Lagercrantz Group AB (publ)

welcome to lagercrantz group q2 report 2024-25 for the first part of the conference call the participants will be in listen only mode during the questions and answer session participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad now i will hand the conference over to ceo jorgen wieg and cfo peter teisel please go ahead Welcome to Lagercrantz Group Q2 Report 2024-25. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to CEO Jorgen Wieg and CFO Peter Teisel. Please go ahead. This call is being recorded. Your line is muted. Welcome to Lagercrantz Group Q2 Report 2024-25. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to CEO Jorgen Wieg and CFO Peter Teisel. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to Lagerkrantz's presentation of our Q2 report. Speaking here is Jörgen Wig, CEO of the group. And together with me here, I have Peter Tissel right beside me. We're maybe a minute early here so we will just hang on a little bit before we get started so that we don't miss anyone.

We start at 10 a.m. and according to my watch it's another minute or so. So we will just wait.

Hope everyone is doing well. And after, yeah, all enthusiastic about listening to us here this morning. So, there we are, right? 10 a.m. So, welcome again, everyone, to the Logics Grounds Interim Report. We normally, as you know, we have a year ending end of March, meaning that we today have released our numbers for Q2 ending the end of September. So it's our six months report that was released this morning. And we normally have this conference call just a couple of hours afterwards to give you a heads up, give you some information around those comments around it, and also end up with a Q&A at the end of the session. It's me here, Jørgen Wigg, and Peter Tissell also beside me here, the CFO. We normally have this presentation in the slightly three parts, really, where we start with a short introduction for all those that are new to the group, but then we get right into the numbers and then we end up with some sort of highlights for the future and also where we think we are with our strategy work within the group, where we are with our ambitions and stuff. So let's get started. We'll give you an introduction for those that are new to the group. I mean, Logger Crowns is a tech group. It's been on the stock exchange in 2001, was formerly part of the Bergman & Bearing Group. We are building a group based on our subsidiaries where we have some 80 or so present, building quite a lot through an M&A with 8 to 12 acquisitions per year and building leading position in expansive niches with all the companies that we have. And you can see here that we have split the group, split the companies into the five divisions they're working with, where we have all the companies. And you can also see over to the right on the map there where we have our pins and where we are located with our companies. This is highlighting the Northern Europe, but we also have, as you see, some footholds for exports all the way to the right here, where we're also present in the U.S. was present in India and in China, with mostly sales companies in those markets. We have a total revenue in the group exceeding some 8.5 billion Swedish and approximately 2,900 employees at present. We are very fond or keen on driving things the way we like it in a very decentralized fashion. So all companies have their own name, working on their own brand name, dedicated to serving their customers in their specific market, which we feel is a great way of running the group. And again, acquisitions is a central part of the business models. That was a short introduction to the group. Let's dig into the numbers then. I mean, I think we've concluded, closed another very solid quarter. It seems like we are, yeah, continuing on our path and you can see our trajectory here when it comes to our sales and our earnings or profit after financial items here on this slide. You can see that we have been on an upwards trend for quite some time now and building both organically and through acquisitions. Some years back we decided when we surpassed the 500 million in terms of profits you could see also that we set the bar for towards the 1 billion and we surpassed that last year so currently we're at 1176 or whatever it is towards the 2 billion so we have raised the bar once again here to towards the 2 billion which was basically one year ago that we communicated that. So it's been a strong performance over a long period of time, and that has continued for another quarter here. Looking at the business conditions and a few comments on that, we feel that the market situation on an overall level has been stable also for this quarter. And that goes for most of our businesses. We feel that we have a number of very strong performers in the group, and they have continued to do it very well, both in terms of sales and also in terms of profits. We have some really strong companies, companies like Elpress and Tourmec and a few others that continue to do it very well for us. However, we also feel that we have been waiting for the recovery and it's been holding on. It's been delayed a little bit and people are, like you've heard from most companies also, that it's been pushed a little bit into 2025. We had expected some stronger underlying growth here in this quarter, but at least we concluded a positive 1% here for the quarter. So it has been a bit of a recovery. but not to the extent that we expected here. We remain cautiously optimistic for the future, and we feel that the interest rates and things are sort of encouraging people to do more investments. And we see that happening in some areas, but not to the extent that we maybe expected here earlier on. But it is happening, but a bit delayed. We feel that demand was strongest within the electrifying and niche products divisions. And we see the infrastructure and electrification continue to do it, sort of recovering and growing. And we also see some of the niche products division companies and the segments that we're working there. We'll come back to that, but that is also growing for us. While we see still some struggling in the construction sector and some companies that are also within the industry sector, which is within the control and tech sector issues mostly. So we also, from a geographic perspective, we feel that our strongest and our largest markets in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and the UK are showing some recovery. While we feel that the market is still sluggish in Germany and in Finland, especially. So that is sort of, yeah, there we have more to struggle with. But in total, we feel that the order intake for comparable units were in line with the invoice sales. So we basically had a book to build them on one here in the quarter. which is also encouraging and, yeah, still, yeah, that it's stable and underlying stability in what we're doing. You can see down there is also that we see that our ambition to grow the proprietary products is continuing. So there's 77% currently on the moving 12 months basis. And we also see that we are becoming, over to the right there, you can see that we're becoming more international along the way. And we see that especially United Kingdom has picked up here to 7%. You can see that that part of the bar there is increasing over the years. And we also see that we are becoming more Northern Europe and more international along the way, which is, we feel it's also a bit of an ambition for us along the way. So that was the comments on the business conditions. Peter, maybe you should head over and we can talk about the artifacts and the numbers here.

Thank you, Jörgen. So to start overall, we're quite happy with the result in the second quarter, where we met moderately tough comparables from the previous year. The net sales increased by some 16%, mainly due to acquisitions. which grew by 17%. The organic growth turned positive with 1%, and then we had slightly negative currency effects of 2%. The EBITDA increased by 16%, where the EBITDA margin was stable at a good level of 17.8% in the quarter. The profit After financial items increased by a good 14%, and this is, as you may know, a little bit below our 15% target for the year, but still on a good level. The cash flow was probably the area where we were not entirely happy in this quarter. It's on a good level, but we have high ambitions with with cash flow. In July, we completed two acquisitions with a total annual revenue of about 280 million. And then adding for the rolling 12 months, we're now a little bit more than 1.1 billion, which is some 15% compared to the annual revenue a year ago. So we have kept the relatively high rate of acquisitions. And during September, we also signed an agreement for the acquisition of Mast System in Finland, which has an annual revenue of about 170 million Swedish crowns. and this is still under regulatory approval process, but we estimate that this will come in and be closed during November and December this year. About the first half year, we note that net revenues has increased by 13%, mainly due to acquisitions, which grew net sales by 15%. The organic growth was slightly negative and currency effects were also slightly negative with 1%. The EBITDA increased 12% and the EBITDA margin was at a good level, 17.4%. And for the first half year, the profits after financial items grew by some 11%. which means that we are a little bit behind our 15% target. But we have great hope of achieving that in the second half. The return on equity was 28%. And the equity ratio was 34%. And the earnings per share increased to four crowns and 41.41 compared to 4.25 in the last financial year. Looking at the result per division, we can note that the positive development was quite broad-based, where four out of five divisions increased their EBITDA. The only exception was the TechSec division, which had some challenges in the businesses related to the construction businesses. But looking at the EBITDA margins, we had the most positive development in niche products, which is now above 22% EBITDA margin on a rolling 12-month basis. and also the international division, which has had positive development for quite some time now, and they are above 17.5% on a rolling 12-month basis. On the more challenging side, we can see control and the tech sec division, as said, mainly due to challenges in businesses related to the construction sector. Then maybe back to you, Jörgen, about comments by division.

We have a few comments by division as well on the coming slides here. So let's start with the electrified division. I think they had a good revenue growth of 26%, but most of it, all of it came from acquisitions with 29%. Organically, it was actually down 2%, even in the quarter here. But as we've seen here, what we're doing is that we are compensating a slower growth organically with more acquisitions. And that is something that holds true for most of what we're doing at Lagerkrantz at the moment. The EBITDA was up 25% to the 100 million. the beta margin continued to be very well at the 18.8 percent so strong performance from from electrify even though the organic growth was slightly negative the the strong quarter then came to some extent to a large extent from the new newly acquired nordic road road safety company um that we acquired here this spring um but also other several units within the electrification addressing the electrification was also also noted the favorable development For example, Elpress are a very strong performer over many years. Also, Elcapsin is doing it very well. VFMetal and EFC in Finland also did it very well here in the quarter. And also good to know is that in September, which has not affected the numbers at all yet then, is that we concluded or signed an agreement for the master steam. I'll come back to that company later on, but that's an important investment and an important acquisition for the electrifying for all the crafts as a whole. Looking at the control division, the revenues, that is the division we have been struggling with. I think we see some positive signs along the way here now. We see that revenues here for the quarter was up 28%. And acquisitions then stood for 27 of those. But organically we also grew by some 4%. The FX there is the difference. But the EBITDA then grew by 26%. So we're seeing some positive signs within the control division, even though the EBITDA margin is at another satisfactory level at the moment with a 12.1%. There we have higher ambitions than that within the division. We see that several businesses still note some challenging market situation, especially the ones addressing the more of the construction sector with Avanti in Denmark and Norway and Stigborgs also in Sweden was impacted there. While we also then have an acquisition adding to the numbers here, which is the CP cases that was acquired in the UK, which is just a leading manufacturer of protective cases. I'll come back to that as well later on. But that is also important for the controls performance and what they've achieved so far within the division. Looking at TechSec, that was the slight disappointment, I think, with revenues growing only 6%, and we see the acquisitions stood for plus 13%, and Organvi was actually down some 5%. But EBITDA held up fairly well still to the 87 million versus 89, but it was slightly down from last year. But an EBITDA margin still at the 17%. Here we see a number of companies still doing it very well and seeing some recovery in the market, which is especially in Denmark, but also in the UK with the Aras Fire Corn PCP. The newly acquired Sumendoza diesel volume in Finland also did it very well and contributed positively to the result in the quarter. But we also, along the way, see that the more construction-related operations, especially with the bigger companies, a couple of the bigger ones, which is the CW Lundberg and the Archon, continued to be affected by the weak construction market, and showed some struggle in the quarter, really. And in July, then, the principal door sales was acquired, so we also have an acquisition here within that division. I'll come back to that as well. That also came in very well here during the quarter. Looking at niche products division, a couple of comments there. That is the division that stood out the most positive, which grew in revenues by 21%, and there we see 16% through acquisitions and organically plus 7%. So strong performance both through acquisitions and organically in that division. And we see the EBITDA growing by 21%. And then the EBITDA margin then, I think it's an all time higher, 22.9% in that division as well. So very strong performance here. And we see a number of companies. So it was broad-based with the ASEP, the Vapro, the Tormek, the Sib, the Sias, and Vendik companies. This is very well in the quarter. At the same time, we still have things to work with within the niche products division. And we, for instance, see the Vesta and waterproof diving, not in some more challenging market situations. And there we have, yeah, to get those companies to the right level is something to work with within that company, within that division. In the pre-do company, which is a leading manufacturer of the high quality folding type industrial doors that we acquired here this spring, also contributed well to the result here, according to plan within that division. Last but not least is the international division. Their revenues grew by 4%, where 5% was through acquisitions and organically plus 2%. And the EBITDA grew by 10% in the quarter, and the EBITDA margin of 17.6%, which is a very good number for that division. It used to be much lower some years back, picked up to the average of the group almost. So it's good to see that performance over a long period of time, especially if we have a couple of new companies that have come in in the last few years here, and especially the Libra has continued to do it well here during the last few years and also during the quarter here. And we also have some new companies in Denmark with and also in the UK that deliver good earnings here as part of the Logitrans group. While we're still struggling with some of the companies that we have in Germany and Poland as well here within the international division. So if you can comment there on what we see in the different markets. Yeah, with that, we will look a little bit ahead. I mean, I think it was another strong, solid quarter for us. I think we feel that we are struggling with the market. We see a bit of recovery along the way, but it's also taking some time to see it really come through for us in the market. And I think that is what I hear from most of other businesses in the Nordics at the moment. And so I think we are on par with most other companies there. And I think we are then have the ambition, have the opportunity in our business model to compensate a lower organic growth for some time with also the more acquisitions instead. And that's what we've done. And so that acquisition page has been very important to us. But our aim is as it has been to grow the group with some annual profit growth of some 15% per year and do it with a return on equity of at least 25%. And you will see the numbers later on here. So we will continue on the path where we are. And we will continue building our five divisions on the next slide here. This is a reorganization and a setup of what we did some almost two and a half years ago now. And it's been working very well for us. We are building the divisional sort of teams and we are doing it in sectors where we see some underlying structural growth based on also a lot of sustainability where we see good business opportunities with the green transition and the electrification on things in some parts but also an IOT and the control division and safety and security products in the tech sec and also the other ones in these products and international so I think we're very well positioned within our different in our different divisions to grow the group for the future. And the setup that we did two and a half years ago has actually been working out well for us. Last but not least is then the acquisitions. And here we can conclude that we have closed some seven acquisitions in the last 12 months. We are more broad-based and we're growing through our divisions more than before. We have the ambition to have 8 to 12, but then adding some 10% of ourselves. And this is, as Peter already suggested, some 15% of ourselves here, the 11 to 45 there. So we are ahead of plan, really. And that means that we have concluded some somewhat larger acquisitions lately with the TIDO and the Nordic Road Safety and all the main ones among the seven there. And then we also here now have signed the must system acquisition, which is not in the numbers yet, that we hope to close here in November or December, based on the regulatory. So just to give you an idea of what we're acquiring, I think we will look at the previous one, please. which is the principal door sets, is the company required here during the quarter. And that is a company providing different types of bespoke fire doors in the UK. We have a similar company already within the UK. So this is another one adding to that cluster of companies. And it's a very well-run company. You can see down to the right there, we were putting down some numbers on how they're doing. and a great company that is adding to the tech sector mission here in the quarter and for the future. Acquisition will be closed here during the quarter in July. The next one is the CP cases. I'd like to highlight it was also during the quarter. Here we are talking about protective cases and high-performance protective cases and racks used for mission-critical equipment for commercial and military applications. So all kinds of different types of protective cases and tracks. With some annual revenues of approximately 12 million pounds, we've got good profitability and also addressing the US market. So they have a subsidiary in the US as well here in Delaware. And here we acquired some 87% of the company and management keeping 13%. So this would be a good collaboration with the management there in building this company for the future. And some good numbers down there to the right, I would expect that to pick up a little bit along the way, that's our ambition at least, but still on a good level with a 16% EBITDA margin there. The next one is something that we already communicated. That was the PREDO case that we did here this spring. I think it's just a highlight that we are trying to make a bit of a fact sheet for all the acquisitions we're making. And the PREDO was a somewhat bigger one here this spring, and it's been coming in very well for us, having had a very good start to the year and the first six months of the year within the group. delivering on what they have promised along the way. So that's a good company to also have. And the next one is the other bigger ones that we also have communicated earlier, the Nordic Road Safety that we also did this spring. And as we point out, they have a bit of seasonality to their business. So they are actually in their high season right now here. about to close this year's high season here in the coming months or so. But doing it very well for us and had a good start as well. And the last one I'd like to bring up is the MUST system, which is the one that we have, again, signed but not closed, i.e. the numbers aren't with us yet. But this is a very high-performing company, as you can see down to the right there with the 15 million euros almost in sales and some 6 million euros in profits. When we communicate these bigger deals, we also like to give some additional information around what we have closed these deals at or are signed in this case then. And so this is an EV EBITDA of around seven times. Mastersteam we think is a very sort of interesting company delivering some some high-performance telescopic masts located in the midst of Finland or in Joensuu in Finland. And hopefully we'll be part of the group here. We plan to have a part of the group here as of mid-November or so or early December. So with that, I think we should round off and open up for questions. I'd like to just highlight that we'll look at the financial overview. I think we posted another solid quarter and we're looking very cautiously optimistic into the future. Delivering along our trajectory here is our ambition.

So with that, I think we should open up for questions.

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 six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Gustav Berneblad from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. It's Gustav here from Nordea. Maybe just to start off here, when it comes to you acquiring companies, I guess you have a complete sort of different way of working with price management than what the companies you're acquiring have before you acquire them. So I guess my question is that now when you have increased the M&A pace in the last couple of years and we have had a period of very high cost inflation, Would you say that we are seeing an increased positive price component in the group's growth here?

It depends on what period you're comparing with. I think what we've seen, I think when the war started in Ukraine, then I think for a period there we had quite a lot of inflation and quite a lot of purchasing prices going up. And then we had quite a lot of compensation and we did quite a lot of price raises back then. I think that period is behind us. I think that we have here in the last year or so, the price component has not been that significant. I think we're more coming down to more of normal levels of price increases along the way. And you can see that also from the inflation rates coming down, right? So I think that that was true for a while, but not lately, no.

Yeah, okay. No, I was just thinking about maybe this last year that we have had companies that you acquired today that hasn't really raised their prices and that you're seeing a potential now when you acquire them, sort of impacting the numbers right now. But okay, that sounds like that's not the case.

Yeah, well, we are pushing price and looking at price initiatives in many of the companies that we acquired. And I think that has been, yeah, we know a couple, on top of my head, I have a couple of great cases in the UK where we have reorganized and restructured their pricing policies and working with that as a clear ambition as opposed to post-acquisition sort of post-acquisition project or ambition that we have in a couple of companies. Yes, it's part of our pay book, definitely.

Yeah, okay, got it. And then if we move over to the tax rates, we discussed it in the last quarter. And as I interpreted it, we should expect a higher tax rate in Q1 generally for you. It still looks quite high this quarter. So just once again, if you can comment on how we should think forward here.

I think that might be a question to me. We will see marginally higher taxes as we expand, for example, into the UK and also in the US, where they have higher tax rates. In Q1, we had a few extraordinary items that increased the tax rate in that particular quarter. But as we, in the coming quarter, I think we will see more of the normal. So we will probably be some 23% or something like that for the full financial year. And one of the extraordinary items we had in Q1, for example, was the tax on dividend from... from Latvia.

Yeah, okay, perfect. Thank you very much.

I'll get back in line.

The next question comes from Zeno Engdalen-Ritchie from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Yes, hello, and thanks for taking our questions. I would like to start off in the control segment. You mentioned that you are not happy, of course, with the margin in that segment. Do you feel that you need to, so to say, wait that out for a recovering market in some of the companies or are there initiatives which you hope to see some effect there?

I did usually how we view it is that, yes, we are working quite hard for some companies to come back. And that is sometimes, sometimes that has to do with the construction sector or, or sort of that, that the volumes are temporarily down and we, that we might wait out. We are also then working with other companies. We're working more with the restructuring sort of thing. And that then we were sort of, yeah, driving that hard and maybe sort of, yeah reorganizing or restructuring companies on top of that we also the third lever is them them to work with also making high high margin acquisitions to bring to that to that division and that we're also looking into so we have a number of levers that we're working with but i mean our ambition is to have the group well above 15 percent the beta margin and and that goes for all the divisions as well so when you're there at 12 points something then then then we definitely have the ambition to get them well above 50 as the other divisions are.

Understood.

And just over to TechSec on a bit of similar notes, but on the weakening there in the margin, do you feel that that is, so to say, correct, that correctly reflects the business environment in that segment when we're looking ahead?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's market related, definitely. Yes, it is. We have a couple of small companies that we're working with and struggling with as well. But the main ones are really construction related, construction sector related, which is the Archon and the CBW Lumber, which are definitely in that sector. And they are down from last year and previously, but we expect them to come back once the market turns for the better.

Understood. And just lastly from me, of course September is an important month in the quarter, but when you're comparing with the usual trend or the trend you had expected,

would you say that it finished off in a in a better worse way was it muted throughout so to say and if you see any so say green sprouts which may not might not be have been converted to orders yet yeah i think i think we are looking at a good sort of a good project pipeline and we're looking at good inquiries from our customers so we are of course as we said cautiously optimistic for the future So I think we have some positives there as well. I think from sort of looking at September separately, it was a good month, but it didn't stand out that we had a really stronger trend in September versus the other couple of months. It was fairly even over the quarter compared to last year.

Understood. Thank you. I'll get back in line.

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

Thank you. Good morning. The first one is on the M&A side where you had a good pace and you reiterate the ambition of 8 to 12 here. What I do note, Arend, you have talked about this before, of course, but you made some really interesting larger acquisitions this year. How do you think about the size of the acquisition compared to the number of acquisitions now, if we look, let's say, ahead into the next six to 12 months?

I think I have that. I think generally speaking, our overarching ambition is to grow the 15% per year EBT, right? 15% per year. And when we think about that, we think that one third of that should come organically over a long period of time, and then two thirds should come from acquisitions. So I think that 10% of ourselves, we should buy 10% of ourselves every year. And as long as we do that, then I think it's good that we can see that we both will do some more acquisitions, the number of acquisitions we'll pick up, but also the size of the acquisitions. However, we will stay we will stay disciplined. When we are looking at larger acquisitions, we're bidding for a few larger acquisitions. We're very occupied with the price tags and that we are sticking to our staying disciplined in terms of the multiples and the price tags we're paying for the companies. So I think that to give you an idea, we have highlighted that it might sort of, or it looks like if we want to close some eight to 12 acquisitions per year, But if we can sort of compensate the lower number with somewhat larger acquisition, I think we will even prefer doing that if we can stay disciplined in terms of the price tax we're paying. I think we have concluded some, in the last couple of three years, we have concluded some bigger acquisitions as well. And those have been really good for us. The CW Lundberg is one example. The PCP is another one. The Predo, the NRS, and now also Musk System.

Libra of course yes is also another one so I think we have been able to do good acquisitions even though they've been slightly bigger and then when we think about the current group and you have you know a lot of for example niche products of course with a lot of diversified niches but you've also been able to now acquire throughout the years companies that are operating within fairly similar end markets. So how are you thinking about you know forming in creating informal clusters in order to promote collaboration and so on?

I think we're doing that quite a lot and we're doing that quite a lot, but we're doing it from a sort of a business and logical perspective and also staying with our decentralized model. People are meeting quite a lot between the companies. I think that also has to do with our size, that we are not that big, so people can interact and collaborate between the companies. We have our MD conference every year where people are meeting on the broad base. We have also divisional conferences here in the wintertime where they meet within the divisions and have meetings around different subjects. We're collaborating quite a lot around sustainability issues. We're collaborating around innovation and product development issues in some parts of the group. We're collaborating around ERP systems as well. Not that everyone has the same ERP, they all have the same ERP systems, but they're collaborating and sharing experiences, what they like and don't like about different systems and thereby collaborating and yeah, and sharing experiences from different things. I should remember the business side is also very important. They are sometimes collaborating, putting together products or system integration solutions for specific customers and interacting in that way between the companies.

Understood. My final one is just on the electrification there. If I didn't misinterpret you, you said that you saw a bit of recovery here. Any certain niches that are driving this improvement in electrification and or electrified division overall?

I think that we are about to start investing more in an electricity grid. And that has been held up. We have been expecting that for some years. But the approval processes have been taking time. I think that that is at a better place now. They're approving more and things are going there in a way that hasn't happened before. Now, I think they're struggling more with finding the right sort of installers and having that happening in some areas. But we see, for instance, for e-press that the where we see that they're building electricity grid, those end markets are picking up at the moment.

Okay, that's all from my side. Thank you. Thank you.

The next question comes from Niklas Sovus from Redeye. Please go ahead.

Hi, Jörgen and Peter.

I have a question on the control division. I mean, we're now going into the high season for that division, but I just wonder if you could elaborate a bit on, I mean, you moved a few businesses into that division recently. So, I mean, should we expect some differences in terms of the normal seasonality for the business area?

No, I think as the division looks now, I think the seasonality remains, but I think that the seasonality is very connected to the Rada Nova business. And as the Rada Nova business is growing, so it has good organic growth, but still as we make more acquisition and build a division on a large scale, I think that that sort of effect will be diluted to some extent along the way. But we're definitely expecting now the high season to pick up and that we will see improvements in terms of margins and profits in that division as we have had in the last few years in the coming quarters for the control division.

Perfect. And then I have one question on the climate for acquisitions. Have you seen any sort of differences in terms of the competitive landscape across the geographies?

Across the geography?

I mean, are the multiples going up or down sort of in the Nordics and the UK and so on?

Okay. No, I think it's actually been quite stable over the last couple of years. We saw before the Ukraine war, we saw higher multiples. But since then, after that, they came down quite significantly. But we have been doing our acquisitions at a very stable sort of ebit multiple here for the last couple of years and that I think remains stable and we don't see any significant differences between the countries either.

What I'm also getting at this I mean you've managed to do a few quite large acquisitions I mean still at good multiple so does that mean that I mean do you saw other competitors for those type of acquisitions before and are they now gone or how do you see that?

Yeah, it's a bit puzzling for us as well. But I think we have managed to close a couple of very interesting deals of the larger size. I think that there might be that some of the risk capitalists or PE funds have been very reluctant to make these smaller deals, in their words, smaller deals that are bigger for us, right, for a period of time. Now we think that if stability comes back and interest rates come down, I think we will see them more in the market in the coming years than we have in the couple of last two years. So that might be an effect that we might see some of. But we will still continue doing what we've been doing, which is that we're bidding for those companies as well, and as we feel that their Yeah, our discipline, then we hope to close, continue to close also some bigger deals. And I think we have quite a number of them to look at at the moment as well. So I don't see that change happening here in the near term, no, but maybe in a couple of years' time.

Perfect. Thanks for the added column. Thank you.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad.

Do we have any questions in the chat there?

No, not as I can see, but we can give them a few seconds.

Okay. Anyone that would like to add a final question?

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Okay. Thank you very much for listening in. I think we are well underway with leading lawyer grants for the future and that's posted in another strong quarter. I think that's very happy with that and looking forward to talking to you guys along the way. And Peter and I are, of course, available here during the day if you have some additional questions you'd like to put to us in a phone call or so. So thank you very much for listening in and have a good day.