Prevas AB

So hello everybody. My name is Magnus Vilen. I'm the CEO of Prevas. And today I have with me Helena Burschem who is the CFO of Prevas. And I welcome you all to this short meeting regarding the Q3 results for Prevas. We will start with a brief introduction, then we will have a review of the financial performance, a brief look into the market, and then we will finalize this meeting with a Q&A session. And I hope that we will get a lot of questions this time as well. All right, looking into the Q3 for Prevas, we managed to grow with 13% this quarter driven by acquisitions. We also managed to increase our prices to continue to increase the prices even in this business climate. I think that is a strong signal showing that we're doing the right things in Prevas. Looking into profit, we can see that the profit this year, 43% compared to last year, was lower. And the reason is that we have a lower utilization and also some specific challenges in Finland that I will come back to later on. The EBITDA for the quarter was 26.5 million SEK compared to last year of 31.8. That equals to EBITDA margin of 7.5%. And of course, in the situation where we see that EBITDA margin is not where we want it to be, we take actions. And so we have taken mitigating actions in Finland. I will come back to that a little bit later in detail. But also in Sweden, we have taken actions. Looking into Sweden, we see a very dynamic market. Some of our regions are performing very well, where we have a good order stock. We are employing people and growing. But we also have some regions in Sweden where we have low demands and we were actually reducing staff. On top of this, we're, of course, working with sales and then increase sales focus and cost focus in order to maintain our margins. Looking into accumulated figures for the year, Prevas is performing .6% growth and a .1% EBITDA. I think that shows also that Prevas is a healthy, well-organized company on a good path. Looking into this quarter, we also consolidated in the MAC. This is a very important step for Prevas moving into the future as we now are a Nordic company for real. We also acquired a company in Denmark called Design People. I will come back to that a bit later in the presentation as well. But as a summary for this quarter, 13% growth, .5% EBITDA. We're taking actions to mitigate the EBITDA. And we have shaped a Nordic company within

Prevas. Looking into the details for the

quarter, you can see that the EBITDA margin was 26.5 million, 7.5%. You can also see that EBITDA was 17.9. The reason that EBITDA is lower is that we had one-time acquisition related costs during this quarter, equals up to 8.2 million SEK. That, of course, influences EBITDA, but also profit for the period and also the EPS. So with this, Helena, I would like to hand over to you to explain the situation about the cash flow.

Yes, thank you, Magnus. Change in cash flow from operating activities in Q3 2024 is mainly driven by two factors. Calendar effect, negatively affecting working capital and lower result. And that is, as mentioned, affected by acquisition related costs. The calendar effect has an impact on working capital, specifically accounts payable, as end of June 2024 was on a Saturday and Sunday. And payments that went in the ninth and thirtieth were preceded the following business day in July, resulting in higher accounts payable. Last day in the period Q3 2024 was on a Monday when also payments were done, resulting in lower accounts payable. Compared to Q3 2023, it is the opposite around. End of June 2023 was on a Friday. Payments were preceded that day, resulting in lower accounts payable. End of Q2. And Q3 in 2023, last day of the period was on Saturday and the payments were made following business day, resulting in higher accounts payable. So in all, a double negative effect compared to last quarter last year. In addition, operating liabilities in working capital are contributing negatively due to effects from Finland, the project makes and from other short term liabilities. Still, we have a continued improvements in operating receivables this quarter. Our customers are stable and we're having good relations and with our continuous focus, we have managed to reduce day sales outstanding. Last year, this was as well reflected in the cash flow from operating activities, even if the last day was on a Saturday. Looking into the investment activities, as mentioned, we have the acquisition of Edmak in this quarter and it's reflected with 189 million SEC. And in financing activities, a new bank loan of 200 million SEC is reflected and as well amortization of loans totaling 92 million SEC in the quarter. And that includes payments related to the loan connected to the acquisition of Evertick 2021. From previous quarter, we have a payment and as well current quarter and that is as much due to the calendar effect. And we also have amortization of external loans that we have released in Edmak with 72 million SEC and new loan amortization in this quarter. And the use of the of order as facility was 10 million SEC. Looking into the accumulated cash flow excluding the acquisition and the acquisition related cost, our cash flow is still good. Finance position remains strong. Prevas is well below the financial target of maximum two times EBITDA and that debt in relation to EBITDA is 0.99. Prevas equity ratio remains strong and amounts to 48.3 in Q3 2024. With that Magnus, I hand over to you again.

Thank you, Helena, for that explanation regarding the cash flow. Now we zoom out a little bit and see how Prevas is performing over time. What you can see on one of these slides is the development of the quarterly turnover and also the rolling 12 turnover. We can see that Prevas has a steady growth over the years. We can also see that Prevas since 2017 has gone through dramatic changes in terms of profitability, where we have increased from very, very low levels and we are now on quite stable level of reaching out for our financial target of 12%. During the last quarters, we have not been able to reach our financial targets. And the underlying reason for that is that the market has been more difficult in this time compared to the previous quarters. Looking at the EBITDA margin rolling 12, it's 10.3%. If we exclude Finland, actually, the EBITDA margin for Prevas should have been 11%. So in that sense, given the market climate, I believe that we are performing rather well in terms of EBITDA despite this market that we face right now. Looking into the focus into the future, it's not growth. We want to grow with profitability and we will work hard now to turn around and to improve our EBITDA margin for the quarters to come. With this said, we have worked hard in order to adapt to the market needs. We have increased our prices. We had actually also increased our gross margins. We have reduced staff in some regions, which means that we are set now in a new way in Prevas. This means that given a normalized utilization, we will have an excellent leverage on the EBITDA level. So when we see that the demands are coming back, utilization goes up, I'm very, very convinced that we will exceed or at least reach our financial

target of 12%. And now

a little bit of an update regarding the situation in Finland. When we made the acquisition of Enmark, we were aware that the market in Finland short term were quite weak, but the market was even weaker than we anticipated during the quarter. So in order to take actions for this, we are taking mitigation actions when we have temporarily laid off 23 employees in Finland, including also overhead personnel. We had also made some permanent layoffs and that is one thing. This is on the cost side, but we also increased our sales focus in order to bring in new business into the Finnish operations. Because that is ultimately, of course, what we need. We need Enmark and we need to bring in business into our operations. During the quarter, we have been working also with integration. And that was also integration's cost that has affected the third quarter that is included in these figures as well. So all in all, Finland had a negative EBITDA in Q3. There was a positive trend though. So after the action we have taken, we actually had a positive EBITDA in September, which of course is very good when we look into the future. So that means that the effect, the actions that we are taking, they are actually changing things and improving our EBITDA. Looking a little bit into the market moving forward in Finland. It's still, it is a reluctant market in Finland. Quite a lot of activity in the customer base, but what we see is that decisions are pushed forward from our customer side. And that is of course not good for us and our operations in Finland. So what we are doing is focusing our sales activities both on of course trying to get our offers into complete orders, but also we have turned our sales and marketing into more service oriented customers, which will bring in business more on the short term in order to reach a good utilization. There are also some positive signs in Finland. Our largest customer Valmet Oy, they signed an order of 1,000 million euro for a pulp mill to Araku in Brazil. That is a huge order and this will impact us positively as Valmet is one of our, it's actually the largest customer we have in Finland. Right now, as we speak, we have meetings with Valmet to discuss how we can support them with this major order that they have now for. And we will see positive effects of this in the end of this year, but mainly of course in 2025 because it takes some time to ramp up an order of this magnitude for Valmet. Generally speaking, we have the all time high actually in Finland in terms of offer pipe. So we have a lot of offers that we are presenting to our customers. And but we are still not seeing that they are so say signing the agreement, so we turn them into orders, but we're working very hard with that, of course, in our customer base. But given this, we have received several orders during the quarter and we still will receive orders as well, so the market is not dead. But one area where we see that the decisions are pushed forward is in with larger investment projects that there was clearly a reluctant market short term in Finland. We also work with market synergies. Now when we are integrating Prevas and Enmak into one company, we are also working with market synergies and we have identified some interesting opportunities in this work. One is within the defense industry where we are cooperating presenting offers within large automation systems. We are also working with joint efforts within industrial IoT, vision system, etc. So it's a lot of things, a lot of activities going on to explore the market synergies that we all see that are present between our units. We're Finnish and the Swedish and the Danish and the Norwegian units within the Nordic Prevas. And then a little bit about the general market. How do we see that? We see that the market demand is similar in Q3 compared to Q1 and Q2 in 2024. More or less a flat development, but in some regions, very low demand, in some regions, very high demand, in some customers, very high demand, in some customers, low demand. So it's a very dynamic market still in that sense, and in some areas also quite reluctant. So it's not a super high demand in that sense, but very similar compared to how it's been looking in the last quarters. What we see also is that the competition on general consultancy assignment remains high in some areas. I would say in particular in general IT area. This is an area where we see that there is a lot of free engineering resources, both in the consultancy industry, but also actually people that are applying for jobs in the general IT area. So there we see quite high competition. It's not a big part of Prevas, but of course it's affected us in that sense. We also see that the high demand we have seen in identification, cybersecurity and defense continue in the third quarter as well. One positive thing in this quarter was that we saw increased demand in life science. We actually see that major customers within life science now are increasing investment in R&D and staffing up R&D projects. That is a good early signal, I would say, that we are happy to see. Also within general speaking, we have received quite nice orders in the third quarter. One is a record business we made within enterprise asset management. The initial order was 7 million Norska Kronor. The potential is around 20 million in five years. This is interesting because this is both in terms of recurring revenue for licenses, but also for services that we are supplying to these customers. That is a good step in the strategic development we want to do with Prevas. I'm very proud of that order in that sense. We also signed a framework agreement with ESS, European Spallation Source in Lund, and several other orders during this quarter. So things are moving, that's for sure. What we also see is that the demand for more complex solutions remains. One example here is within the defense industry, where we have very nice discussions with the defense industry regarding quite large projects, because the defense industry is ramping up now. They're ramping up production and we, as a partner that can enable and support them in that development, Prevas is very well positioned

in that discussion. Then a little bit about

the acquisition we made in Denmark. Design People is a leading design company based in Denmark. It's a digital and industrial design company working with both industrial design, digital design, UI, and user experience. Combined with the strengths of this company and Prevas in Denmark, together we shaped Denmark's absolutely leading product development hub. That means that we will increase and improve our offering to our customers in Denmark. This is really great for us, because it's a strategic acquisition for us to add these competences to the team in Denmark. It's not a big company, but it's important in that sense. What we also see here is market synergies. Design People has an attractive customer list. On the slide you can see some of these customers that Design People are working with. Of course, we see that we have good opportunities with cross-selling between the different units and now when we merge with Design People and Prevas in Denmark. That is another upside in this acquisition. This company will be consolidated from October 1st into Prevas. Summary of the presentation. Prevas was continuing to grow. We grow with 13% in the quarter, although with a lower EBITDA margin. During the quarter we have integration costs, acquisitions costs as well, but anyhow we are taking actions in order to mitigate reduced EBITDA. We're increasing the sale focuses, we are increasing our prices and we are also working on the cost side, adapting our personnel to the actual market demands and that we are working with during this quarter. We'll continue to work with of course in the future, because that will more or less never end. If you accumulate the Q1 to Q3, Prevas is performing almost 7% growth and over 10% of EBITDA. I believe that is at least okay given the market climate that we're in. We're also building a Nordic company. During this quarter it was a big step forward for Prevas as a company when we consolidated Nmark into Prevas, building a Nordic company. But also we continue this path. Now we made this acquisition of design people in Denmark, so we're actually operating all over the Nordic countries today, which I believe is a good step forward. As Helena was mentioning, we still have a solid financial platform even after the acquisition of Nmark and we are actually looking for future acquisitions as well. Of course we are picky, but we continue that work all the time, to see new possibilities as well. Then Prevas is well positioned in the growing sectors in the economy as we right now and that is very good for the future as well. Then I would also like to emphasize that thanks to the actions we have taken, the work we have been doing in Prevas, with the price increases, with increased efficiency in the operations, given normalized utilization, we will see an excellent leverage on EBITDA. So I really look forward to presenting better results moving forward into 2025 with another market situation as such. But with this said, I am not satisfied with EBITDA in Q3. Prevas can and will do better than that. So with this, I would like to ask you all with interesting questions and start the discussion. Thank you all.

Regarding Finland, the slow market took you by some surprise. Can you elaborate on why Finland was standing out in such a

way? Yeah, when we made the acquisition of Nmark, we were aware that there was a tough market in Finland, although it was going down more than we anticipated. That is the reason that we are taking these actions as we have made during the quarter. As I said in the presentation, there are also some positive signs, like the Valmet order and discussions we have with Valmet and some other customers as well. But we are taking action, we are focusing quite a lot on the sales side now. Also moving into more of social service selling, which also means that we can fill with more work, so to say, with more assignments, more short term. Because what we see in Finland is a reluctance for the investment projects, mainly in the process industry, where we can see that they are pushing decisions forward.

Hi, this is Stefan from ABG. Thank you for the presentation. Just to clarify, I think you said, was it that without Nmark you were at 11% margin for Prevas?

Not for this quarter.

Okay, okay. Then regarding, it was quite interesting to hear about the Valmet order and Valmet being the largest client for Nmark. Do you have any estimation on how large of a client it is and the work that Nmark is doing for Valmet? Is it mainly connected to the pulp and paper sector? And those kind of orders that Valmet received now?

Yeah, the work we do with Valmet is connected to the divisions in connection with that order. That's true. That's where we're working mainly. We're working with, for some one area, we're working with Valmet within piping designs, which our unit in the northern parts of Finland has a very good long relationship with Valmet. Hopefully we can see and present some orders in that area rather soon. That is very concrete because you need to ramp up that as well. Generally speaking, Valmet is a customer that our Finnish team has been working with for many, many years and we have a very close relationship. It's not only in that division, but it's a major part of our business. It's in that division driven by where that

order is relevant, but also of course other orders for Valmet.

Okay, perfect. Then you also mentioned that you received several orders both in Finland and in general here in Q3. Would you say that your order book is larger in going out of Q3 than it was going out of Q2?

I would say it's on a similar level in that sense, but also at the end of Q2 was before summer. I don't know if it's a

relevant comparison in that sense, but I would say that our situation is more or less flat in that sense. We are working more or less on the flat level over the year, both in terms of from the market side, but also in terms of on the order side. It's coming in orders all the time, but I wouldn't say that we have a substantial increase in orders coming into the next quarter in that sense, more or less a flat development.

But we have good discussions, so I'm very hopeful in that sense.

You said that September was better for NMAC. Are you comfortable with continuous improvement in that business going forward?

To put it like this, we don't give forecasting for Prevas, but what we have been doing is taking actions to mitigate the lower demands. What we saw in September was that that gave effect and we had a positive EBITDA in September. With that said, of course, we are counting on improvements for the coming time as such, but still it's a reluctant

market that we are in. But we are taking actions to secure the margins moving forward, that's for sure.

Okay, perfect. That was all for me. Thank you for the answers.

Thank you for those questions. One question about the listings. What about an eventual future move to mid-cap segment?

That is something that we worked very hard for to achieve. Of course, that is a target for us to reach mid-cap because we think that is good from many aspects. All I can say is that we are doing everything we can in order to perform because ultimately over time what counts is performance and that is what we are focusing on. I'm not focusing on mid-cap in that sense. It's a consequence of what we're doing in the operations in the business as such that will lead us to mid-cap.

Thank you. One last question for this presentation then. Can you give us some more color on the future outlooks?

As I said, we don't give forecasting from Pervas, but if you ask me as you do, I'm very, very positive regarding Pervas. We have a fantastic company. We're building the company long-term. We have now invested in Finland even though short-term it's a bit bumps. But moving on into the future, we have a fantastic platform, a Nordic platform. We have a team of engineers, managers, designers, product managers, etc. We have a fantastic team in Pervas. I'm so proud to be able to work with these people and I'm really looking forward to the future. Also, another important area in that sense is our customer base.

Looking into the customers we have and what we actually are doing for our customers, it's a privilege to be able to work with customers

like that and also the trust we get from them. So I'm looking very forward to the future in that sense and I'm very convinced that we will

deliver over time, that's for sure.

Thank you. That would conclude today's presentation. Thank you both Helena and Magnus and I wish you a very nice weekend. Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye.