Investor AB (publ)

Results call for the second quarter and the first half of 2025. I'm joined here in the studio by our CFO, Jenny Aschman-Hakvinius, and our CEO, Christian Sederholm. Both will soon give their presentations. Today, we are also fortunate to have the CEO of Möllnlykke, Slatko Richter, with us, and he will provide some more in-depth comments on that company. Following his presentation, we will be opening up for questions, both via our operator and online. And with that, over to you, Christian.

Thank you, Jacob. And hello, everyone. So, Q2 results were healthy in a turbulent environment. Our adjusted net asset value grew 3% in line with the 6RX return index. Our TSR, however, was minus 5%, reflecting a wider discount. In times like these, we stay close to and support our companies as many are focusing a lot on cost efficiency and agility. We have continued to see significant investment activity across the portfolio, reflecting attractive opportunities in all three business areas. Our financial position remains strong. At the end of the quarter, our net asset value stood at 961 billion Swedish. Let me briefly go through the three business areas, starting with listed companies that represents about 70% of our portfolio. Listed companies generated a total return of 6% ahead of the 6RX return index that gained 3%. Saab was the main driver of our outperformance. During the quarter, we invested 1.2 billion in Ericsson. We continue to see Ericsson as well positioned to deliver profits and cash flow and to find new growth avenues over time. We've entered a contract to divest 5 million shares in SEB in order to avoid potential regulatory implications from our ownership increasing as SEB buys back and cancels shares. We remain positive to SEB's long-term potential and we're comfortable at an ownership at or around the current level. The portfolio companies continue investments to future-proof their long-term competitiveness, and ABB Robotics' new product families from China is one good example of this. Now over to Patricia Industries. Total return for Patricia Industries was minus 6 percent, including cash, with significant headwind from MultiPulse and FX. Our major subsidiaries grew sales organically by 5%, driven by Advanced Instruments, Laboree, Sarnova and Mönlycke. And as in previous quarters, innovative products continue to drive significant growth in several companies. Adjusted EBITDA declined by 1%, impacted by low profitability in Mönlycke, where margins were lower, again with significant headwind from the weaker dollar. Mönlycke and Permobil both distributed capital to Patricia Industries during the quarter. Mönlycke, 200 million euros, and Permobil, 1.5 billion Swedish. This is a testament to the strong cash regeneration in the Patricia Industries portfolio companies. Chuck Witkowski was appointed new CEO of Permobil, effective as of July 1st, and really happy to have found a strong internal successor to Bengt, who's done an outstanding job developing Permobil during his tenure. After the quarter, on July 10th, Advanced Instruments closed the acquisition of Nova Biomedical. Patricia Industries contributed 1.6 billion US dollars to finance this transaction. And as you know, we're really excited about this combination. Together, the two companies create an innovative, diversified and global life science tools platform with attractive long-term prospects based on, for example, a strong product portfolio across the biopharma and clinical markets, global presence with direct sales in key geographies and with low overlapping call points, and a scale and really strong R&D capability boding well for continued innovation. As you can tell from the pie charts here, the combined company will have roughly two-thirds of sales from clinical and one-third from biopharma, with the latter growing faster over time. About 60% of sales come from the US and with strong presence also in Europe and in APAC. And about 70% of sales come from consumables, which of course improves the stability of the business. For the major subsidies and our 40% in 3 Scandinavia, in aggregate, reported last 12-month sales was 67 billion Swedish and EBITDA was 16.7 billion. Now, please note that this is all in Swedish kronor, so of course sensitive to foreign exchange rates. Investments in EQT is our third business area and make up about 10% of the portfolio. Here, we had a fairly busy quarter. In Q2, total return from investments in EQT was 4%, driven primarily by depreciating share price in EQT-AB. During the quarter, we acquired shares in EQT-AB for a total of about 800 million Swedish, increasing our ownership by 0.4 percentage points. We think EQT has a proven business model that has consistently generated attractive returns to its fund investors. And this, of course, supports its ability to raise funds even in this tougher environment. We also co-invested alongside EQT 10 in Fort Knox. Fort Knox offers vital software-based infrastructure supporting Swedish small and medium-sized companies and has an impressive track record of profitable growth. This will be a passive minority investment, and we view this as an extension of our fund investment in EQT 10. From time to time, we will selectively look at co-investment opportunities as a complement to our fund investments. During the quarter, we invested 2.6 billion in this Fort Knox acquisition and expect to invest another 1.9 billion once EQT's bid is finalized. Finally, we committed capital to the new EQT Infrastructure Transition Fund, a new member of the infrastructure funds family, backed by a team with a really strong and long track record. So, to summarize, we have a strong platform and clear strategic direction. To continue to deliver, we focus relentlessly on performance, portfolio, and people. When it comes to performance, profitable growth, of course, is the main driver over time for our companies, and our companies continue to invest in future-proofing. At the same time, as mentioned, several companies are currently sharpening their focus on cost efficiency. Portfolio, we continue to see and execute on investment opportunities across our businesses, and we maintain a strong financial position. As for people, then, we're committed to broadening our network and to always strive to have the right person in the right place. With that, thank you, and over to you, Jenny.

Thank you, Christian. And good morning. So let me take you through the financials. So in Q2 2025, we had a net asset value, adjusted net asset value of 961 billion. And this implies an increase of 3% compared to Q1. For the quarter, performance was mixed across our business areas. Listed companies increased with 6% and investments in EQT increased with 4%. Patricia Industries, however, decreased with 6%. And this implies a total return of 3% for the quarter and 1% year-to-date. And now I will comment specifically on each of the business areas and I will start with listed companies. So within listed companies, share price performance was mixed. Saab was a strong contributor also this quarter, followed by Wärtsilä. We saw positive share price development in most of our companies. However, Atlas Copco, AstraZeneca and Electrolux had a tougher quarter looking at total return. Total return for listed companies portfolio was 6% compared to 6RX benchmark of 3%. And as for absolute contribution, Saab and ABB were the biggest contributors, while Electrolux, Atlas Copco and AstraZeneca naturally then from the previous slide contributed negatively during the quarter. And then moving on to Patricia Industries. In Patricia Industries, we saw a 6% decline in estimated market values, and that's compared to Q1. So from 214 billion to 202 billion. And this decline was almost in full explained by lower valuation multiples, but also to some extent negative currency impact. And as for the lower valuation multiples, they reflect average peer stock price development of the last quarter. The decline was, however, somewhat offside by underlying earnings growth and cash flow generation in the portfolio companies. And if we look at the value development across the companies, we can see that most of them were negatively impacted by lower valuation multiples and that some of them were also negatively impacted by currency. Worth noting here is the capital distribution from Mönlycke of Euro 200 million and from Permobil of 1.5 billion Swedish kronor. And then commenting on performance across the companies in Patricia Industries, again, it was mixed. And I will highlight a few themes, and I will comment specifically on Mönlycke on the next slide. So first to highlight the positives, we saw a strong organic growth in advanced instruments in Laboree, Sarnova and Mönlycke. And as for advanced instruments, we saw notably strong clinical instrument sales, and that's due to the launch of the Osmo Pro Max, but also strong growth within consumables. And we will report on the combined entity, Nova Biomedical, from Q3 as the first quarter. And for Q2, I can comment that the combined business grew in line with the historical average. For Laboree, we continue to see good runway with the Optilum products. In the short term, comps are getting continuously tougher as the Optilum urethral strictures is included in benchmark quarters. But longer term, there is a lot of potential in both urethral strictures and the more recently launched BPH product. PIAB and Permobil, they had a tougher quarter when it comes to sales growth, but profitability held up well. We continue to see tougher performance for BraunAbility and Atlas antibodies, and that's because market demand remains weak. And for Atlas antibodies, we are also seeing some increased competition from low-cost alternatives for some of the products. And then moving on to Mönlycke, and we will listen to Zlatko in a few minutes, so I will keep this on a high level. Before the quarter, Mönlycke had good sales growth, driven to a large extent by wound care, which grew 11% organically for the quarter. Profitability, however, was unsatisfactory, and that is in part explained by external factors, and that's primarily the negative effects from a weaker US dollar, but also to some extent tariffs, from which we started to see an impact later in the quarter. And these external factors impacted the margin with roughly three percentage points. And then on top of that, the slowdown in ORS also weighed on profitability. But as mentioned in the report, Manlycke is accelerating the work to find efficiency improvements. And worth noting, however, is that the actual timing of the positive impact from such improvements will vary. Moving on to investments in EQT. The total value change was 4% in the quarter, and that's primarily driven by EQT AB, which was up 6%. Fund investments were up 1%. And as a reminder, we report EQT fund investments with one quarter lag. So the 1% is based on EQT's Q1 report. For Q2 earlier this morning, EQT reported 1% positive development in key fund investments for H1, indicating a similar performance for Q2. But note that this is in euro and that the correlation to our equity fund investments is not one to one, but perhaps it gives some indication. On the right hand side, we illustrate the net cash flow from equity to investor, which was negative with 2.8 billion in the quarter. And that's because investments were larger than the sum of dividend and proceeds. Our 2.6 investment in Fort Knox and the 800 million acquisition of shares in EQT AB represent the majority part of investments for EQT in the quarter. And this is an illustration of net cash flow from our investments in EQT over time. While it's quite lumpy on a quarterly basis, over the past 10 years, we've received a net cash inflow of 2.3 billion on average per year. Our balance sheet remains strong, and this is always a priority, but perhaps even more so in these turbulent times. Leverage was 1% in the quarter and gross cash was 40 billion. If we include the closing of Nova Biomedical that took place in the first half of July, leverage is estimated to just shy of 3% and gross cash to roughly 24 billion. And this is, of course, all else equal as per the last of June. And as for leverage, and as you know, this is a comfortable level at the very low end of our policy range. And then on to my last slide. So over the 5, 10 and 20 years, the investor ABB show has outperformed both 6RX index and our internal return requirement, which we've highlighted in orange. And this underscores the strength and the resilience of our portfolio and our strategy. The past year has presented headwinds, but the long-term track record demonstrates the ability to navigate through cycles and generate sustainable returns for shareholders over time. And with that, I will leave the word to Slatko to provide some more color on Mönlycke.