Loomis AB (publ)

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the second quarter presentation for Loomis. My name is Haritz Larrea, and I'm the CEO of Loomis. With me here today, I have our CFO, Johan Wilsby, and Jenny Bostrom, our head of sustainability and investor relations. I will begin by giving a brief review of our business performance in the second quarter and an overview of our results before taking questions. Let's start the presentation by turning to slide number two. We had a record quarter in terms of both revenue and operating income. We achieved revenues above $7.6 billion through this corona, with growth across our three segments and most business lines. Acquisitions had a positive impact on our revenue, while the changes in currency rates had a negative impact due to hyperinflation currencies.

We achieved an organic growth of $6. despite continued cyclical headwinds in the international business line. The demand for cash-handling automated solutions continues to be high, and we have had double-digit growth for automated solutions in both the U.S. and Europe, even when excluding FEMA. Our operating margin increased to 11%, with improved margins in both regions. The U.S. segment had a great performance with the combination of volume growth and continued focus on increasing operational efficiency. But I'm also pleased to see that our ongoing efforts to improve margins within the European and Latin region are starting to yield positive results. Allow me to further address these drivers in more detail later when we run through our segments. The operating cash flow for the quarter was very strong. Keep in mind that we did have a positive effect of the timing effect from the first quarter in these numbers as well. Due to timing between the quarters, it is more relevant to look at this metric over a 12-month basis, and then the cash conversion was a strong 92%.

This quarter, we returned over 1 billion Swedish kronor to our shareholders through a combination of our annual dividend and our share repurchase program. We also permanently reduced the number of outstanding shares by canceling close to 4.3 million treasury shares. Demonstrating our continued commitment to shareholder value, we announced yesterday a new share buyback program for the third quarter. The Board of Directors has authorized the repurchase of up to 200 million Swedish kroner worth of shares during the period. Let's turn to the next page and address our reporting segments, beginning with Europe and Latin. The positive trend in revenue growth in Europe and Latin America continued, and we reached our highest quarterly revenue. Our operating margin increased to 11%, which is a substantial increase, both compared to the first quarter and to the previous year. Price increases, as well as growth from emerging markets, were the main contributors to the organic growth. Our automated solutions with SafePoint and Recyclers had a double-digit growth on a standalone basis, and Chima had a positive contribution to the business line performance as well. We're still seeing a continued decline for our international business. It's too early to say when this cyclical impact will trend back. However, we hope to see it reverse by the end of the year. We are actively examining our operations throughout the region to make sure we are best positioned for future growth. The goal of this analysis is to pinpoint the optimal footprint, capacity, and competencies required for success. As I mentioned earlier, we therefore booked additional restructuring charges in the quarter as part of this process. A key to reaching our margin target for 2024 is to recover our margin in Europe and Latin America. This would require both continued efficiency gains and restructuring strategies. Let's turn to the next stage over to the U.S., The U.S., that is more than 50% of our business, and we keep delivering strong performance in this market. The cash handling business in the U.S.