AB SKF (publ)

So welcome to our Q2 2026 earnings call. Once again, we navigated well in markets with mixed demand and our strong underlying margin was mainly driven by our specialized industrial solutions segment, which grow in targeted areas, including aftermarket. I'm Sofia Arneus, heading up Investor Relations. And with me here in the room, I have our CEO, Richard Gustafsson, and our CFO, Susanne Larsson. After their presentations, there will be opportunities to ask questions. Let me just remind you how you do that. There are two ways to ask questions. If you have joined via the telephone, you can at any time press star and one to ask a question. If you are instead watching this call via the webcast you can also during the call here type in your questions via the question tab which you find above these slides. So without further ado let's get started here and it's a great pleasure to hand over to you Rickard.

Thank you very much, Sophie. And good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us for this earnings call. Starting on the first page and draw your attention to the up right corner with the bar chart where you see that also in this quarter we are in the positive organic growth territory. And this quarter we report an organic growth of 1.4%. It's driven by strong growth in Asia and also across our segment specialized industrial solutions. We do see a remaining and generally soft demand in Europe, whilst the OEM market in Americas shows early signs of improvement driven by certain industrial verticals. Profitability-wise, we have a strong quarter. The adjusted operating margin improves to 13.9% in the quarter. And there are some key drivers behind this. Firstly, we do see a significant uplift profitability-wise in our specialized industrial solution segment. Secondly, our ride-sizing program continues to deliver. In this quarter, we have some 350 million in realized benefits, which exceeds negative synergies from the separation. And thirdly, we have also improved our profitability in the automotive segment, which we will come back to shortly. And furthermore, there are also some limited contribution in the quarter from some support production to automotive as part of the separation activities and also some AIPA tariff refunds that they have received in the quarter. Turning to cash, we have a stable cash flow in the quarter at 2.1 billion kronor, as you can see from this chart. It's somewhat lower than the same quarter last year, but in this quarter, we have had cash impact of roughly 700 million from our right-sizing activities, our automotive separation activity, and also from some footprint optimization. Turning to our strategic priorities, I'm pleased to report that our automotive separation is progressing in line with plan, and I will share more details on that shortly. We have also announced an exciting venture in the humanoid space, where I also will come back with more details during my presentation. And as part of building a strong business-driven value chain that are fit for purpose for a pure play industrial business, we have also initiated activities to modernize and standardize our IT platform and make them AI-enabled for the future. But let's move in and start to look about our organic growth by geography. And when I speak here, I'm going to talk about all our three segments. So starting with EMEA, our largest region, you can see there kind of a flattish to negative organic growth. But if you pick that apart, you will see that we have very solid growth in specialized industrial solutions, especially driven by aero and magnetics in this region. For automotive, we maintain a low-demand environment where both light vehicles and commercial vehicles report negative organic growth in the quarter. When it comes to business bearing Solutions, we see some cautiousness in our distribution business where the uncertainty also related to the crisis in the Middle East makes a number of our customers to apply kind of better be safe than sorry and a bit, you know, TURNING TO THE AMERICAS where we have a growth of 2.3%. Here I can say that that number is somewhat reduced due to that we have received some tariff refunds, as I mentioned. So underlying organic growth is somewhat bigger than what is reported here. Also, as in for Europe, we have very strong magnetics business driven by the AI build-out and the data center build-out in the region. Also, aerospace are growing very, very nicely in this region. We have a stable organic sales for bearing Solutions and also for automotive, but we start with Bearing Solutions. We do see that we have defense, heavy industries, high-speed machinery are also, just like for Europe, areas that are growing very nicely at the moment. And for auto, it's more flattish, where actually both light vehicles, commercial vehicles, and the aftermarket comes in rather flat in the quarter. Turning to China and Northeast Asia, solid growth north of 3%, where we see a continued solid demand development. And here I like to single out distribution, rail and high speed machinery as some examples of high growth areas for us. For automotive, we're back in growth territory here as well, and to some extent driven by light vehicle and the EV export that we now see coming out of China, but also commercial vehicles have a strong quarter in the region. And finally, India and Southeast Asia, solid growth, just shy of 4%, clearly driven by India and Vietnam, growing very nicely as geographies. For bearing solutions is distribution, wind, and also heavy industries that I would like to highlight as particular good growth areas. And for automotive, it's a bit flattish, very good growth in light vehicles, somewhat offset by commercial vehicles in that region. So we then turn to our segments and starting with bearing Solutions. And as you can see, I'm representing 55% of group sales and 76% of the adjusted operating profit. Here we have a flat dish organic growth of positive 0.2, driven by a price mix. We do see a solid growth across Asia, offset by a declining development in the EMEA region. We do have some tariff refunds, as I mentioned, that impacts growth somewhat in Americas. But here in Americas, we do see early signs of OEM market improvement from direct and indirect growth in these areas that I mentioned, like data centers, defense, AI, and infrastructure. The adjusted operating profit is solid north of 19%. And to give you some more color on this one, we do have benefits from the right-sizing separation, as I mentioned before, that offset negative synergies from the separation and also some of the inflation. But we also have some negative cost items from a comparison versus the same quarter last year. We have some preparation costs for the IT modernization that I mentioned and also build up of shared services beyond what we have in finance. And we also have less contribution from the world class manufacturing program this quarter versus the same quarter last year. Moving on to specialized industrial solutions, representing 20% of sales and 22% of the adjusted operating profit. Here we do see very solid growth, north of 8%, as you can see on this chart. And it's actually not just price mix. Price mix is part of the equation, an important part, but also volume, underlying volume is driving growth here. All units contribute into the growth, but with a particular emphasis on aerospace and magnetics. The adjusted operating margin increases significantly up from last year just north of 10% to over 15% in this quarter. And the main drivers behind this very positive development are threefold. Firstly, we do have a strong aftermarket growth across our business segments or business units, I should say, that make up this segment. Secondly, as I mentioned, our aero and magnetic business are growing faster than our lubrication and seals business, and that implies a positive mix, margin mix for us. And thirdly, we also have a very strong margin uplift in our lubrication business, both from pricing activities, but also for good success in growing our automated lubrication systems. And for those of you who joined us for the Q1 call, we did do a deep dive on the lubrication business, and there I tried to highlight the importance of automated lubrication systems in our lubrication portfolio. So we're pretty pleased to see that growth. Turning to automotive. representing 25% of sales and 11% of the adjusted operating profit. Here we are still in a declining growth environment, negative 1.4% in the quarter. And as I mentioned, there's generally challenging market conditions, especially in the media where both light vehicles and commercial vehicles are down. Good development in China and Northeast Asia, as I mentioned, both on commercial vehicles, but also light vehicles, EV export is driving growth there. And in America, as I said, it's more flattish across light vehicles, commercial vehicles and the aftermarket. But despite that we have a declining growth, we are able to improve the adjusted operating margin up to 5.7%, also visible on this slide. And we're starting to see benefits from being realized from becoming a more separated business. And we continue to see solid cost development, mainly driven by manufacturing efficiency and procurement management. If we then leave the quarter and the numbers, and before I turn back to Susanne to give you some more details, I'd like to take this opportunity to do a few deep dives. And I want to start with the venture around humanoids that we announced a few weeks or days ago. As we mentioned in the past, we have done a rather thorough study here to identify where we should play in this potential market. And we have concluded that we should focus on humanoids for industrial applications and that we will remain a component supplier and that we should partner with key system manufacturers to rapidly build a proposition That covers most of the need for industrial humanoids. But with that said, we also remain open to explore potential expansions to this as this market matures and we learn more. But on the right hand side, I'll try to give you some flavor of the bearings kind of contribution to humanoid and the number of positions where there are bearings. And in a humanoid, there are more than 120 bearings. And if you divide the value of those bearings broken down by bill of material, you find that roughly 45% of the bearing value is found in bearings like cross rollers and flexible bearings. they go into something that's called harmonic drives. And I'll come back to harmonic drives shortly. And this is an area where we don't really have an offering today. But that's where the venture with Leader Drive will come into play and really bridge that gap rapidly. Then some 35% of the bearings, they are related to thin section and other type of bearings. And here we already have capabilities and knowledge in-house that we intend to build further and accelerate internally. So from these two, we have some 80% coverage of the need for humanoids. Then the remaining 20%, they are related primarily to what's called miniature bearings that you find in hands and in fingers. This is an area we don't really have a coverage and where we are still assessing if we should do a greenfield here or if we should try to find a partner to also include this in our portfolio for humanoids or not. But 80% is what we now have coverage. Turning to the venture itself and a little bit on Leader Drive. It's a manufacturer of harmonic drives and other robotic precision components. And you may wonder what is a harmonic drive? And let me try to the best of my ability to explain that for you very, very quickly. An Amaric drive is the gearbox of a rotating actuator with flexible gears that can continuously deform during operations, enabling high precision and torque. And for this type of gearboxes or harmonic drives, a leader drive is the clear number one in China and a clear number two globally after the Japanese company HGI was the first to commercialize a harmonic drive. LeaderDrive, they supply manufacturers for both traditional robots and humanoids, and the main emphasis will be on humanoids, and they have customers both in China and outside China. And before this venture, they produced in-house the cross-roller and flexor bearings that are needed for these harmonic drives in-house. Now with the venture, that will be carved out and moved into the venture. and the venture, it will provide a fast track for SKF into this new exciting growth area. So LeaderDry will contribute with their cross-roller and flexible bearing production, and our contribution will be large-scale manufacturing know-how, support in actually scaling up and industrializing this, and then coupled with our own engineering innovation capabilities. SKF will be the majority owner of this venture, 60% ownership, and the future IP will be retained within SKF. The venture will start with a very strong position in the Chinese market, which we then can scale globally. We will also have capabilities to support all types of robots, traditional co-bots and humanoids, but clearly the main emphasis will be on building humanoids for industrial usage. And we expect this venture to be operational by the end of this year. Turning to automotive and the separation. And I'm very pleased to report that the separation is progressing with speed and fully aligned to our plan. Automotive is now structurally separated and also from an IT point of view. The board of automotive or SKF Vertebo, they have appointed Carsten Enogsson as the CEO, tasked to build an even stronger standalone automotive business. So overall, we are on track to complete the plan separation and listing by Q4 this year. This slide is also something that we used at the Capital Markets Day in November to lay out the five strategic levers that makes the foundation for the full potential plan of SKF Vertevo. And in Q1, I gave some color to some of those levers. And this quarter, I'd like to draw your attention to lever number four, a lean company setup. As I mentioned before, we now see tangible benefits from operating as an independent company. A lean company setup drives speed, cost efficiency and customer centricity. And let me provide you with a concrete example on how we actually accomplish this. In the past, preparing complete design packages for truck-matched units was a very manual and time-consuming process, taking more than four hours to complete. Now, using AI-based automation, customer, factory and supplier drawings are created in less than four minutes. This is, of course, creating significant value from a cost efficiency point of view. It also enables us to more rapidly respond to customer quotes. So it drives speed and also customer centricity. And it's freeing up valuable engineering time on innovation rather than spending time on documentation. I stop there and I turn back and hand over to Susanne to take you through the numbers.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. So let me start with the profit and loss and the overview then. So as we have touched upon already, net sales was flat year over year with an organic growth of 1.4% being then offset by both currency and structure. We had an adjusted gross profit margin that improved by 1.1% to 32.7%, which we could also see visible in the strong adjusted operating margin that improved from 13.3% to 13.9%. I will come back to the different components of that on the following page here. Talking about one-off cost IEC in the quarter, they amounted to one billion krona, where automotive separation costs represented roughly half of the part, and the other half was related to the consolidation of our America's footprint that we announced early in this quarter, early in quarter two. And out of that restructuring charge, 345 was related to impairment of assets. I also just want to remind us that last year, At this point in time, we took a charge of 2 billion linked to the right-sizing program that we are now implementing, and we also had a profit of 800 million from the divestment of the aerospace business Hanover. All in all, in absolute amount, both adjusted and non-adjusted operating profit as well as net profit was higher than last year, largely explained by less IACs, improved operational performance, but also reduced FX headwinds. Altogether, we ended at an earnings per share of 2.8 krona per share and an adjusted one of 5 krona per share. So, let's look at the components that is building up our strong adjusted operating margin of 13.9%, starting then with the organic growth impact. We see a solid price mix that is the main contributor to the improved result, and as mentioned previously, it's mainly deriving from the SIS segment. Organic sales were negatively impacted by the customer refunds Richard talked about from the EPA tariff reclaims, which we have received the majority of during Q2. Payments to customers will follow the completion of the refunds, so they have not yet been done. The result impact of the tariff all in all around the reclaim is somewhat positive in the Q2 result. Also in this quarter, we had some support production ahead of the separation related to the transfer of production to automotive. So whilst the production volumes were positive in the organic, the result impact was limited because these higher production volumes led to temporary less efficient production impacting our cost negatively. So net-net then, we had a very limited result impact of that support production. With respect to the support production, we expect that to continue also in the second half of the year. Some further comments related to the cost development. Our ride-sizing activities contributed with some 350 million of savings and they continue to more than offset the separation related negative synergies. Material cost savings remain positive and particularly in the automotive segment. The overall cost development remained unfavorable driven by weaker productivity in the support production that I just talked about. We see wage inflation and tariff costs and some industrial transformation initiatives. We continued to largely compensate for the tariff costs also in Q2, and we expect to continue to do so also in Q3. And as I've already mentioned, we had a slight positive effect from the tariff reclaims in the Q2 itself then. With respect to currency, the impact is notable but much less severe than what we have faced previous quarters. So they impact our sales by a reduced 0.8 percentage point and it reduced the profit by 0.3 percentage point. Mainly driven by a weakening dollar vis-a-vis Swedish krona conversion year over year. Finally, then we have the structure column and that is representing the divestment on the aerospace business Eldian that we closed during quarter one earlier this year. Let's move into cash flow. If I start with EBITDA for the quarter two, that amounted to 3.5 billion Swedish krona. And non-cash items and tax payments made the cash flow before changes in networking capital to end at 3.2 billion compared to 2.9 last year. Tax payments was fully in line with last year's payment. Then we had a high networking capital build-up of minus 1.1 billion kronor. And this is mainly explained by the build-up of safety stock linked to automotive channel transfers, together with higher accounts receivable caused by the ongoing separation of automotive. Looking then at the graph to the right, I would like to recall that we announced the right-sizing initiative in Q2 last year, and since then we are paying out gradually every quarter the 2 billion that we accrued through the PNL a year ago. The automotive separation started in the late part of 2024. However, the speed of the separation has been at its peak during the first half of this year, where separation initiatives are now being finalized and we are moving in doing listing preparations. In the Q2 cash flow, we included 700 million of payments linked to such IEC charges. And with respect to Q1 last quarter, we had a similar 700 million paid then. Finally then, we had the capex of 700 million in the Q2 and the year-to-date of 1.5 billion. Comparable numbers last year was 900 in this quarter and 1.8 for the full first half year last year. Balance sheet and return on capital then. Our net debt excluding post-employment benefits Q2 over Q1 increased by 1 billion to 7.3 billion SEK, mainly driven by the dividend payment in Q2 net of cash inflows from our operations. Net debt divided by equity excluding pensions ended at 12.3 compared to 10.2 at year end. Net debt in relation to adjusted EBITDA excluding pensions ended at 0.1 above last quarter. If we then look at net debt in relation to adjusted EBITDA and include pension, we ended at 0.9. Adjusted ROSE improved to 14.5 vis-à-vis 14.4 loss quarter and 14.3 at year-end. So this is as a result of a somewhat improved result and reduced total assets. All in all, our net debt remains on a low level and our liquidity is high, 12.5 billion vis-a-vis 8.4 in the previous quarter. And this is a lot explained by the drawdown of the EIB loan, where we now have $500 million in loan. Additionally, we have another 800 million euro of undrawn credit facilities. That turns me to the last page, and that is around the outlook then. where we say that for Q3 then, and with given signs on improved market demand in certain industries, we expect the organic sales to strengthen somewhat in Q3 year over year. Considering still the geopolitical turmoil and the conflict in Middle East, there is certainly remaining unpredictability. Guidance also for Q3 around currency on the operating profit. That is estimated to a positive 100, applying the exchange rate as per the end of June. Moving on to guidance for the full year, talking tax levels, excluding effects from divestments and ongoing automotive separation. We now guide at 29, which is a slight increase compared to the earlier announcement of 28. And we do that because we have changed the assessment of evaluation reserve linked to the consolidation of our footprint in America. And you see the tax cost for that coming through the P&L in this very quarter. And that means that the full year tax rate is then rather around 29 than 28. additions to property, plant and equipment. We now take down 1 billion and guide to 4 billion. And this is mainly explained by further optimizing both existing assets, but also our planned investments. And finally then, when it comes to one-off costs in this year, IACs related to the automotive separation as well as our footprint optimization, we remain with the minus two and a half to three billion, fully in line with what we have communicated previously and also at the capital market in the end of last year. Rickard, over to you.

Thank you, Susanne. And let's wrap the formal presentation up before we head into Q&A. I do think that we close a rather strong quarter, and there are some key highlights I'd like you to take away from this conversation or this call. Firstly, we continue to deliver on our right-sizing program at speed and with accuracy. And in the quarter, we have some 350 million in benefits, as you heard both me and Susanne mention. We do have a strong operation of profitability uplift in our specialized industrial solution segments, coupled with the solid growth. And as you recall from our Capital Markets Day, this is one of key pillar for us to reach our mid and long-term profitability targets. So we're pleased to see that that is moving in the right direction. We're excited about the humanoids venture. We know that this is an industry that is kind of in its early phase stage, but it's being formed now and we are keen to participate in that. So we also can learn this market and also play a role in defining the standards for how this market is going to play out. So therefore we are excited about this venture that will give us a fast track into this segment. And finally, the separation progress is going according to plan, and we stay firm in delivering on and completing this by Q4 this year. And on a personal note, I would like to take this opportunity to also congratulate Kerstin Enochson to her promotion. So with that, I hand you back to the safe hands of Sofie to manage the Q&A session.

Thank you. We look forward to your question. I can see there is a big interest to ask questions. So let's limit yourself to one question. And then, of course, if time allows, you're welcome back to rejoin the queue. But before we go to questions, let me just remind you on how to ask a question. So if you are dialing in via the telephone, you press star and one. And if you would like to withdraw. You press star and two. And we will of course also accept questions from our audience watching via the webcast. And so you can already now type in your questions in the tab that is above the slides. And let's start with a question here from the telephone line. And it is from Chit Sinha at JP Morgan. Please go ahead, Chit.

Yeah, morning, Ricard, Suzanne and Sophie. Thank you for taking my question. So just if I could ask about the tariff retains in the quarter, could you please quantify the impact on sales and then, of course, the benefit on the margin in the quarter? And I think you mentioned that you received the majority in this quarter. So does that imply that we should expect a bit more in Q3? Thank you.

So we will not quantify it but we are stating that the majority of the IEPA tariff refunds have been received during the second quarter and then since we had certain surcharges to customers we are also accruing a reduced sales price then as a consequence. We have still not paid the customers because we are still waiting for some of that refunds to complete during quarter three but by that the first big chunk Thank you. I'll rejoin the queue.

And let's continue with a question from Daniela Costa at Goldman Sachs.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to ask on the EBIT bridge, I guess, apart from the tariffs, the other two things that you mentioned sort of that move that bridge different to normal is the overproduction points and the savings net of synergies. First, can you comment that if we should assume the overproduction more or less at a similar pace to what we had in the first half or if that's going to wind down as we get to the spin? And then on the savings, you've accelerated the savings part from 300 to 350. Should we think about it accelerating as well? I believe before you had sort of talked about it has more linear going forward. So if you could help with those two items.

Will you take this one?

Hello Daniela. So starting off with the overproduction that we had now, both in quarter one as well as quarter two, we envisage that that will remain in the second half in a similar manner. Then we will have two different things that explaining that really. So the first one is really to prepare the channel transfers ahead of them taking place and being moved in real life. That is the kind of overproduction We have seen now in quarter one and two, and we will to some extent also see in the quarter three. Then what we will also see in the second half of the year is a buildup of Automotive being a standalone company. And that allows them to have, I mean, we will seek Automotive as a separate customer. They will have unique SKUs and Automotive is starting also to build their own stock for the aftermarket primarily. So that is a stock buildup and preparation that is coming ahead of the spin of automotive. So both those will allow us to have a similar level of support production, if we call it that, also in the second half of the year. When it comes to the savings then, the rightsizing initiatives, net of the synergies then, or the saving itself then, you're right, we saw 300 million in quarter one, and we saw 350 million now in quarter two, which allowed us to have somewhat of a positive impact. Moving on, now it will be on a linear basis and we will have more and more of a... I mean, it will be a limited result impact as we move along, but it will continue to be on a linear path with a limited result impact.

Sorry, linear has increased to 350.

Just add that the negative synergies we saw in Q2 was very much in line with what we saw in Q1. And we expect that to continue on the same level. So for the full year, we expect a positive net impact from the right sizing savings versus the negative synergies. Okay, I'll follow up. Thank you very much. And we have a question here from the webcast, and it is from Andrea Kuchning at UBS. And it's also about this support production. And if we expect that to become more efficient in second half and hence benefit profitability. Susanne, do you want to? Yeah.

I can do that. So probably putting some light on why we had less positive benefits out of it now in the second quarter compared to the first one. And that is because we have that additional production in channels that are fully, to a big extent, loaded already. So I think that is not the majority of the channel. So I think we have had less benefits of that now when we are into certain channel transfers of full load. So that's the consequence we have. Do we envisage that in the second half of the year? I think we envisage a certain but limited positive benefit of the support production that we will have also in the second half of the year. Somewhat of a positive.

And also we got a question here from Andrea and just to clarify that when we said, and it's about the timeline for the automotive separation and we may have said by Q4, we don't mean by end of September then. So it's during Q4 we aim for listing and separating then automotive. Of course given shareholders' approval and that the board of directors propose that. Correct. So let's continue with a question from our telephone audience. And this time it comes from John Kim at Deutsche. John, please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for the opportunity. I'm wondering if we could go back to the humanoids opportunity. It'd be helpful to get a little more color here about SKF's longer-term strategy. When you think about your JV partnership with LeaderDrive, is this an exclusive relationship in the sense that you would use them as your primary path to market in China, or are you open, able to form additional JVs with perhaps other participants or entry points? Thank you.

Well, thank you. And the venture will be a key supplier to LeaderDrive, but it will not be an exclusivity. We will also have the ability to form partnership with others. And we are free to develop other ventures outside of China as well.

Okay, quick follow-up question, if I may. If we think about the scope here in the medium term, is the intent to stay very focused on bearings, or would you look to build partner for adjacent capabilities or subsystem components, perhaps like some of your peers have?

As I mentioned during my presentation, I do not roll that out, that we will move into some adjacent capabilities or areas related to the humanoids. Right now, we are focused on building this presence to really be a strong component supplier for industrial humanoids. As this market evolves, we will assess opportunities, and if something emerges, we will let you know.

Okay, thank you. And before we take the next question, I see that some withdraw their questions. So there are opportunities to ask questions. So just press star and one to enter the telephone queue again. We will continue with a question from Tore Fangman at Bank of America. Tore, please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Also one on humanoids here. My question would be what percentage of the bill of materials of the humanoid do you estimate would bearings be going forward? And therefore, do you have any estimate of the size of the addressable market for you? Thank you.

Not on top of my head, I can give you that. I try to describe the value of the different bearings that makes up a humanoid. And we have then coverage with the future venture with LeaderDrive of roughly 8% of the assortment needed to support humanoids. We still lack the miniature bearings. And as I said, the jury is still out if you're going to go Greenfield or if you're going to partner up with someone to also close that gap. But the total value of the humanoids and the size and the potential market, I think it's rather... difficult to assess. There are a number of different sources that have done thorough analysis of this that indicates a rather significant market potential. So I'm going to refrain from actually claiming if they're right or wrong, but rather refer to them as a source.

Perfect. Thank you. And may I just ask one clarification following up on the first question that we have coming from Chit. which was on the tariff reclaim impact. Just wondering, you said reclaims have been awarded to you, but you have not, as of now, refunded your customers yourself. So should we see this as a cash drag into Q3, or is this also on a profitability basis a drag? Thank you.

Thanks for that clarification. So you're right. So we have got it into our wallet and we have not yet paid the customer. It will be a heavy exercise to do that. So we are awaiting that all of that is finalized, even if the majority is already paid to us. So the consequence in the following quarter will be on the cash flow, as you rightly indicate.

Thank you.

And we will continue with a question from Tim Lee at Barclays. Tim, please go ahead.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Can I ask you about the demand development into the first quarter? How do you see the momentum into the quarter compared to last quarter? And you're guiding somewhat higher organic growth on a new year basis. How do you see it sequentially, whether it will be like an acceleration from the second quarter?

Sorry, Tim. We didn't catch that, so great if you can just repeat your question there.

Sorry, can you hear me now?

Hello? Tim, we can hear you, but if you can repeat your question, that would be splendid.

Yeah, sure. So I'm just trying to understand the demand development into the first quarter. How do you see the momentum sequentially compared to last quarter? And you're guiding a somewhat higher organic growth on a year-on-year basis. How do you see the comparison with the second quarter? Would it be like an acceleration?

So, Rickard, you are eager to talk about the demand development going into Q3 here then? Yeah.

The guidance is not just a comparison to the same quarter last year. It's actually based on a somewhat increased activity level, as I mentioned, especially among OEMs, and with a particular emphasis on Americas. And it maintains solid demand in India, Vietnam, and also in China, Northeast Asia. And also, as I mentioned, we see some positive movements also on the OM side in Europe, but maybe not to the same extent as has been the case in Americas. And right now, the current trading, I don't have much insight early on into Q3, but there's nothing that says that we should not believe in that outlook.

That's our best view. And as we talked about earlier here on the call, it is certain industries we are seeing a better demand and it's very much driven by infrastructure and defense and data centers. Answer your question then, Tim.

Thank you. I will back to you.

We'll continue with a question from Andreas Koski at BNB Paribas. Andreas, please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. So I want to ask about capex. So you have now lowered your capex by 20% from 5 to 4 billion for this year. But can you give us an understanding what we should expect for the coming years? Will that also be lower than what you had previously expected?

So while being very busy on the automotive separation, we have also challenged ourselves to see whether we can actually optimize existing equipment additionally and also looked into what sits in the pipe and see if we can do more. And that allows us actually to take them down the 5 billion to forest the guidance. And we do not see that that falls over to next year, but actually concluding that we will be better off than what we first thought from a cash flow and capex perspective. Then, when it comes to general guidance, we will remain with the 5% of sales, then the industrial sales, until mid-term, considering also that we have footprint optimization ahead of ourselves. And that we see will also call for some of the capex. And then from mid-term, we will normalize into something more like 3.5% of sales. So this reduction that we see this year then will not make us adjust future outlooks and guidance that we have already provided, Andreas.

Okay, so it's still 5% of sales. Can I also ask, because it's additions to property, plant and equipment, should we expect any investments in or capex in intangibles or is it only tangible capex that you order something?

That's a good question. So this, when we talk about it from this perspective, it's fixed assets. It's no intangible asset that comes from potential M&A activities. So there we are talking about accelerating, doing more of bolt-on acquisitions, and that is not guided in this CAPEX number.

No, I meant actually internal generated intangibles if you invest in

We actually expense that as we build it. So we do not put internal R&D into our own balance sheet. So you should not expect that.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you. Let's continue with a question from Will Mackey at Kepler Chevre. Will, please go ahead.

Yeah, very good morning and thank you for making the time. I'd like to come back to the question of cost evolution through the first and second quarter and the actions you're taking across the business to compensate. There are a number of times you've commented on price and cost. So the question is, could you please elaborate on the level of pricing, how it evolved through the first half, and your thinking about pricing into the second half? and particularly perhaps a comment on regional pricing or channel pricing depending on the customer segment. So where you're able to develop a positive price cost in H2 and where perhaps there are more tensions to achieve the offset to costs. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll try to give some color to this. Starting in the, as you heard us say, for the growth in this quarter is primarily coming from price mix. So we are taking the opportunities where we can to do selective price increases. We have continued to do that throughout the quarter and we plan to do that as we move forward. We have also been proactive and already taking price increases in certain geographies to compensate for increased energy costs and logistic costs. So that has happened in Q2, so it has not had a significant impact yet, but it will have an impact as we move forward. I will not guide by geography or by area where we do see price increases going forward, but I can promise you that we will continue down this path. Clear, thank you.

And we will continue with a question from Rory Smith at Oxcap and it's from the webcast here. And it's if we can give more color on the net impact from right-sizing benefits versus negative synergies. And from a year-over-year perspective here with the comps that are now coming up for Q3 and Q4. And perhaps I can answer this one. You are absolutely right there, Rory. We did get savings from this rightsizing program already. Some in Q3, we said less than 100 last year, and then we had 190 million Swedish kronor in Q4. So, of course, there will be tougher comps in Q4. We expect, as Susanne already said, the right-sizing savings to be linear from now up until then, Q4 27, with the 2 billion. and the negative synergies to be fairly on the same level as we have seen in Q1 and Q2. So for the full year, we don't guide specifically for Q3 and Q4. For the full year, we expect positive net impact from the savings versus the negative synergies. But of course, bearing in mind with what you said, and I'm sure you can do the math, it will be tougher in Q4 than it will be in Q3. So I believe we have time for a final question. And it will come from the telephone line. And it's from John Kim at Deutsche Bank. John, please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for the second opportunity. Appreciate it. One of the things I'm kind of thinking through here is you had a number of different impacts, positive and negative, in the quarter. If we could drill down into industrial, if we think about the margin progression in SIS, is there any sense or steer you could give us on how the margin evolved from mixed effects versus perhaps the margin management initiatives on lubricants and seals. Was this more of a mixed effect or the start of the self-help and the repricing story?

Well, we will not break up the organic growth and tell you how much is kind of coming from price and mix and from volume growth. But both contribute to the growth. We do see, as planned and as needed, as a rigorous work in the different business units to drive efficiencies and also ensure that we expand into those verticals or segments that we're focusing on that will lift the overall performance of each business unit. They are progressing well. As we said before, you know, magnetics and aerospace is somewhat ahead of lubricant, lubrication and seals in that regard. But as I also mentioned, they are moving fast. And in this quarter, I'd like to highlight lubrication that has done a significant uplift also on their profitability performance while growing rapidly by doing, you know, solid price activities, making sure that they are managing their portfolio to lift the mix and again moving forward in the automated lubrication space and also making sure that take advantage of the lucrative aftermarket.

And if I may add, they've also done a lot of operational measures, lubrication, and we got a question here from Anders Idborg at ABG, Sundal Collier, also about lubrication. So I think, Anders, your question was also answered here by Rickard. And of course, as Rickard said earlier, SAS is an important pillar for us to reach the industrial margin targets, mid-term and long-term. And lubrication did well in Q2, but we have higher ambition than that, so still opportunities. So with that, we unfortunately need to end this Q&A session. Time flies, and I leave it back to Rikard.

Thank you very much, and thank you for joining. I know there are a number of other companies reporting today, so we are honored that you've paid attention to us. As I mentioned in my closing remarks, I do think that we close a rather strong quarter behind us. We are excited about the future and our ability to deliver on our separation and build two even stronger businesses, one fully dedicated industrial and one fully dedicated automotive business. So with that, I think we close this out and I wish you all a wonderful summer. Thank you very much.