Green Landscaping Group AB (publ)

Thank you, and a warm welcome to you all. As mentioned, my name is Johan Ålström, and today I'm joined by our new CFO, Marcus Armstrong, who finally came aboard in December after a long wait for him. Marcus will walk us through the financial section of the presentation in just a few minutes. But first, let me just give an overview of the performance in 2024. So we conclude the year of 2024 with a 9% sales growth, and we had, I would say, a strong 3% organic, and we reached an EBITDA margin of 8.3%. And this is despite the headwinds we have faced in the market during the year. So from a financial perspective, I'm quite happy with the performance we as a company have done for the full year of 2024. When I look up on the fourth quarter, the final quarter of the year, in my mind, it's an okay quarter, where basically you have two major observation that stands out. And on the bright side, I would say that's really the cash flow I'm quite happy to see because it has been somewhat up and down during the last quarters. And we did initiate some activities in order to make sure that we had a strong cash flow. And so we did. So we had a very strong cash flow in the fourth quarter. And that, of course, brought down the leverage to a very comfortable 2.5 level. The not so bright or the shortcomings of the fourth quarter, that is really the underperformance of the segments in Sweden, where you can see that neither sales and in particular not the profit did meet our expectation and came in as a bit as a surprise to us. But again, we ended the year and the quarter on a strong note. We also invested in three new companies in the fourth quarter. And that means that we right now are back on track in terms of the investment or the acquisitions in new companies. And the goal we had for the 2024 was eight to ten companies. And we did achieve that one. So we do welcome those companies into the green landscaping family. And of course, looking into the year of 2025, we will see a similar pace, I would say, in terms of investments or acquisitions that we're looking forward into that year. So by that, I do conclude that it was kind of a good year for us with a couple of highlights in the fourth quarter and also one setback in that particular quarter. So let's move into the presentation. Now, we basically only have one slide on the Green Landscaping Group. But again, we are active on a very attractive market and there are certain characteristics of the market that I would like to highlight. And the first one, it's a large market with low cyclicality and a high degree of stability. Having a big market really means that we can pick and choose to some extent on how we would like to position ourselves in terms of what customers and what services to perform. and also in terms of what companies we would like to invest in. So being in a big market, we're right now active in six geographies, meaning that we can really, from a static perspective, position ourselves in the way we would like to be positioned. The right business model is about the decentralization. And again, we have 60 very skilled entrepreneurs working in 60 different geographies, being close to the customers, making business decisions, basically every day being close to employees. And that has proven to be a very strong model that also makes us fast, nimble, and quite profitable given the market we are in. And again, then we have the M&A strategy. And we have been doing that for years. We have several criterias in the selection of great companies that we choose to invest in. And having a large pool to choose from really means that we can pick and choose the very best entrepreneurs and the very best companies to join the company. So next slide, please. So to do a summary for the full year of 2024, as I mentioned, net size increased by 9%, and that means we basically reached 6.3 billion SEK, organically 3%. And again, given the market situation, I think that is a good number to bear in mind that it's headwinds out there and having a 3% organic, also given some structural changes we've done throughout the year, that is a good number. Back on track on acquisition that contributed by 7%. And their profitability increased by 3%. And that means we actually came to 528 million SEK in EBITDA. The EBITDA margin have roughly been like half a percent below previous year. And again, given the market condition, I think that is good numbers. We landed on 8.3%. We were on a positive track and for the last, I would say, four quarters, we can see that we have kind of leveled out that one. I don't see any reason why we should not be able to come back to a situation where we continue to improve the profit margins. But nonetheless, 8.3, given where we are and the industry we're in, is a good number. Then of course, cash flow from operating activities for the full year, that's 601 million SEK and in comparison to the EBITDA of 528, I think that is clearly a very good number. moving into the fourth quarter there we saw that the net sales increased by seven percent and of course the organic in particular to the to the segment in sweden means we had a negative six percent on the organic side on net sales ebitda increased by three percent to 164 million and the margin that we landed is a As we said before, 9.3% versus 9.6%. It's still a fairly strong margin of 9.3% in the fourth quarter. The cash flow, as I did mention, that's 282 million. So that's a kind of a very big number in particular when compared to previous year or the previous quarter in comparison quarter, sorry, where we had 8 million. So still a very strong cash flow from operating activities. And the financial leverage means that we are right now at 2.5 and that we were joined by three companies in the fourth quarter. So that's pretty much on that one. So next slide, please. In terms of growth, we have a growth ambition and we intend to grow by 10% year over year. We took a step back on the M&A activities in the year of 2023, 2024. We are back on track in the number of companies we are looking for. And that means that we right now are at approximately 10% growth. That's where we are at this point in time. And that's what we have. We have had a higher number in the future. That's really what I'm saying. And as we are coming back on track on investment, we should see that number start to increase again. Stable market and right business, as I did mention, we are active in a very large market and that enables us to position ourselves and having a decentralized model enables us to have a margin that is quite higher than the average of the market. And being above 8%, that's the financial goal we have. We are meeting the target and working on exceeding that one significantly. Next slide, please. Now moving into Sweden. The full year on Sweden basically means that the net set decreased by 4%. And that's basically two factors. We have headwinds in the market. And also, as we have communicated before, focusing on increasing the profit margin in Sweden. And to some extent, that means that we are closing down one or two companies. We are getting rid of unprofitable customer contracts. And that's primarily focused on the Swedish market. So for the full year, EBITDA, we had given the fourth quarter performance, we saw a decrease of 21% to 135 million. And that means that we landed at the margin of 5% versus 6.1% the previous year. And that is of course below our expectations. But nonetheless, that's where we are. The fourth quarter net sales decreased by 60% to 670 million and EBIT A decreased by 63% to 21 million gives us a margin of 3.1% versus a 7.1%. So this is the shortfall that we saw to some extent unexpected and also Yeah, we're going to save that one. I'm sure we're going to have questions coming further on in this one. I can imagine that about 50% of the shortcoming, that one we can refer to, let's say, company specific events and about the other rest, the 50% of the shortcoming is it was a tough market in the fourth quarter. So moving on to Norway. What we can see in Norway for the full year of 2024, we saw an increase of 10%. And again, the market conditions in Norway was also quite a significant headwind, I would say. So having an increase of 10% in that year is a very strong performance on our Norwegian company. So for those guys, they did a very good job. Organically, they grew by 8%. And then we had the acquired one of 3%. And then of course, we had the increase of EBIT A by 6%. And that meant they landed the year at the healthy 9.9% EBIT A. So quite strong performance in Norway for the full year of 24. In the fourth quarter, we saw an increase of 30%. And we saw that the EBITDA increased by 9%. And they landed at the market again at 11.6%. Quite a performance of our colleagues in Norway. Then moving on to other Europe. As communicated before, other Europe, that's particularly, I would say, Germany. And that's where we have the... heavy focus on investments, but for the full year performance, they grew by 67%. They have now reached a billion SEK in annual revenue. And also we saw a very substantial organic growth by 40%. And then again, invest in the new companies or acquisitions by 54%. So it's a high growth situation for us. EBIT A grew by 36%. And that means that we reach 192 million. And that gives us a margin of 18.8%. So again, significant growth in both revenue as well as in EBIT A. Now, in the fourth quarter, we saw that the net sales increased by 86%. And we saw an EBITDA growth grew to 70 million SEK. And that gives us a margin of 21% in the fourth quarter. So again, we are building up Europe. We have Munich as the second headquarter. We are focusing on the German-speaking region of Europe at this point of time. and we do our ambition is to continue the growth in the german market for the coming one or two years then going through the companies we basically are presenting three companies We made one additional company in Finland, and that is Turun, who was founded back in 1985, operates out of Turku in Finland. And this is actually a sweet spot company in terms of what they are doing, because they are doing both landscaping and maintenance services. The majority of the companies we have in Finland are landscaping companies. So here comes the maintenance companies with service contracts, longer public contracts and so forth. They have an annual sales of 3.6 million with 20 employees. So we do welcome Turo to the Finnish organization as well as to the Green Landscaping Group. They are a great addition to us. Then we have Viva Gartenbau in Switzerland. So they are operating in Basel. This is an acquisition that we actually made or an investment that we made a year ago, actually more than a year ago. And then for various reasons that to some extent is out of our control, we needed permits in order to acquire the building stone in Basel. And that actually meant that we had to wait 12 months before we conclude this business. But nonetheless, they are much welcome to the group. They have a revenue of 3.2 million Swiss francs and they have 20 employees. And we do welcome that company to the group as well. And then the last company to be presented today is Tiefbau Lenzen GmbH. That was founded back in 1953. This is the first company in North Rhine-Westfalen. They are located in Bonn, and that is basically in the rural area of Germany. And we do expect other companies in that area to be followed by Tiefbau Lenzen. They have an annual revenue of 8 million euros and they do that about 30 employees. So this is a very good addition to what we are doing in Germany. And we do welcome the Tiefbau Linsen to the Green Landscaping family. I think that concludes my part of the presentation, and then I hand it over to our new CFO, Marcus Holmström, that we have been waiting for for a long time. So, Marcus, take it away.

Great. Thank you, Johan. And I will cover the main financials. Quarter four showed net sales of 1.8 billion, bringing our rolling 12 months to 6.4 billion, resulting in a total growth of 9% for the year. EBITDA in the fourth quarter came in at 164 million, which was ahead of last year, but the modem was slightly below at 9.3%. Positively impacted by the development in Norway and other Europe, but weighted by the development in Sweden, as Johan already mentioned. I will talk more about cash flow on the following slides, but we are very pleased with the way we ended the year, and as a consequence, financial leverage decreased sequentially to 2.5 times. Order backlog decreased to 7.3 billion in the quarter, but have in mind that the size fluctuates between quarter and it should therefore not be used as a short-term leading indicator. Earnings per share in the quarter was 109 SEK compared to 166 SEK last year. It's worth noting that last year we had a positive effect of 0.42 SEK per share related to revaluation of estimated outcome of earn-out considerations. So let's have a look at cash flow. During the quarter, we managed to reduce working capital, supporting the already seasonally strong cash flow quarter, resulting in an operating cash flow of 182 million, which is clearly stronger than last year. This brings the rolling 12 months cash flow to 601 million, as Johan said, that we're very pleased with. Nonetheless, working capital development and cash flow generation continues to be a focus area for us. And looking at the cash flow bridge and total cash flow, as said, the operating activities contributed with 282 million in the quarter. Then we completed three acquisitions totaling 119 million in cash considerations. We then also divested certain assets such as machinery and so on, resulting in a net positive 1 million from CapEx and other investments. The net difference between new loans and debt amortization was positive 65 million, totaling the cash flow for the period at 228. Given the positive cash flow in Q4, in combination with positive effects on EBITDA, we sequentially deleverage to 2.5 times, which is in line with our financial target and gives us headroom to continue the M&A agenda. The low maturity profile remains the same as in previous quarters, with maturity at the end of 2026. These are banks loans from three different banks, and we have only one covenant, which is net debt to EBITDA pro forma. And financial targets. We have a growth target at 10% and we're currently shy of it at 9%. But looking at margin, we're ahead at 8.3 and spot on at our leverage 2.5. The board proposes to the AGM that we should not distribute any dividend for fiscal year 2024. And with that, I will hand back to you, Johan.

Okay. So thank you, Marcus. Just to sum up the year for 2024. And as I think you all know, it's given the segment we're in, we have faced some headwinds during the course of the year. And having a net sales increase by 9%, I think that is a strong performance. I look upon the organic growth of 3% and also that the investment activities have yielded in another 7%. I think that it's a strong performance. And to me, it's a quality indication of the companies that we have in the group that we continue to grow even though we are having headwinds. The EBIT A increased by 3% to 528 million SEK. And again, if I look up on the margin that we were at, if I compared the previous year, 8.8% and that we are at 8.3%. Again, that is very strong performance of the companies out there. And they really do show a pricing discipline. Because if it's a tough market conditions, the number of quotes or the competition is increasing and so forth and still showing a very strong discipline in what they are doing. I think that is a quality indication of the companies we have. And as I did, we are highlighting the cash flow, being able to deliver 601 million SEK in cash flow. Given the EBITDA of 528, it's also a very strong performance. So all in all, I think it's another successful year for the group and I'm quite happy with the performance given the market conditions that we have seen. So by that, I do believe we are opening up for the Q&A part of this conference call.