Ework Group AB

Good morning. E-Work Group has published a report for the third quarter of the fiscal year 2026. And joining us here in the studio is the company's CEO, Daniel Ahlengren, joined by CFO Johanna Estra. Welcome. Thank you very much. You will give a presentation and afterwards we'll come back to ask a few questions from both the chat, but also joining analysts. So go ahead. Thank you very much.

Before we get into the financials, let me briefly highlight a few key developments from the quarter. First and foremost, we finalized our strategy for 2027 to 2029. I will come back to that later in this presentation. We also took an important step in Germany through the acquisition that provides access to an AUG license, a prerequisite for us to get access to attractive agreements and continue to see encouraging signs from our commercial activities with more business opportunities, tenders and a growing sales pipeline. Also, and importantly, AI continues to reshape the labour market and represents a significant opportunity for e-work in more ways than one. AI-related demand increased by 134% over the rolling 12-month period, making it our fastest-growing competence area. We see more organisations are moving from exploration to implementation, increasing demand for specialised expertise and workforce transformation. Finally, while the market remains cautious overall, we are seeing signs of stabilization. Norway delivered growth, the decline in Sweden slowed, and we continued to strengthen customer relationships, including the important agreement with Tetra Pak. At the same time, our gross margin reached 4.3%, the highest level in five years. With that overview, let's look at the quarter in more detail. The most significant development during the quarter was, as mentioned, the expansion of our long-standing partnership with Tetra Pak. Building on more than a decade of collaboration, E-Work has been appointed the exclusive MSP partner for interim consultants across all competency areas in Sweden. The agreement significantly broadens our role and positions E-Work as a strategic partner in managing external talent for one of the world's leading industrial companies. We are also pleased to have renewed and expanded our relationships with several important customers, including Husqvarna, SKF, Elevio, Malmöstad, Öresundskraft and Telemark Fylkeskommune. These agreements reflect continued trust in eWorks' ability to deliver specialized competence through efficient supplier management. At the same time, we secured new business Nobia, further broadening our customer base and creating opportunities for future growth. Taken together, these wins demonstrate the strength of our customer relationships, the relevance of our offering and our ability to create value for organizations. We look forward to building on these partnerships in the quarters ahead, all the while further strengthening our sales efforts. Regional development was mixed, but with several positive signals. Norway delivered growth, while the decline in Sweden slowed and was largely concentrated in the private sector. Denmark saw a stronger pipeline, while Finland, Poland and Slovakia continued to be affected by the previously ended consulting contract. Manufacturing, public sector and energy increased their share of business during the quarter, while automotive and consulting remained weaker. Meanwhile, our expansion in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands continues according to plan. Let's also spend some time on the omnipresent topic of AI, which is becoming a significant growth opportunity for e-work. Demand for AI-related skills is increasing at a fast pace. This growth accelerated during the Q3 as more organizations moved from experimentation to implementation. We also continue to see a rapid expansion of AI talent in our network. The number of newly registered consultant profiles with AI competence increased by 11% compared with Q2. And today, more than one in six new profiles joining eWork have AI-related skills. This development is also accelerating. Through our tools SkillShift Lens and SkillShift Temp, both accessible via our website, as well as expert provider AI and our specialist network, we support customers in securing critical AI capabilities and navigating the fast-changing talent landscape. E-work is especially well positioned to capture the growth, the growing demand for AI competence. Connecting clients with specialists is what we have always done. Cutting-edge knowledge within the field of AI increasingly sits with specialists who are freelancers who work in niche consultancies. Our access to these specialists via our vast network and our ability to match demands of a large client clients with a dispersed supply is and will remain a real competitive advantage for us. During the quarter, as I said earlier, we finalized our strategy for 2027 through 2029. The strategy builds on the long-term shift shaping our market and provides a clear direction for the next phase of e-works development. The forces shown here reflect some of the most important changes affecting e-work. Firstly, it's clear that in the last few years we have lost business volumes, whereas margin levels have held or even improved. With expected effects of AI and automation, however, we do expect to see margin pressure going forward. This means recapturing volumes will be key to our resurgence, as will lowering our cost to serve. AI will change how we deliver faster than it will change what we deliver. We expect that automation will be a key theme for us in the near term. That said though, the impact of AI does not stop there. We see very intriguing opportunities to launch new AI-related and enabled services in the near to medium term. And no, I will not tell you what they are. Finally, a key shift that we see is accelerating across our markets is the move into outcome based delivery and payment models, which in itself is a natural extension effect from the AI tools becoming an increasingly important component in how consultants deliver their services. We see an opportunity to further develop our services to accommodate this development. Our strategic priorities are set to both adapt e-work to these new circumstances, but also to utilize these forces to realize new business opportunities. We will develop our offering to allow for multiple service levels, allowing us to serve more varied client preferences and also smaller organizations. Similarly, we will strengthen our offering within project or so-called statement of work. This will be done in combination with strengthening our network selectively. Prioritize skill areas or engineering, cybersecurity and multiple AI related fields. Geographically, we specifically aim to grow our network in Poland, Germany and Benelux. AI will allow us to both automate core repetitive processes to a greater degree and to build new revenue opportunities. Automating the boring and administrative tasks will allow us to invest in value building activities such as proactively advising our clients on what talent to source, how and from where. In short, being a true strategic advisor within the field of talent management. Combined with the commercial and operational improvements already implemented during 2026, this provides a strong foundation for long-term profitable growth. With that, I will hand over to Johanna to take us through the financial performance for the quarter.

Thank you, Daniel. Then we will move over to Q3 financials and start with the financial overview. And for the third quarter, we reported a revenue of 2.8 billion versus three last year. And that represents a decline of about 8%. And this is due to lower consultant volumes in all our markets except for Norway. And as Daniel mentioned, Norway grew during the third quarter and that is driven by telecom and the public sector. Denmark continues to decline and is working hard on building a new sales pipeline. Poland and Finland were impacted by an end in client contract that we have reported about earlier. and this is the trend that we've seen the last quarters however it's really positive to see the stabilization in Sweden Sweden which is our largest market with the highest impact it is too early still to talk about a broad market recovery but we see some positive signs Gross profit decreased by 7% but gross margin increased to 4.3%. We have reported before and mentioned today that volume is our top priority and that that might impact the gross margins going forward. However, long client contracts create resilience in gross margins and this effect will take time. EBIT was roughly in line with last year and this is due to lower cost and depreciation that partly mitigates the volume drop. We have maintained cost discipline throughout the year and we have also reported of cost initiatives that will have full year impact from 2027. Net financial items improved, minus 4 versus last year's 6.9, and this is due to lower interest and favorable currency effects. EPS grew by 14% during the quarter, and this is due to the higher net profit. Order intake decreased by some 9%. We saw some increased volumes in Finland and the largest decline was in Denmark and Poland. Public and private sector was both down. Automotive grew, tech consulting and life science were weaker. We could see a pickup in demand in September and requesting Q3 was up 12%, which is really positive. We also see a trend in the market that clients tend to sign longer contracts to secure expertise. Looking at the key drivers for net sales and EBITs. In terms of net sales, the lower consultant volumes are the key drivers. But this is partly offset by higher average rates in the market. It is, as mentioned, our top priority to grow the business volumes. We are doing sales investments, but it will take some time to see that effect.