Nordic Waterproofing Holding AB (publ)

So welcome everyone to this Nordic Waterproofing Earnings Conference call after our second quarter 2024. May I remind everybody that this webinar is being recorded and also that the participant names are disclosed on the screen here. With that, may I introduce our president and CEO, Martin Ellis. And Martin, hand over to you for starting the presentation here.

Yeah, thank you very much, Paul. Welcome all. Thank you for participating. So let's jump right into it. The second quarter was in line with expectations in the sense that we've seen a continuation of the demand trends of the most recent previous quarters. And we have a mixed bag in terms of demand and performance, strong performance, in Denmark and Sweden, but continued very weak demand in Finland, which as you know, is our biggest country. So that explains the results you're going to see in a second. Moving on to the next page, we can see that we've had a decrease in net sales from 492,000 SEC to 1.96 billion. No significant impact from acquisitions, just 1%, no currency effects either, and an 8% organic reduction. EBITDA also decreased slightly from 186 million to 168. EBIT decreased from 143 million to 131. And cash flow from operating activities was also slightly lower from 157 last year to 126 this year due to different inventory moves between the two quarters. Net debt stands at 881 million SEC. down from the same period of last year and slightly up compared to the year end, obviously because of seasonal inventory positions. Moving on, a few comments. The demand is impacted by a slowdown in commercial new build, which we've seen in the previous quarters. Renovation continues stable and residential new build continues depressed. And at this point, it's too early to see any uptick. As you know, that's very much related to the level of interest rates, and they haven't moved that much yet. Bitumen-based waterproofing operations, our legacy business, are stable in Sweden and Denmark and continue, as I mentioned, challenging in Finland and also to some extent in Norway. Our EPDM synthetic rubber products are slightly below last year, but we believe that we have seen the bottom here in terms of demand and we've been able to improve margins somewhat over the same quarter last year. Prefab element has a high exposure to residential new build and has been hit by the low demand. Nevertheless, we had a positive development sales on the Danish market, but negative development in Norway. Profitability levels are still unsatisfactory, and we are executing restructuring programs both in Denmark and Norway. In Finland, the same business is doing quite well. The green infrastructure business had decreased sales, especially due to less roof park projects, but improved profitability over last year. Installation services had lower sales. Obviously, there we have the biggest impact from a very low demand in Finland. And margins also slightly decreased. The order books for installation services continue to be on par with the previous year in Finland and Denmark, slightly weaker in Norway. And especially in Finland, we're working on a number of large offers where we're making currently. Obviously, it's too soon to say that this is going to translate into firm orders.

But definitely a lot of