Indutrade AB (publ)

Welcome and good morning on our behalf as well. We will directly go into some of the overall highlights as usual. We gave this quarterly report the headline stable demand in a challenging quarter and with challenging we refer to that Q1 in 2023 was a very strong quarter and is now a difficult reference. We have some easter effects and also some headwind in certain segments and all of this I will obviously elaborate more on. But back to the highlights and the comments. So there was a stable order intake growth of plus minus zero percent in total where of minus three percent organically and to comment some of the Sectors and segments we saw good demand in the medtech area, pharmaceutical area and also in terms of energy and the process industry. In terms of sales we were down four percent and organically minus six percent and again this was mainly due to strong references and fewer working days. This led to an EBITDA margin of 13.3%. Not a level where we want to be but again I will talk a bit more about this later on here. The inventory level was quite stable from Q4 2023 so sequentially flat and a very good acquisition pace. five acquisitions completed in quarter one and seven so far in the year here. And I would say that the inflow of interesting companies to acquire is strong. But I'm sure many of you are keen to understand more about the market perspective. And on this slide here, you see both order intake and sales next to each other and the bars refer to the absolute numbers and the yellow line is the growth line organically and you can see now in terms of the bars there that we have had a growing order intake and a fairly good order intake in Q4 last year and Q1 now this year in relation to sales which has been a little bit weaker there and hence we have built some order book but I would say continued aggregated stable high demand and order intake as I said in line with previous year and Q4 23 and just to gives some context to 23. Order intake at that point in quarter one was in total up 14% and organically plus 3%. And as usual for Indutrade, we have seen variation between companies, segments and countries. And we have had a positive book to build now two quarters in a row where orders now were 4% higher than sales. So you have to take the numbers, plus minus zero in total, minus 3% organically, plus 3% from acquisitions, minus one from divestments, and plus one related to currency. And talking a bit about sectors and segments, as I said, companies with customers in the pharmaceutical production had the strongest order intake. But demand was also good within the process industry and the energy segment. As many of you know, we have a cluster of companies linked to the Novo Nordisk capacity increases. And that's still obviously ongoing to a very large extent, but the projects are large and complex and there are some delays being experienced there. I would say that we weren't able really to invoice and ship to the extent which we planned some months ago. In general, I've said this many times before, in general the green transformation is still driving a lot of investments and also business activity in general which is positive for a large part of our companies. not least the process energy and water business area. The organic order intake in infrastructure and construction was still weak and has been weak now for some quarters predominantly in the construction area. This quarter we have also experienced a bit weaker demand from the engineering segment. If we then turn into sales, again, strong references, and it was even stronger on the sales side than the order intake side. Q1 2023 sales increased 26% in total and plus 13% organically. So it is really difficult comparisons here. And we came in this quarter minus 4% in total and minus 6% organically, plus 3% from acquisitions, minus 1% from divestments, and the impact from currency was basically flat. And this time, only one of our five business areas were able to grow organically, and that was process, energy, and water. And again, based on to a large extent, I would say the green transformation and predominantly the Nordic region. Life science had very strong references, a lot of all time highs in our companies in terms of sales last year. And again, as I said, a bit of delays linked to the Northern Nordic potential invoicing shipping. and also lower activity in terms of single use in the pharma production. We had a great business linked to that a year ago and now it's dramatically lower and part of that can be explained by less with orientation. And again, a continued challenging market situation for the infrastructure and construction area. If we look at sales more in a market perspective, what markets countries we sell into, you see that we have divided this in a Nordic cluster. something we call rest of Europe and then rest of the world. We are since several quarters back stronger or we are experiencing a stronger market situation in the Nordics versus the more central European countries. And within the Nordics it's actually this quarter been Norway which has been the best market And in Norway, I would say that the energy segment stands out positively. And otherwise it's a rather okay situation overall. Otherwise, Sweden, Denmark, Finland was more flattish. Obviously, differences between sectors in these countries. In Sweden, we have had a good life science situation, but a weak construction situation. sector. The rest has been more flattish. In Denmark it's been quite okay in terms of process, energy and water. Some of our companies there have built new business in Iceland where we really haven't been strongly present before which has been positive. As I said, Denmark would probably have been a little bit stronger with an arrow up if there had been more invoicing linked to this Novo Nordisk cluster. In Finland we also see a weaker construction area, also slightly weaker engineering segment. Obviously there's been a strike as you all know in Finland this quarter and that has also had some impact there. If we turn to the rest of Europe it is somewhat weaker. In the Benelux area in Germany we see weaker single-use invoicing and that sort of driving the arrows down otherwise fairly flattish situations. In the UK Energy defense are positive, construction weaker. And in Switzerland and to some extent Austria, we have also seen a weaker situation in the construction segment. Also life science and process energy in water. And we are not really present in the other sectors in Switzerland, Austria. We are fairly relatively small in North America and Asia, so large individual orders can have some impact, but in general, the business climate is stronger in North America, and that's why the arrow is up there, and Asia, prominently China, a bit of a weaker business situation. If we then turn to our financial performance in terms of EBITDA. Obviously, the organic sales development is the main driver for the EBITDA decline. Again, the strong references and the Easter effects had impact there. In absolute terms, our EBITDA came in at 1.1 billion SEK, a decrease of 16% and 19% organically and plus 3% from acquisitions, 0% from divestments and 0% linked to currency. It was actually comforting to see that our gross margin was improving in this quarter. It's actually been our best gross margin level since Q4 2021. So good work in terms of that. However, we also experienced higher expense levels and Here we are not equally proud and I could just say that cost management will be important going forward. I think we were a little bit too much on our heels versus on our toes in this quarter linked to the cost side. All of you basically know that from the beginning of the year we introduced a new group structure. We went from eight business areas to five international business areas. The intention with this is basically to fuel growth, medium term, long term. Not any expected short-term impact. The organization is obviously launched and implemented and the structure is based on being more outside in market driven in terms of these new sectors and all the sectors are then divided into approximately 30 segments. We have definitely still kept the individual company at the core of Indutrade. So we are more building, you can say, a support and development structure around the companies. And the companies are now grouped into more relevant segments where they can learn from each other and gain knowledge from each other in a better way. We also think that this can and should drive positive acquisition activity. We can more clearly see now where we potentially have what we call white spot areas in these 30 segments and build acquisition plans in a structured way linked to that. I also think this structure provides more clarity about the Indutrade in an external perspective. It's intuitively more easy, I would say, to understand what we are all about and in what sectors where we are present. So if we then turn into the performance in the five different business areas, I would say that all of them are obviously impacted by fewer working days and strong references, but in particular the life science area. They had an extremely strong quarter one last year and not least then linked to this single use area. Infrastructure and construction continues to have a challenging market situation and in this business area total sales were also affected negatively by the divestment of the Dutch company Cubic which we made late last year and that had an impact of minus eight percent This is not new that there has been headwind in the construction sector for some quarters now. I would also say that the winter this quarter or the first quarter of this year in the Nordics have been quite challenging in terms of construction work. The weaker general engineering and also construction markets had impact in industrial and engineering and also technology and system solutions more broadly and I would say more evidently this quarter than in 2023. But process energy and water managed to grow organically and driven mainly by the process industry and the energy segments in the Nordic area. If we look at EBITDA in a business area perspective, all areas were impacted by the weak organic sales development. EBITDA margin declined for all business areas, but only very marginally for process energy and water. Life science, as discussed before, had the most challenging references. And the lower organic sales for companies selling to the pharma production single use had a really stronger impact on the margin here. Good pricing work and impacting the gross margin positively. And again, it came in at 35% versus 34.6 a year ago. So a strong level here. But the margin, the EBITDA margin was reduced or dampened by our increased expense level. And we have obviously experienced cost inflation in general, and this needs to be managed. And I'm not completely satisfied with our performance here this quarter. If we then leave the financials and the business areas and turn to acquisitions, a more happy phase, happy situation, I would say a really good start in 2024. And we have now been able to acquire seven well-managed, successful companies. And if we add their total sales annually, it adds up to 775 million SEK. four out of five business areas have been engaged in acquisitions. And we have a number of projects right now in different phases ongoing, which is positive for coming quarters. And as we have said before, we have generally strengthened our acquisition resources since some quarters now, and we have built also some some professional resource in the Northern Italy and hope to see positive effects of that going forward. Also the general pipeline remains strong and the inflow of new companies is positive. So all in all I'm quite optimistic that 2024 will be a good acquisition year. On this slide here you can see our performance in terms of number of companies acquired and also the quarterly financial effects from acquisitions. Basically how much EBITDA we have added in a single quarter here. In the slide towards the right there you see that we have added around 30 million SEC in quarter one. That's in relation to the previous years here, a fairly low level. We have been more around 60, 70 or even above that some quarters. So we didn't have effects from previous quarters into this first quarter to a very large extent now. And the acquisitions we have made this quarter haven't really added in enough yet. So in this perspective, quarter two will will have a better effect, more effect. But you know that our goal is to really acquire around 20 companies per year and I would say that we are at that pace this year now. In general it's wise to basically follow up our acquisition progress over a longer period of time since it can shift between quarters quite significantly. By that I will leave the word over to Patrick to elaborate a little bit more about the financial performance.

Yes, thank you, Bo. And summarizing a little bit of the financial performance then, and maybe repeating a little bit the important key points. Total growth for orders and sales were zero and minus four respectively in the quarter. And as Bo already talked about on the organic side, strong references and they affect fewer working days had a negative impact on the development. And also on the acquisition side, the addition from acquisitions were relatively low compared to previous quarters as the new acquisitions have not really started to give effect. So slightly lower than we're used to, but it will increase during the coming quarters. Positive is that book-to-bill was above one in all business areas and also then aggregated, of course, for percent higher orders than sales in the quarter. Continued good pricing work gave this higher gross margin, as Bo also mentioned, and 35 versus 34.6 last year. Beta was down 16% in the quarter, driven by the lower organic sales, I would say, and slightly higher expenses. Beta margin 13.3 versus 15.2 last year. And Q1 has historically been a seasonally low margin quarter. So the 15.2 last year really stands out. I must say that. And looking in detail in the result a little bit more, we had some positive earn out revelations in the quarter as we sometimes have, but then They were basically offset them by some other negative one-offs, for instance, connected to the divestment boom mentioned. So net, there are no sort of one-off effects in the result, I would say. Finance net up 17 versus last year because of the higher interest rates. Tax costs decreased with 23%, so basically in line with the results. The underlying tax rate is also then basically in line with last year. EPS decrease with 22% in the quarter and I will elaborate on the next slide a little bit more on that. Return on capital employed declined but is still on a good level of 20% in line with our target. Cash flow, operational cash, seasonally weaker in Q1 and amounted to 487 which is lower than last year also that affected mainly by the lower earnings. Net debt EBITDA was stable on a relatively low level 1.5 versus 1.8 last year. So moving on and looking at the cash flow and as I said then it is also clear from this chart Q1 is a seasonally low quarter, but it was also down versus previous years and amounted to 487. The decrease is driven totally by the lower result. Working capital movements were actually more favorable this quarter than last year. Inventories more specifically, they were sequentially stable from end of last year. Of course, a bit of headwind when the organic sales has a sort of a slow development. But our companies are working hard to get the inventories further down. And then maybe also important to note that Q1 is normally a quarter where working capital is increasing slightly. And that's part of the reason why cash flow is normally seasonally a bit low in Q1. So moving on to look at the earnings per share development in a trend perspective. EPS amounted to 1.61 in this quarter then compared to 2.06 SEK per share Q1 last year. And this was mainly driven by the lower operational results. But also then, of course, the increased finance costs also impacted this in a negative way as well. Looking at the more longer-term perspective, the three-year and the five-year growth is 16 and 14 percent respectively. Ending then with the debt situation. To summarize, we still have a strong financial position. The interest bearing net debt decreased versus last year and was around 8.5 billion versus 9.4 last year and the reduction there comes mainly from the very strong cash flow we had last year then the lower the seasonally lower q1 cash flow then in combination with the increased acquisition pace made the debt move up sequentially slightly But the net debt ratios, they are still stable and low from a historical perspective. Net debt equity, 55 versus 69. And net debt debt, as I mentioned before, 1.5 versus 1.8 last year. And if you exclude the earnouts, it's 1.4 versus 1.6 last year. So again, in conclusion, despite increasing our acquisition pace, the financial position is strong. So then I leave back over to you, Bo, to summarize.

Thank you, Patrik. So the key takeaways from this presentation here should be that there has been stable demand in a challenging quarter. and a positive book to build two quarters in a row now we have a portfolio of companies in different situations and companies experiencing better market situations they obviously continue to pursue growth initiatives while companies with more declining order intake are actively working on on defending their margins There is still some uncertainty in terms of the macroeconomic situation. However, it seems like we are coming closer and closer to reduced interest rates. But there is also geopolitical risks which provide uncertainty. And we also face strong references, particularly now in quarter two. In quarter three and four, they will be more reasonable. However, the slightly improved order backlog and the good acquisition pace contribute to some optimism about the earnings trend in the coming quarters. Seven acquisitions in 2024 with combined annual sales of 775 million SEK. And we have established and implemented a new group structure for future growth. I would say towards the end here that we are not happy with the Q1 profitability and we will work towards improving this level going forward. By that we end the presentation, the formal presentation and leave the word back to the facilitator.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five 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 Ritchie from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Thank you and thanks for taking our questions. Just to start off there on the margins, as you said, there are strong comps and maybe a bit higher cost than you expected. than you had wanted but would you say that it's given the volumes that you had that the EBITDA margins are kind of on a normalized level for a Q1 or would there be more that you could trim away on the cost side in a material way?

I would say that there is and there should be more to do on the cost side. But I can't give you like a number or what type of impact that should have but there is more to do there.

And input is also that sales of course and the strong you have this from reference but you also have the working day so that lowers total sales of course and we will get back that in quarter two so that will also impact the margin of course.

Okay and would you say that there is there a material difference between the trading companies and those with proprietary products that's worth highlighting?

No I think it's That categorization is not key here. It's more, I would say, different sectors and the cost is more of a broader situation than linked to a certain category of companies.

Also, the stable gross margin indicates also that there's no sort of big grounder absorption or so in the production companies that impacts.

Very good. And just lastly on life science, on the projects which you were not maybe able to invoice as much as you had anticipated, is it possible to get some kind of idea of the impact it had in the quarter?

Some. No I can't give you a number there but it had some impact and if it wasn't to some extent interesting significant I wouldn't have mentioned it.

Okay thank you I'll get back in line.

Thanks.

The next question comes from Carl Ragnarstam from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Good morning, it's Carl from Nordea. Coming back a bit on the SG&A level. I mean, looking at both selling and admin expense up 8%. As you said, sales came down due to working days, which impacts obviously the relation to sales. But could you help us a bit on the walkthrough of the components here? I mean, it looks a little bit steep in our view. I guess wage inflation is a little bit of it, but I cannot obviously explain the whole SG&A uplift here. And also on that note, I guess you mentioned a bit on cost out. Could you explain a bit how you will communicate and work with the companies on the back of it? And also, will you work a little bit more with pricing? Because you have good pricing opportunities. I mean you could likely work with pricing in some companies as well I guess.

As you say yourself it's a general cost inflation increase as we all know and also linked to salaries and people related costs. I would also say that since we have experienced quite quite good growth for several years now. Some of our companies have engaged in facility changes and for the right reasons they've been growing and they've been outgrowing some of their old facilities and at least new facilities and so on. So there is to some extent I think a cost increase linked to that and otherwise I can't really say that I have any specific comments I don't know Patrick if you have.

No if you I mean there's net not that there's no increase in employees net I would say year over year so there's no big increase in employees There is a structural cost, as Bo describes, on the facility side. That's driving a little bit. Companies have moved into, a few companies have moved into bigger structures. That's part of it. Inflation, I would say the main other reason is the inflation. You mentioned 7-8%. That's on the total and including acquisition and currency. Looking at the organic, I would say it's half of that, which is Also a lot of money, but not as high as described.

I think how we work with it, you have fixed costs, you have semi-fixed and you have costs you can get more easily sort of decide on yourself in terms of activity oriented cost basically and here I think companies could have done a little bit better job when they are expecting perhaps a lower top line. They need to be a little bit more on the toes to protect their profit margins.

And in the trade, I mean if you look at historical context, you've been extremely good in managing costs and being very agile. Would you say that the reshuffling of companies is the reason behind the sort of maybe maybe the reason not that you've taken out costs that quickly as before or could it be that you have too many companies to manage is the reason why or is it just bad luck this quarter or how should we look at it?

I think it's not primarily the reasons you bring up because business areas or head office or so are not drivers for cost reductions it should be the local managing directors who and with their management teams who manage this and I perhaps think it's a little bit more linked to that we have had quite a long journey of growth now and yeah perhaps a little bit slow reaction here and there more than usual but it's I'm still confident that with some sort of discussions internally now we will very quickly come back to the DNA we have in the group here to manage costs in a good way. So I'm actually not really worried but I think it's more of a one-time setback a little bit here now and then we will come back to managing this in a good way. But responsibility lies locally and should do so. So it's not really linked to a new organization.

Okay very good and also on life science here we have very little historical numbers obviously but From historical data, the margin looks a tad soft, but obviously had good demand in the quarters. We actually can see from your reporting. So could you help us with the historical margin? What is the normalized? I mean, the sort of boosted years here, margin level, and could also help us on the year-over-year development here in the margin of life science. What is the mixed effect with with lower single use demand currently?

It's a super relevant question obviously and I will say that we will come back to that with a more structured answer at the right time. We are in a phase actually detailing this out ourselves. Obviously we know a lot more than you do but rather And saying something prematurely now, I think we will come back more at the right time when we have an overview which we can explain in a good way. But briefly, the single use segment has been very accretive for us. And within single use, there was a clear COVID spike. that is now basically gone and it's difficult to short term offset that spike with other types of single use orders that quickly. So I think that is the main explanation I would say. And the single use companies have been quite profitable so when they in absolute terms have lower both Top line and bottom line, there is a mix effect in the life science business area impacting the total area negatively. I don't know, do you want to add Patrick anything linked to that?

No, maybe repeating a little bit, but there were fantastic order growth in this segment, not only specific COVID orders, but that whole area grew fantastically during 21, 22, built up a very big backlog with relatively long lead times. And that was delivered out in a very good way than late 22 and beginning of 23, contributing to the good results of life science last year. And now those orders are, the backlog is more normalized or lower. I would say not normalized, it's low on the single use side. We see some slight signs of pickup, but it will take some more quarters before it comes back more in good pace. So in general, I think the life science margin is there is a potential to that but we need to come back with maybe a more detailed answer on that but I think there's for sure a potential to that up to something more similar to what they had before but exactly what let's come back to that and the follow-up if I may sorry

on the order intake in life science you grew by 1% organically and you said that you see some signs of a pickup do you have positive organic order intake growth in single use currently or is it more an ambition in perhaps in a few quarters or was it a statement related to sales that you have a pickup in orders now and sales might improve in second half when you deliver or

But if you look at the order intake, I don't have the aggregated number to be honest on the single use, but it's picking up sequentially at least. It is on the order side, but the sale side, it's a big negative in the quarter.

And what is the time difference between order and delivery typically?

But I would say Carl that a more sort of really significant uptake both in orders to start with and sales is a couple of quarters away in single use. There has been quite a lot of stock build up by these customers and So there's not going to be a really dramatic effect, I don't think, in Q2, perhaps not even in Q3, but more towards the end of last year. There is, as Patrick says, a positive trending, but it's going to be more significant later on in the year.

Then to zoom out, I mean, this is only one of the areas we have in the life science area. Then you have the more the cluster working with the also pharma production, but more stainless steel oriented pharma production, which has had a fantastic order growth the last year. And even if there's maybe a flattening out this quarter because of a bit delay in Novo Nordisk, that will continue to grow. So there are other areas. The single use is, of course, not an insignificant area, but only one of the areas within life science.

For sure, I totally agree. But from the look of the margin, it looks to be quite important. That's reason behind the questions, I guess. But super, if you could come back at some point, it would be very helpful. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Carl Bockvist from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. My first question is on the organic sales deceleration if we compare it to the level we had now in Q4-23. Just to understand the dynamics on a group level more in terms of orders and sales and what you see and also the comment you made about two quarters of positive book-to-bill and encouraging earnings trend going forward. Two quarters in a row now good orders how quickly could this help organic sales?

If we look at quarter two to be a little bit more specific then I think the Easter effect will definitely obviously have a very positive impact and the number of working days effect. So even if we are basically flat at the level where we have been invoicing on a daily basis in March now, there will in absolute terms be a positive effect in quarter two, which is probably quite significant. And then we will see a little bit month by month now. I think at some point in this year the construction segment will turn. It's perhaps not in quarter two, maybe more quarter three, quarter four. At the same time the general engineering segment slowed a little bit now in Q1. I don't expect that to be very dramatic. I think it's going to be more of a soft landing or a short period of decline there. But it's likely to be a little bit softer in quarter two as well. And then you still have improvements i think in in life science you have a process energy in water which which will continue to be in a good good mode so it's uh yeah difficult to sum this up and and give a very detailed answer but but there will be not least from from just the easter effect a positive impact on quarter two so

saying it in a few other words, I think sequentially Q2 from Q1 will, if we don't have any sort of significant changes in the sort of general macro environment, Q2 will pick up from Q1. But there's still these tough references from last year. So it will be difficult of course to show really good organic growth levels also in quarter two. But sequentially there will be in pickup if you don't have any dramatic changes, macro changes.

Understood and then on the M&A side if we look at the acquisitions made year to date. There's been three out of six within life science. You, of course, have an ambition that all divisions should contribute to the M&A targets. But right now, based on what you see in the market, are there any particular areas where you feel that, first of all, there are more opportunities, and second of all, from your side, where you find things more interesting?

Even if we ever had a setback in quarter one now in terms of life sign margins that is a very interesting area. It's usually healthy profitability levels in the sector, good gross margins in the sector and usually less volatile environment I would say as well. So that's absolutely interesting and important but we are broadly optimistic in terms of our acquisition approach so we look for you know really nice good companies in all these sectors and don't really put a certain sector as a priority it's more to find really good individual companies I would say and that should be possible in all areas based on the geographical scope we have.

Understood. And then my final one, getting back to the subject we've already discussed quite a bit, but when it comes to the matter of expense levels, historically, how quickly would you assess that your businesses can get back to being on their toes, if we put it in that way?

rather quickly I would say, more quickly than a large big industrial company with integrated product ranges. They can impact their activity-based costs very quickly I would say and a little bit more slowly they're semi-fixed but they can also impact that. So hopefully some effect quite quickly.

Understood. That's all from my side. Thanks.

Thanks.

The next question comes from Johan Dahl from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Johan Dahl Danske Bank, your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad.

there are no more questions at this time so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments thank you as we haven't received any written questions we say thank you for listening in and please turn to us if you have complimenting questions later on today and we wish you a good day thank you so much