Welcome to you all. Me speaking is Jörgen Wigh, CEO of Lagercrantz. Together with me here on the line is Kristina as well, our CFO, Kristina Elfström. We will try and run you through the interim report, our Q2 report that we released this morning. That the report is available on our website, lagercrantz.com, you can find it there to download it, that's how I normally do it. We will run you through that, comment along the way, we will open up for questions in the end of the presentation, which usually takes around 40 minutes, 45 minutes before we open up for questions. We will put you all on mute, if you would like to interrupt me along the way, please do that by using star six to unmute yourself if you'd like to interrupt or have questions in the middle. Otherwise, we will open up in general for questions at the end as I pointed out earlier. I will now unmute you all. Hope this works. Okay, good. I hope everyone is muted and can listen in. Again, a warm welcome, and I will start and I will point out along the way which slide I'm on. The way we normally do this is that we start with a short introduction, a couple of slides to introduce all the newcomers to the group, what we are all about, and then we will jump into the numbers, and then we will also discuss a little bit, especially around the M&A situation, I think in the at the end here. I think that's how we normally would run it and do it that way as well today. We start on slide number two. Lagercrantz, an introduction, is that we are a technology group with a very strong focus in building strong positions in niches. Currently we are somewhat short of 60 profit centers, and they're split into the four divisions that we have, the Electronics, the Mechatronics, the Communications, and the Niche Products divisions that you can see there on the slide. As you can see, we have a density up in the Nordics, but we have a Northern Europe group with also some companies in the U.K., some companies in Germany and Poland and also in the Dutch region or in the Netherlands. We have some 1,500 employees all in all in the group, and we have a turnover of some SEK 4 billion, roughly around that. As you all know or most of you know, is that we have M&A as a very strong sort of DNA of how we run things. We are building the group with focus on organic growth and especially on organic profit growth and so the improving the companies that we have, but also in terms of doing M&A with a clear ambition of acquiring four to six companies per year. The group should grow by around 10% coming from M&A every year is our aim. We have been on the Stockholm Stock Exchange since 2001 as a separate entity, and we are currently on the mid cap on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Moving over to page number three, we give you a little bit of sense for what we have in our different divisions. Here we have them again, the four divisions. You can see from the left that Electronics is where we came from. We used to do quite a lot of electronics distribution, but nowadays we have changed the content of Electronics quite dramatically. We're both moving to more of modular and semi-finished goods, so much more complex products, much more solution-based type sales. We've also moved in some proprietary products areas with LED, with other types of areas which we're in, the RFID and also some marine applications that we also have within the Electronics Division. We also have a couple of other companies doing more special materials or more infrastructure related type businesses that we have in the Electronics. Through all of that, we have lifted the margin within Electronics from 10 years ago, somewhere around 3%-5%, up now to more than 10%, which I think is good performance from the Electronics Division. Alongside with having the Electronics, we also have the Mechatronics, and that is currently our biggest division. Here we have also the biggest company within the group, the Elpress company, providing cable lugs and electrical connection systems for a lot of interesting sectors, growing quite a lot for the wind turbine industry as well, with components going in there, but also in the electrification of the whole society. We have quite a number of companies working in that area with Elpress as one of them, but also the cable harnesses companies, Elkapsling and Norwesco, a couple of other companies going in that direction. Here we have quite a density of our companies, but also quite a density of our earnings and volumes. You can see the 33% of EBITA last year. The third division is around communications, and that is also built around really two verticals or two key areas, technical security area, where we also have our biggest company within that division, that is the R-CON business, providing different types of infrastructure for sprinkler systems with pumps and other type of infrastructure around building sprinklers for houses and factories and that type of thing, in those type of environments. We have a couple of other companies within that area doing more of traditional technical security with alarm and protecting, for instance, in prisons and that type of thing. We also have a couple of companies around that. Within communications, we also have the control and access area, where we have a number of companies. One example is Radonova that you could see there. They are one of the market leaders in radon measurement, doing quite well for us. Precimeter is another company doing very well for us in an area for measuring and working in the aluminum industry. You can all find separate homepages for these companies if you like, to understand better what they're doing. Since 2012, we are also building a Niche Products division, which is becoming increasingly important to us, and it's here 25% of the EBITA. Currently, it's growing faster than the group all in all, and that is very promising. That's been very important to us, and the strategy that we have for the group is to find the niche proprietary products companies that we can add to the group. Here we have a number of different companies. We have the, for instance, SIB Products, you could see up to the left there, work with brush systems used to clear runways at airports from snow. We don't provide the vehicles, but we provide the brush systems that we have there, you can see there. We also have a number of other companies, the company doing best in this division is the Tormek. You can see the sharpening machine there to the right, not entirely to the top, but the second picture from the top there to the right, you can see the sharpening tool and a sharpening machine being used there. That company is doing very well for us on exports, especially in the U.S. and in Europe. That's also a very strong company within the whole group, but especially for the Niche Products division and a number of other companies that we have within the Niche Products division. That was a sort of an introduction to the Lagercrantz Group. We move on with going into numbers. Here we have our chart that we have used over the years, showing where we are with the moving 12 month's figures in terms of sales and profits. You could see that we concluded yet another good quarter. We had a very strong upwards trend in our numbers. As you can see, the scales onto the left and to the right here are proportionate, meaning that we also can see the margins lifting along the way here, exceeding 10% as of, you could see, 2016, somewhere there we started to exceed 10%, and we have been above 10% since then, basically, as an EBITA margin then. That has been very good. You could also see that we had a very strong performance in 2018, 2019, and then we reached a very high there about a year ago, a little bit more than a year ago. Since then, we have also been, as most companies, been dealing with the COVID-19 situation, and therefore we had a couple of slow quarters, but after that, we have now had two stronger quarters than the same quarter previous year, and that means that we are still on a very good trend when it comes to our profits. Along the way here, we have also then been doing different types of themes. You can see that in the bubbles here. We started out with some restructuring of the group. We put a new corporate governance model in place in the years 2005 and onwards, and that proved very good for us. We had a downturn in the financial crisis, where we took some actions during the recession. Since then, we have had some recovery and started out doing more and more acquisitions and improving with operational improvements along the way. Then we have created some organic growth and more acquisitions along the way with especially the proprietary products. That has been lifting our margins and our profits along the way, which brings us to the full picture here. Moving on to page number five, a little bit more on the Q3 report, or much more really. I think what we saw in the quarter is that we had a recovery during the quarter, with some good improvement in many of our companies. We saw some limited effect to the COVID-19 pandemic in total. We saw some companies doing really well, and especially the bigger companies have been doing very well for us. Elpress is doing very well on exports within the Mechatronics Division. We saw in the Communications, the R-CON with the sprinkler pumps that I mentioned earlier. They're also doing very well for us within the Communications Division. The fastest growing company in the group this year has been the Tormek company, with the sharpening machines there that I also pointed out earlier within the Niche Products Division. A couple of other companies within the Niche Products Division have also been doing very well for us. Wapro, for instance, the Nikodan in Denmark that's been doing very well for us within the Niche Products Division. As you will see from the numbers, the Niche Products Division is the one growing their profits the most here in the quarter. On the other side, Niche Products have also had a couple of companies that have been affected by the COVID-19, especially Asept that was doing very well for us last year, with their dispenser products for the fast-food industry and the fast-food restaurants in the U.S. especially. I think we can all understand that those types of sectors have been very severely hit by the COVID-19, and that has, to some extent, also affected our Asept business. We have a couple of other companies that have also been affected by the pandemic. That is especially within the Mechatronics Division with Frictape, and also some Cue Dee has also been affected. All in all, the most important ones and the strong ones have been performing very well. All in all, I think it was a quarter that we saw some strong recovery and some strong order intake in many our companies. That is promising for the future as well. What we also saw in the quarter was that we did, and I had commented on that earlier, that we did some really restructuring of the Electronics Division about a year ago, and that has taken some time. We have here now again, a strong quarter from the Electronics Division, where we saw some good effects from the restructuring we did last year. We closed one company in Germany. Sorry, we restructured one company in Germany. We put a couple of new management teams in place in a couple of companies, and we closed one unit in Norway. That has had a good effect on the Electronics Division here. You can see they come back very well here. During the quarter here, we also made four more acquisitions. We took a little bit of a pause here during the summer, and especially during the spring and summer, but have then picked up the M&A activity again and concluded now four acquisitions during the quarter, which I think is very promising. They are strong companies as such, but they also have clear connections and some synergies with all the companies that we already have. I'll come back to that later on here. We also tried to comment on the charts down here below on page five, and you can see that our share of the international business is slowly but steadily increasing over to the right. You can also see that the proprietary product is up to 63% here now. That's also been a key metrics for us driving the growth and the profitability of the Group. I'll come back to that as well. Looking a little bit more on the numbers to Q3, we had some net revenues at SEK 1,0 78,000,000, and an EBITA then increased by 8% to SEK 168 versus SEK 156 last year. A very strong EBITA margin, as you can see there, from 15.6%, which this is a very good number, I think. The profit after financial items also increased by 8%. A stronger quarter than we had in the previous quarters, and due to the recovery and the coming back and having a better sort of grip on where the COVID-19 are affecting us and where it's not, and driving the group in a better way along the way here means that we had a good recovery here in this quarter. What I also like to point out is the very strong cash flows we had, the SEK 226 you can see here, as opposed to SEK 178 last year. Last year was also a strong quarter, but SEK 226 here is even stronger. Again, four acquisitions. I'll come back to them later on here in the presentation. That means that on page seven, you can see the full nine months figures. You can see that the EBITA then increased in the quarter by 8%. Here during nine months, it was 3%. We had a stronger tendency here along the way. Even though Q3 last year was a very strong quarter. An EBITA margin for the full nine months of 14.3%. Earnings per share as well at SEK 178. As most of you have recognized, we did a split of our share here during the period, 3: 1. That is of course affecting earnings per share and those type of numbers. That's all been sort of adjusted for here, of course. The return on equity was 22%, we had a very strong balance sheet going forward as well with the equity ratio of 40% as opposed to 38%. That leaves quite a lot of room for more acquisitions. Again, a very strong cash flows from operations here with SEK 552 as opposed to SEK 369 last year. Cash flows is a strong point as well, I think. Looking at the outcome per division on page eight, you can see how it looks by division. I think it's important to highlight here the strong performance in Niche Products. Niche Products have had some quite strong quarters and is becoming sort of a very strong team within the group. The main theme really to build Niche Products division and those type of companies. We have those in the other divisions as well with the proprietary products. That proves you can see how Niche Products is evolving over time here. Another strong point is the recovery after the restructuring of Electronics, now back with the EBITA margin of 12.5%, which is the strongest you have in the timeline here. I think they have been close to that earlier on, but that's still a very strong quarter. With more acquisitions and building Electronics further, the aim is of course to improve that further. I think the important thing here now was that the restructuring from last year had a good effect there in the quarter. You could also look a little bit on page nine, where we have the comments by division. If you look at the Electronics Division, again, the restructuring, I went over that already, I think. That was in Poland, Norway, and Germany, that was the reason behind the improvements. Within the Mechatronics, we see the main unit doing very well for us, the division's largest units with the Elpress, Elkapsling, Elfac, and Norwesco are doing very well for us. We also saw some negative effects from the pandemic, specifically related to the Cue Dee and the Frictape businesses. Nothing that we really worry about in the long term, but because we can see clear reasons for why it's happening now. It's very difficult for Frictape, for instance, to visit customers and do installations out at customer sites when we have a lot of lockdowns in different parts of the world. Cue Dee also had some international projects, and we had one last year during last year, but that was not repeated this year. We also have some discussions and some good projects coming downstream. To some extent, they are a bit delayed here, and that's why you make this comment around the telecom, the delay in some telecom related projects here in the Mechatronics Division. Within the Communications, we also had a good EBITA, we think, very good margin of 19.4%. We have some type of seasonality within the Communications as I pointed out earlier. We also see that some of the bigger units, ARK, ISG Nordic, and Liatec, and Precimeter are doing very well during the quarter. While we also saw some negative effects in the radon measurement business, the Radonova, that was negatively affected by the pandemic. That was also very important for us. Within the Niche Products Division, that was the one increasing the EBITA most, up 46% as opposed to last year. I think we see some really good performances from especially the Tormek business, but also from the Wapro, from Nikodan. Dorotea Mekaniska also made it very well, and Vendig. On the other hand, Asept made a very strong quarter last year, but also affected by, as I pointed out earlier, by the COVID-19 pandemic. I also think that's very easy to explain, and we are confident that that will come back as soon as we are through the pandemic and are approaching summer here and things will turn for the better in many of these companies that have some effects. Moving on, that was what I would like to present around the numbers of the quarter. Looking a little bit ahead, I think I try to highlight a few things. I think we will continue, as we always do, to adjust strategies and measures and actions to the situation in each company. When we have a portfolio of 60 companies, there's always some companies that we are more in the restructuring phase, while others are sort of really driving growth and doing very well. I think we have a very strong management team that are adjusting these adjusting measures to what is needed in each company. We run the companies through the boards and the sort of recipes and the strategies vary quite a lot between the different companies as to what we do. All in all, of course, we have seen some action due to COVID-19 pandemic. I think we are dealing with that on a company-by-company basis as well. I think we have a good grip on where it's affecting us still. We don't see any sort of really dramatic measures as the new lockdowns that we've seen in the last recent weeks or months here. I think that it's still working on a very good level for us in most instances. As we get through the COVID-19 pandemic, I think we also will put much more focus on growth again, and we will continue our focus on value add, and we will also then, as we already picked up now, doing more acquisitions. I will comment on that a little bit further on. Look, I think we will move to page number 12, where you can see the focus on value add. This is something that is very important to us, and you see that it's been a focus for us for many years. You can also see that we have been good in delivering an improvement in value add. I think this comes a lot from what we see on page 13, which is the growing operations and the increase of proprietary products. You can see that it's a clear target for us, as pointed out earlier, we are aiming for this 75%, and with the recent acquisitions, this will also be pushed in the right direction. We are definitely on the path to reach the 75% in the next three to four years or something like that. We will be there three to four years maybe, depending on how acquisitive we are along the way. Looking at acquisitions, we are on page 14. We can look a little bit, as pointed out, we have made six acquisitions in the last year or so, while we made four here in the last quarter. The Sajas Group came in, that is affecting the numbers in the quarter, while the other three will affect the numbers starting from J anuary 1st. We only have Sajas within the numbers in the Q3, while the other ones will affect us from Q4. Acquisitions is a key thing for us. We have seen some very interesting projects, and we still see some interesting projects along the way. It's been very exciting to be in this market. We have more acquisitions that we're looking into, and that I think is very promising for the coming quarters as well. Looking at what we have acquired here during the quarter, the Sajas Group is the first one, so over them a little bit. Sajas Group is a leading supplier of brushes for road sweeping, airfield, and railway cleaning, and that type of thing. You can see a little bit of the products over to the right on page 15. Here is an annual revenue of some EUR 10 million. This is a Finnish-based company in Tampere, in Finland, but they also have operations and production in Tallinn, and also some sales organization primarily in Germany. A strong player, and here this can be connected now to the SIB business that we already have within Niche Product Division. There we're making brushes and brush systems for cleaning runways and airfield, while we here have a broader spectrum, and therefore, we see some clear synergies between the companies. Sajas also have significant sales to Swedish customers, and that means that we can also sort of collaborate going to market here with two different companies. That's very promising. You can see the numbers down to the right there. Normally, we would like the EBITA to be about 15%. They have not been fully there, but our previous businesses is there and have been there, therefore, of course, we have some profitability measures to be taken here in order to improve this further. A very promising acquisition within that area, that came into the numbers as of November here last year on in Q3. The second acquisition we made is the Hovicon International. That is a Dutch company based in the Netherlands, that has a clear connection to the Asept business that we also have within the Niche Product Division. Here we make a different type of dispenser solutions. As you may know, the Asept came basically from a lot of ketchup dispensing and those type of equipment that you see in restaurants and McDonald's and that type of thing. We also see clear other areas where there is more dispensing with other type of solution, and we made an acquisition of one player in the Dutch region with [uncertain] a few years back, and now we have also made the second acquisition with the Hovicon business coming in here as of January. Here you can see some really good numbers down to the right, some really strong profit margins, and that is of course, adding to the overall strength of Asept and Niche Product, and also to the group as a whole. [uncertain]. The third one on page 17 is Esari. Esari is a Finnish company. We have a similar business making more of enclosures, smaller types of enclosures in Sweden, our Elkapsling business. Here we have another company with similar customers and similar sort of applications in Finland. Here, of course, we will see some synergies also with Esari being brought to Sweden and Elkapsling being brought to Finland, and through that find some synergies market-wise. This company is located in Karlstad, and you can also see some good numbers down to the right there. Elkapsling is providing even better numbers, so we also see some synergies that can be explored here in order to maybe reach the 20% level here. I think it's fully reasonable. The last acquisition, but not the least, is the VP Metall on page 18. That is a company that we acquired here in Norway, and they're making implosive connectors, where you build for high voltage applications. You can see the applications over to the right there. As you may know, the Elkapsling is making cable lugs as well, using a crimp technology. This is another technology using explosive to making these implosive connectors that is used. The application of these are easier to be applied, especially when we're talking about high voltage application and the transmission network. It's really a very strong player in the electrification of the society and therefore fits very well into the ambitions we have within the Mechatronics Division. This is a Norwegian company, as pointed out. It's located in Raufoss in Norway, and you can see down to the right there, also very strong performance in terms of margins and performance. The growth here has not been very high, as you can see there. I think that is a clear ambition for us to put some growth into this company. They have been very Norwegian and been very local in many things of what they've been doing, but they have a set up now, some sales organizations in both in Sweden and in Finland, but also in Canada, for instance. We will together with them and put the Elpress with stronger exports on their agenda, and try to build the company further on with exports as a primary source of growth here in this company. That's also a very interesting company being brought into the Mechatronics Division. To round off, we produced a very solid quarter here with some profit improvements of 8% in Q3, and now accumulated we are above last year, despite the pandemic, and that's a very strong sign from us. In addition, we have very strong cash flows and a good cost control in what we're really doing. As pointed out, especially the division Niche Products has delivered a very strong quarter, and Electronics came back after some restructuring for a couple of quarters. We still see some negative effects from the pandemic, once we are through this, we also will see some stronger growth from our companies. As pointed out, we've also then picked up our M&A activities with closing additional four acquisitions along the way here. With the strong balance sheet we have, I feel confident that we are looking forward to 2021 really, and the coming quarters. That was my presentation. I think we will try and open up for questions then. I would like to unmute you all here first. Let's see. I think you're all unmuted. Do we have any questions from you? Anyone would like to start? If you would like to unmute yourself, you could also star six is a way to [crosstalk]. Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, I can hear you. Yes. Oh, hi. This is Victor Hansen from Nordea Equities. Yeah, Jörgen. Hello, everyone. [uncertain] you can start. Yes. Thank you, Jörgen. If you could please give us a split or at least elaborate on how much of the margin improvement in E lectronics that is due to general market performance, and how much is due to restructuring and cost efforts, please? I don't have a clear number for that. I would say that from my gut, I would say that 60% of the margin improvement is due to restructuring, and 40% to market improvement. We saw some really lower growth in some of our Danish businesses last year. That has picked up again. That's a market improvement. We also saw some improvements in Germany, but we see some clear and some stronger improvements from the restructuring that is coming from the restructuring in Norway and Germany, as pointed out. 60/40, I would say. Thank you very much. That is all for me. Yes. Hi, Jörgen. It's Johan at Danske. Hello. Yeah, just two quick questions. Firstly, can you just address, if you look into the coming 12 months, if you see a normalization of your SG&A, i.e. internal education, traveling, et cetera. If you just look on the cost headwind from those issues as society normalizes, hopefully, and if you compare that against, I saw you saw a slight decline in number of employees in the group. How do you expect that net to pan out in the coming 12 months, let's say, your perspective? I wouldn't put really so much emphasis on that. I believe that we have been good at cost control, and we have decided to cut out some employees given the pandemic and some companies affected by that. It's not like we will hire them all back as soon as we see some improvements. That won't happen, I think. I think what I expect in the next year is also that we see some improvement in top line and business volume that will address that. Of course, yes, we will get some SG&A back, but I don't think that effect will be significant, really. I think we see some. I don't see that will affect our margins to a large extent. Really, I think you theoretically could argue that that will be the case. I think the improvement in volume and the gross margins and our gross contributions will be strong as well in the next year. All right. Just another question on, can you just quantify in very broad terms your exposure to electric infrastructure transmission business? What are you hearing from those companies in terms of long-term planning, long-term dialogues with their clients? Is there any sense of a long-term shift in demand? Lots going on, obviously, on a very high level in that area. Yeah. I think we are very well positioned when that is happening. I think around 60%, 70% of the business we have within Mechatronics is related to that type of happening in society. We also have other businesses that are also affected by that. That I think is a very strong platform for us to build, and especially now when we've also made the additional acquisition into that area. I think that's a good place to be. Given the discussions we have and what we see is that, of course, there is a lot of discussions on both the need for more electricity to be produced, but also the imbalances in the systems and in the networks that also needs the networks to be further developed. That I think is very promising. When you look into what customers and different type of expansion plans, you find different things. All in all, I think the growth will be pretty good in those areas. As you know [crosstalk]. Rather stronger than weaker than it has been really. Okay, no step change which you can identify as yet, is that correct? I understand. There's been some articles around that lately, and there you could see basically a step change. We have not really been able to verify that in the discussions we've had with customers. I think that's the politician starting out in that area, and then it will happen along the way, but it maybe takes a year or two more before we're there. Okay. Thank you. Okay. More questions? Anyone else? Okay. As always, me and Kristina are available here during today. Please, if you would like, give us a call, and we will try to give you a brief interview or a short one-on-one if you'd like, if you have some additional questions. Don't hesitate if you'd like. Thank you for listening in, and have a good day.
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