mix and lower cost. And that on a total have amplified that we are close to 10% uh lower cost organically compared with last year quarter despite the inflation that we have had since then and this in total that we increased ebta level by by 12 this quarter ending up with 160 million And this also have improved the margin. So it's 1.2% unit improvements compared with last year. We ended up with 9.6. So we're getting close to a double-digit figure. And still, we are facing higher financial net due to the higher interest rates. So the EBITDA was a little bit weaker than previous year. But going forward, we expect to have easier kind of financial net to kind of match based on that the interest rate then has been higher for the similar period. We also deliver a very solid cash flow from the operating activities it's 101 million SEK Normally, the Q4 quarter is the weakest cash flow quarter for us. And it's quite normal that we actually have negative cash flow during the Q4 quarter. If you compare with last year, that was a little bit lower. We had 145 last year quarter for. But then we have even bigger effect of the lowering of our stock values that was built up during Corona. So we are very happy of the cash flow, the strong cash flow that we have this quarter. So then if we look at acquisition, I only mentioned that we made six and none in Q4. But I think the key message here is that we are buying highly profitable companies. So to the right here, you can see all of the companies we acquired had a profit margin above 15%. And profitability-wise, they were all above the 45%. target level that we have for the group level. And the total amount of revenue is amounting to 450 million last fiscal year in total. If we have some additional comments here, I said it before, but we now have 17 consecutive quarters with improved profit. And you can also see on this curve that we have along the way improved the EBITDA margin. And as we communicated, we have, you know, should reach the 500 million EBIT level late in fiscal year 26, 27, and also have an EBIT margin of 10 percent. So I comment that in the quarterly report that we are, you know, following the kind of path getting to that level, both in terms of EBIT in absolute terms and in margin. But that's also good, I think, despite the kind of tough market conditions that we're currently facing. If we look at the revenue, I have stated before, and this is also relevant for this quarter, we continue to prioritize profit growth ahead of turnover or revenue growth. So we had an organic decrease of 12%, and I would say the majority of this is due to the kind of tougher market conditions. But still, part of this is due to we still have some outfacing of low margin, high volume products. And as you can see, the acquisition added 10% to the top line, and this in total ended up at minus two in revenue. And we didn't have any currency effect in this quarter. So with that, we also mentioned the gross margin and also on this slide, you can see this is a continuous positive trend we have in improved gross margin, both on quarterly terms, but also rolling 12. We are now at 48% and you can see we have went up from 38% during the last three and a half year. And a lot of this is based that we have worked with the product mix in all our companies. And once again, facing out low margin products. And I said last quarter, you shouldn't expect this curve to kind of continue going upwards. Most of this phase out has been done now. Of course, we will continue to acquire high margin, high gross margin companies. But I think we're getting to kind of... a more stable level in terms of gross margin going forward. But some improvement there will be, but not in the kind of magnitude that we have seen historically. And you can also see on the right side of this slide, part of this is also that we have improved the mix in terms of own products. So we are now at 72%. The target is set to 75 in two years from now. So we also can see that we have this improvement that also is kind of reflected in the improved gross margin and such. So with that said, I will hand over to the CFO, Peter Schoen.

Hi, everyone, and good morning. We're starting out by looking at the earnings per share. As you can see below, it was 170 kronor per share in the Q4. And as Magnus said before, it's lower than the year before. It was 190. And it's due, of course, to the higher interest rates mainly, which we expect to stabilize at least going forward. As you read in the report, the board proposes a dividend. of 3,980, and that is compared then to last year's 360 as a dividend, so increased dividends from the board, even though it's a higher percentage of the earnings per share. So next slide, we'll move into the inventory. Inventory was reduced. And actually, if you look at it, it's organically back to the pre-COVID levels. But we worked a lot with the assortment, reducing high volume, low margin products and decreased safety stock. So we have had a really good effect. But since we worked with this high volume businesses reducing the sales volume, if we look at the inventory turnover, it's still not on a pre-COVID level. So we are still working on that with all our companies. But as you can see in the graph, it's on a good trend moving up. We expect that to continue going forward. We're moving further on to the cash flow from operating activities. It was 100 million SEK in the quarter, and it's a bit lower than the year before, as you can see in this graph. But if you move back to the next previous two years so you can see that it's that's more of a normal seasonality curve and the main reason for a weak cash flow in the last quarter is that one of our large companies SVS having the spring orders that they deliver during the spring which they purchase going into q4 and pay to the suppliers But then when we sell it to our resellers, they try to stock up before the summer. They get the long payment terms on that. So the cash gets into the company in June, July instead. Good. And then if we move to the next one, it was on the net debt. As you can see here, we have decreased the net debt. And that is not the goal in itself. I'm actually more focused on the previous slide, the cash flow. So the main thing here is that we still generate good cash flows. We could even increase debt short term as long as we have a good cash generation. So we have decreased the debt. And the positive thing here, I think, is that we have acquired companies meanwhile. So acquired 450 million SEC in turnover, but still reduced the debt. And also the net debt EBITDA is going down. So that's really positive. And as I said, it's not the main objective to reduce debt. get good cash flow so we can acquire companies and that ambition is still on the table going forward so we have a good pipeline and we'll continue to acquire good companies so let's go into the the free division that that is forming our group so the building material division

You can see on this slide here, they are mainly focused on the construction sector in the Nordic, but then commercial building infrastructure. So they are not so exposed to residential building that is the segment in the construction sector that has suffered a lot in the Nordic region. But as communicated before, overall in the construction sector, there is a weaker demand. And that is something that, of course, the companies within the group, the building material group, is kind of dealing with, and especially SVM is facing partly a slower demand in this quarter. So the revenue decreased by 9%, but we are focusing on... on profit, so as you can see, the EBITDA increased 15 percent in this quarter, and we got an all-time high EBITDA margin of 13.2. So that's a really, really strong performance, I would say, despite these tough market conditions. And this is due to improved efficiency in the companies that we own, and in combination with highly profitable acquisition that has kind of leveraged this. If you can see on the graph here on the right side, really the EBITDA margin role in 12 is having a very positive development over time as well as the EBITDA in absolute terms. I think we have done a very good job in this division given the tough market condition as such. Our second division, the workplace safety, is also, I would say, the division most heavily exposed to the Nordic industrial reseller segment, as well as the construction reseller segment. So they have also had a weaker demand in this quarter, since the industrial kind of segment has weakening compared with the previous quarters. So also here we have a revenue decline in the quarter, but also an EBITDA decline and also an EBITDA margin decline. And this is something we are not happy with. We haven't been able to kind of match this weaker revenue with lower costs. And we have some better gross margin in this division, but they haven't improved to the level necessary to match the kind of weakened top line. So we have taken additional cost measure during the quarter that is to be implemented and has been implemented. And we also made a change in the division leadership to put some more effort and energy into kind of moving this division in a steady and right direction. So our third division, I would say, have a lot of similarities with the building material. I would say all the key parameters is going in the right direction. Here we have some improved revenues, mainly due to acquisitions. This is the division I would say that the minority is exposed to the industry sector. So they of course also been facing a weak demand in this quarter, but despite this they increased the EBITDA by 46%. So that's a great achievement, mainly due to acquisitions, but also to some companies in the division that has performed better. And Luna is one of those that is well above the previous year quarter. And here we also now have an EBITDA margin above 10%. They're delivering 11.1 in this quarter, and that also is due to the acquisition of highly profitable companies in combination with improving companies within the division. So I am very happy with the tools of consumer division development and I think it's also good that we are working both on the companies that we own in the division and improve them in combination with doing very good acquisitions. So We communicated in November some additional goals. We previously had the EBITDA of 500 million latest fiscally at 25, 26. We added the EBIT margin should be about 10% in the same year. And then the profitability target that we have profitable working capital of 45% should be reached one year later. And that is the target we phrased as 510 and 45. And this will be achieved by continue to acquire. And this is the ambition we have this fiscal year to acquire 50 to 80 million in combined annual earnings and focus on own product companies. So we have 72% now and we should aim for the 75 in two years time. So those targets are still valid. We are currently on the path on delivering on all those targets in the set timeframe, despite the tough market conditions. So we don't see any reason to kind of change those ambitions. And as Peter was mentioned, we have now proposed a dividend of 3.8 SEC. That's a little bit above the interval of 30 to 50%. I think it's 53%. But we stated that that is over a business cycle. And we were a little bit lower than the 50% previous year. But this is also kind of a signal that we are very confident with the debt situation and what type of cash flow we can generate and still deliver on the 510 and 45 targets. So how should we reach the 510 and 45? There's actually nothing new on this slide compared with previous quarters. It's about do what we always are doing. It's profit expansion over revenue expansion. It's to make sure we allocate capital in the proper way through, and we are using our focus model to make sure we are good in allocating the capital to the companies that we see the best growth, profit growth opportunities. And it's really company by company strategy. I mentioned earlier, some companies are reducing costs, focusing on improving the product mix, improving the gross margin. and actually decreasing the revenue. And that's the result you can see in the organic decrease partly. But there's also some companies have all the kind of financial parameters in place. And here we invest for growth, expanding the business and really try to grow the top line. And we have some good example of that also in this quarter. We also like to support our companies in the kind of in the journey. So we have our bare man of bathing toolbox. And I mentioned that before, and we don't have the time to go through all the things to have in that toolbox, but that is a very appreciated tool that we have that our companies can use to kind of reinforce the development in the group companies. And we'll continue acquiring companies, focusing on profitable B2B companies with leading position in expansive niches. On top of that, we have some specific group team that is based on where we are and how we feel the market conditions are going forward. So really focus on cash flow and increased liquidity. Peter mentioned the stock level and the ITO. We are still not on the pre-corona level. So we still have some work to be done there. We have done a lot of good work that has generated and free up some cash that we are not done yet. So that's something we will continue to work on. And we are still cautious with asset investments based on the market condition as such. So really scrutinize all the investments that we're doing and are very cautious and make sure we do investment that allocate capital in the right direction in terms of what companies to invest in. And we still have a tight cost control. We don't expect the market to kind of pick up in the next coming month. Hopefully we'll see a pickup in the autumn, but that's too early to say. So we really make sure that the companies have a very tight cost control. And some companies, as mentioned before, have taken some cost measurement reducing costs. And as mentioned, the Workplace Safety have, during the last quarter, taken some additional activities in reducing cost to match the weaker demands. I also showed that the strong gross margin development that we had, but we also make sure that we protect that gross margin. And that's implied that we actually will have and will make some price adjustments during this year. It will be in a much smaller kind of attitude compared with what we've done historically, or I would say during the corona situation. But we still need to increase prices in a few percent units to be able to kind of protect our gross margins. So with that, that was all we had for this quarter. So we now open up for questions.

If you wish 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 Zeno Engdalen Richuti from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning, Magnus and Peter, and thanks for taking our questions. I would like to start out in workplace safety primarily. Based on what your companies hear from their customers, How do you basically expect the underlying market to continue? Do you expect it to get worse kind of before it gets better? You mentioned the autumn.

Yeah, that's a very difficult question. But currently I don't expect it to get worse in terms of demand. But not even better. So I would say it will continue on this level, that's my guess at least, at least up until the autumn. And then hopefully we see a stronger demand, but that's too early to say.

Thank you. And just on the cost savings you did in this quarter, if you could quantify or give some more color on it, and if you expected if it didn't have full effect in this quarter, so to say, if we look ahead.

Yeah, along the way, the last fiscal year, we took, I would say, each quarter additional cost measurements and activities. So some of those activities and actions taken, you haven't seen yet in the cost base. So there is a lag from the point we take actions to you actually see it in our cost base.

I see. And just lastly on the M&A where you commented on the quality maybe not in this quarter of the companies you looked at being where you wanted it to be and multiples maybe a bit demanding from them. Would you say that this is just company specific or is there any red thread to a change or similar?

Oh, it's company specific. I mean, we made an acquisition first of April, the first day of this quarter. So you shouldn't read into anything in this lack of acquisition in the Q4 quarter. in terms of our capacity or capability to continue to acquire along the target of the 50 to 80 million earnings per annum.

Very good. Thank you. Those are my questions.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Emanuel Jansen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Magnus and Peter. I hope you can hear me. Good morning. I have two questions here. I think we can follow up maybe on the M&A agenda and also on the financial target here on reaching 500 million SEC in 2025-2026, right? Do you still estimate that about two-thirds will steam from M&A and the one-third will steam from organically improvements going forward?

That's a very good question. I mean, that is kind of the kind of ambition we have over a business cycle. And going back to the question, when will the demand pick up? I mean, we are now in the first quarter. The autumn will be in our third quarter. Of course, if the market pickups in Q3 and Q4, then we will have a very good position organically to grow profit because a lot of those cost reductions we've done, a lot of the product mix improvements we've done will remain when the market pick up. So then we will have a very good effect organically on the profit growth. That's kind of the million dollar question. I can't put this kind of percentage in this point in time. that is kind of a target we have as once again over a business cycle but that will be very dependent on the underlying market development during this fiscal year.

Okay perfect that's clear and do you also think that you when it comes to in terms of M&A that you have a good pipeline in order also to deliver on these targets or you still need to search and look for companies?

I mean, it's a continuous process. I mean, we look at more than 100 cases per year. And once again, we are very rigorous in making sure that, you know, it's the right type of company and we get the right valuation in the end. But currently, I feel confident with the pipeline that we have that we should be able to deliver on the targets we set, i.e. the 50 to 80 million earnings per annum in acquisitions. contribution.

Okay, perfect. And I think last question from my side here, looking at the tools and consumables division, you have worked truly throughout the last couple of years here with facing out the low margin, high volume products. And I think soon we'll start to also face kind of maybe easier comparable numbers year-over-year, given the organically improved development in this division. Do you think also that it's fair to assume organic sales growth from the autumn here, or will we be able to see that earlier in this division?

That also will depend on the underlying market. The tools and consumables is mainly exposed to the industrial sector. And the industrial sector kind of demand was quite stable up from the autumn last year. And then it started to weaken. And we see this weakening trend also in the Q4 quarter. So if we then use the Q1 and Q2 as comparable quarters, they were quite strong or at least stable last year. So I think that effect you will have in the second half of this year now.

Okay, perfect. And the trend going into Q1, is that a similar way in the tour eating market as you have seen in this quarter?

I would say, once again, I expect the Q1 and Q2 quarter, our fiscal year, to be on the same level, roughly, market-wise, as the Q4 quarter.

Okay, perfect, Magnus. Thank you for taking my questions.

Thank you. The next question comes from Marcus Almarud from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi, gentlemen. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, Michael. Yes. So I'd like to start maybe following up on the demand discussion and demand question. If you could, when you say that you don't expect demand to get worse and maybe not also get better, and then we'll see in the fall if it'll pick up, does those comments go for both industrial and construction? Or do you see it different there? And Maybe more specifically, have we seen any further acceleration downwards on the industrial, where I would assume that construction has been quite stable? Just elaborate a little bit on what you've seen.

Once again, this is a guess game. If you look at the construction sector, the big settlement has been in the residential building segment. And what we see, that will most likely pick up already during the next month from a very, very low level. But we are not especially exposed to that segment. We are more exposed construction-wise to kind of industrial and infrastructure segment. And they have been quite stable, actually, maybe in some instances, some weaknesses. So overall, I don't see any big difference. I don't expect any big difference in kind of the development of the demand in the segments we are exposed to, both in industrial and the construction sector.

Okay. Because you're also talking about spring orders. You mentioned the spring orders, and we've been talking about that for the past couple of years in this period of time. And you said here that spring orders were kind of Are they coming back? That is, is there a little bit more optimism in that part of the value chain that they're ordering more now than they have done in last year and the year before?

The so-called spring orders related to our company SV is selling fasting products. And what typically happens is that the reseller build up the stock of fasting products for the spring. Because then it's the biggest demand on those type of products. And during this period, this kind of spring order period, we have a weaker demand on those products compared with last spring order period. So we don't see any kind of strength and demand in that segment in this year.

But one important thing there is that the resellers put their orders in to SV in August.

also last year so it's not really a good yeah it's not a good indicator indicator you can say okay okay and then i have a question interest level is is i mean interest keeps rising uh and now interests have come down a little bit but would and you're talking about stabilizing would q4 you say the is it clean enough to use as a kind of reference point going forward in coming quarters and going into next fiscal year?

Yeah I think so we did have a bit of an exchange rate variation of about five million maybe in the quarter so it was maybe a bit high actually to use as a reference but.

Okay so a little bit lower than this. A little bit lower yeah. And then my final question is just, I was curious about this internal education that you have on your targets and especially on the R over RK. When did you start this and have you seen any impact of it already or is it still to come?

I mean, this business school that we launched 42 years ago, it's part of a greater kind of agenda. We have really enforced the companies to understand how we should allocate capital through our focus model. And part of that is to make sure that the management in all companies understand the logic and what action activities they should prioritize based on how we allocate capital. So this kind of business school that now 20% of all our employees has kind of been through is part of the agenda to make sure that our capital allocation, the understanding and actions is in line with our focus model. Actually, I will go to London this evening and I will participate in UK business school tomorrow actually it is. So this is a continuous process and new companies, of course, as well as current companies is participating in this business school. It's an important part that we get acceptance and understanding for our focus model.

There's more of an evolving kind of thing, part of the long-term agenda than new initiatives.

Yes. Yes.

Okay. Okay. Perfect. Excellent. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Carl Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.

Peter, I wonder if you could start maybe giving us an idea of how big a headwind you saw from facing out of low margin, let's say low margin, high volume products in the quarter so we can get some grasp of how that 12% decrease is built up, so to say.

Do you mean those organic top line decrease of 12%?

Exactly how much that is safe or how much is there due to say market environment how much is your decision to leave out any products?

That's also a difficult question because we don't have exactly you know the detailed information what is what here. But on an overall level, I would say the majority of those 12% is due to the market, the weakening market. I expected the market to be maybe two-thirds of that. That's my guess. And one-third is the kind of phase-out effect.

That's fine. And if you look at the same kind of comparison during the fiscal year, is that... Because I remember we have now talked about these phase outs obviously for quite some time. And is that impact decreasing as you see it going through the year or as you now indicate that we might even be through it to some extent?

No, if we would compare with the Q1 last fiscal year, the majority then was phasing out or no margin. So we have communicated earlier with the end phase of this phasing out. And that's why also you shouldn't expect the improvement path of the gross margin that we've seen historically. Because that is the main effect you see there in the improved gross margin of this phase out. And that will again level out now.

Yeah, and that looks very, very healthy, obviously. And also, to take your view, Lillon, on obviously a fantastic turnaround of the tools and consumables and getting good comments about what you have achieved in Luna. And if you then compare the situation that you are now facing in workplace safety, is it a question of also maybe going through the Shrida platform much more aggressively also to get that going, or is there other things happening in the workplace safety area that needs to be considered.

Yeah, that's correct. Skydda is one of those companies that need to perform better than they have done the last fiscal year. But we have some other companies as well in this group that need to improve. So it's not only a Skydda topic, it's some other companies as well that need to step up.

And you mentioned in workplace safety that obviously it's a reseller focus and some of the resellers have been cautious and most obviously seen decreasing volumes. How has the number of listings for workplace safety with the resellers worked out during this period? Is it increasing, decreasing, stable? Because I know a couple of them are really focusing on trying to get their own brands into their operation in this area.

You're meaning if we lose market share

Yeah, relative space at least with them, given that there's, I guess, a volume component to it as well.

If we look at the customer base within the workplace safety and the product companies there, I would say it's a zero game. It's kind of moving materials. So in some situation, we kind of lose some market share, but in some, we gain some market share. So on a kind of aggregated level, I would say it's kind of a zero game.

excellent none of them then it's down to also the market recovering that to some extent going to help you so yeah and when you look at the quarter we were i saw that finland was was very weak obviously that's where you have the the weakest consumer the confidence numbers also coming out but this was there a huge strike impact for you that are hitting the quarter yeah it was also partly some effect of the strikes

Yeah, it affected the deliveries mainly. It was a logistic issue.

Do you dare to quantify it in some way?

No, I don't think we would.

You shouldn't put any big number on that.

No, it's not the biggest companies, but of course there are some. Take, for example, PolarFam. They couldn't deliver in March because the harbors were, you know, affected by the strikes and so on. So it was companies like that.

Excellent. And one final for me, looking at the 510.45 target, I get the feeling that the 45 that you obviously are talking about a year later looks to be the real challenging numbers to me to some extent. Could you just describe maybe what kind of evolving you have had on the business unit level of the amount of turnover or the amount of business units that are already about the 45% and then maybe allude to what kind the extra strategies would be to get the ones that are not up there yet to get there.

I mean, as you saw on this acquisition slide, we only acquire companies that are above the 45%. So that, of course, will help over time. And then we have our focus model, where basically if you're below the 25% profitability, that's profitable working capital, we don't want the company to grow revenue. We would like them to focus on improving their product mix and reduce costs. And that is, for example, the agenda of Luna. And as communicated, they have a significant profit increase this year and this quarter compared with previous year, along with improved working capital efficiency. So it's kind of, we are moving companies slowly but surely towards the 45%. But I agree with you. That's, I would say, the most challenging target of those 50, 10, 45. But we have a good improvement of 5% units on this profit of working capital on a group level this fiscal year. And we need to kind of increase that path during this fiscal year. But I think we have some very good actions in place. And I feel confident that we should improve our speed of improvement in those aspects. It has been a long journey, I would say. I've been now with the group for three years and introduced this focus model and capital allocation two and a half years ago. And it has taken time for everyone to understand and accept and act accordingly. And now I think we are getting there. And we've already seen some effect of this, but I expect that we should see even greater effect of that going forward.

Excellent. And focus normally pays off, doesn't it? Could you allude to how many of the business units during the last fiscal year was above the 45% level?

If you look at the full fiscal year, is that the question?

Yeah.

Half of our companies.

Because I thought you mentioned a couple of success stories in your CEO statement as well, showing the width of things that needs to happen to get things going up there.

Yeah. That's correct. I use that for everyone to understand how we work with this capital allocation and the different agendas dependent on how profitable you are.

Excellent. Sounds promising. Thank you very much for all the answers and welcome to London, Magnus. I hope you get a good teaching here.

I'm actually going to the Cambridge area.

Not surprised, not surprised. Good to hear. All the best out there. Thank you.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad.

So what I can see, we don't have any additional questions. So then I would like to thank you for participating in this session. This is kind of the last chance to put any questions on the table here.

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions or closing comments.

So I would like to thank you for participating and looking forward to talk to you later on, on the development of biomanoeuvring. Thank you very much.