Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Clein Ullenvik. Please go ahead. Okay, everybody. Welcome to Alligo Q1 Report 2024, this super busy Thursday reporting-wise. So we will be more to the point than ever, and we can also anticipate perhaps a little less live questions and perhaps a little bit more mail questions. Presenters today, as always, Irene Wisenborn Bellander, our group CFO, and myself, Clein Ullenvik, CEO. As always, we are happy to present some highlights. We have one theme per quarter. As you know, we've had logistics, assortment, sustainability, acquisition, and so forth. And this time we will present two things: one service in the clothing section and then our Inno within Fasteners, our little growth area. We can present those two. So we hope you will enjoy this presentation. But before we get started, just a few things, three from my heart, because we're putting quite a different quarter behind us where we could see the underlying market developing broadly in line with what we have seen for quite some time. It's a year and a half since we first started communicating and guiding for tougher times ahead, and that continued into this first quarter of 2024. And we've been able to mitigate that in a nice way, we think, so far. And looking at the different type of market statistics being available, we know we're doing a pretty good job. We are following a lot of different sectors of our market. Secondly, we have had a significant Easter effect. It's difficult to communicate, but you heard many other reporting companies relating to that. We had 1 trading day more in January, a small month. We had 1 trading day more in February, a small month. We had 3 trading days less in March, which is for us an important month in this quarter. In Norway, it was even 4 trading days less, actually. So that was known. It was planned for us. And of course, we will have a similar positive effect in Q2. On top of those 2, we had a strike in Finland and that we didn't know about and we couldn't plan for. So from sometime second half of February until end of March, there was a big strike in Finland, which affected our biggest customer quite significantly. Some of them came to full stop, and it's just a fact. And then on a personal note, I ended the quarter by poking myself in the eye with my own thumb. So I've had 2 eye surgeries based on that. So believe me when I say that I'm super happy we put this quarter behind us. But we do whatever we can to improve the position for the company. We have improved the gross margin. We are working, as you know, hard with cost and with manning. We've had great progress. We are in a very good position. It's the same company as Q4 last year, but in different circumstances this time. We will do acquisitions. We did 2 yesterday in Finland. We are super proud of. So we are confident, but we are happy that we left this a little bit different quarter behind us. So should we get this show on the road? We said that we should not have too many slides presenting Alligo every time. I think you guys know it pretty well since before, but SEK 9.3 billion turnover, a little shy of 2,500 employees, 210 stores. What is new since some time back now is that we have decided on the concept brands, TOOLS in Finland, TOOLS in Norway, and Swedol in Sweden. So with our integrated model that takes away a lot of complexity from a marketing perspective and all types of from webshops and so forth. So it's an important thing for us to only have one concept brand per country. So some highlights. I perhaps covered most of them in my little introduction, but the market continued to slow down, in line with what we've seen for quite some time. So no drama there. Significant Easter effects and strike in Finland. Yes, that we had. But we are on top of things, reducing costs, adjusting prices. We've done it nicely so far. We even do not increase and even lower the prices in some sectors where it's very price sensitive from a competitive point of view. We will continue to grow by acquisitions. When we find the suitable target and it fits into our strategy, we go for it, and we will continue to do that, work with developing our sales processes and reducing inventories. We as a company, we are super stable. Logistics works. We have a good set of assortment. Our shops work nicely. We have wonderful colleagues everywhere. We as a company are in a very good position. Then there are some external factors that we can't really do much about. Business cycle will probably continue a little bit longer, being slow. Then you have, of course, you have this geopolitical turbulence. So we have to take our private brands, own brands, not through this U.S. channel that causes some, of course, extra time and some extra cost. But we are used to that, unfortunately. So the quarter in brief, a little over 5% down on revenue. And the cash flow, looking to the far right top, it says fully in line with the lowered result. So the adjusted EBITDA high SEK 84 compared to SEK 127 same quarter last year. And EBITDA margin 3.9% and a gross margin which is stable, even a little bit up. So we continue to play our game. So we've opened some new stores in Bodø and in Västervik and one in Finland in Herttoniemi. So we continue to develop the business just according to what we said the whole time and according to our plans, and it works well. The acquisitions I mentioned, combined turnover of EUR 15 million, 42 employees in five stores. INNO, we will come back to shortly. So if you take our product brands. I was saying it was a terrible quarter and so many things we didn't like, even including eye surgeries. But I managed to spend a week in mainland China during the quarter, which was super positive on the other side, meeting our wonderful factories there producing our Björnkläder, Univern, Gesto, INNO, 1832 brands. And it makes me super proud seeing what our colleagues have done over so many years, building relationships and developing together with our partners in China. So we have Björnkläder, Univern, Gesto, super strong Balance gloves, INNO, 1832 for more corporate branded clothing, tool supply. We have AmPro, Award, Nima, 4USE for more consumable items. And then to the far down right corner, INNO, which is our new brand in fasteners for industrial use. And if you look at this circle, you see the PPE being the biggest part and tools. And then we have three smaller areas, which all of them are growth initiatives for us. One is workplace. We've said many times there we see a great need to grow. We have many industrial customers who do not buy their workplace equipment for us. It's a growth opportunity. Then we have the fasteners, which we are not super small in fasteners, but we can be much bigger. So that's a growth area. And then the last little chunk before other is welding and industry components. And the welding, as you know, is also a very focused area for us, having done a number of acquisitions. So we are taking a leading role in consolidating the welding market in the Nordics. So those three are for us very important growth areas. So INNO, it's a full range, industrial fasteners. It's available in bulk, and it will be available through bars, fastener bars in our shops. So we will improve our profitability. We will improve our competitiveness having this INNO. And it's also good to have something we can fully control ourselves. So it's being launched as we speak in Finland, and it will continue to be launched in Norway and Sweden after summer. This will, of course, have some effect on our inventories because we are now launching a new assortment. We're taking home products to launch into our shops and to other distribution channels. SmartWear is also a very good thing, also from a sustainability point of view, where we to a customer together decide what type of assortment they should need for the type of jobs they are doing. Then we include that into a full circular model with washing, repairing, recycling. So we have an external partner helping us with the recycling part. And to a great extent, already we have many products being made from recycled material. So we can be a true and one of the absolutely first offering a true circular offer in workwear. So for the customer to see on a nice dashboard, savings in money and improved from factors from a sustainability point of view. So it's also being launched as we speak. We have one bigger customer already, and we're having discussions with several. So we are very interested in following the development there. Financials, Irene. Yes. Thank you. As Clein mentioned, the slowdown in demand on the market continued as expected. Revenue decreased by 5.2% in the quarter. Acquisitions had a positive impact of 3.3% but were unable to compensate for negative organic growth of 6.3% related to all our three markets, a negative calendar effect or Easter effect primarily affecting Norway, and on top of that, the union strike in Finland. The union strike impact on sales has been estimated to approximately SEK 75 million and corresponding SEK 25 million on the result. EBITDA reached SEK 84 million compared to SEK 127 million last year. The result was weaker in all markets but primarily in Norway and Finland. EBITDA margin reached 3.9%, and the decreased profitability is a result of lower volumes but mitigated by improved gross margins and cost-cutting measures. The cost savings are mainly related to the reduction of personnel costs. Excluding acquisitions, the annual salary increases have been offset by a reduced workforce. If we turn to the next slide, there's some illustration of parameters affecting the trading gross margin. The gross margin improvement that we have seen in the quarter is mainly related to the increased share of our standard assortment, including our own brands, but also the increased share of small and medium-sized customers while an unfavorable customer segment mix contrasts. Looking into customer segments, the largest drop in sales in Sweden is within construction. In Norway, oil and gas is the most resilient customer segment, and these effects hurt margins. On the other hand, we have a favorable customer segment mix in Finland where the largest drop in sales is related to manufacturing. If we move on to look at the development on each market, we can see that sales in Sweden decreased by 2.2%. Organic growth was negative but mitigated by the acquisitions of two welding companies and one project media company. The previously observed slowdown continued in the quarter. Organic growth was approximately -5% just as for 2023, and the decrease relates to most customer segments. Sales in Norway decreased by approximately 7%, and the organic growth was negative at -4% and significantly affected by Easter and FX. The slowdown in the markets is related to all customer segments except for oil and gas. In Finland, sales decreased by 10.5%, including two acquisitions. The organic growth was negative at -15%, and the clear slowdown in the manufacturing industry in Q4 continued, and the union strike and Easter effect reinforced that effect. If we move on to cash flow, we had operating cash flow of SEK 128 million in Q1. That is slightly behind Q1 last year due to lower EBITDA. We are still focusing on reducing our inventory levels, but new stores, investments in our own brands, and the launch of a fastening assortment will imply an inventory buildup in the short term. The investing activities are mainly related to M&A activities of SEK 124 million and consist of three completed acquisitions but also investments in non-current assets of in total SEK 34 million. The investments are mainly related to server developments of our e-commerce solutions, our on-site service concepts, and new store establishments. The ratio of CapEx to depreciation amounted to a multiple of 1.1x, which is almost in line with our long-term target level of having depreciation levels in line with CapEx. Finally, the financing activities are related to increased borrowings and amortization of leasing liabilities. Why do we have so much in cash, Irene? Yeah. We plan to do some more acquisitions. Good question. Yes. The net debt, as you can see, amounted to SEK 1.6 billion at the end of the period, and the ratio of net debt to EBITDA amounted to a multiple of 1.8x, which is in line with last year and well within the financial target range. Unutilized credit facilities. Credit in cash amounted to SEK 1.1 billion. And as I just said, you can see the cash amount is on a high level, and we have a good acquisition pipeline besides the two acquisitions that we made yesterday. Our covenants are related to interest coverage and equity asset ratios. And these are fulfilled at the end of the period, and there's good headroom before reaching the thresholds. In summary, we have a strong financial position, and we will continue to invest in organic growth and take advantage of good M&A opportunities in our market. Very good. So if we move to summary and outlook and this high-speed presentation. So we are in a very stable position in a continuously challenging market, which we've been able to predict in a good way and to the greatest extent mitigate so far in this quarter then. Of course, Easter and strike effects from Finland. I don't need to say that anymore. We continue to strengthen our competitiveness through adjusting prices in a clever way, work even closer with our wonderful partners and suppliers. We develop our sales activities step by step. You hope you will soon hear much more marketing from us. And we are deadly dedicated to improve the customer mix. So everything is stable. Everything is in order, and we have a good delivery capacity. And the outlook for 2024, well positioned. We do whatever we can, and we will capitalize on our own brands to take market shares and to grow. And we are also aiming to set climate targets in line with SBTi that we've already communicated. So that's all for now. Handing it back to you, Heidi. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it in the box and click submit. We will take our first question. Your first question comes from the line of Emanuel Jansson from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Good day, Clein and Irene. Thank you for taking my question. Indeed, a lot of reports out there today. Sorry if I'm answering questions which more or less already been answered. Looking at your performance here in Q1, we can see that the gross margin improves and remains strong. I think you're also increasing the share of private labels and also increasing in the very profitable area within Workwear, etc. It feels that you are a very well-managed company, so to say, with both you, Clein, and Irene with great experience from this industry. My question for you here, Clein, is what could potentially make you more concerned about not increasing profits in 2024, now leaving Q1 behind us? What could surprise us potentially here going forward? Because otherwise, underlying, it seems that you are developing fairly well, so to say. It's a good summary that we think we're progressing with whatever we've said we should address. Unfortunately, the market is not helping us much. Besides a general upturn in the market, I mean, the inflation challenges we had not that far ago, it's not there anymore, not in our assortment at least. I hear it in other adjacent assortments. It could still be an inflation price increase pressure. We don't see that. We have a very small, not to say more or less none, price increase is coming in. That is taking out of the equation at the moment. All the disturbances in the world, we think so far, we can mitigate that in a nice way. We have to go around the Suez Canal. It costs a little bit and takes a little bit extra time pushing the inventory a little bit up. But besides that, what is known so far, it's nothing that should affect us. And we have a good set of warehouses. We have a good integrated model. So no other threats as such. For us, the challenge now and a brutal focus for all of us is to push even harder on sales. Of course, we had a couple of years. Even if we think we've been reasonably good, of course, we've been to a certain extent inward looking with all the changes we've done, ERP changes and logistics changes and assortment changes and merging two fairly big companies that have taken a lot of time and efforts. So for us to really get the energy out and do that together with everybody in the company because everybody is a part of this chain delivering to our customers. I think we are in a good position, although the market is terrible partly on this quarter hitting us hard with a couple of other effects that we didn't want to. We feel confident. We have a super confidence going forward. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Thank you. And could you maybe also maybe elaborate a bit on the difference you see in demand versus small-medium customers versus your larger customers out there? Yeah. Both within the construction and also maybe the industry as a whole. Good question because we have an unfavorable mix at the moment. I mean, we love if all our customers have an increased engagement together with us. But the smaller ones are suffering more. And the top-line drop is not so dramatic, but also we're having the largest we have some growth industries in our countries where we are suppliers to them, and they grow a lot. And normally, the bigger the customer, the lower the margin. So we have a bit of an unfavorable mix. But that doesn't change our strategic direction that we need to increase the share of smaller and medium-sized customers. So the marketing I mentioned briefly, which you will see and hear much more about from starting soon, is aimed at increasing that share because we have our shops. We have the assortment. We have these wonderful colleagues out in the shops serving those customers. We are super ready, and we need to increase the traffic to our shops in all our countries. Yeah. Thank you. And do you see any slight indication in this segment of small-medium customers that is turning to a yeah. Starting to turn somewhat, at least, here in Sweden or in Norway or in Finland? Or how can you describe it? I said we consume all available market statistics. And if you look at Norway, the market statistics actually have indicated some improvement. It should have been on its lowest level as it looked at the figures we can watch now. Then we talk to more or less all salespersons daily. And of course, some of them feel that we are getting quicker responses to quotations made. And I don't know if they I only hear that because they want to be kind or not. It doesn't feel it has changed a lot, but we are hopeful. Interest rates, hopefully, starting to come down. I mean, it sounds like why should that affect so much in the short term? But just changing the mind of people and being a little bit more optimistic should help us going forward. I've said it so many times, and it's not a signal that everything is super growing from now. But every quarter we put behind us is one step closer to a market upturn. We continue to focus on what we can, and we hope that we'll soon see some changes. Yeah. Yes. Thank you, Clein. I don't know. At least here in Sweden, it's been pretty cold weather. I don't know. Could that maybe affect the start of Q2 somewhat, or? Thank you, Emanuel. You are brilliant in helping us communicate it. You know the company. It's exactly that. I didn't want to even bring that up. But of course, we are having these experiments with old days and tools days right now and to sell high-pressure equipment for cleaning your outdoors and selling shorts. Of course, we'd like it to be cold and snowy in the beginning of the winter, and we'd like it to be warm and nice in the beginning of the spring. So yeah. Thank you very much. Great. But otherwise, from that, I don't think I have much more questions from my side here at the moment. So thank you very much, Clein, Irene, for taking my questions. Thank you, Emanuel. Good luck with the other companies. Thank you. We will take our next question. Your next question comes from the line of Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes. Good morning, Clein and Irene. Thank you very much for the bridge that you gave us on looking at what you think the Easter and the Finnish strike meant for the quarter. But if you look at that, would you consider that now being what I would call lost business for you, or do you see some of that impact coming back in, say, a favorable April? If you look at the Easter effect, it should be everything else alike should be just shifted from Q1 to Q2. But we are shooting at the moving targets. Hopefully, we don't have any strikes, and it's not any strike in Finland at the moment. We don't have any Easter effects in Q2 as we had last year. On the other hand, we have the underlying market, which we don't see has turned up yet. But we, at the same time, say we are pretty good at, so far at least, mitigating. So it should be more or less a shift between the two quarters. Yes. Good to hear. Good to hear. And when you talk about the strong acquisition pipeline, is it possible to quantify it? Do you see opportunities to maybe get up to the same acquisition volumes that we saw in 2022, 2023? I see that your main competitor, Ahlsell, has been very active in the market at the start of the year. So has it meant that you've lost business opportunities there that you would really have liked to go for with them being more active? No, you're very insightful. A couple of irritating acquisitions from those guys and girls. No, we have plenty of acquisition candidates. And the two nicest ones, at least from my personal favorites, we arrived at yesterday as we communicated the super well-run businesses, good customer structure, and also big supplies to the defense industry and in good things. Those are exactly the type of acquisitions we'd like to make. And we have a big pipeline. Sometimes we are more in a catch-up phase than Ahlsell. And now they have been launching a couple of them. But no, it's good with good competitors. It keeps us both on our toes, I guess. So no, no, we have many cases to continue to pursue. If you try to go get in a time perspective, say, if you compare the pipeline you might have had for six months or two or three quarters ago to how it looks today, how would you see it measures up? No, it's better. It's better companies. We have found our growth sectors. They are much more clear for us internally when we talk to the board and the management team. It's also fun to say that we looked at that at yesterday's board meeting and that actually the growth areas we have identified are also those being most resilient in this difficult market, which is partly perhaps luck and partly perhaps we have done something good. But it's good to see. So that gives us even more hopes that we are on to something good. So we will continue to push. So it's better. Better is a quick answer. Good. Good. When you mentioned the unfavorable customer mix for the moment with obviously the smaller guys fearing worse maybe than the larger midsize customers in the backlog, has it meant any change to your bad debt situation or the way you reserve for, say, outstanding debts? No, strangely enough, when we entered into this soon, 2 years ago, we expected more of that. It's so far touched all woods possible. It hasn't materialized yet. It's strange. Perhaps we are too strict when we allow customers to come into our family. I don't know. So far, so good. Just also a couple of questions on the own brands that you're presenting. Looking at the INNO that you now launch, how do you try to position that in the market price points and maybe compared to, say, the highest quality products, lowest quality products, or whatever, so? It's a super good question. That takes some intelligence to do that in a good way because we get a competitive advantage. We'd like to use that competitiveness, of course, where it makes use, not just lowering the market price. We have a pretty good idea of how to do that. You're on to something extremely important that it needs to be very, very well managed and done with sourcing hand in hand with the sales organization and do it in a very controlled manner. We are very much on top of that. We don't want to end up having created higher inventories and a lot of internal hassle just to sell just as many as we did before, but at a lower price point than we would have done. Something really, really bad. Yeah, it needs to be handled carefully. If you tried to describe it, would it be a value price point in the professional segment, or how would you describe it? Yeah. Quality-wise, it's exactly the same as any other brand. But you get an increased interest if it's your own brand. Of course, it's more interesting for our sales organization to talk about own brands. So you normally get an increased focus just having an own brand. But it's a little bit of a different, more modern shelving system in the shops. So we actually think we are with our own brand developing that part of the market a little bit. So it's not just taking in lower priced, lower quality. It's exactly the same quality, at least, but potentially at a little bit lower price point out in the market and with better competitiveness for us. So it's a win-win-win. Excellent. Maybe just a couple of words on how you see the own brand opportunity in welding. I understood that that's the segment where most clients look for the big professional brands and stick with those brands. How do you develop an own brand there? No, the welding as such, it's not. There, it's more developing the welding offer. So we have made. There, we've been successful acquiring welding companies, building a welding group within our company, and try to make them to cooperate and carving out the best assortment possible. But you can have own brands on grinding products, drilling products, everything around that. And when you have a welding customer, then you also can sell the workwear to that customer and other welding equipments that we already have in the assortment. So for us, welding is important to get closer contact with the customer. We are closer to the customer's process. And then we have so many different product areas when we have that relationship with the customer that we can also sell to the customer. That's the brilliance of the welding offer that we are developing. Excellent. No, it sounds logical. And thank you very much, and all the best out there. Thank you very much, William. There are no further questions from the phone lines. I shall hand back to Clein Ullenvik for webcast questions. Yes. And we had, as we predicted, very many. I'll take them a little bit just as they came in. Can you indicate price multiples to be paid for Finnish acquisition, which, according to the accounts, had a combined EBIT of SEK 1.56? Yes. We've said earlier, generally speaking, not disclosing too much, we think that Finland is an interesting place to do acquisitions in. There are profitable companies reasonably valued. So we happily acquire companies in Finland. And the multiples, it's exactly the same for us as for any other players if you are a serial acquirer or whatever you are. But it could be 6x. It could be 7x profit, depending a little bit how strategically important it is to us. So we're not paying up a lot. So Finland is a very good place to do acquisitions. Then there are a number of questions related to fasteners. If I could mention any top brand, which we have today, and that is quite obvious. It's no secret that we have Arvid Nilsson. He's our partner in fasteners. That is no surprise. Supplier margin, are you able to leverage from your size? And yes, normally, with our the question is if we, with our size, can leverage. And another question is asked from a fastener perspective, but it's valid for all assortments. With our perhaps a little bit different approach on how we do sourcing is that we actually select the partners we want to work with. And then it's a real win-win. The ones we'd like to work with and the ones to work with us, we together have a tremendously good development. And we believe we have good conditions for those. The ones we work closest with, we call partner suppliers, and there are some 35 of them. Then you work in super close cooperation. And we actually even closed the doors to the ones who didn't win the tender to supply through us. So that gives yeah, it's obvious for our partners that if you're in, you're in. If you're out, you're not selling through us. And we think it's a more fair and better approach. And there are others having more of a, "You are welcome into the family. Now you can use us as a platform for selling your products." Our approach is a little bit different. How is a typical impact on sales from adjustments in your customers' work force? Okay. It's a good question. I had that discussion with a colleague from the industry. If I interpret this question as if suddenly there were to be employed a lot of more people, will that automatically lead to a lot of more workwear and tools? And yes. We have never looked at that as much. But I know others talk about that a lot. And of course, if there are more employees, then, of course, they need more gears. We have, from a general perspective, more looked at the GDP development. That has been something we correlate with. If the GDP development is good and going up, then we normally trade up. But of course, the number of employees in our customer segments is affecting us. Very good. And B2B share versus consumer, the consumer part is more or less nonexistent. I mean, what today is consumer could potentially be if there's somebody in our shops and they themselves don't even know if they are there as a consumer or a business they have running a small business and you're in a Swedol or TOOLS shop and you're making purchases or something. And it could even be that you don't even know yourself. Am I there as a private person, or am I there as someone running a company? That was that page. No, anything else there, Annika? We had some other things to see if we covered that in the presentation. Yeah. Well, is Alligo any different as a company in Q1 2024 compared to Q4 2023? No. If anything, we are a better company. And there are other factors that influence our performance. No, I think we covered that. It's a little bit of Easter egg. I think everybody's cheering in a nice way. So what do you say, Heidi? Should I go for some closing remarks? Yes. There are no further questions from the phone lines either. Very good. So then let's just say thank you for listening in. This is a busy Thursday. We are happy. We've left this quarter behind us. Let's bring it on for the rest of the year. We think we are progressing with what we have said we should do and fix. We have great self-confidence, and we know what we're capable of. Our model is clear. Our direction is clear. So it's just keep on doing what we've always done. With that, we are ready to do more acquisitions. Irene has a lot of cash ready. And we launched two acquisitions yesterday. We intend to do more. Only if they are the right ones at the right price. And as I said, each quarter we can put behind us is one quarter closer to, hopefully, a market upturn. So thank you very much, everybody, for listening in. The journey continues. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.