Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Alligo Interim Report for third quarter twenty twenty-four conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one one on your telephone keypad. You wouldn't hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw a question, please press star one one again. Alternatively, you can submit your questions via the webcast. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker today, Clein Johansson Ullenvik. Please go ahead. Thank you, Nadia. Welcome to Alligo Q3 Report 2024. The presenters today will be our CFO, Irene Wisenborn Bel lander, and myself, Clein Ullenvik. Those pictures are only two weeks old. I didn't think I could reach a new level of pale and gray, but I did, obviously. But our CFO looks alive and well. It's a report-busy day, and as always, we'll focus on the highlights. As per your request, the theme of today is welding. So Alligo, we've had, as you know, sometimes many slides describing the Alligo Group, and it's, they have become fewer and fewer, and this time we only show one slide. So, unfortunately, still a bit shy of 10 billion SEK turnover, 2,000 employees, 215 stores, I think. Actually it is now. And what is good is that we now have one concept brand per country, but many other smaller companies within our group. But the main concept brands are TOOLS in Norway and Finland, and Swedol in Sweden. So highlights, the market is still weak, and we are still suffering a lot from our beloved small and medium-sized customers that we love a lot. They are suffering. We, together with many others, had hoped to see some signals in the sales figures by now that market is recovering. That is yet to be seen, but we still hear positive signals. We, as a management, reflect every day, have we done whatever possible to drive the group forward? And I think we can conclude that, to the greatest extent, we think we've done that. We try to find areas where it's stability or even growth. We continue to focus on acquisitions. We were very early on identifying the potential downturn in the market, so we've been working with cost structure and efficiencies the last year and a half or even more. Fine-tuning our inventory levels and working with price adjustments, partly in a high inflation environment, and now heading into a very low inflation environment, possibly also perhaps even a deflation environment. So not pricing ourselves out of any important customer segment. So the delivery capacity, the group is stable in most aspects. We are still working with fine-tuning the Vestby, the new warehouse outside Oslo, Norway. We have some things still to be done, but it's moving on in the right direction. And macro factors, I don't even need to communicate it. It's obvious for everybody, I think. So Q3, in brief, a slight growth, driven by acquisitions, mainly. Operating cash flow, quite a lot above last year, but on the other hand, the EBITDA, quite a lot down. Irene will come back to this, in a while, so I don't need to dig into too many details. But the adjusted EBITDA margin down from 9% to 6.4%, and the gross margin, it's reflected in the mix of our customer segments, but we'll come back to that, as I said. Highlights, we have linked the already existing loans we had to sustainability targets. We think that is a signal that we are doing the right things, and we're taking sustainability issue in the greatest respect and have a great focus on that. We continue to do acquisitions, completed four of them during the quarter, 220 million SEK in the turnover, and two of them in the welding segment. Come back to that shortly. The two other acquisitions has also been in Finland, which is fun. At least one of them very much focused on the defense industry in Finland, which is, to say, somehow, unfortunately, predicted to have a good future sales-wise, and we are investing in sales. We have appointed two Nordic sales segment managers, one for construction, one for industry, and we are actually investing in people in positions to drive the right type of sales. So to go into investments, just when we say investments, what do we mean? So if we look at this slide, and from the down left, we have, since a while, been working with own products in price-sensitive areas where we can strengthen our competitiveness. One being INNO in Fasteners. We've talked about that before. One being 1832, which is a professional, high quality workwear brand, our own, but at a little lower price point for the very price-sensitive customer segment. So as a step in brand for parts of the assortment, 1832 will play a very important role. Then they have ProWeld, sounds like a shampoo, but it's actually hand TOOLS, also to take that position of a little lower price position, but very good products, and then Award in the more technical products, workwear, lighting, and so forth. Then one step up, we are focusing on services. Smart Services, you heard us talk about before, that we are focusing even more on, but we are now launching Smart Wear, where we can have sewing services, laundry services, and so forth, which is a big market, and we have not been active there yet, and it's good for many different reasons. First of all, being that you first sell the workwear, and then you can have a recurring business when you actually do the laundry and the adjustments on the workwear, going forward for many years. And as I said earlier, reinforced sales organization, the two segment managers, whose main responsibility is to put together an offer, which is perfect to customers and manufacturing customers, making sure that we have the right assortment, that we have the right service. Segments within the bigger segments that actually shows growth. For example, in construction, if housing construction doesn't pick up- Dear participants, please stand by. We'll just resume shortly. Can you hear me now? Dear speaker, please proceed. There sounds to be, seems to be a sound issue, but hopefully I'm back on track. I'm not quite sure where we got lost, but just to finalize where the investment areas, where the services, Smart Services and Smart Wear, where we invested a lot in. We try to focus on the growth areas available in construction and in manufacturing. In construction, it is in the infrastructure side, it's predicted to have a growth, and then the service sector, and in manufacturing, we try to sell, historically, we have delivered a lot within the TOOLS and supplies area, and we have an under share of workwear towards the manufacturing industries, so there we invest, and we have hired people to assist our key account managers. I hope you didn't lose too much of that slide. So if we then move into welding, as per your request, I'm looking at the map. It starts to feel good. We've made six acquisitions since June last year. We have more than doubled our welding sales. We had pretty big sales towards welding before, but now we have more than doubled it. And it includes the welding machines, consumables, service, repair, training, and even rental. But looking at the map, as you can see, two good ones in Finland, plenty of them in Sweden, and we already had a pretty big existing welding business in Norway. So why is that a good fit for us in Alligo? First of all, it's technical sales, and we'd like to move the group more and more into technical sales to actually add expertise to our customers. And we also wants to be closer to the customers' process, and the welding companies are really involved. And that by that, you also get a long, long-lasting relationship. Many of these companies has decades long relationships with their customers and healthy margins. So, we have a customer base within Alligo, within the TOOLS and Con-Tool brand, with customers that needs a better welding offer, which we now can offer with these companies. The relationships are mentioned, and there is good synergies to extract, first of all, with the welding companies within them, to focus on the right assortment, but also to sell more of product available from the Alligo group to these customer categories. So welding is getting into more technical sales, closer to the customer process, to their own processes and to get synergies. So, they will be kept as specialist entities, not being integrated and lose their identity. And it's already started this coordination, which is so nice to see, where take Västerås, for example, where we acquired Granlund. They are, as we speak, sitting down, looking at the customer list, which customers did the district have, which needs more welding, which customers did Granlund have that needs more tools and workwear. So that work has already started, and it's good findings coming out of that. And we have done a lot, but there is more to be done within the welding side. We see great potential to continue to grow organically and through acquisitions. Yeah, so eight acquisitions during 2024, adding a little shy of 500 million SEK to the sales when it's a full year effect, so to say. So financials, Irene? Yes, thank you. As Clein mentioned, the same trend that has been seen throughout twenty twenty-four continued into Q3. The weak market has primarily impacted small and mid-sized businesses, and negative customer mix effects have hurt our contribution margins. Revenue increased by 1% in the quarter. The negative organic growth in Finland and Sweden continued, ending at -3%, but it was offset by acquisition-driven growth of 4.8%. EBITDA reached 137 million SEK, compared to 191 million last year, and the result was weaker in all markets, but primarily in Sweden, which has the largest share of SMEs. The EBITDA margin declined to 6.4%, and the drop in profitability was driven by weaker demand and margin pressure caused by unfavorable customer segment and size mix effects, as well as disruptions at the logistics center in Västerås. This slide, you can see, the parameters that affecting the trading growth margin. And as you can see, we continue to increase sales related to our standard assortment. However, the share of sales of our own brands has decreased due to recent acquisitions, and the customer mix with a larger share of industrial customers buying fixed assortments of external brands. The weak market has primarily impacted small and mid-sized customers, and the decline in the share of more profitable SME customers in Sweden negatively impacts the group's contribution margin by 0.6%. However, we continue to uphold the margins within the SME segment in Sweden. In Norway, the oil and gas segment continues to develop well and represent a higher share of total sales. This development has negatively impacted the group's contribution margin by 0.3 percentage point. In summary, the negative customer segment and size mix in Sweden and Norway are the main explanations for the 1.1 percentage point drop in contribution margin in Q3 compared to last year. Looking into each market, we can see that sales in Sweden increased by 1.5%. Organic growth was negative at around -5%, offset by six completed acquisitions, four of which were within the welding sector, and the weak organic growth primarily impacted SMEs, while some larger customers, such as those in the defense and energy industry, had a positive sales trend. EBITDA ended at SEK 97 million, and the EBITDA margin reached 8.3%, which is behind Q3 last year. The decrease is due to weak volumes and margin pressure caused by unfavorable customer segment and size mix, while cost savings somewhat mitigate that effect. Sales in Norway were in line with last year, including two acquisitions. Organic growth reached 2%, driven by continued strong market in the oil and gas customer segment. When it comes to Finland, sales were in line with last year, including two acquisitions, and the clear slowdown in the manufacturing industry in Q4 last year continued, and organic growth was negative at -8%. When it comes to cash flow, the third quarter is traditionally the weakest quarter from a cash flow perspective. Operating cash flow improved from last year and amounted to 116 million SEK, and weaker sales and work with decreasing inventory levels have had a positive impact, while lower EBITDA and the customer mix with larger share of larger industrial customers with longer payment terms contracted. The first nine months investing activities are mainly related to M&A of 290 million SEK, consisting of 10 completed acquisitions, but also investments in non-current assets of 80 million SEK. CapEX to depreciation ratio amounted to 0.8, which aligns with our long-term target level. Finally, the financing activities are related to increased borrowings, amortization of leasing liabilities of 288 million SEK, and dividend paid. As you can see, net debt at the end of the period was SEK 1.8 billion, an increase from year end, due to the completed acquisition and the increased dividend payment, but still in line with September last year. The ratio of net debt to EBITDA was a multiple of 2.2, which is higher than last year due to lower rolling twelve month EBITDA, but still well within the financial target range. Leverage is expected to improve by year end, following that Q4 is seasonally strongest quarter, and as Clein mentioned, our existing term and revolving facility was sustainability linked in Q3, and this will impact the interest rate slightly from Q1 next year, up or down, but at maximum, 2.4-2.5 basis points, depending on whether we perform on the sustainability targets. Unutilized credit facilities, including cash, amount to 1 billion SEK. And, our covenants relate to interest, coverage, on the equity asset ratios, and these are fulfilled at the end of the period, and there is good headroom before reaching, the threshold. Handing it over to you, Clein, for summary and outlook. Very good. I don't know if it was the picture of me that made me not to be able to hear me speak. I was, but I hope it's better now. Continued weak market. We drive growth wherever we can find. So we are developing and strengthening our offer. We know we're doing the right things. We know it will pay off. We are proving our sales offer, effort, and offerings, and we are continuing to make strategic acquisitions. As you have seen, we have increased the acquisition pace, and we will continue to do that. We have invested in welding, we have invested in product media companies, and other technical areas will follow. Good delivery capacity. Cautiously, we can see that we see positive market signals, not visible in sales statistics yet, but just with this month, we are having the so famous Swedol Days and TOOLS Days, and just talking to customers who are in our shops, it, it feels like it's, it's a much more positive tone these days. So the outlook for twenty twenty-four, as we have said so many times, we're well positioned. We will take advantage of this slower market to continue to improve, to continue to improve our offer and to make acquisitions. Those new launches we are making will make us more competitive, not losing customers because we don't have an offer in the lower price range. We are stopping that with these launches. And then, of course, we will set climate targets in line with SBTi and sending it more or less as we speak, for validation. Very good. So back to you, Nadia. Thank you, Clein. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star one one on your telephone keypads. If you wish to ask a question. To withdraw a question, please press star one one again. Alternatively, you can submit your questions via the webcast. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. This will take a few moments, and now we're going to take our first question, and the question comes in line of Emanuel Jansson from Danske Bank. Your line is open, please ask your question. Perfect. Hi, Clein and Irene, hope you can hear me, and sorry if I may be repeating some questions. I had some technical difficulties here, hearing some parts of the conference call. But just looking at the different niches that you are active in within product media, your more or less legacy business, if you can call it that, and also the welding business, can you maybe give us some coloring on how these kind three different niches are performing at the moment? Which faces the toughest time, and- Yeah. And, yeah, as, yeah, the other way around. Very good question. And it's, we're happy to, to see that the welding business, if it's our, brilliant intelligence or it's luck or something in between, but that is very resilient and is developing nicely. So the welding sector is keeping up nicely. Yeah, of course, the industrial sector is not as hit as the construction side, so that is, of course, a part explanation. But the welding business is keeping up well. The product media companies are keeping up okay. And then in the normal, mainstream business, of course, the smaller the customer, no matter what segment, actually, the tougher they have it. So even in the manufacturing side, the smallest customers are suffering there, too, for some reason. But the most worrying trend since a long time now is, of course, in the construction sector, the lovely small and medium-sized customers we have, and they, I think, would need some more positivism from us as private persons to get the wheels turning again. But welding is keeping up very well, product media, okay, and then it's a scattered picture for the rest of the group, but positive signals throughout the group, of course. And not to forget, we have a lot to do, even in a slower market, we need to be better at going for the volumes that exist in the market. Perfect, thank you. That's super clear. Just looking on the small and medium enterprise customers, have you experienced a slowdown throughout the quarter or in the beginning, or have it improved somewhat, or what have you seen during Q3? It varies strangely between more or less weeks and months. We felt that in August. Now everything is pointing in the right direction, and then it slowed down again in September. I hope this volatility. It's the long range of it, at least if you look at the trend diagram, is pointing upwards. I mentioned this yesterday. I was in some shops in Stockholm, and I ran into our regional manager, Therese, and she said, "Look at this," she said. I said, "What? What should I look at?" "Look at this, don't you see?" And I said, "Well, what else should I see?" "The shopping carts are out again." So because for a very, very long time, our customers have come into our shops, and they're not buying more than they can carry, more or less, in their hands. As in this, but old days, the shopping carts were out again, and they were filling them with products. So I take that as a little, little signal that things are picking up, but much more positive tone. But again, we have so much more to do to direct our sales efforts to areas which actually shows growth, as well, and we historically have been able to do that. Would you say that the reception of the Swedol days was quite okay, or how would you put it? Absolutely. No, it was in line with last year, and that is, that has been the market has turned for the worse during that year, but it was in line with that year. So that we see as at least a stability signal, so that is good. Okay, great. And maybe Irene or you, Fredrik, can maybe give us some more additional color on the gross margin here, which decreased somewhat year-over-year. I understand the mix effect here, but you maybe give us some more color between Q2 and Q3. What have you seen impact. What, why have you seen a high decline of the gross margin this quarter compared to Q2? It is quite complicated because it's several different mix effects. But the drop related to the share of SMEs has actually seen the same level as we have seen in Q2. So that's more or less the same thing. And when it comes to Norway, that's also the same thing. But of course, there are different kind of things that also impacts the gross margin like customs handling and so on. And we were hit by some costs related to customs handling as well in the quarter. So that also explains the significant decrease in gross margin, which is- But per customer segment, the gross margins are stable. Luckily, we have been able to find volumes in sectors which unfortunately are at a lower gross margin level. So it's in a way that is disturbing the picture that we've been able to grow in areas which has not been small and medium-sized customers with the highest gross margin. But if we look customer segment by customer segment, as you showed in the previous slide, we can explain the drop in gross margin. And that's one of the two things that, as you as a management team, should really focus on in slow times. Do whatever you can on the cost side without destroying the business in the long run, and keep up the gross margin per customer segment, because the gross margin you establish in bad times, that is the gross margin you're stuck with when the business turns up again. Mm-hmm. We can conclude that we have, within a few tenths of a percent, the same gross margin- Yeah ... per customer segment. Yeah. And it is a mix effect. I know the word mix effect is something you use when you have no clue what you're doing, but it's actually true in our case. Okay. A mix effect, because of the different customer segments growing or shrinking. Actually, both customer segment and customer size. Ah, yeah. Yeah. And just heading to the short term here and the next upcoming quarter, then what do you think we should expect here? Should we expect the gross margin to follow the same pattern as we have seen here in Q3, or? For the last quarter, let me take that, and then for the last quarter, we already have one month behind us, and Yep ... it will be a similar picture. But we all had hoped. There are so many companies that has reported and will report where we all collectively predicted that we should also see a market upturn during second half of 2024, and that has not materialized. That is obvious. So in a bit into 2025, hopefully, first, the market stabilizes in combination that our sales office pays off in combination that the acquisitions we've made pay off. So a long answer, but for the last quarter, there shouldn't be any major changes up or down. Mm. Step by step during twenty twenty-five, I see no reason why we shouldn't come back to where we were, customer mix wise, and thereby also the- But would you say that you have seen a stabilization already now in the market, or is it still deteriorating? It's also not getting much worse. No, it's stabilizing, absolutely. Mm. But as you know, we are very prudent and do not dare to give any hints of that now everything is hunky dory, and we will grow like crazy. That's not the situation. It's we are fighting for the contracts, we are fighting for the customers, and what happens in a market which works with it. It's a market economy, and it works, is that the areas that are stable and that can show some growth, of course, everybody, all of our competitors, they also enter that market, and we have a clear ambition of keeping the gross margins up. So it's a delicate game going on every day. But yeah, let's conclude that it's reasonably stable as it is. Mm. I will not be able to say that we can see that it is starting to grow. Oh, I understand. I understand. But once since you're seeing maybe a larger share of big customers in Sweden, for example, how has the development been with large customers regarding private or own brands? Ah, good. Yeah, and that is, yeah, it is positive. But as we said originally, when we started this journey some four years back, when we built a legal group, the more of a shop behavior a customer has, small customer or large customer, but the more they acquire their needs in our shops, the easier it is for us to convert them. 'Cause then they are face-to-face with our brilliant colleagues, and they say, "Oh, you want the shoe of this brand? Why don't you try the Gesto shoe? It's better at a little lower price point." But the more you have a customer relationship, which is that you are fixing the assortment in a conference room somewhere, the longer that transformation takes. So it differs a little bit from customer to customer, but slowly but surely we're getting there, also making our key account managers feeling comfortable presenting this. And that is exactly what I meant when I said we have hired people that are experts in our workwear offer to help our key account managers to present our workwear offer to larger industries. It will take too long time to train everybody to be experts in workwear. We need to speed that process up. So that's why we have hired workwear specialists that can co-visit customers with good potential and presenting our workwear offer. That will accelerate that development. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Very good. Then, is it possible to maybe quantify the average share of private brands and private labels that the average large customer buys from you? Is that possible? I don't have it on the average. It's not that I don't want to share it, I don't have it. Right. But of course, some industries, of course, has, I guess, close to zero- Mm. -and some we manage to. We have examples in Finland. I don't know if I should mention, but a large Finnish industry where we, in a sitting meeting, and being one of those conference meeting, negotiations, the customer said, "Ah, but it sounds good with the Gesto shoes. Let's go for the Gesto shoes." So it's the whole spectrum, but the average share, of course, is significantly lower. The more of industrial behavior, it's slower. They have different groupings that needs to accept the what type of work wear and personal protection you should have, as opposed to a small construction company with five employees, then they can decide on the day. You have an example of last week, when one of our sales guys went into a construction company who had a different brand of workwear and converted that customer within twenty minutes. So, the more of a shop behavior, the easier to transform, and the more of a large industry behavior, the longer it takes, of course. Yeah. Okay, perfect. That's great. And maybe the last question from my side, maybe you kind of can answer it, but from your long experience and expertise within this industry, and then just looking on the general market and how it develops out there, what's your best guess then on when we should expect to see? I mean, Swedol has a history of being very early into the cycle and seeing opportunities to grow early. What's your best guess here, then going forward on, on, on- A very good one. ... market recovery? Yeah. Yeah, and you partly answered the question. You know the group so well, you partly answered the question yourself. And we were early in the downturn, of course, and we traditionally are early in the upturn. And there's a lot of discussions going on that will the housing construction levels be on the levels they were a few years back, or will they establish on a half that level of thirty thousand units somehow? But for us, that is not the problem. We don't sell heating and plumbing or electrical materials or any other building material. For us, the essential part is, and that is the core of these wonderful small and medium-sized customers. When we say construction companies, it's very much on the excavating side. So for us, it's important that it's being built, bridges and tunnels and also houses, of course, the foundations for the houses. So if there will be more investments in the infrastructure side, that is brilliant news for us because that segment, we have a strong grip on, thanks to our we have hydraulics, we have oil, we have components for the machines, and we have workwear, which is actually made for those type of customers. So that is good news for us. And as to your question then, when will it turn up? That is the million dollar question, but it has to come during the first half of next year. But again, even on this level, I would be very disappointed. I will go home free of charge if we don't manage to grow even in a slower market. That would be super disappointing if we cannot activate our sales force, so that's what we are doing twenty-four/seven. Okay, great. Thank you for that, Klein. I think that was all my questions for now, at least. So thank you very much for, Thank you, Emmanuel. Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from the line of Karl- Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Yes, good morning, Clein and Irene. Emanuel asked a lot of good questions already, so I see my list here going a little empty, but maybe we could elaborate a little more on what you see for Q4, and maybe looking at the comparison from last year, when you look at the sales mix, then you were obviously. There was an early kind of winter kind of thing hitting you weather-wise last year. Is that now a big challenge if you are getting more of a warm, normal kind of autumn into the winter? Or how would you see Q4 from that kind of comparison perspective? You are extremely well-informed, but... No, of course, we are a much better company this Q4 than last Q4, but the market is on a lower level. And then we have this little section of the equation, which is unknown, that is the weather. And of course, it's not helping us when it's 14 degrees outside and sunshine, but still it's not a problem. In October, it can be super sunny and nice, and it can also be worse off. But I think it will continue the year out in the pace and the structure we have. That is our best guess, and that's what we plan for. We have been running cost mitigating actions, and as I've said, I'm super surprised that we've been able and potentially 2023 turned out too well for us, because you should not be able to mitigate market challenges as we have done with 215 stores and all the central warehouses. Our group structure is. It's essential that you grow, and if you don't grow a group like ours, it's super difficult, but I'm so proud what all our wonderful colleagues have been able to accomplish on the cost reduction side and also keeping the margins. Even if all our competitors are clinging on to the parts of the market where the volumes are, we are still having a stable gross margin. I'm super, super happy about that, but for the rest of the year, my best guess would be the same customer mix. A trend tends to stick a while, at least it doesn't shift too much from a quarter to another quarter. But again, when we are having so many sales initiatives, and we are running new customer campaigns internally with competitions and so forth, so it will be good. Let us enter twenty twenty-five, but the last of twenty twenty-four, I think we'll be at the same pace as this. Excellent. And when you look at the cost savings and the mitigations you have been forced to do to stay balanced, the day-to-day operation towards demand, you don't feel that you have become too anorectic, so you can't, yeah, basically then cope with the... When demand recovers, that you need to then suddenly get a lot of the cost back in there again? That is the trick, and we've said, I mean, if we were to start closing shops, then we would add to the downward spiral, which we do not want to do. And as you said, we want to capitalize on the challenging market conditions, not ruin the group. So it's a very delicate thing, and we are down to a minimum manning in our shops. A potential next thing we haven't done, and if it continues, that we could do that, is that we have opened on Saturdays in this for all shops in Sweden. Of course, if you didn't have open on Saturdays, you get at least one FTE for a manning schedule over a shop, over a month, you could reduce. But it's a little bit in our concept that the small and medium-sized customers, they actually come to our shops also on Saturdays. Some of them are so small, so they don't know if they're there as a private person or as a business person. So, but it's exactly those evaluations we have to do continuously, and still, I can say to this point, we haven't done anything which will ruin any opportunities going forward. On the contrary, I think I even said early on in this downturn that to a certain extent, this is perfectly timed for us because we built this group with an axe during burning COVID. Of course, we needed to get more efficient in different parts of the organization. So the first year was perhaps perfectly timed and even needed of this market downturn, but now it's getting a little bit boring. Another half year of market challenges that is getting a little bit frustrating. But so far, we haven't ruined anything, and we have the full intention of not adding to worsening the situation. ... I fully appreciate your frustrations, Clein. Irene, you mentioned a normal kind of free cash flow pattern for Q4. Is there anything that could, I guess the only thing that could challenge that is if you get an enormous pickup in demand, so you need to restock levels and all these kind of things, and end up with a lot of payments over the year-round. Or is there any other part of that equation one should be aware of? No, I don't think so. We think that it will be almost the same pattern that we have seen the last two years. So Q4 is expected to be a good quarter cash flow-wise. And we have also, I mentioned. I should also mention that we have a new sourcing, purchasing and sourcing manager in Fredrik, and with a brilliant last name, Klein. And he is also now able to, in a more structured way, now we have a full-time resource working with purchasing and stock levels and cash conversion, and he's super dedicated. So going forward over time, inventory levels should be even more optimized, because we'd rather use the cash tied up, of course, in stock. We'd rather use that for acquisitions, of course. So we invest at the same time as we try to be cost cautious. That's a delicate thing to do. When you look at the gearing at 2.2 at the end of the quarter, is that in any way holding you back from acquisitions at this stage? Not now. Absolutely not, but of course, if the result levels were to come down a lot, then, of course, we need to be more cautious, but it has in no way affected us yet, and it's we have the financial target is three in gearing, but we've said, as you know, we don't want to exceed two point five, so no, it's not limiting us at this point. Just to understand the welding segment, a quick one as well. When you talk about now having about more than SEK 400 million in revenue in that segment, what kind of market share would that be in yours, in your business, so to say, in the Nordic framework? That is, sometimes I wonder if you have some informant. We are actually looking at that because it, it's not super easy to identify. It's probably a pretty big. There are different figures. We use external help to define the market, and it's not super easy, but I would just to say something, say 15% market share, perhaps, as it is now, but it's a fairly fragmented business. But also the welding segment is, one thing is the product category size, the other thing is what the welding customer needs, because it's cutting, it's grinding. Many other articles that could be included into the welding area. We know that is. The potential is huge. We know that the potential is huge, comparing Swedol customer needs, if you take Sweden or TOOLS customer needs in Norway and Finland, with a larger welding offer. But we are trying, we have an extra strategy day with the board in November. We said we need to pinpoint then and put the foot down and say, "What is our market share?" So we're actually looking at that as we speak. But so far, it hasn't been needed because we, there's a lot of room to grow, so we don't have the exact figure, actually. Excellent. Then I'll come back and chase you on that at a later stage. Ah, please do. Thank you very much, and all the best there. Thank you, Koljo. Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Alternatively, you can submit your questions via the webcast. Dear speaker, there are no further questions on audio lines. Therefore, I would like to hand over to yourself for any written questions. Yes, there are a few of them, and I try to read as I speak. There was one on acquisitions. I think we more or less covered that through call Q1. Alligo closed four acquisitions in the quarter, and has so far signed eight acquisitions to twenty twenty-four. How is the acquisition pipeline going forward? Is it possible to specify interesting sectors? That's a super good question, of course, and it's we have a good pipeline. The cases closest in time, I'm not sure if I'm saying too much, or perhaps a little bit bigger, and fewer, but there is different areas to grow within and other interesting sectors. Yeah, we are now digging a lot where we stand. That is the welding side and the product media companies. And then, of course, we have some ideas. We'd like to do the rope trick again, as we have done with the welding, because now we found a model how to do this and what the potential is. So there are other, so to say, technical areas which are similar to welding, we could do all over again, but there is a lot still to be done within the welding side. And then there is a question: I appreciate that the market is tough, but how are you gearing against competition? How is your market share developing? Thank you. That's a very, very good question, and we had a board meeting yesterday, and we consumed a lot of market statistics. It's heating and plumbing statistics, it's electrical market statistics, it's the hardware business index. And whatever we can see from a volume perspective, we are holding our grounds nicely. I mean, looking at our top line, it's compared to any statistics, it's holding up good. Our difficulty to communicate with you guys is to explain that it's the reduction of volumes in the small and medium-sized customers that is hitting us. If everything had developed as the small and medium-sized customers have developed, then we would have a significant drop in our top line, and it would be easier to explain, then the contribution margin would have been the same, but our results would have been worse. So of course, we go for what we think is profitable volumes wherever they exist. But you probably read the same thing as we do there, laid off 120 people yesterday. So the cost... the building material sector is suffering. Looking at, in the different countries, we know what's happening at the stats and what's happening at in different players. So I think we are holding up nicely so far, but I think there is opportunity to do much more. I think I've been pretty clear on that. Very good. I think that's all from the digital world. So what do you say, Nadia? Should we go for the closing remarks? So dear speakers, just a last reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Dear speaker, we will just give a moment to our participants. Thank you. So there are no further questions. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Clein Ullenvik, for any closing remarks. Please go ahead. Thank you, Nadia. Just quickly, as I said, a report, busy day. The market was still tough during the Q3, and it's frustrating. We think we do a lot of good things, and we get no benefit from that so far. Not no, but very little so far, but it will come. We have step-by-step adjusted our cost structure, now we are fine-tuning it, but we don't, as Koji was mentioning, we don't want to do anything that destroys the setup when business picks up again. We are keeping our trading margins, which I think is the best grade you can give to a management or a company if you manage to do that in tough times. Trying to buy volumes at lower gross margin is not super clever to do. So day by day, we build a better company. We dare to invest in growth initiatives, own, or so to say, organic growth initiatives, and we make acquisitions, and I think we've done it quite successfully. We actually changed the welding market already, and we've just begun. So thank you, everybody. Sorry for the sound challenges. It's not only the market that is against us, also the technical side is against us. So the journey continues, and thank you for listening in. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.