Sweco AB (publ)

Good morning to you all and welcome to this presentation of Sweco's Q3 report. It will, as usual, be presented by Sweco's president and CEO, Åsa Bergman, and CFO, Olof Stolnacke. After their presentation, we will, of course, welcome all your questions. So with that, Åsa, please.

Welcome everyone to Sweco's Q3 presentation. Before we present the third quarter of 2024, let me give you a quick overview of Sweco. Sweco is Europe's leading architecture and engineering consultancy with operations in eight geographical business areas across 15 markets in Europe. We are a well diversified business operating across three segments with a good balance of private and public clients. The foundation for Sweco's long-term success is our mix of competencies spread across 22 000 experts, our focus on organic and acquired growth as well as our efficient and decentralized operational model. With a strong financial track record and financial position, we are focused on continuing our growth journey and build on Sweco's success. With this introduction, let's move over to the Q3 highlights. QT was another good and stable quarter for Sweco. We continued the positive momentum from the first half of the year and delivered a quarter of solid growth and improved margins. Net sales increased by 6%, of which 4% was organic growth. This quarter marks another milestone on our growth journey, with net sales exceeding 30 billion on rolling 12 months. Five years ago in Q3 2019, we exceeded 20 billion SEK on rolling 12 months, and this new milestone highlights Sweco's strong growth trajectory. Going back to the third quarter, there was a significant positive calendar effect in the quarter. And after adjustment, EBITDA improved by 5% or 22 million SEC. One of the key highlights in the quarter is that we continue to strengthen our margin. The EBITDA margin increased to 8.7%. Apart from the calendar, it was driven by higher average fees and higher billing ratio as a result of our focus on pricing and internal efficiency. Altogether, this was a solid quarter for Sweco, and we continue to deliver profitable growth with improved margins. Another good thing about this quarter was that Sweco now has received the validation and approval of our near-term target by the science-based targets initiative. The climate target covers emissions across the company's scope one, two, and three, and are consistent with the goals of the UN Paris Agreement. This summary lets us dive into some more detail in the third quarter. As mentioned, we continue to build on the momentum from the first two quarters with a positive operational trend. Most of our business areas reported positive organic growth and improved EBITDA. The development is supported by a continued positive trend in average fees. Over the past few quarters, we have placed greater emphasis on our internal efficiency and billing ratio, and we are pleased to see that our measures continue to show effect with further improvements in billing ratio and EBITDA margin. We continue to see solid demand across most business areas and segments, and the level of orders received increased in the quarter, demonstrating that we are well positioned in the market. Let me give you an update on our work to improve our efficiency. Efficiency improvements are key to strengthen our margin, and over the past quarters, we have announced a series of actions. We have previously announced redundancy programs mainly in Sweden and in Finland, the repositioning of our business in the UK and a group-wide organizational review to streamline the organization. We are pleased to see that these measures are continuing to show effect. Finland improved its margin significantly in the quarter and Sweden improved billing ratio. The repositioning in the UK is progressing according to plan and the business area reported another quarter with improved EBITDA and margin. As previously mentioned, we are also seeing an increase in our profitability and improvement in billing ratio across most business areas. This will remain a key priority going forward, and we expect further gradual improvements. Looking then at the overall market situation, it is generally in line with previous quarters. As a group, we undertake more than 150,000 projects annually, with many centered around the ongoing green transition, which continues to be a key growth driver for Sweco. Looking at our segments in the water, energy and industry segment, we see that the demand related to the energy transition and the green transition in industry continues to be strong. We are also seeing good to strong demand in water, while traditional industry remains a bit weaker. Transport infrastructure remains good in most markets, driven by large need to update Europe's transport infrastructure. In the building segment, the demand for public buildings remains stable while demand in residential and commercial real estate continues to be weak with the variation across markets and sub-segments. With that, I will hand over to Olof to walk you through the numbers. Please, Olof.

thank you also and good morning everyone we start with a summary of the quarter net sales at 6.8 billion with four percent calendar adjusted organic growth three percent from m a and fx headwind of two percent EBITDA is at 588 million. Excluding the positive calendar effect, we are 22 million or 5% up, margin at 8.7%. It should be noted that the positive calendar effect fell in July and therefore didn't fully materialize due to vacation. Leverage is down significantly from last year at 1.1%. Looking then at net sales, adjusted for calendar, as said, 4% organic growth, and we see organic growth in six out of eight BAs. Denmark and Germany and Central Europe continues to show very strong growth. Solid growth also in Sweden, Belgium and Netherlands. Norway shows a little bit lower growth this quarter. Finland and UK have negative growth. These continue to be our weakest markets and the markets where we have taken the most significant restructuring action, as you know. The growth drivers have been continued fee increases and also higher billing ratio. On the EBITDA side, we see a 5% increase. This is adjusted for the full calendar effect, so actual EBITDA growth is significantly higher. Denmark, Belgium, and Germany and Central Europe deliver double-digit margins. Sweden, Finland, and Netherlands are in the 7% to 9% range, and the UK delivers 6% in another profitable quarter. Norway shows the lowest margin but are in line with last year despite one of costs in the quarter. Overall, higher average fees continue to be a positive driver, together with higher billing ratio, while higher personnel expenses had a negative impact on EBITDA. Looking at the BAs, six out of eight deliver increased EBITDA. UK delivered the largest improvement, but this was primarily due to significant restructuring costs in Q3 last year. Apart from UK, Finland, Denmark and Germany and Central Europe delivered the largest improvement. Sweden improves despite taking a provision for bad debt in the quarter. Norway and Netherlands had a weaker quarter, in Norway partly explained by the one-off costs I mentioned for our new Oslo headquarters, with moving costs and double lease costs in September. The calendar effect from eight more working hours corresponded to a positive 101 million in net sales and EBITDA impact. And again, vacation reduced that impact significantly. Looking then at the financial position, which remains strong, net debt is significantly down versus Q3 last year. driven by an improved working capital position and lower M&A outflows. Leverage is at 1.1, also significantly down versus last year and well below our target. And we remain financially strong with available liquid assets of 3.2 billion. Finally, on the numbers, a reminder of the calendar effects. We have a slightly negative calendar for Q4 with three less hours. Most of the calendar effect comes in December and always a bit difficult to know how the holidays will play out with that. With our increased size, one hour now corresponds to approximately 13 million SEK. And with that, back to Åsa.

Project one this quarter reflect our broad and diverse expertise across several growth segments, mainly centered around the green transition. The energy sector remains a large growth area, and this quarter we won an exciting project involving civil and electrical engineering designed for a new giga energy storage facility in Belgium. In Finland, we have been contracted to manage the establishment of an industrial microprotein production plant, which is set to begin producing the sustainable meat substitute in 2026. The continued demand for sustainable transport solution is shown in a new project for the Swedish Transport Administration, expanding the railway line between Stockholm and Uppsala, an ambitious project that will span from 2024 until 2035. In Denmark, we are part of a project to create the parliament of the future, enhancing access to the Danish parliament and transforming the former national archives. Now I will conclude by presenting our key priorities and focus areas going forward. We will continue to focus on our efficiency to further improve our billing ratio and margin. This includes continuing the initiatives that I have presented today. We see that we have made positive progress over the past few quarters, but there is still room for further improvements. We remain focused on capturing business opportunities by further strengthening our market position as a leading advisor within the green transition and continuing to tap into growth segments such as security and defense. We are also focused on executing our M&A agenda by continuing to successfully integrate acquisitions while continuously evaluating new opportunities. All in all, Sweco remains well positioned to continue our journey of profitable growth, and we are committed to capturing opportunities while driving efficiency improvements. Thank you.

Thank you, Åsa and Olof. And now we will open up for questions. So please, Sharon, if you could give us the instructions.

Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click submit. We will now go to our first question. One moment, please. And your first question comes from the line of Dan Johansson from SEB. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, and good morning, Olof and Åsa. Good morning, Don. Hey, I think I have three questions. I'll take them one by one. Maybe firstly on the billing ratio, which continues to progress well here, and you speak about further improvements in the billing ratio. Are the measures you have taken in the UK and Sweden and Finland enough now to have continued progress, or do you see a need to further fine-tune your organization and to boost efficiency here? Thank you.

We would have announced if we had any plans for any bigger changes, but of course we will continue to adjust our organization as needed to improve efficiency, but we have nothing major in the plans right now.

Okay, very clear. And on the higher average fees here in the quarter, continues to support a bit. Could you say the level of price increase year over year if possible? And do you also expect to manage to keep the price increases going forward at current levels with inflation levels most likely coming down here?

I think it's it's fair to say to to look at the growth, probably half of the you can estimate that half of the calendar effect did not materialize. So in total, probably are at 5% organic growth of something if you adjust for that. And 1% comes from building ratio, we have relatively flat FT growth. So you can assume that most of the rest comes from from fee increases.

Okay, make sense. And maybe a final one from me. I noticed that you highlight the defensive security as an area of growth for Sweco. I don't think you mentioned that explicitly before. Is that growth you see there, is that mainly in the Nordics due to the NATO membership? Or is it a segment that you're growing in other parts of your Sweco footprint as well? What's the strategy there going forward?

I mean, we have been working for the defence and security industry for many years, historically as well. So this covers the whole of Europe. Of course, the membership of NATO and the scaling up of capacity in the defence and security industry is part of this, but we are winning contracts in almost all our business area right now. But of course, due to the nature of those contracts, it's nothing that we communicate about, but it is an important area for us.

Yeah, awesome. Very interesting. I think that was all from me for now, so I'll jump back into the line. Thank you so much for answering my question.

Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Stefan Knudsen from ABG Sundarkoja. Please go ahead.

Morning, Åsa and Olof. I have a follow-up question on the price increases there. I interpreted as, Olof, that the vacation effect might have distorted the picture a bit, but according to my calculation, the the price increase or the price uplift was a bit lower than in Q2. Do you see an increasing challenge in offsetting cost inflation in the current market conditions or how do you view that dynamic?

I think we are, if you look at it, including sort of what we estimate the calendar effect to really have been, we are roughly on the same level as Q2. With the inflation coming down, it becomes more of a challenge to increase prices, but we believe that we are still relatively successful in that. So no big change from Q2, I would say.

Perfect. Thank you for the clarification. And then next on sustainability, I mean, we're yet to see any meaningful progress on your carbon intensity. Are you on track to reach your internal carbon neutral goals, would you say?

Yeah, we have, I mean, we have had plans for that several years. And now we have the goals as you have read, validated and approved by science-based targets. So we have transition plans in all our countries. And we are committed to reach the goals that we have put forward to the SBTI. So yes, I would say that.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you. We will now go to the next question. And the question comes from the line of Jasper Stukmo from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Good morning. I was thinking a little bit around the effects on green projects and the risk. You see, the energy transition, et cetera, has been the shining star lately, but we have now seen a few projects put on ice. So how do you plan for this internally? And I'm just curious around your view on the project risks and similar ongoing related to your pipeline. Thank you.

I mean, the green transition covers or crosses through all different sectors that we work with, meaning that industries and companies and different players need to make sure to implement sustainable solutions to stay competitive. And the European agenda is right now to make sure that there is a green transition and making sure that Europe is independent when it comes to energy and making sure that we scale up defense and security. So from our horizon, the trend when it comes to the green transition is strong. And we see big demand in the energy and transport infrastructure segment across Europe. Then, of course, we are facing some postponed and weakening segments. And I think that is part of a big transition as we are in. The most important role we have is to make sure that we can support all the clients that needs our competence and make sure that we understand what competence is needed to make this transition happen. So that is from our angle. And as I said, the demand we see is good in the areas that you mentioned. And then maybe a comment on what you said when it comes to maneuver risk. For us, it's about making sure that we evaluate all contracts in a clear way and staying close to our clients and to the projects and to the development all the time so we can handle the risk that we take on.

Perfect. That's very clear. And I was just thinking around the FTEs also here, up 2% year to year, down sequentially. You talked about efficiency measures, but when do you think that you will dare to ramp up to have an organic, positive net recruitment? Do you have any visibility here?

I think if you look at it sequentially, we will always be down on Q3 because it's a vacation quarter. So we have sort of less working hours in total. If you look at the development year on year, we have reduced personnel by around 500 FTEs in the programs in primarily UK, Finland and Sweden. So sort of net of that, we have actually recruit 500 more in other areas. So we are recruiting all the time. Obviously, we are watching what happens on the market, but I don't know if you want to add anything also to that.

No, I think both what Olof is mentioning and also our focus on other efficiency measures is part of why you see lower FTE growth. But as said, we are very focused on making sure that we recruit in the right segments to continue to grow where we see the growth is coming. So this is an adjustment to the market circumstances. But as said, we are not at the moment seeing any more redundancy and we are focused on recruiting.

All right, all right. And just one last quick from me. You had a one-off in Norway related to cost for premises, but I didn't find a number in the report. How large was it?

It was 8 million in the quarter. So both moving costs and double rents in one month in September.

Okay, perfect. That's everything from me. Thank you for answering my questions. I'll jump back in line here. Thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click submit. We will now take our next question. And your next question comes from the line of Johan Longfist Sunden from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Olof and Åsa. Thank you for taking my questions.

Good morning, Johan.

First off, just curious to hear a little bit more details about the further kind of improvements you expect, efficiency improvement you expect to gain and what kind of more concrete actions you have taken and how much it can bring in efficiency gains.

Shall I start and you can continue? I think we said in connection with the capital markets day last year that we have been at 75% building ratio relatively recently and there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to get back there. But obviously we are not putting a ceiling on ourselves. We have been at higher levels also historically. We expect to sort of continue to gradually improve on the billing ratio side. And the actions we are taking are the ones we have talked about before, which is reductions in segments with low demands. It's increasing team sizes. It's reviewing overhead and management layers across the organization. It will continue to be the same actions.

Nothing to add from me. Nothing to add.

Okay, good.

Perfect. And looking at the at the Germany, German business, we've seen quite an impressive kind of margin journey over the last five quarters. Should we expect you reaching some kind of plateau here or is it continue to grinding on the old mantra of keep on improving the rolling 12 month margin in Germany for a couple of more quarters?

I mean, our long-term target is 12%, and that goes also for Germany. So that means that we are on our way. And as I said, it's positive to see the development in Germany, and we're satisfied with that. uh but if you look at the german market there is a huge potential link to the consolidation and also a potential for us to grow if you look at the the market size so we will now focus on growth both organically and acquire growth and and continue to step by step strengthen and grow our business in germany

Just to follow up, I used to ask you about the M&A pipeline, but have you seen any kind of changes or improvement in the M&A pipeline in maybe Germany specifically given the COVID-19 scale?

Specifically when it comes to Germany, it's more in our own hands due to the fact that we have a saying that says you need to earn your right to grow. And as we have been in a turnaround in Germany the last years, we have been a bit cautious when it comes to invest in the German market. But with the stability that we see and the progress we see in Germany, we are ready to take on opportunities. But again, it's, as I said before, we have a way of working with our M&As. We have an M&A pipe in all our countries, including Germany now. And we are working with that pipe in a clear and consistent way. But it takes two to tango. So it's more about finding the right match for Sweco. And when that happens, then we buy the companies that we would like to have. into the future.

Excellent and also a few questions on the UK business which showed a clear step up in margins in this quarter compared to last four or five quarters. Is it possible to kind of divide the UK business in the kind of the weaker part that has been struggling and the kind of good core that you've referred to a couple of times in terms of margins or the kind of weaker spots at kind of segment level or are they still diluting or how should we view the kind of various pieces in the UK business?

I think roughly you can say if you look also at our markets comments for UK is that the building segment and the transport infrastructure segment are sort of the weaker parts, whereas in water, energy and environment, we see good demand. We also see good demand in some specific businesses we have around data centers based in the UK. And we also see good demand in a building inspection service that we have in the UK. We have that to some extent in other countries as well, but it's biggest in the UK.

Margin-wise, is it fair to say that the weakest pockets are

they break even and the other ones are more in line with SWEC or group average or is it other kind of we don't as we don't publish margins on lower we don't want to comment but I mean you can make your own assumptions I mean the total becomes 6% so you can assume that the better segments are above that and the other ones are below that of course but don't want to give any more details on that sorry yeah

That's fine. And just one final question from my side. It's about the calendar effect for Q4. Is there any kind of reason to expect this kind of theoretical calendar effect not to materialize according to plan or is there something we should keep in mind

No, I would say there is about half an hour coming from the net of October and November, which are sort of big production months. So that should be relatively limited. And then we have maybe two and a half hours or something waited in December. And as you probably remember from historically, it's always a bit... difficult to know how the holiday season will will play out or how christmas and new years will play out but i think ingoing assumptions should be that um that we have that calendar effect sort of the theoretical one but as as usual we will come back with with sort of any changes to that excellent thanks a lot for your answers i get back in line thank you thank you

Thank you. There are currently no further phone questions. I will hand back to Marcella for web questions.

Thank you, Sharon. And we have a question from Pareto Securities. Tom Ginchard, sorry for the pronunciation if that went wrong. And the question is, could you clarify the billing ratio impact on EBITDA in Sweden and continued caution on recruitment here? Personal reductions in Finland, are they layoffs or follow? Can you quantify the one-off costs in Norway? So there's a multiple question.

The last one we covered, it was 8 million. We mentioned that as an answer to another question. The 115 FTEs in Finland are furlough or temporary layoffs. And then the first part was the billing ratio impact in Sweden was positive. And as we say in the report, They have a small EBITDA improvement, but it would have been significantly larger excluding the bad debt provision in the quarter.

Okay. Thank you. Then we have no further questions on the chat either. So I would like to thank Åsa and Olof. And before ending, also remind yourselves and ourselves of the next report, the year-end report and the Q4 for 2024 that we will publish on February the 7th next year. With that, I say thank you and have a nice day. Thank you very much.