Inwido AB (publ)

Hello and welcome to today's presentation with InVidu where President and CEO Fredrik Miller and CFO and Deputy CEO Pete Tavellin will present a report for the first quarter of 2026. After the presentation there will be a Q&A so if you're calling in and want to ask a question please press star 9 to raise your hand and then star 6 to unmute yourself when handed the word. You can also submit in questions via the form to the right and with that said I hand over the word to you guys.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's webcast covering Invido's first quarter performance of 2026. My name is Fredrik Møller. I'm the president and CEO of Invido since two years back. And next to me here in sunny Stockholm today is Peter Wellin, our group CFO and deputy CEO. Looking at the agenda and the material as such, we have listened to your feedback. We use today a new format, hopefully perceived as being a little bit more to the point at both group and BA levels. We will have a question and answer session towards the end of this call. And as usual, the material is, of course, also available on INVIDO's website. A seasonally challenging quarter in a turbulent context. I think the summary of that heading sums it up quite nicely. Given that and given the circumstances, I have to say that I think we do it rather well. in what has been a challenging quarter. And to some extent, we have to start already at the end of the fourth quarter of 2025. We had a record breaking December following a soft October and November. And so it was a strong finish to last year, indicating that we would have a solid start to 2026. We, of course, also need to remind ourselves that Q1 is always the quarter with the lowest activity of the year, where we also need to balance our resources for the pickup in demand and pickup in this industry early Q2. So we cannot take out all of the costs that would hamper us in Q2. But January and February were really burdened by harsh winter conditions across all of Europe, really, including our markets. And on top of that, we had some turbulence in the Danish market, which is somewhat unusual for us. lower consumer confidence related to everything from the Greenland debacle to turbulence around the Northern Nordic share, which is a major factor on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. And on top of that, harsh winter also in Denmark. And of course, also a new election. So there's a bit of a vacuum early in January, February. Momentum, however, I will get back to that momentum, however, picked up quite substantially towards the end of the quarter. Then on top of that came the Middle East conflict spoiling the party and adding to uncertainty overall, although we haven't seen any major impact of that so far. We'll talk more about later on as well. So for us, it was to some extent back to the drawing board without panicking. We continue to align our costs, but that is not something you do overnight. So it is, of course, a bit of a lag before that those measures kick in. And it means that we've had a start to what is now de facto the fourth year of a historic industry downturn. But again, given the circumstances, I think we do it rather well. I'm quite impressed by the efforts taken across all of our four business areas. And financially, Peter will cover the details of the financials in a second. But financially, we're back to quote-unquote normal pre-pandemic QI profitability. And that's also taking into account the fact that we had some negative FX impact in this quarter as well, around 6 million SEK. on EBITDA. What is important is that because there's always a silver lining and this quarter is no exception, March was substantially better than January, February. In fact, almost record breaking. And I think overall April looks good. So some positive momentum that bodes quite well for Q2 and onwards gives us some cautious optimism. There are lots of positives to celebrate in this quarter as well. I'm very proud of the achievements that we have made, going everything from R&D, where we launched new products, to sustainability, which has been award winning in many aspects. In fact, last Thursday, Our business unit outlined in Denmark was commended as the number one company in Denmark within diversity and number six when it comes to employee engagement. We're number two in employee engagement in Finland. We're number three in employee engagement in Ireland. So there's still a lot of positive activity, and I think we handle the downturn in a very, very good way across the group. Last but not least, before Easter, we... It concluded our fifth acquisition over the past six months, not bad. Through the acquisition of Sovereign in the UK, a fine traditional InVito transaction, I would say, really, really strengthening our UK platform. And it goes to show that the road map that we are on towards doubling the size of invito by year 2030 is definitely achievable and we do it in a still in a selective way where profitability is just as important as growth now we have one slide per each of the four bas and the order is by size we're starting with ba scandinavia Whereas I mentioned Denmark was softer, meaning that that had a negative mix impact on the overall figures, not only for the BA, but for the group as a whole. But I think, you know, solid performance also here, given the external factors. It's largely a volume and gross margin one matter, particularly in January, February, Denmark was softer, meaning that there was increased price pressure. March, much, much better. We came out of the doldrums. And as I said, that offers some cautious optimism for Q2 and beyond. Elite Transfer, to mention one specific BU, continued to gain share already late last year. And they have also launched a new precision range. I myself actually attended a two-day training course at our Leonhovda site. And walked away with a big smile on my face, feeling that we have a fantastic BU with fantastic products and people. So that's important for the future. If we move on to what is now a BA called West, previously Western Europe. West was in this quarter one of the stars, together with our e-commerce business. We have concluded three nice acquisitions, one of which after the quarter end, as I just mentioned, and they're all contributing nicely already. So great to see the integration happening and with quite attractive synergy potential upside as well. Saidi Group in Scotland bucked the poor weather and the cycle and in fact had their best Q1 to date, which makes a big difference positively to the whole BA. Worth mentioning more from a structural point of view in the UK and West market is that minimum wages have been raised yet again in England by 4.1% as from 1st of April. We've also seen a positive reaction from the cold and wet and windy and snowy winter that people have become and consumers have become much more aware of the fact that their electricity bill has gone up and the fact that they need to renovate their windows. And in addition to that, there is now something called the Warm Home Act in the UK, where the government is providing some incentives for renovation. In Ireland, we have seen the equivalent of the root subsidy in Sweden now being implemented, which of course provides some tailwind for our consumer business. Moving on to business area East. Finland, on top of very, very challenging macroeconomic conditions, had an unusually prolonged and cold winter. We had temperatures of minus 25, minus 30 degrees for several weeks in a row, meaning that it's not easy to run a window business during those conditions. And certain projects were, of course, deferred and some projects pushed to the sideline. Having said that, we have continued to shave off costs in a creative way, painful as it may be, and I'm genuinely impressed by Antti and his team and how they try to manage the situation. Price pressure is immensely fierce. given the fact that the market demand is just so low. So given the circumstances, I think we've done a good job. As a sign of the times, worth mentioning is that one of our larger competitors, Finestra, two weeks ago announced their bankruptcy. So it just goes to show that these are exceptional market conditions. Who knows? Hopefully it takes out capacity from the market. So hopefully that's in a way something that we can reap the benefits of as well. Poland looks solid. And of course, we've added AJM, the acquisition in Slovenia, making it our 14th market in terms of manufacturing and 18th market in terms of manufacturing and sales. So that's really great to see. Worth mentioning regarding Finland is also that as late as last week, finally, at last, the government is talking about implementing measures and relatively soon implementing measures. Again, similar to the route set up that we've seen in Sweden and that has been beneficial in Sweden. They're talking about implementing some of that in Finland to get the renovation and the consumer side going again, which would of course be extremely welcomed by us and everybody else in the industry. Last but not least, our e-commerce business is really going from strength to strength. I'm very pleased about the development here. It's the third consecutive quarter that we raised our profitability in what is de facto still a tough segment. Also here, of course, we saw some tougher conditions in Denmark at the beginning of the quarter, but quite a nice rebound towards the end of the quarter. And a 191% higher profit is not bad. 4.5 percentage points on the margin side, I think says it all. It's very impressive. It's a combo of cost efficiency measures that we started to take already one year ago and that we continue to take throughout 2025, but also very dedicated efforts within the field of value-based pricing. So these measures are kicking in quite nicely and In addition to Denmark, Germany is improving, and we have seen that we've gained market share in Q4 last year in Sweden, meaning that we are now number one in Sweden. And last but not least, we can see, judging by crossed pilot scores, which are quite important in this business, that we score far, far higher than our peers. And I'm not surprised. I visited our Glodene factory in Romania recently. Fantastic factory, great people, great products. So we have a bit of a lean and mean machine now when it comes to online in our e-commerce business, which is great to see. Onwards and upwards for Bo and his team. Now for more flavor on Indiro's consolidated Q1 financials, I hand over to you, Peter, please.

Thank you so much Fredrik. I'm starting with this page. This page is showing the income statement for Q1. As Fredrik mentioned before we had a good momentum end of last year. So when this year started we had a positive order intake in December and then the cold and long winter slowed down the market performance in the beginning of the quarter. Meaning we had too high capacity in the beginning of the quarter because we had forecasted with a higher activities which didn't occur. Thereby, we had a lower gross margin this year compared to last year, a decline from 22.9 to 22.1. Because we don't have the time, we didn't have the time to adjust that quickly in the beginning of the year. And it shall be noted that everything we do is made to order. If we could be able to produce an inventory, then we could have been running the productions fully, just producing the inventory, but we can't do that. So sales in the quarter was up by 4%, organically it's down by 2%. We had a slow start in the quarter, but more positive end of the quarter. The EBITDA was down by 6% compared to last year, and the operating EBITDA was down by 19% compared to last year, from 111 million down to 90 million. And here it's also including a negative FX impact of 6 million. Further down income statements, we can see that profit of the tax was down by 55% and the earnings per share was down by 73%. Of course, we have a higher minority stake in the quarter this year compared to last year. This page is showing the sales development as well as the operating beta development in Q1 from Q1 last year to Q1 this year. We can see that we have a lower resource in Scandinavia and in East. And we have a positive improvement or positive result improvement in West as well as in e-commerce. In West, we have a positive improvement due to, of course, acquisitions that have positive contributions to the result in Q1 compared to last year. But we have also an organic improvement in West when compared to last year. And then e-commerce has continued improvement as Fredrik mentioned before. Looking more on long-term perspective, this page is showing the sales and the gross manual one development from 2020 until 2026. And this year we have a higher seasonality impact in this quarter compared to last five, six years. A manual 4.3% is quite normal if you compare the margins pre-pandemic. Pre-pandemic, we were running between 4% and 5%. And in 2020, we had a margin of 3.3% in Q1. So we have a higher seasonality impact in the quarter. And it should be mentioned that the seasonality impact doesn't mean that there's an impact of the total year. It's just a shift between Q1 and the remaining quarters. Looking at the cash flows, the cash flows development is always negative in Q1 because our seasonality this year was no exceptions. So the cash flows before finance activities, excluding financial assets and acquisitions. was negative by 212 million this year compared to minus 187 million last year negative delta of 26 million due to the lower operating operating results so cash flow of operating activities was down by 24 million looking at the capex level and the capex level is slightly higher this year compared to last year but not a large a large increase Then looking at the net debt, the net debt has increased during the last months due to acquisitions. We have made five acquisitions, but only four have been paid for. The latest acquisition sovereign will be included from April and paid in April. So the total net debt end of March is 2%. 0.6 billion, including 490 million of IFR 16 debts and an acquisition debt of 586 million. Net deficit EBTA is 2.0, including RPAS 16 and 1.9, excluding RPAS 16. However, if I then calculate with a performer basing, meaning I calculate for 12 months running rate for the acquisitions, when I calculate the net deficit EBTA is on 1.7, meaning we have still a good leverage and a healthy position to make more acquisitions. Jan-Willem Wasmann, Return operating capital has declined in the quarter, mainly due to the lower operating result, but we also have a higher operating capital due to the acquisitions, so we have a decline from 12.4 in Q4 last year down to 11.7% in Q1 this year, rolling 12 months. looking at the order intake and the order backlog. On this page, you can see to the left, you can see the order backlog and to the right, you can see the order intake. I will come back more when it comes to the order intake on the two following pages. But starting with the order backlog, the total order backlog is 1% lower compared to last year. Project is minus 5% and consumer is plus 11%. Looking at the order intake, the total order intake is plus 3% in the quarter. Organically, it's minus 3%, where consumer is minus 2%, and project is minus 5%. So if we then dig a little bit deeper into the organic order intake consumer project started with consumer, this page is showing the organic developments, order intake developments of the consumer. From Q1 last year to Q1 this year, meaning the latest five quarters. To the left, you can see the total development of the group. You can see that in Q1 this year, we have minus 2% in Q1 and Q4 last year was plus 2%. Starting with Denmark, Denmark is quite stable. And then you can ask me, have you forgotten Q1 this year? No, I have not. The Q1 is exactly on the same level as last year organically, thereby there's no staple for Q1 for Denmark. So Denmark is quite stable. In Sweden, we had a higher oil intake, all the quarters in 2025. We had a really strong end of Q4, and then we had a little bit weaker Q1 this year. And of course, the winter has an impact, but also the root program has some impact for the order take. The root will not have an impact on the total sales or total development at 12-month basis, but it's a shift between Q4 and Q1. So higher order taking Q4 and a bit less order taking Q1. The consumer market in UK and Finland are still very challenging, and then the rest, which is only 30% of sales, there we have growth, and we see growth in Poland as well as in Germany. And once again, this is organic, so meaning the latest acquisitions are not included and also adjusted for FX. So in Q3 and Q4 last year, the UK and the Finnish markets was negative, but that was compensated by the Swedish, by the order intake in Sweden. And then it's Q1 this year, Sweden has not compensated the development of UK and Finland, and thereby we have a decline of 2% compared to last year. The product market. This page is showing exactly the same as consumer and organic developments of the order intake of the product market. But I can say this is so much more volatile. On the previous page, we had a scale from minus 25 to plus 20. Here we are more or less a minus 100 to plus 300. So the order intake within the product market is more volatile. And in total, it was minus 5% in the quarter compared to last year organically.

Thank you very much, Peter. It's time to round things off. And I think overall, I mean, Invito's 2030 target remains firm. We are delivering on our strategy in a very good way in anticipation of the organic growth and the market growth. rebound or recovery we are in a clever and selective way conducting a lot of acquisitions attractive acquisitions in both existing and new markets we've signed and concluded five deals over the last six months when i look into the pipeline of live and semi-live cases i think it looks quite good In fact, we have a few cases in totally new markets in addition to the ones that we've already added. It's a mix still of window and door businesses, but it includes also some targets within solar shading, which as you know and as mentioned several times is another area that we want to enter into. So I think we stand tall in the worst storm this industry has ever seen. We're turning challenges into opportunities. And to some extent, to use an analogy here, I think we're building and to some extent have built a Ferrari. In Q1, we were unfortunately only able to drive it at 40 kilometers per hour. So that's a little bit frustrating, but we're picking up speed and that's important and builds quite well. I don't need to dwell on the headwind on the left hand side, but more importantly, perhaps point towards the levers that we are pulling since a long time back. And this is, of course, something that we can never stop focusing on. This is always relevant for us, given the market context. On the cost side and the personnel side, we are taking out headcount. We are emptying time banks. We are forcing vacations, etc. It's painful, but necessary. We are tightening the screening of our portfolio. and the BEU's performance in a clever and long-term way, meaning that additional restructuring may happen. But there's absolutely no panic. On the contrary, I'm quite confident about where we are and where we're heading. And I think it feels the same when I listen to the rest of my group management team and the BU management teams. We are performing better than our peers. And overall, I think Q1 is actually a solid quarterly performance given the circumstances. Let's not forget that the fundamentals of this industry remain very, very strong. At the end of the day, people do need support. new windows and doors. We have lost some 20-30% volume and sales since the peak a few years ago. A normalization quote-unquote of this industry will implicitly mean quite a solid bounce back in demand. So if we look at the outlook, yeah, the world is in a crazy place. It's very difficult both for us, our analysts, investors, and everybody else out there to see what's around the corner. The Middle East conflict will most likely have a negative impact on raw materials, both price levels and availability. It will impact energy and transportation costs. But I'm not necessarily overly concerned about that. We have a governance model and we have a track record of being able to deal with those kind of circumstances, particularly looking into what we did during the pandemic. The question mark is more hovering around demand. and how that will be impacted by by this situation if there is of course increasing threats about inflation indicating that interest rates may go up then of course that could be another wet blanket on the consumer demand side but let's see our size um and our competence uh is And our importance, relatively speaking, for our suppliers is something that is certainly helping us in this situation. So we are focusing on what's within our control. Pro forma, we've added one billion second turnover over the last six months through these mentioned acquisitions. We have a more lean operational setup. It's really all about volume and about... going for profitability instead of volume. So with that said, I think Peter and I would be delighted now to answer any of the questions that you may have, please.

Thank you so much for the presentation here. And as you mentioned, now we'll carry on with the Q&A. So if you're calling in and want to ask a question, please raise your hand by pressing star nine and then star six to unmute yourself when handed the word. And the first caller here is Johnny Jin from SCB.

Good morning, Fredrik and Peter. I hope you can hear me. I have a couple of questions. I will start with profitability and the operating expense side. Were there any unusual high costs in this quarter that we should not exploit going forward? And also tying that to your comments on increased market uncertainty and such, are you now actually implementing cost reductions ahead in Denmark on Finland, for instance, or is this sort of the fair cost base we should

expected in the near term yeah hi good morning uh johnny this is frederick um it's a relevant question of course uh no i think as we said before one one needs to bear in mind that q1 is uh a quarter where we always need to balance the the cost it would be very easy to and but very short-sighted to throw out many more resources than what we have and what we can do. But that will bite us in the rear end if we do that already early in Q2 as the seasonal demand starts to pick up. And thankfully this year we've had, following the harsh winter, we've had quite a nice spring season already in many of our markets. So Again, big variations from market to market. In Denmark, of course, we're looking into what we can do to enhance the profitability even further. There is a lag before we take the measures and before we see the impact on that in the P&L. But overall, Denmark... did come out of the doldrums towards the end of the quarter, much, much better compared to the beginning of the quarter. And in Denmark, we have some really, really nice entities that are doing a good job already. So it's more a matter of getting that volume back and actually, to some extent, walking away from silly price projects. Finland is a totally different story. There, as you know, we have not only, I mean, already before 2025, we started to adjust the cost base, both the fixed and variable cost base to the demand situation. But you can only shave off so much. At the end of the day, you come down to the bone. But we have at the same time continued to take additional measures. And I'm genuinely impressed, as I said before, by... what we have achieved and how we can maintain momentum and this award-winning employee engagement level given the circumstances, because it is heavy, it is tough. And as I mentioned, we have competitors that are now going belly up, which is a sign of the times. So hopefully the last piece of news in Finland, the introduction of some kind of government incentive scheme comes into play and very soon, because that would be, of course, a big positive piece of news. So yeah, I mean, we are adjusting costs everywhere, but we are also confident about our OTIF, our on-time in full delivery precision, because that gives us an edge vis-a-vis competition, and it gives us an opportunity to also work with value-based pricing. So it's too easy to say that we should only work with the cost base. It's a bit more complex than that. Hopefully that answers your question.

Yeah, understood. But there were no extraordinary costs that we should be aware of in this quarter.

No, there was no extraordinary costs in this quarter. And it should be mentioned, if you take away acquisitions, because we have quite many acquisitions that impact the comparement. And when you're comparing Q1 this year compared to last year. But as we follow up on our cost base, meaning our production costs and overhead costs, we have a cost savings more than 30 million in the quarter compared to last year, excluding acquisitions.

understood okay moving to gross margin here it declined in the quarter year of year and i suppose that is more of a reflection of volume and mix is that correct and then more importantly how should we think about increased energy prices and raw materials going forward what sort of the magnitude we can expect from from that coming quarters and are you now implementing pricing to offset that or

And so the first question is, the first question is, yes, it's more, it's volume and mix, more volume than mix, especially because of the lack of activities in January, February, because we had planned with higher activities in January, February than what was the outcome. And then, of course, we have a mix because of the Denmark was a bit lower in sales compared to last year, and that has a negative impact on the margins. Looking at your second questions, we foresee material price increases, which will then impact in Q2. We will increase our sales prices. It is an ongoing process right now when it comes to our sales price and how much we're going to increase sales price because we don't really know how big the material price increase will be. But that will then have an impact then from Q3. So there will be... Everything else equals slightly negative impact in Q2, and then on Q3, we are back on track because it takes a bit more time for us to adjust our pricing. So it's a timing issue for us. So in the long-term perspective and looking historically, we have never had problems because we are able to adjust and compensate on the sales prices, but it's a time lag.

Understood. Good. Then I move to sales here a little bit. I think you mentioned some harsh weather conditions in the quarter. Have that affected deliveries in any material way causing delays or similar?

Yes, the short answer is yes. Again, it's really been across all of our markets. In the West, it was more wet and unusually windy. In the East, it was more snowy and cold. And all in all, it has had quite a big impact, both on demand as such, but primarily on installations and product deliveries and what have you. So it's been deferrals, not cancellations in any way. It doesn't really work like that in our industry. It's more deferrals, delays. And again, that typically happens in Q1 every year, but this year has been exceptional. I think it's been across Europe the coldest winter since 2008 or something like that. So very wet in the west and a few weeks of a spell of minus 25, minus 30 degrees in the east. I hate to talk about the weather as one factor explaining the quarterly result, but this year one really has to.

And this will not have an impact when it comes to the full year, because that will then be compensated in the following quarters. And the delays are on the product market. The consumer market has not such delays. There is more delays that the consumers are waiting to place the orders. Instead of placing the orders in January, February, and March, you're placing the orders in March, April, June instead. So it's a timing issue. So it's not the impact of total years. It's more a timing issue with lower Q1. And then that will then compensate in the following quarters.

Understood. Is it possible to try to quantify the effect a little bit of that delay?

We are talking about roughly 1% of sales that has been, that should have been moved to Q7. So roughly 20 million, a little bit more.

Good, that's clear. Then just one final from my side. I think this is more of a clarification question and it's regarding your comment that are higher activity levels and all the intake in March compared to January and February. Are you talking about the year-on-year improvement here? Because I suppose you always have this a little bit seasonality during Q1 where March is usually the strongest. So would anything deviating extra from the usual or?

Yeah, it's more year on year, Jonny. It's a relevant question, of course. As you correctly point out, normally we see a gradual uptick throughout the quarter. But this year, March was, relatively speaking, better than a quote-unquote normal March. And of course, it's nice to see our acquisitions adding to that overall somewhat rosier picture as well.

Okay, can you say something? How much higher sales were in March year over year? Is that possible?

No, I would not go public with that figure, but I can say that January was the worst January ever, and I've been here for 28 years. And then February was weak, and March was an improvement.

We have an extremely bumpy pattern, which is not really something we've seen before. But if we start with Q4 already, I mean, October was challenging. November was an all-time low. And then December was an all-time high. Then, as Peter said, January was an all-time low again. And then we're gradually getting back on track. So it was always going to be a bumpy ride. We talked about it for a long time. And it's difficult to predict what's around the corner. I think it's important that we... stay focused on the roadmap that we have. We continue to deliver on the strategy in a very good way, given the circumstances. And we have a model where we are prepared and we have the skills, the experience to deal with whatever comes in our way, both challenges and opportunities. But as Peter said, it may be a lag of a few months every now and then, depending on what happens in the exterior domain. But overall, I'm quite confident about what we're doing and where we're heading.

So it was a positive organic sales in March this year compared to last year. Sales growth March this year compared to March last year.

Understood, understood. I was just waiting for one final story, a lot of questions here. But in Scandinavia, organic growth took a step down here. It's down 3% organic, which is a slowdown compared to Q4 here. And I think you mentioned this root effect. So if we take Q1 and Q4 combined, organic growth is on 2%. Is that a fair reflection of underlying demand sort of now in the near term?

Yeah, if you combine Q4 and Q1, and then you can see the total developments.

Understood, that's clear.

Yep, good.

Good. Thank you so much. That was all for me. Have a great day.

Thank you very much.

Have a great day, you too.

Thank you for the questions there. And then we're going to go to the next caller. And this cell phone number that ends with 8225. You have the word.

Can you hear me now? Yes, yes. All right. All right. I think I muted myself and then unmuted again. So I'll be here. Uh, lots of good questions there from Johnny, but I have one more. Um, you mentioned some timeline time issues, uh, but then looking at, looking from here, uh, I think Q2 last year, you had margin headwinds due to the significant Q1 to Q2 drop in, in orienting and demand, especially in Denmark. Um, which I believe in fact the margin is in Q2 this year. So how should we think about Q2 this year? Is it easier now to plan for you? And should we therefore expect that margins are up again in Q2 year over year?

I can't say it's easier to plan for because of the volatility, as we've seen, as I said before, December, best December ever, January, the worst January ever. So it's a very volatile market for us. It's also hard to predict how the Middle East will have an impact on the consumer behavior and the consumer spending in Q2, which is, of course, a big, big question mark for us. So I can't say it's easier for us to plan for, but my comment is more that everything else equal and increased material price inflations will have a negative impact in Q2 and we will be able to compensate that from Q3. How big that is, is also a question mark because it depends on how long this war is going to be. and the impact on material prices due to the war. So it's very hard, it's very tricky to predict. That's for certain.

Yeah, and maybe just to add to that, maybe just to add to that, there is a lot of, it's all about psychology if you look at the consumer side of things, because as Peter said, all is equal. And let's take Sweden as an example. The macroeconomics are there, right, and the households have thicker wallets than in a long time. But with the uncertainty going on, it just makes it very difficult for everyone to push the button on a project like a window and door renovation project, as goes to show. But the fundamentals are there, and Sweden as a market, otherwise has quite a promising outlook i would argue uh irrespective of the fact that the root level is now at the lower level again we still have lower interest rates i mentioned the households wallets we still have um you know a easening of amortization of mortgages etc etc the housing market has started to pick up momentum primarily in the three largest cities, etc. But I think what Denmark experienced in Q1, which was a relatively new situation for Denmark, is really all about psychology and the sort of geopolitical unrest Finland, yeah, if you go there, you need to understand that they have a neighbor in the east that they have a history with. So it's not necessarily so that people are thinking about renovating their windows when they're not really sure about what will happen next week, so to speak. So it's all in the shadow of the Middle East, in the shadow of Ukraine, in the shadow of the Greenland debacle and what have you. It's frustrating, but we need to pay respect to that, I think.

Okay, thanks. And is it possible to quantify what the impact of the, like, let's say, hard to plan moment last Q1 to Q2 did with the margins in the second quarter? Is it possible to quantify that? And correct me if I'm right or wrong, but Denmark has the last quarter with tough comps. This quarter was the last quarter with tough comps for Denmark, right? So it should be easier.

As a Denmark, you had a good Q2, a relatively good Q2 last year as well. Sorry, I can't quantify it. It's too many uncertain parameters right now.

Yeah, I think when it comes to Q2 last year, it was more a matter of I would argue it was more a matter of parts of UK and Finland that were on the softer side. Sweden and Denmark were quite solid in Q2 last year. Sweden had a pickup because of the higher root level as from May last year. So it was more a matter of Finland that towards the end of the Q2, we of course thought that Finland had bottomed out and then the floor just disappeared already in July. So there you go. But yeah, I mean, yeah, it was really a mixed bag already in Q2 last year. And it's continued to be a mixed bag across the markets. I think the good news is with the broad exposure that we have that we don't stand on for one single market, we have a mitigated risk in that sense with the broad exposure that we have. That keeps increasing, by the way.

Yes, yeah. For sure. And then maybe one question on another single market. You mentioned Root in Sweden and some similar stuff in Ireland going on right now. Can you just comment a bit more on the details about that? When did it start? What do you see, etc.? ?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. In Ireland, they have actually quite recently introduced this, I can't remember what it's called, but it's related to energy efficiency with the purpose of renovating old windows and doors. grant levels are actually very similar to what we've seen and are still seeing in in sweden at the at the high level so um so that's of course um a boost for the for the market and for us as such and again as late as last week something similar was mentioned in finland now the proof is in the putting that it actually becomes implemented but um

the the news was that they are looking into doing something like that very soon in finland and that would of course be uh welcome okay that's a bad timing for the bankers for me in finland then uh but uh speaking of that then is it any tiny buzz or internables for sale there that you're interested in acquiring sorry say that again albin The company in Finland that went into bankruptcy restructuring, I think it's Fenestra. Is there any intangibles or cannabis there that are interesting for you?

Most likely not. I mean, it's early days. It just happened less than two weeks ago. But at the end of the day, it's capacity out of the market, which is good. um but uh so hopefully we can have a stabilization of of you know pricing price levels etc but uh yeah it's it's uh yeah this was more of a sales company so i yeah i don't think it will have any it's not really of interest for us in that sense uh similar to what we've seen in the uk as you know for the last year we've had lots of teasers about uh various companies being up for sale almost being panic sales where they are in financial distress and at invito we don't do financial distress acquisitions so we just leave them and thankfully they have been left to to their own devices as well so nobody else has really picked them up i think the same will happen

Yeah, that's true. And that's also for me. Thanks very much.

Thank you so much. Thank you for the question there. The next caller is Sofia Sörling from Carnegie. So the next caller is Sofia Sörling from Carnegie.

Hi.

Hi Sofia, how are you?

Hi, thank you. I'm good, thank you. Two questions from my side. So first, why would you say the competition is more fierce in Denmark compared to, for example, Norway and Sweden? And also, do you believe that this competition is isolated to Q1 or have you seen it continue into Q2?

I think it's, we feel that it was with this magnitude, it was much more linked to actually January, February, rather than March. Let's see how this develops. But as the market was just much smaller in that sense, through lower demand levels in January, February, of course, that quite quickly intensify the competitive nature of the market, meaning more price pressure than before. But we remain confident with the entities that we have, and the market remains attractive. And again, March looked much, much better than January, February. So we are quite optimistic about the Denmark development going forward. As Peter said, order intake-wise, it's quite stable, actually.

Okay. And just on the question, why the competition was mainly in Denmark and not Norway and Sweden, do you see any specific reason for that?

Well, Norway is, first of all, a smaller market for us and a smaller market as such. We have one entity up there doing a great job. And Norway, market-wise, I mean, the country is benefiting from higher oil prices, but the consumer side of things has been at the somewhat subdued lower level. And that's where it sort of stayed for the time being. So no major differences in context this quarter compared to previous quarters in Norway. Competition remains more or less the same. In Sweden we have thankfully gained market share. industry association data, the freshest data is from Q4 last year. So it's the lag here of a quarter, but it indicated that we have gained market share primarily through our lead funds to business. And that's without reducing prices, by the way. It's by retaining a high OTIF level and by launching new products overall, just doing a good job, particularly on the consumer side. So, yeah, overall, of course, competition is fierce. In Denmark, I think the nuance thing for Denmark was more that it was a somewhat new situation for us and for the market in the beginning of Q1. Partly weather related, partly related to, as I said, macroeconomic conditions, Greenland, Northern Nordisk and the elections.

Okay, thank you. And my last question. Would you say that you're satisfied with the margin contribution from the new acquired companies, both Invest and ETH?

Very much so. I mean, again, out of the five that we've acquired now, the majority of them have as communicated a higher profitability level than ETH. NVIDIA in general. So that's good. Then of course they are facing also some seasonal differences and that varies a bit from one entity to another. The one in Slovenia we are learning of course now as part of their integration into NVIDIA that in Slovenia there is even more seasonality in Q1 compared to what we are typically used to. Having said that, they've had a very good start to this year, relatively speaking. So overall, really, really nice acquisitions. And it looks good also going, when I look into the crystal ball, looking ahead. Of course, we need to continue to be selective, particularly now in the current market context. We can see that a lot of companies actually improved their performance and did better in 2025. And then, of course, we are not alone with a more challenging Q1 this year. So we can see that when we look into some of the other acquisition targets, potential transactions that we're working on, meaning that we need to bridge. Yeah, valuation gap one way or another, meaning that it may be somewhat more difficult to reach an agreement here and now. Having said that, I think it looks quite good actually with the discussions that we are in. Solar shading is a little bit the odd bird in all of this because the larger incumbents, i.e. the ones that we are more interested in as an entry ticket into solar shading, in addition to this smallish entity that we have in Finland already, they are performing really well, which is good news. But if they don't have to sell and there are really not any structured auction processes in that field at the moment, then, of course, the price tag goes up a bit, meaning implicitly that we need to be dead certain about the savings coming from sales synergies in particular in this case. There will be some cost synergies as well, but particularly sales synergies. So yeah, difficult market, but again, doing better towards the end of the quarter. And again, April has started in a good way and M&A activity remains high.

Okay, great. That was all for me. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Sofia. Thank you. Moving on to the last caller here, which is Linus Arlington from Nordea.

Yes, hi and good morning. Just a quick couple of questions here from me. You mentioned walking away from silly price projects in Denmark. I was just wondering if you could give a sense here of how much volume you are deliberately sacrificing here.

Yeah. Not too much, I'll say. I mean, we need to make sure that we all understand that Denmark is not... I don't want to make it come across as Denmark is sort of on a similar level like Finland or anything like that. It's definitely not. Denmark is very, very solid. But of course... We have strong positions to defend. We have strong brands to defend in the Danish market. So we are really cautious about going into some projects that for us don't really make any sense. Let's not forget that we are in the sort of upper medium to premium, premium niches of the market. It's not in major volumes that we're talking about Linux when it comes to Denmark. In Finland, it's a totally different story there. The pond has just become extremely small, meaning that everyone is fighting for volume, us included, meaning that we have lost quite a lot on the gross margin one level. In Denmark, it's a different story. And again, we think that was more of a short-term thing in January, February compared to a long-term thing as we look into what's happened in March and onwards.

Okay, okay. And just there on Finland, I mean, that was a pretty weak result. But as I understand it is a lot due to the weather here. Can we expect some sort of pickup here in Q2 in Finland?

You shouldn't expect a lot. In fact, the really only limelight in what is de facto a rather dark market context is, as I said last week's announcements by the Finnish government, which are really the first announcements that they are looking into and preparing for some kind of rollout of a similar route program that we've had in Sweden. They have a history of looking into what their friend, their neighbor on the west side of the country is doing, and I think that they're doing exactly that also for something to happen hopefully later in Q2. But other than that, let's not have too high hopes about Finland. We've had that before. I was somewhat optimistic about Finland a year ago and I was proven very wrong just a few weeks later. So let's hope they can surprise on the positive going forward. But we hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Having said that, I think we are doing really, really well over there, relatively speaking, given the circumstances. And again, we have peers that go belly up, whereas we are still alive and we have entities that, of course, make money, despite the fact that we're taking out

a lot of resources which has been super super painful and again we are winning awards for the CSU that we have the DNA that we have in the organization which to me is super impressive all right understood and just one last question here back to the UK you mentioned the minimum wages here up above four percent from April right I was just wondering if you could perhaps give some rough quantification of the impact here and or are you able to offset this straight away through pricing?

I don't know the exact impact but of course if we take a step back and look at the country as such it's of course a lever that the Labour government is pulling with all good intentions But in a country where productivity has, at least historically, not necessarily followed suit, it becomes a bit of a challenge for at least more labor intensive industries in that country. We, as you know, have a mix of PVC manufacturers and timber manufacturers. And of course, the PVC manufacturing is less labor intensive. Overall, of course, we're trying to push that cost increase onwards to customers. I think we do a relatively good job with that, given the circumstances. But it's trickier to do so in the consumer trade part of the business than in the than in the product business. So it sort of theoretically reduces the competitiveness of England as a country. For us, as witnessed by the acquisitions that we have made, which are, by the way, contributing very nicely already, it is possible to make money in that market. And let's not forget that it's de facto the second largest window and door market in Europe. And we are number two in that market. So for us, we see scale benefits. We have our entities collaborating more and more, much more compared to what they did in the past. So that all bodes really, really well. We have some new people on board and more people coming on board. So we are quite forward leaning when it comes to the UK outlook. In the near term, it will be perhaps more within social housing than anything else. But as goes to show with, for example, the Victorian sliders acquisition, you can make some really nice money in that market if you do it well.

A lot of opportunity, I understand. All right. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you. Good questions.

Thank you for the questions. And that was all the questions we had here. So I will now hand over to you Fredrik for some concluding remarks.

Thank you very much. Please pencil these dates into your calendar and don't forget to look at our newly released annual and sustainability report as well. Hot off the presses. uh thank you peter thank you everyone out there for attending and listening and let me also thank all of my invito co-workers and our business partners for a job well done throughout q1 of this year thank you very much bye for now