Norva24 Group AB (Publ)

Good morning and welcome to the presentation of the fourth quarterly report of Norrva24. My name is Henrik Norrbom and I'm the CEO. With me on stage I have our CFO Stein Ynderstad. Before we start jumping into our Q4 report, I would like to take the opportunity to share information about our capital markets day coming up in Stockholm on the 19th of March. Here we will present our updated strategy, financial targets and the evolution of Norva24 for 2025 to 2030. We will kick the day off with a site visit leaving central Stockholm at nine in the morning. We will be back in central Stockholm for lunch at 12 and the capital market day will start at 1300. We, of course, hope to see you there in person, but we will also live stream the event. Warm welcome. Please sign up. Given the upcoming capital market day, I will not spend time presenting the Norva24 case today, which most of you already know so well. Okay, now on to the group numbers and the highlights. We continue the growth journey where we see solid development in core business and in addition, a strong cash flow. Given the negative impact from the underperforming entity Jutze Haus Technik in Germany, we will comment on the overall numbers, but also on the performance excluding Jutze, given the fact that we are winding down the non-core projects, the non-core project business that has had such a negative impact on our 2024 performance. A lot of CEOs always want to exclude things, but in this case, I see it as important to show that we have a healthy and strong core UIM business in Germany. We talked about this unit in Q2 and Q3 report, but we will be more transparent in the disclosures today. More on Jyotsu and Germany later. We are satisfied with the quarter with a growth of 15.5% in the total operating revenues and the currency adjusted organic growth is 6.2%. The adjusted margin for the group was down 1.3% from last year's Q4, which is related to our problem unit in Germany, Jutzi. Adjusting for this, Norva24 has both solid organic growth and margin improvement for the quarter and the full year. Looking at the operational highlights, all our markets have experienced revenue growth achieved through a combination of increased utilization, higher prices and new customer agreements. There are margin improvements in all the Scandinavian markets and also in Germany when exclude Jytsi. Norway is up from a poor quarter last year at 7.9% margin up to 9.6% this year with an organic growth of 7.8%. This is still not where we would like to see the Norwegian operation. We have taken action to secure improved operations in Norway. Sweden with a solid uplift to a margin of 14.1% with strong organic growth of 8.5% on the back of a solid Q4 last year. Denmark continued the positive development, total growth of 49% and with margin improvements. Currency adjusted organic growth in Denmark was 1.7%. Germany, despite the challenging market conditions, the German operations have had a currency adjusted organic growth of 3.5% in the quarter, but with a margin reduction of 320 basis points. Excluding for Jytsi, the margin is up by 370 basis points. In Q4, our operating activities generated a strong cash flow of 298, up 92 million from last year's Q4 of 206 million NOK. Overall, we are satisfied with our core businesses in Q4. Before we go through the segments, I want to present Norva24 group numbers adjusted for Jyotsu. Excluding Jyotsi gives a more balanced view of the underlying performance and shows that we are on the right path. Overall growth was 21.5% and the currency adjusted organic growth was 11.3% for the quarter. This performance is strong and underpins that our core business is resilient and acyclical. I also want to stress that despite the impact Jyotsi and the non-UIM business has had on our 2024 result, it is a limited part of our operations. Non-core operations was less than 10% of German operations in 2024 and expected to be less than 5% in 2025. and significantly less for 2026 as we are discontinuing non-core operations in Jyutsu. The adjusted numbers also show we are on the path of margin improvement and we achieved 130 basis points uplift for the quarter when adjusting for Jyutsu. Now let's go through the segments. Starting with Norway, most Norwegian entities have revenue growth, but on the back of a quite slow quarter last year, which was impacted by bad weather conditions, resulting in an organic growth of 7.8%. The EBITDA margin increased by 170 basis points this quarter from last year, with a total margin of 9.6%. Even though we see an improvement, we had expected more from Norway. To our disappointment, we were not successful in the appeal to the court regarding the acquisition of Vitek. We are continuing to build our position in Bergen and are comfortable that we are the preferred partner to our customers in the greater Bergen region. As we informed in January, our head of Norway, Tore Hansen, is stepping down after six years in the role. We would like to thank Tore for his strong contribution during these years. We are in the middle of a recruitment process for his successor. Germany achieving 8.6% total growth and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 10.9% and a margin reduction of 320 basis points over the quarter. As mentioned earlier in the presentation, the margin development is affected by low activity in Jutsy and I will in the next slides present Germany without this company to illustrate that the rest of the entities in Germany are performing strong. Okay, next slide. Germany, excluding Jyotsi, achieved total growth of 25% and an adjusted beta margin of 14.4% in the quarter, a margin improvement of 370 basis points. The same exercise for the full year gives total growth of 18%, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.1% and an uplift with 50 basis points for the full year. This underpins that our core business is performing well in Germany with both growth and margin improvements. We managed to improve our margin in some important units and we will show this on company by company level on the next slide. But before that, one more topic about Germany. We are in the phase of going live with our well-needed business platform in the first entity of Germany. The first part of the business platform, a field services management system, was launched in Q4 and is delivering as expected. And the second part, which is the ERP, will be live in the summer. Then a broader launch through the rest of the German entities will start. This will support operations in a good way and enabling better utilization of equipment and personnel. It will also help scale the business in a better way. As promised, here is a transparent overview of the German entity's full year. We see from this slide that all operations are delivering double-digit EBITDA margins. The exception here is Jyotsi this year with their non-core UAM business that destroys the picture. Including German group overhead, the margin adjusted for Jyotsi was 13.1%, up with 50 basis points. Before closing the German chapter, I want also to be transparent with our improvement plan for Jutsy. We exit the previous management summer of 2024. Since then, German CEO and CFO has been on the location on a daily basis. We have a new manager in place from 1 January 2025. We are winding down our non-core, non-UIM project business. The non-core projects will be finalized during 2025. We have rigorous follow-ups and have limited the financial risk of the one large remaining project. The revenue reversal from Q3 deemed to be sufficient as we implemented a new control regime, except expected to be concluded during first half of 2025. 2025 is our transformation year, transformation of this company, but we are not expecting any significant restructuring cost. We are now building on our core and healthy UIM business in Jutsy and we expect to get back to profitability during 2025. Homework is done and we have turned every stone and there are no major non-UIM projects in the German operation or other parts of Norwa24 for that sake. Okay, next slide is Sweden. Sweden continues to perform well with strong currency adjusted organic growth of 8.5% and the impact of acquisitions leading to a strong growth in total operating revenue at 18.8%. The margin improved organic with 70 basis points and in total 130 basis points for the quarter. Full year the margin has improved by 310 basis points and the majority of the margin up list is organic. The Swedish operations and management are really starting to function as a team and we see a strong broad-based improvement in Sweden. Looking forward to seeing the continued development in 2025. Okay, Denmark. The Danish operations have improved a lot during 2024. This continued in the fourth quarter. The organic margin improvement is 170 basis points, while Nordic Power Group, who has their peak season in the summer, has a negative impact on the margin of 130 basis points. This does not worry me, as this is following the seasonality we know from them. Denmark had a revenue growth of 49% in the quarter and 51% full year. Nordic Power Group contributed a lot to this growth despite only being consolidated from the 21st of May. The organic growth in the Danish operation was 1.7% in the quarter and 4.1% for the full year. Full year margin improvement for Norwa24 Denmark was 390 basis points. The impact of Nordic Power Group for the full year is significant with 295 basis points contributing to the margin uplift. And there is also a good organic margin improvement of 95 basis points in the Danish operation. We continue to grow and we have added close to 500 million NOC of revenues from Q4 2023 and more than 1.1 billion NOC from Q4 2022. Also, regarding profitability, we see growth. Our EBITDA is up to 384 million NOC on a 12-month rolling basis, up from 279 two years ago. Adjusting for Jytsi, we reached 400 million NOK, up from 309 million NOK. Okay, I hand over to Stein to go through the financials.

Thank you, Henrik. Before we go to the financial section, I would like to touch on the M&A activity. When we met in May, we were very pleased with the activity and the conversion we had achieved in the start of the year. Since then, we've kept our cool and pushed some deals into the future, as we've seen the financial performance of some of these targets drop. This was related to Germany in particular. We have not been able to complete the VTEC transaction, and we do not expect this to change in any way. So far this year, we've signed a smaller deal and we will be closing that in the coming days. It will be a good add-on to the Zimmerbeutel operations in the rural area. Looking at the funnel, we have worked on expanding our shortlist and have grown the list with new targets. We currently have 10 targets in the advanced discussion phase and as stated earlier, we are in no hurry and it is very important for us to be prudent in these acquisitions and secure the right capital allocation. We have increased our capacity with the head of M&A Nordics to strengthen the Nordics, but also to free up capacity for our head of M&A who is located in Germany and who will spend most of his time on this market. We do expect that M&A activity will pick up in the coming months and in relation to The Jyotsi situation, we have adjusted our M&A approach to secure that we do not run into such issues as we did in Jyotsi in the future. It's important to note that we have done more than 50 acquisitions and a very small proportion of these have had a negative impact on the group. Now let's move on to the financials. As Henrik mentioned, we're satisfied with the revenue growth and the growth in the quarter, with a revenue growth of 15.5% in the quarter and 15.2% for the year. Last quarter, we did a revenue adjustment related to the potential reversal of previously recognized revenues of 3 million related to Yuzi. And based on the information we have today, it appears that that provision or that reversal is sufficient. And following that adjustment during Q4, we have rolled back a small proportion, about 10% of that reversal in Q4. related to a project that we have concluded and that was sufficient for that project, actually a little bit more than sufficient, but the benefit of that is an XO in the quarter. Looking at the cost development, this is quite aligned with our growth in revenues. The other operating expenses increased a lot, around 30 million, and this is primarily related to M&A costs in various forms, but VTech is a major reason for this increase. Operational service expenses and personnel costs, which you should see jointly, have increased together in line with our revenues. The same goes for vehicle operating expenses, which are up by 15% in the quarter, so following our revenue development. The same goes for our depreciation, which is at the same level compared to revenues as last year's fourth quarter. Year-to-date, we've seen a small increase of 25 basis points in relation to revenues on the depreciation. For the quarter, the adjusted EBITDA is 8.2%, and that's a margin reduction of 130 basis points. Year-to-date, the margin is 10.6 percentage points, which is down 40% on last year. Excluding Jutzi in Germany, the group margin would have been 9.3, which is 130 basis points higher for the quarter. And year-to-date, the margin would have been 11.5, which is 80 basis points up from last year. Our net financial costs were 5 million in Q4 versus 36.6 million last year. The reduction here is coming from recognized earn-out gains of 14.2 million, mainly due to the reversal of an earn-out accrual in a German acquisition. And we also have a currency gain of 10.7 million. And the interest cost is up by 6.1 million from 22 million to 28.1 million for the quarter. And this gives us an earnings before tax for the quarter of 56.5 million. And that is up from 23.4 million last year. The tax rate was at a lower level this quarter compared to the year-to-date numbers, and this is mainly due to the year-end calculations that we've done. The tax rate going forward is expected to be at around 25%. Okay, let's look at the balance sheet. we continue to show a strong balance sheet. Our net debt of 1.6 billion at the end of the year represents a net interest-bearing debt over adjusted EBITDA of 2.1 times. Goodwill of 2.260 billion at the end of the year shows an increase due to the latest acquisition. We also do this, we do impairment tests on a regular basis and these show ample headroom for all cash generating units, meaning all markets. The lease liability of 1 billion and 39 million is related to the right of use assets, which refer to financial leasing of vehicles and property rentals. And the non-current loan of 9-11 million is primarily the bank loan. Our investment in the quarter was 134 million, and our investment in machinery and equipment should be around 8-9% of revenues in the long run. But we are currently seeing a higher level, driven primarily by three factors. We are up due to a lower level of deliveries due to the war in Ukraine in 2021 and 2022. The second reason is that we are winning new contracts where we need to increase our capacity. And we also for a third reason is that we're seeing stricter requirement for carbon neutral vehicles, meaning electric vehicles or for larger vehicles, gas fueled equipment, which has also led to new investment. You could also say that we have grown significantly more than the market, and we're having a growth this year of 8.8% organic, and that also requires more capacity. Going back to the gas vehicles that we are acquiring, some of these are replacing equipment that has not sort of reached the end of life. And these vehicles were able to relocate to more rural areas and they can have a sort of a useful life going forward as well. But still, it does mean that we have a temporary higher level of investment, and we are also expecting to see that in the prices and revenues going forward, that the equipment that we're investing in is slightly more expensive than it used to be. Okay, let's move on to the debt structure of the group. So as our headline says here, about 65% of our debt is related to IFRS 16. So most of our debt is IFRS leases and rental agreements. These leases amounted to 1 billion and 40 million in Q4. a slight increase from 1 billion and 16 million at Q3. Our total net investing-bearing debt was 1.55 at the end of the year, slightly down from last year. And as I said, about 65% of these are capitalized EFRS leases. Leasing payments for the next 12 months amount to 268 million, which is very close to what it was last year, 267 million. Depreciation of the lease assets is included in the P&L under depreciation. Net debt excluding leases was only 511 million at the end of the year compared to 581 million in the last quarter. The multi-currency revolving loan facility has been increased from 1.1 billion to 1.85 billion, and it has also been prolonged two years compared to the 2021 facility. The agreement was signed in Q4. Of the NOC 1.85 billion credit facility, 868 million was utilized at the end of the year. So there is close to 1 billion available. Then moving on to the cash, in Q4, our operating activity generated 298 million of operating cash flow, and that is up from 206 million last year, so 48% up. For the full year, this number was 661 million, which is up 28% from 516 million last year, and a cash conversion of 90.8%. up from 80.9 last year. We've started initiatives to reduce our working capital in Germany and Denmark particularly, and we see some positive impacts from this in Denmark, particularly in Denmark. And the overall net working capital is down from 5.9% of annual revenues last year to 4.6% this year. Although it is encouraging to see the improvement in net working capital compared to the previous quarter and year, we have yet to reach our target net working capital levels. Yes, and at the end, just to recap the financial results, it's a good growth in total operating revenues of 15.1%. 15.5%, sorry. The adjusted EBITDA margin uplift in the quarter and full year when we adjust for Jyotsi. We see a strong cash flow and we have a strong balance sheet that enables M&A. And there is still room to continue the growth journey. And the multi-currency revolving credit facility has been increased from 1.1 to 1.85 billion NOK. Now handing over to you, Henrik.

Okay, thank you, Stein. Summarizing the year, we see very solid organic revenue growth for full year with Sweden and Germany at 10%, Norway at 8% and Denmark at 4%. Resulting in currency adjusted organic growth for the group of close to 9% for the full year. And three of four markets also achieved margin increases and Sweden quite significant increase. Key takeaways from this presentation. Financial wise, we come from a quarter with strong total growth, 16%, and adjusting for Jyotsi, a growth of 21.5%. And currency adjusted organic growth of 11.3%. Reported adjusted EBITDA is flat for the quarter. Adjusted for Jyotsi, it's up by 40%. Strong operational cash flow, up 44% in Q4 and up 28% full year. And strong cash conversion of 90% full year. Other takeaways, we are uniquely positioned in an attractive growth market and show resilience in a tough economical climate. And we are prepared and ready to continue the profitable growth journey. Before we open up for Q&As, I want to repeat that we have a Capital Market Day on the 19th of March in Stockholm to present the updated strategy and evolution of Norma24, our strategy for 2025 to 2030. Sign up, warm welcome. Now we open up for Q&As.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Dan Johansen from SEB. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I think I have three questions here. I'll start with the first one here. On Norway, the beta margin was up a bit, but perhaps a little bit less than I had anticipated. And if we look a few years back, you were a couple of percentage points higher in Norway during Q4. Is it the holiday season that hampers you a bit? Is it other seasonality compared to a few years back or what explains that the margin doesn't come up even more here in Norway during this quarter?

Good morning, Dan. I think it is. We're a little bit surprised by the weakening that we saw in Q4, particularly in December. And the surprise was really that the Christmas holiday didn't start on Friday the 19th or maybe it was the 20th, but it actually more or less started a week before. So we had a fairly slow second half of December and that really impacted the profitability and uh no reason to sort of point at snow and cold weather because it was pretty good pretty decent production uh conditions for the one and then we have we have a couple of units which are not quite up to uh speed where we would like them to be and that's um that's something where you know applying the playbook and expect to to see that improve going forward okay understood and uh

maybe on Denmark in terms of seasonality with Nordic Power Group I guess Q1 is also low season that will hamper you a bit and we should then expect a stronger Q2 and Q3, is that the correct way to see it here going into next year?

Absolutely. Nordic Power Group seasonality, they have their peak season in Q2 and Q3. And that's what we're aware of that when we're buying the company. But it's nothing that worries us. It's followed their seasonality. and had a really strong Q2, Q3. We know they are a little bit slower due to their customer base that they're having. So we expect a good year from Nordic Power Group going forward.

Perfect, thank you. Maybe a final one from my side. You grow a bit above your target for organic growth this year and I guess maybe inflation helped you a bit but Looking into 2025, you speak about the need to increase capacity, which sounds good, and you also perhaps need to raise prices a bit to reflect the higher vehicle costs. Even if inflation is coming down now, it sounds like you should at least be able to achieve organic growth you've seen in the past. the right way to understand your thinking here into 2025.

Yeah, absolutely. We're planning. I mean, we have a possibility to grow organically, and that's our aim, to continue that journey definitely. And of course, adding our acquisition on top of that one. So, yeah.

Perfect. I think that was all from my side for now. So I'll jump back into the line. Thanks for answering my question.

Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Dan.

The next question comes from Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Henrik Enstein. Thank you for the deep disclosure on the German kind of situation you have ended up in. Just to get the full understanding, winding up the rest of this project business, as you see it, it's not really going to be a profitability burden in 2025. And then is there anything that you feel is an uncertainty in that kind of protection?

No, I mean, our determination now is taking out that non-core, non-UIM projects that we have talked about. And as you said, we wanted to reveal that the company as such, Jutsy, and also, so you see that we have a strong and healthy underlying core business in Germany. But back to your question there. We will finalize this project during 2025. And we had that accrual from Q3 last year. And the longer we get in and the more we have really turned our stones and we are very close to this project, we feel more and more comfortable that we have enough accrual to finalize it during 2025.

Excellent. And should we expect any winding up cost for that part of the operation that is then working in this?

Because a lot of the revenue in the project was driven by subcontractors. So we will not have any significant restructuring cost for the company. It is a transformation year that I said in the learning call here. But But we will not see it with a lot of restructuring costs. It's more of shrinking down now to core and then build from there, build on our core. And the core business within Jyotsi is quite healthy. So it's more of getting rid of the non-core thing. And that's why we were a little bit eager in this call to even it out and show you our core situation due to we are taking out this odd bird, as I have called it before in the earnings calls.

earlier and do you have the feeling that the problems you have had in the german project business has yeah maybe impacted also the the other part of the operation so when you can start to focus on that better that's the general profitability of that operation would also be higher.

Of course. I mean, we have spent some time and the German management that also spent some time on this. So, of course, we want to get back. But from 1st of January, new management came into Jyotsu and the CFO and CEO for Germany, you know, can go back to normal a little bit. But so more focus on the total operations now going forward. Absolutely.

Excellent. When you look at it, you mentioned it when you talked about CapEx needs, saying that you have had quite a good win rate. Could you disclose anything about how the win rate has looked in 2024 compared to earlier?

No, we haven't disclosed that. But what we can say is that we've, particularly in Sweden, we've won quite a few large contracts and then, well, Norway as well. But we haven't been very detailed about that, Carly-Anne.

I think, Norman, historically you talked about that you had maybe a 78% win rate in the kind of situation you got involved in. Is that a fantastic ratio still there?

I would say yes. Maybe slightly lower because we've been somewhat more aggressive, is maybe not the right word, but we've been more demanding on what kind of prices are we going to be doing these assignments for.

And also the capital allocation question, where do we spend our CAPEX? When we go into new contracts, we want to make sure that we have a good capital allocation, not spending CAPEX on the wrong places where we can earn a lot of money.

Makes 100% sense. And coming back to the M&A pipeline, you alluded to that we should expect a pickup here in the coming months. Do you still see the 4.5 billion revenue target for this year as reachable with that kind of what you see in the M&A pipeline?

That 4.5 billion is a statutory number. And of course, it is becoming more challenging as if you look at the if you take the revenues from 2024 You add on sort of a, I don't know what, if you add on 6%, you're very close to 4 billion on that number. And that would mean sort of doing M&A for 500 million for the year on a statutory basis. And that is, of course, challenging. But we haven't completely abandoned the target, so to speak. We haven't abandoned the target.

But just an add on that, we want to be prudent in our M&A journey, making good acquisition. We can reach the 4.5, but we want to do it responsibly.

Makes total sense. And looking at the strong working capital release you saw in Q4, is there any temporary thing that is helping you in that number, or is that what you talked about, say, progress in Denmark and a good year-end kind of development?

It is a positive underlying development, but... Nordic Power Group has not been great at working capital. And the fact that they've had sort of a slow season towards the end of the year also means that the accounts receivable in that unit has been taken down. But that's just that's one one cause. So I think it is that they have improved the routines and systems for this. And we'll just need to continue working on that. And Germany. Germany is a little bit of a special case here because it's it is quite old fashioned. Up until 1st of January this year, you could you could insist on getting the invoices by post. Luckily, now from the 1st of January, we can actually send it electronically, and that also improves work in progress, account receivable in Germany. Excellent.

And just one final more deep question if you're looking at I saw that you did some changes to the lease accounting in the cash flow. Could you just elaborate what you were doing and what you adjusted for?

Yeah, no, it was, I mean, It was, in a sense, it was a mistake in the way we showed the cash flow, because since Q4 last year, for some reason, interest cost was being deducted or added back up on the cash flow. In the overall picture, it didn't change the situation, but it added about 10 million.

of operating cash flow for q1 q2 q3 and q4 last year in the reporting so that's what we've reversed now or corrected now excellent so if i did this kind of lease accounting adjustment to my way of looking at cash flow already before it's basically the same thing as that before yes thank you very much and all the best out there thank you thank you cj

The next question comes from Jacob Edler from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys, and thank you for taking my questions. I just have two short follow-ups, and please correct me if you've covered this. I missed one or two questions while hopping on the line. But starting there, I appreciate the added color on Jyotsi, clearly. Just a more detailed question, if you can provide some color. I mean, how much of the sales in Jyotsi in 24 was related to these non-core uim projects and a follow-up on that is what can we assume you know german margins on on on the uam part of utsy

I think it is, in 24, it was actually a quite substantial number. Say around half of revenues in 2024 were related to this, these kind of activities. And that's sort of the non-UIM part. And a smaller part of that is what we have described as this project. Yeah. So the margin of the other part of the UIM business, and you'd see, is quite okay. The thing is, in 2024, that operation has somewhat suffered. I mean, we exited the management mid-year, and we've had the German management being partly in charge or in charge of the operation. So... it has not been what it should be. Going forward, we expect that the UIM part of Jytsi will be more in line with the margins we see in Germany, as we have from the 1st of January, a new manager in place in Germany.

Perfect. Just a second question, just a housekeeping question. Last year, corporate cost was quite low, and this year was quite high. I'm just wondering, is it fair to assume 14 to 15 million per quarter you know, going forward, it was maybe just a tad high in this quarter. Is that a fair assumption?

That's correct. I mean, this year it's 19.7 million, and that is your number of, say, 14 to 15 is much more precise. What we see in the cost base here is that we've used quite a few consultants in some areas one of them being mapping up our business processes and preparing for that project also in the nordics and this is this is caused that we haven't exode and you can't capitalize it because it is prior to starting the implementation um so i think the level of uh say around 60 million is probably more the level you should see uh going forward on an annual basis.

Thank you so much for your answers. Those were my two questions.

Thank you, Jörg. The next question comes from Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.

Sorry, I missed one from my list. Looking at the VTech situation, have you decided to walk away from that acquisition now, or are you going to challenge it to the next level in the system?

No. I mean, we have terminated the share purchase agreement, and we've sort of given up. Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. But just to underline that question, it's not the end of the world. It's one acquisition. We are strong in Bergen and we are building our position stronger organically instead. So I know that we have received questions around our acquisition journey in Norway. It's definitely not the end. It's a lot of things to do here. So no worries about that.

Looking forward to the next transaction then. Thank you.

The next question comes from Jacob Edler from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi again, guys. Just interesting on the Vitek situation. Just when you say that you're confident in being able to do more M&A in the German market, does that also include, like, you know, there's some big private players still on the Norwegian market, like VO365, etc., Would you still think you would be able to do sizable acquisitions in that market after the VTEC outcome?

I mean, this was a local question. The competitor situation, the local in Bergen. Of course, we are not happy with the decision. We have another view of it. I mean, there are so many places in Norway where it looks different, competitive-wise and so on. So... I don't see the problem. Then if we can buy the big one, the substantial one, that can be another question. But there's a lot of medium-sized, small and medium-sized companies, a healthy one that could really be a good puzzle piece in our building of Norway.

Thank you so much for that clarity. Looking forward to the CMD in March.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Jakob.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Jenna Shu from Burenberg Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for the presentation, and thank you so much for sort of all of these disclosures and the clarification. My question is regarding more specifically on the rest of Germany operations, excluding UC. I mean, I really appreciate this sort of transparent disclosure. I'm just kind of wondering what should we expect for the German margins going forward for the next few quarters, especially since you also mentioned the implementation of the ERP and field services tool back in Q4, and the ERP that's going to be rolled out in the summer. So I was just thinking, what should we expect for the next few quarters in terms of margins and growth?

We're not going to give sort of any guidance on the margins specifically for the next few quarters here. I mean, we do believe that the ERP project that we're implementing will, over time, give us some fairly significant benefits on the operational side. We'll get more into the details on the capital markets day on this, but we're quite confident we're doing good in Germany and we're also seeing some decent margins. Management has spent... a very large share of their time on the Jyotsi case, and that's not the greatest situation for us to be in.

I don't know if you want to... We should not guide on Germany going forward. But as you see, that's why we wanted to be transparent that we have a good underlying healthy business taking out the non-core stuff that we are winding down. But coming to the business platform there, I mean, as stated in the call here, we have started the pilot. We are, you know... We have seen good signs. We are still in one of the units implemented first, the field services management tool, then the ERP. When everything seems to be OK there, we start rolling out entity by entity. If we could see any, I would not stand here and promise that we can see it in the numbers in short time. But in the second half of the year, I mean, I'm very curious and we are a lot of people, you know, really looking forward to see what this can give us because it's really something new to put all the entities on the same platform, being able to... to read, to cooperate. And I mean, the key to success for us to have utilization on our vehicles and personnel. And this is something really and a good control of the situation so we can steer it from a price perspective, planning perspective, route optimization. But I cannot stand and promise that you will see it in May. We are in the implementation phase. Everything looks good so far and really looking forward to see the benefits going forward. But it will also be more on this tool and the journey on the capital market.

Just a final comment. I mean, the German economic state is not great, but still we're able to deliver solid growth and also margin improvement, excluding Yuzi. So we feel that, you know, the business is quite resilient and quite acyclical. And it's very much up to us what we are able to achieve here.

And we have to remember that German society is in recession and having like a negative or flat GDP growth for quite some time. But we still, as a company, can produce organic margins and organic margin increase and also better margins. So I think that is really strong and good proof for the Norva24 case.

Yeah, makes sense. So just kind of looking at the slide with sort of the various margin developments of the companies. So I see that, you know, like the margins are not very consistent across 23 and 24. You know, we have some companies that saw huge jump in margins and others that look like maybe the margins declined a little. So I'm guessing this is just sort of usual business fluctuations and nothing major to be concerned about here?

It's quite normal situation that is going a little bit up and down. We have companies, we're still on Germany, I assume. I mean, we still have companies that have assignments and contracts that are really, you know, boosting in a year. And then you go out from there and, you know, find new ones and so on. So it can be a various between. It's not... We are not driving a business that is super steady, quarter by quarter by quarter. It's up and down. It's for us to always improve. And as you see, and I also mentioned, some of the entities have higher margins. Some have taken a little bit back, but they can be the one that's stepping forward next year and so on. But our aim is always to move the whole cake, so to speak.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Janna.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions.

Yes, I have a final question here that hasn't been addressed so far. What is the risk with the project business in Germany as it is still some 5% of German revenues in 2025? That is correct. I mean, in Turpe, we have still some of these projects. We're not bidding for new ones. We're not entering into new... In Jutse. In Jutse. We're not entering any of these contracts anymore. What we're doing is we're finalizing some of these. And there is really only one large contract left. And we're... following that up in a very different way than the previous project. And I'm not saying it's going to be hugely profitable, but it's not going to be a bomb. There is not going to be a very big surprise where we have a big loss on one of these contracts. And the larger one is being monitored in a very, very different way. So I'm not too concerned about that. That was the final question.

Yes. Yes. Big thank you for listening in to our earnings call and have a nice day.