Good morning, and welcome to Nilfisk's Earnings Conference Call for the Q2 of 2024. My name is Tracy Fowler, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations here at Nilfisk. To cover Nilfisk Q2 2024 results today, we have our new CEO, Jon Sintorn, and our CFO, Reinhard Mayer, presenting. For the call today, we will cover the following topics: First, Jon will share his view on why he joined Nilfisk, and then give an update on the Q2 2024 numbers. Then Reinhard will give a more detailed run-through of our financial performance in the quarter. We appreciate that you took the time to listen in on the call this morning. We look forward to taking your questions during the Q&A session at the end of the webcast. Moving on to slide two. Before we begin today's presentation, please note that this presentation, including remarks from management, may contain forward-looking statements that should not be relied upon as predictions of actual results. For more details, please read the content on this slide. Now, I would like to share a brief introduction to our new CEO. We welcomed Jon to Nilfisk on June seventeenth as CEO and Executive Board Member, where René stepped down as Interim CEO and remains on the board as Deputy Chair. I would like to briefly introduce Jon and some highlights of his career so far. Jon joins us, having worked in several large global organizations, such as Permobil, Nobia, and ABB, bringing with him a proven record of building and growing businesses, most notably the growth journey of Permobil with advanced annual growth. The Permobil journey was anchored around commercial and product development, acquisitions, and adapting the business organization for continued growth. Alongside this, he also has thorough experience with transformation of businesses and execution, including consolidation of brands, product platforms, and supply chain network, managing significant projects at Nobia. Finally, Jon chooses purpose-driven organizations focused on building a performance culture. Welcome, Jon, to Nilfisk, and with this, I pass over to you. Thank you, Tracy, and good morning, everyone. I'm very happy to be here, and thank you for joining us on the webcast today. First, I will share some thoughts on why I joined Nilfisk, so please go to Slide four. Most of my years, the vast majority, I have worked with the technical products, with the service element, varied commercial models in a global environment, and I really like it. Nilfisk has a strong market position, operating in the market with mega trends, supporting growth each year. It's an iconic brand with strong heritage of being nearly 120 years old, means that there is a lot of knowledge about what we do, cleaning solutions. We have a leading premium products and compelling range in our portfolio to cater for our customer needs. This is supported by the service offering, providing a customer-centric approach, stickiness, and a recurring revenue stream. Nilfisk has a strong sustainability agenda to cater for our customers' increased needs in this area, often through technology-led R&D. In recent years, Nilfisk has generated profitable growth, improved cash flow, and reduced debt, significantly strengthening the financial resilience. There is a clear strategic direction in the Business Plan 2026, and right now, I'm in the midst of learning about our customers, the products, the people, the company. So let me reiterate, I am very excited to be here and look forward to a great future, at Nilfisk. Moving on to Slide six for the financial highlights. Nilfisk's Q2 2024 results continue to be in line with our plans, delivering a robust financial performance. We saw satisfactory progress across many of our financial KPIs, but let's start from the top with the revenue development. Total revenue came to EUR 278 million, representing a reported growth of 0.8% and an organic growth of 2.4%. Consumer, Consumer saw strong organic revenue growth, while service and professional saw moderate to limited growth. Specialty declined by -2.3% in the quarter. Looking at the regions, EMEA continued to deliver strong growth in both our professional and service segment. Americas saw a decline in organic growth over a very strong prior year, and APAC was impacted by the weaker economic situation in several markets. EBITDA, before special items, increased to EUR 39 million, and the EBITDA margin before special items rose to 14.1%. This was supported by a solid margin improvement compared to prior year. Overall, the Q2 results were in line with our plans. Moving on to slide seven, and moving on to Reinhard for the financials. Thank you, Jon. Let's turn to financials on slide eight. In Q2 2024, our revenue increased to EUR 278.4 million, from EUR 276.5 million in the prior year period, corresponding to reported growth of 0.7%. Revenue was driven by continued diligent price management and minor volume growth. Foreign exchange impacted revenue negatively by 1.7%. This was mainly driven by Turkish lira. Revenue from the consumer business was very strong, with 18.1% organic growth as customer demand continued to grow. This was mainly supported by the updated high-pressure washer range and new product launches, including the vacuum cleaner range, S1. Service delivered organic growth of 2.6%, following investments into Business Plan 2026, and a strong focus on service agreements and contract attachment rates. The service attachment ratio grew from 22% to 25% in the quarter. Professional was flattish at 0.7% organic growth, driven by private label and floor care. While we saw high-pressure washers and vacs negatively impacted by market demand. The specialty business saw a decline in organic growth of -2.3%. This was due to lower demand in APAC and Europe, especially in the industrial sector. Moving on to slide nine. Looking into the three regions, the EMEA region delivered strong organic growth of 6.5% in Q2 2024. The organic growth was led by consumer. The region also saw strong growth in both professional and service, with price management remaining a key element. In total, EMEA delivered revenue of EUR 162.8 million. The Americas region saw a negative organic growth of 1.7% in Q2 2024, over a very strong quarter last year, which had an organic growth of 17.8%. Demand was muted in North America, while price management remained a positive driver. In total, Americas delivered revenue of EUR 96.8 million. The APAC region delivered negative organic growth of 8.7% in Q2 2024, as market headwinds in China and Pacific led to negative volume growth. This was partially offset by continued price management. In total, APAC delivered revenue of EUR 18.8 million. Moving to slide 10 and the gross profit and gross margin development. The gross margin reached 42.2% in Q2 2024, compared to 40.4% in Q2 2023. This is the highest gross margin since Q4 2020. The gross margin benefited from favorable price management and mix effects. Alongside, you realize smaller positive effects from lower freight and capacity utilization. Let's look at the three buckets of moving parts impacting the gross margin. Compared with Q2 2023, pricing and mix effects benefited the gross margin with 1.3 percentage points. In addition, freight and distribution costs positively impacted the gross margin with 0.1 percentage points. Volume growth positively impacted gross margin, alongside tailwinds from raw material cost reduction and improvements in capacity utilization, leading to a positive impact to the gross margin of 0.4 percentage points. Summing up, the gross margin increased year-on-year by a strong 1.8 percentage points. Moving to slide 11 and some comments on the overhead cost. In Q2 2024, overhead costs increased by EUR 5.5 million compared to Q2 2023, coming to EUR 94.2 million. The overhead cost ratio increased in the quarter to 33.8% from 32.1% in prior year. Let's have a deeper look into the evolution of our major spend categories. Sales and distribution costs increased by EUR 2.5 million from Q2 2023, driven by merit increases and increased spending on marketing activities. Administration costs increased by EUR 1 million from Q2 2023, impacted by BP 2026 activities and offset by structural efficiency measures executed in 2023. R&D spend increased by EUR 1.9 million in Q2 2024 to EUR 9.8 million, representing 3.5% of sales. We continued to invest into refreshing our product pipeline in floor care. Other income and expense decreased by EUR 2 million versus last year, mainly by the one-off income received from the sale of our dormant site in Italy in Q2 2023. Moving to the EBITDA margin development on slide 12. EBITDA before special items increased by EUR 1.2 million in Q2 2024, compared to prior year, and came to EUR 39.2 million. This corresponds to an EBITDA margin before special items of 14.1%, compared to 13.7% in Q2 2023. The top line growth and gross margin improvements benefited the EBITDA margin, offsetting the increased overhead costs. Moving on to cash flow, working capital, et cetera, on slide 13. Free cash flow amounted to an inflow of EUR 8.4 million and decreased by EUR 31.7 million compared to the prior year period. The key driver of this development was the increase in working capital from year-end 2023, mainly from higher inventory to support new product releases and due to higher accounts receivable. CapEx ratio in the quarter was 4.1%. We continue to invest in our product innovation, digitalization, and capacity expansion. As a result, cash flow from operating activities for Q2 2024 was a net inflow of EUR 19.7 million, compared to a net inflow of EUR 43.6 million in Q2 2023. Total net interest- bearing debt declined by EUR 28.2 million compared to Q2 2023, and came to EUR 263.3 million. The gearing is on the same level as year-end 2023, at 1.9 times, reduced from the 2.2 times in the same period last year. Next page, please. This concluded the financial sections. Let's move on to slide 15, the outlook for 2024. We confirm the full year outlook as communicated in the annual report, 2023. We continue to expect organic revenue growth in the range of 3%-6%. The range for EBITDA margin before special items is expected to be 13%-15%. We also expect the CapEx ratio to be around 4% and special items in the range from low- to mid-single-digit million EUR. And with this, we conclude our presentation, and we are now ready and able to take any question you may have. Operator, please. We now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will be returned to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Anyone who has a question may press star, star one at this time. The first question is from Casper Blom with Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Thanks a lot. Hi, guys, and Jon. Welcome to the wonderful world of cleaning here. Looking forward to getting to know you. I have a couple of questions. I'll just take them one by one, so you don't have to write down too much. Starting with organic growth in the service business, which came in at 2.6% here in the quarter. And Reinhard, as I recall it, after Q1, you talked about a negative Easter impact in the service business, and I would have expected a little bit of a rebound there. Where did that rebound go? Thank you, Casper. A very good question and very good memory on your side. You are absolutely right. We had, so to say, about 1% of flip over from this holiday topic from Q1 into Q2. If you deduct that, the underlying growth is obviously in quarter two alone, 1.6%, but it's 1% which this was affecting the Q2 result. What's your view on 1.6% underlying organic growth in service? Well, the effect is in the following: I mean, we have, at the moment, seen a clear growth in the segment, and this will actually continue with good demand. And if you look into the service attachment ratio, which really begins to now come forward strongly from 22%-25% in the quarter, we will see basically more service growth in the next quarter. On the other side, you should remember in prior year quarter, we had a rather strong service growth for the quarter. So it's a base compare, and it's also, to say, a compare in the month. ... Okay, fair enough, Reinhard. Then my second question goes to pricing. In the slide where you show the overhead costs, you also show again that merit and wage inflation, I suppose, is having a negative impact. And we can also see that the overhead cost ratio is increasing year-over-year. Would that not imply that maybe you have not been increasing prices enough to keep up with higher costs? And is there anything, of course, I would guess a normal consideration about volumes, but anything else holding you back in terms of lifting prices a bit more? Well, first of all, I mean, with price increases, you can see we take a positive effect in our gross profit margin, so that lifts overall up. On the other side, what also drives overhead costs forward is an effect of investing into the business. As such, Q2 was certainly impacted by significant marketing and product launch activities. That comes on top of the merit increases. Beyond so that, we are investing into building a stronger service force, a stronger R&D force, and a stronger marketing and stronger product management force. Those effects take also part in the overhead cost growth. So it's not only a merit increase topic, but the merit increase as such is, as we have it today, covered through price increases, and that is my answer to your question. Okay, fair enough. Then my last question goes to the U.S. market. There's been a lot of talk over the last couple of years about a backlog in the U.S., and the ability to deliver, especially on the large machines, what the customers wanted. Can you give sort of an update on that situation and whether or not you're expecting any change to that here in the second half of 2024? Thank you. I'm not quite clear what I understood your question. I mean, we have, in a way, in the United States, a situation that we have different dynamics in the market. We also call it a muted demand, specifically in the area of public and school sector. That is depending on budgets. On the other side, we are going to benefit in the Americas as well from product innovation coming into the market at the second half of this year. And that we have always described, that our product innovation will actually support growth for the second half of the year, as the products shown at Interclean will predominantly come into the market for invoicing and shipping as of Q4. Okay. Apologies if, if the question wasn't clear. If, if I can then ask in another way, are there still product segments where you are seeing an elevated order book or backlog, whatever you want to call it, in the US? Yes, we see still an elevated order backlog on the large industrial, and that we continue to reduce, but we have not reduced it yet to the normalized level of pre-COVID situations. Okay. And do you still expect that that will be normalized by the end of this year? That's current expectation. Okay. Thank you. Then I'll hand over to the next one. For any further questions, please press star one on your telephone. The next question is from Claus Almer with Nordea. Please go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, also some questions from my side. The first to go to you, Jon. I know it's still early days, and you're still in the learning process, but have you made any, you know, initial thoughts about improvement changes, that could bring extra value to the shareholders? That would be the first one. Thank you for the question. As I said, I'm really excited to be here, and I think this is a great company, and I see lots of opportunities and also areas that we should address. But as you just said, I mean, it's still a bit early days to share very publicly those kind of things, and I need to reflect a bit more on that. Fair enough. Do you think that Q3 will be the time where you will, let's say, open up for the toolbox, or when should we hear more, hear more about your strategic thinking? As you said, and I said, I'm in the midst of learning customers, products, people, and the company, and so on, and, and understand where we are and understand in how to go forward. And in, in due time, which is not super long time, but still in due time, we will get back to that. Okay. That is all fair. Then a question regarding U.S. You were kind of flattish, year-over-year, which is, you know, you're up against a quite tough comparison. Can you give some more flavor to what is actually happening in the U.S. market? Thank you, Claus. Maybe I take that question with some more background, let's say, history. I mean, yes, first of all, it is a market that was extremely strong compared to the 17.8% we had last year quarter. But it's also a market where we see currently muted demand, specifically in the public and school sector, which is typically in this very season a driver of, let's say, demand. There we saw muted demand during the Q2. On the other side, we see a very good demand in the specialty business, specifically on IVS. That's lifting up. But we also see, so to say, somewhat market headwinds from the high- pressure washer side. That is not only on our side, that's across the industry, and that is what I can reflect to your question. But the specialty was good, but that was down on group level at least, and gross margin was down. So you created growth by discounting your products, or is it mix, or how to think about that? We had a very good growth in IVS in the Americas region, but we had decline in EMEA and APAC. And as EMEA is a by far larger share in that IVS business, the overall impact brought so today the performance in the IVS business, specialty business, down. But as such, you asked for Americas. IVS is one- Mm-hmm ... of the business segments really driving Hilti forward. Okay. Then just to my understanding, in one of the slides showed this evolution on your gross margin, and it seems like labor was a positive for your gross margin. That's at least how I-- it was a one of the contributions for positive gross margin development. But I would have thought, there was inflation in your labor cost. You know, you're still, you have more people, and you have wages, you have cost inflation. How can that be positive for your gross margin? Well, on one side, I mean, this is a bucket which, let's say, sums up volume, labor, and raw materials. The labor, of course, is a negative driver, volume- Okay ... but also raw material, let's say, improvements, are the positive drivers, and it's the sum of all those. But the merits- Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay? Yeah. Then just my final one. In service area, your attachment rate goes up, and I think these service agreements must have a very high gross margin impact. Still, the gross margin within service went down. So is that due to mix or how to think about that? A very good question. Well, first of all, I mean, the service contract has a more longer term perspective, so, that's strong, that these rates go up. The second piece is, we have a, let's say, an investment piece to that, which is in workforce, because we are supporting the, let's say, the growth in this segment with workforce, which needs to be trained up. Not yet as effective and productive as the existing workforce. And that is actually the main driver of our in our FTE growth in, let's say, the first half of the year. So structurally, we are investing into Business Plan 2026, and productivity is not yet there, but get there. So this is why the gross profit margin in the service business is slightly down to prior year, because the effect of more labor, not yet at the same productivity, and rental contracts, not yet, so to say, fully in force, basically deliver a slightly lower gross profit margin, and those are the effects. But overall, fully according to plan, and I'm very happy on the growth we see there now with concrete, focused actions. That sounds good. And that was all for my side. So thank you so much. We have a follow-up question from Casper Blom with Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks a lot. Reinhard, I was just thinking if maybe you could give us a little update on what to expect on the cash flow for the full year. Obviously, you had a lot of working capital tailwind last year towards the year end, and I think it's maybe normalized a bit more here by now. How do you see that panning out the remaining six months of the year? Well, and I think I gave a little bit of an idea. I mean, the building of growth, which we assume for the second half, is in one way coming through the buildup of inventory. That has happened and is certainly continuing slightly, but maybe not at the same pace as in the first half year. Secondly, we have been building more capacity into our factories to further reduce our order backlog. Those investments are more or less finished, whilst we still continue to invest into digitalization and new product innovation. So that will come. But we will expect to get some better cash flow in the second half than what we have seen in the first half. We do not specifically guide on cash flow, so I will not say any specific number here. Okay, but then maybe you could just remind us how, how far down you want to see debt before considering potential return of cash to shareholders? Well, I will not give you a specific number, but in our, let's say, annual report and in our capital allocation policy, we stipulate once we are sustainably within the guidance range of 1.5-2, we will then start, so to say, paying out capital to our shareholders in whichever way and form. We are on a good trajectory there. I will, so to say, not give you now a specific number, but we should expect that we will further improve our leverage towards end of the year. Thank you. The next question is from Kristian Tornøe with SEB. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you. Just one question on your guidance. So, so you stick to this 3%-6% organic growth guidance with 3% organic growth in the first half. Getting to the upper end means that you need to make at least 9% organic growth in the second half of the year. Can you just elaborate on, on that scenario, and then what could potentially drive such a big improvement to growth? Thank you, Kristian. Very good question. On one side, we need to remind ourselves that Q3 and Q4 last year had a negative growth. So there's a different base effect to the first half of 2023, which we now, so to say, have concluded with the comparable in 2024 now in the Q2 2024. But more important is actually the other effect. The effect of new products coming into, let's say, invoicing and revenue as of Q4. And the products you have seen at Interclean, we have displayed them, and they will actually drive additional volume and revenue. And those are, of course, the key drivers for coming towards the higher end of the range. Besides, growth continues in our service business, and I think we have given now the evidence that service attachment ratio, especially in Europe, is going to drive further service growth. Okay. And then maybe just a sort of an update on your visibility on the demand for your new products. I mean, how much visibility do you have as of now in terms of how much they will sell? We have very good demand, but and as we are not, let's say, giving all the number values out, I cannot specify it as now. But we see very strong demand on our new product. Understood. Thank you. That's all for me. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to the management for any closing remarks. Yes, and then, thank you all for participating in today's call. We look forward to meeting with some of you over the coming weeks, and if you have any follow-up questions after today's call, please do not hesitate to reach out to Tracy. We will be back with the Q3 report on November 15, 2024. And with that, have a great day today.