Good morning, everyone. It's 10:00 A.M., welcome to the Lagercrantz presentation of our Q3 report. Me speaking is Jörgen Wigh, CEO, together with me here, Peter Thysell as well, our CFO. Welcome everyone. We as we normally do have this as a phone conference. The presentation we would like to go over and the slides we would like to go over, you can download them from our homepage. It's lagercrantz.com is the homepage address, you can download the presentation there. We would like for everyone to be able to follow, we would like, I would like to so I try to highlight along the way which page we're on. You can find the presentation there and also the report, of course, that we released here this morning. A very strong Q3 in our fiscal year, ending the last of December. We had a very strong growth still, also some good cash flows and also some the acquisitions came in very nicely for us. It's a record high EBT for the group here in Q3. We will as always go over the presentation, and it's basically three parts. I make a small introduction for those that are new to the group. After that, we will go over the numbers, and after that, we will highlight a few things that we feel are of importance when we move forward. Finally, we also open up the Q&A. We will mute you all so that you are muted along the way so that we don't disturb each other. But if you'd like to interrupt and if you would like to pose questions at the end, it's star six to mute and unmute yourselves. We will all mute you guys in the beginning here so that we don't disturb each other. We will jump right into the presentation. Just to give you the first overview of the group, we have on page number two, you can see the overview of the whole group. We are a tech group, with trying really to build a company consisting of our subsidiaries and build a group around sort of B2B tech. All our companies achieving some type of leading position in expanding niches. We're really looking for growth niches in different parts of the market. We have a high dependency upon electrification and infrastructure, but also a number of other niches, product, and tech niches that we are present in our especially our Niche Products and International divisions. The tech sector division is the last one, where we have more of sort of technology security companies, which is safety and security type products, which is also a growth area for us. All our companies are offering value-creating technologies in different expanding niches, either through own products or through sort of leading suppliers, doing more of value-adding distribution for those type companies and some system integration. Some 73% of what we're doing currently is proprietary product companies, and products that we sort of provide for our customers. Our revenues are approaching SEK 7 billion, SEK 6.8 billion here, in the moving 12 months, and we are some 2,400 employees. We really focus on having strong subsidiaries, we are some 15 to 18 people working centrally. The rest of the people are working out in the different subsidiaries. We are strong believers of decentralization. Each of the profit centers are working independently based on some goals and some strategies that they have in each of the subsidiaries. They're all sort of then gathered in these five divisions that you can see here on page two. Over to the right, you can see also where we are present geographically. You can see that the Nordics are a strong foothold for us, especially Sweden and Denmark. Norway and Finland, slightly smaller. We're then also moving out in the world, establishing ourselves in sort of Northern Europe. We have now some existing businesses in the U.K., in Germany and the Benelux, and a number of other places as well. You can also see that we are moving more towards more and more exports along the way. You can see that we have footholds also in other parts of the world outside the Nordics and Northern Europe. You can see that goes over to the right there with China and the U.S. as some examples, and India as well. We are a very acquisition-driven company. M&A is a very central part of our business model. We are concluding some six to eight M&A transactions per year, and it's been slightly more here lately, which is also affecting the numbers. We have been quite acquisitive here in our fiscal year of this year. We were part of the Bergman & Beving group up until 2001, where, we've been separately listed as an own company on our own name here since 2001. We've been around for some 23 years or whatever, 22, 23 years, along the way. That's an introduction to the group. We move on to page number three, looking at the Q3 report. We posted yet another good, very strong quarter, our record high, really. You can see how that evolved over time here on page number three. You can see that we started out with some low margins way back in 2007, 2006, 2007, 2008. Since then we've been moving up and you can also see that we now posted them yet another strong quarter. Moving 12 months, EBT is now about SEK 900 million. As those of you who know us, is that we're aiming for the SEK 1 billion here, and we are on the way to reaching that goal. We said we would do it in five years, now we basically, we're basically close to doing it in two or 2.5 years or something like that, really, along the way here. That's a very, I think, a very encouraging and also we feel enthusiastic about that goal and the achievements we've had so far. Moving over to page number four. Yeah, we posted our numbers here this morning, and you can see we try to also give you some idea of how we feel the business climate has been. We feel that during the quarter here, the market situation remained very favorable for most of our businesses in our main markets. It's a lot of talk of downturn, and we are prepared. We have made our contingency plans and stuff like that in all our subsidiaries, but we haven't sort of, in, put those in effect in more than maybe five to 10 companies or so. It's, I think we still feel that the order intake is strong and good in most businesses. We feel that we are still sort of perceiving the market to be very good for us. In Q3, we had a strong revenue growth on some 38%, of which 10 was organic then, and 23 through acquisitions, and then we also had a positive currency effect of some 5%. We believe that our strong and very broad focus with the sort of many different end customer segments is a very strong point for us at the moment. We also have quite a lot of dependency up on the electrification, the infrastructure, and some specialized products in different niches that we feel is favorable for us at the moment. We feel that we are really working with some strong mega trends in society, and those are beneficial for us at the moment. That's also holding up the numbers really good here in the quarter. We believe that the order intake is still good, and especially so we've seen here during the quarter within the TecSec and International divisions. We saw a slightly lower growth rate, but from very high levels, but not really significant, and still holding up very well for us. We also said here that the order intake was, during the quarter, was at the same level as the net revenues. The order book was basically impacted during the quarter. It didn't decline, and it didn't build, but it was impacted during the quarter. That's for comparable units then. That I think is also a strong point given the market is how the sort of the discussion is around the general market conditions. We also here down below, you can see also that, I mean, we have the, I'll come back to that later, but that's around our aim to have 75% proprietary product, and we see that improved a little bit further here to 73%. You can see also to the right there that our revenues, the exports are becoming more and more important to us, and you can see that's also sort of that development is continuing in the right direction, like we would the way we would like to have it. We move over to the figures that we have on page number five and looking at the Q2. As said, the net revenues increased by 38%, and the organic growth part of that was 10%. The EBITDA increased by 43%, which we feel is a very strong number. As I said, I think ahead of most of the consensus, which was a strong point. We had an EBIT margin improved slightly with 16.6%, a very strong growth level, we feel. We are of course working intensely to keep that level. I think with the acquisitions we made and also the sort of setup we have with the different businesses that we have a very strong portfolio of companies in that range and above that range. That, so it's a strong one for us as well. The organic growth in the EBITDA was 20%, where we felt that many of the companies, especially in Electrify and TecSec, contributed the most to that figure. A very strong one was also the cash flows, which was for the from operations, which was the SEK 439 million during the quarter. We had the tendency to build some safety stock earlier on, and I think we are about to sort of deal with that. We see that some lead times coming down in some in-instances, and we see that we also are freeing up some cash flows along the way here, and that's affecting that number. Also of course from profits is also a huge part of the cash flows. In the report, you can see the full cash flow analysis. Profit after financial items then increased by 31%. We had a currency conversion effect on some foreign currency loans that was somewhat higher here and during the quarter, which affected the growth rate of the profit on financial items. The weak Swedish krona has affected our some foreign currency loans that we had. And that's also part of that number. The profit after tax then increased by 34%, and the Return on Equity was very strong at 30% as opposed to 29 last year. The equity ratio improved here during the quarter from some 30% last quarter to 35, and compared to 36 last year. The strong cash flows, and a few other things also affected the equity ratio here along the way. We move over to page number six and you see the nine months, and you can see that the Q3 was slightly stronger than the nine months. If you compare the slides between each other here, the net revenues increased by 33% and organic growth is 10% also for the full 9-month period. The EBITDA then, increased by 37% and the EBITDA margin of 16.6% for the full 9 months report. The EBITDA then, the organic growth in the EBITDA was 19%. Cash flows strong also for the nine months, but it really picked up here in the last quarter so that's really done for the better for us. Yeah, you can see the rest here. It's important to also highlight that we posted some seven acquisitions during the nine months period that add about SEK 1 billion in phase. We have made a few slightly larger acquisitions, especially the PcP, but also a few ones, the high margin ones that if they add to the whole group. Here lately, just before Christmas, we acquired Tykoflex, which is also an important acquisition for the Electrify division. That's really a good thing from us, we feel as well. We, I'll come back to those along the way. The earnings per share is currently at the SEK 3.54 per share, as opposed to SEK 2.80 for the full fiscal year last year. That's also moving definitely in the right direction. The equity ratios and the I covered already. Looking a little bit at the outcome by division on page number seven, you could see that we have some five really strong divisions. We, it's very strong in Electrify, TecSec, Niche Products and International. It's the Control divisions that is lagging behind a little bit. They are struggling with a couple of companies that are more related to the building sector and some parts there, but also experience some shortages from suppliers of different types of components still in some parts of that in that business. But otherwise, the Control, many of the companies did it very well in the Control division. And you can see a very good healthy EBITDA margin in the quarter there for the Control division as well. We see a couple of strong companies there, and especially the Radonova business is strong here during the wintertime, and you can see that affecting the strong EBITDA in the last quarter of Control. You can see that also down there that we have five divisions with really strong and healthy margins, all of them. I think that's also a very strong good thing about Lagercrantz that we have a strong portfolio of many different companies and a very broad-based sort of set up in the group. Looking at page eight, we have some more comment by division. I mean, looking at the Electrify, they posted a very strong quarter. The revenues were up 26%. The EBITDA was up 31%, and the EBITDA margin of 16.4%, an improvement there as well. We can see that the stronger and the bigger part of the, of the companies are doing it very well with the Elpress and Earcaps thing posting very strong quarters and also QB had a very strong quarter. We have a couple of others moving in the other direction, which Wide Wire, for instance, that we also are working with. But all in all, a very strong quarter from Electrify. The Tykoflex acquisition came in here and affecting only the December numbers. That will also be something that we look forward to working with that company within the group moving forward. We saw a slightly decline in the, in the growth rate here in the last part of the, of the, of the quarter for the Electrify. So far it's been good here during this quarter. It's not a big thing, but still somewhat slower here in some aspects in the Electrify division. The Control division, as already said, is the one where that didn't increase their profits in the quarter compared to last year. Some units are still doing it very well with Direktronik and Precimeter especially, while Radonova is performing at the same level as last year. We had originally expected some growth there, but the somewhat slower growth, I think that's also customers are more sort of being more careful with sort of doing that type of thing and measuring right now at the moment, and therefore holding back a little bit, but still on a very good level at the same pace as last year, really. The recent acquisitions came in very nicely. We have a couple of other companies within Control that are more struggling, especially the lighting business we have in Norway, for instance, and in Denmark are struggling a little bit. We also see, yeah, in other parts of the business that we're struggling a little bit, but still on a very good level, I think, in the Control division as well. The TecSec division on the next page nine, is on the other hand, doing it very well for us. They're basically doubling both their revenues and their EBITDA during the quarter as opposed to last year. Here we have made some significant acquisitions. Also underneath the underlying organic sales, both sales and EBITDA growth has been very strong here during the quarter for the TecSec division. The larger units, the CW Lundberg, the Arkon, the ISG Nordic, and Frich, they brought a very strong organic sales growth. Also some of the others, they did very well with the COBS and Idesco. Also the recent acquisitions came in very nicely for us with the PcP, ARAS, and Bjurenwalls AB. Within the Niche Products division, we posted some revenue growth of 33% and an EBITDA of 22%. A slightly lower organic growth rate during the quarter. I don't think that there is some things that has been working better or worse for some of the companies there, so it's not really business cycle related, I will say. Somewhat slower there, but good hope of things to catch up going forward here. Especially strong development we had in within Rockwood and Truxor and Profsafe and PSD. Niche Products is a very strong division for us. It's good to see that they have an EBITDA margin of 19% and a good revenue growth as well. Last but not least is the International division, which had a very strong quarter and is doing it much better along the way. It's posted revenue growth of 28% and an EBITDA growth of 38%. That's really some strong numbers coming there. We see some good margin improvements across many businesses really, and especially the marine businesses with the Libra Norway and ISIC in Denmark and also the Tebul that we acquired here during the fall in Finland, posted very strong quarters. The German Schmitzt echnik and ACTE companies, which you have in a number of markets, did very well for us. Also the E-Tech business in the U.K., is really growing at the moment, which is good to see. A very strong quarter for many of our divisions, and some highlights there. That was what I had to say about the quarter, really. We move into looking a little bit further ahead. I think it's important these three things are to highlight. Of course, the Lagercrantz, the goal that we have here on page number 10, the Lagercrantz towards the SEK 1 billion, is a key thing for us. We are really keen on delivering on that, and we are well on the way to doing it before the timeline, really. Here, this is something we launched now a year, yeah, 21 months ago, really, where we would like to sort of made a reorganization of the group. We set targets, a little bit higher ambitions along the way, and we also declare that we are really moving into more sustainability and finding different type of product segments, different types of customer segments, where we see some underlying structural growth, also to create a more sustainable society, really. We would also like to increase the capacity within the M&A, which we also, I think we've been delivering quite nicely on. And to highlight what we have done really looking at page 11, you can see that we have really been looking at growing faster, doing more acquisitions along the way, but also creating a better organic growth than we've had looking a few years back. In the last couple of years, we've had a stronger organic growth with this new focus allows, and of course, also benefiting from what we believe is a very strong market or has been a very strong market along the way. Setting ambitions a little bit higher with the five to eight acquisitions per year, and really delivering on the Return on Equity of more than 25% along the way. On page 12, you could see the new five divisions that we've had since now, almost two years then, with the electrification and the Electrify really focusing on that area with a number of interesting companies very well positioned within that sort of mega trend. especially Elpress are among the bigger ones. Elkapsling is among the bigger ones. Now we've also then added the Tykoflex here as well as an important company within the Electrify division. We see the Control divisions, which is focusing on measuring and controlling different type of technologies, with sensors, communication solutions, and lighting control that we have within the Control division. That is the smallest division we have, but we definitely have the ambition and see good opportunities for growing there, both organically, but also through we're also looking for more acquisitions within the Control division. The TecSec division has been growing quite nicely here since we launched this, so it's becoming one of the bigger divisions we have with safety and security products or solutions addressing that need in society with some really important and interesting companies that we are gathering in that division. We have the Niche Products division also doing it very well for us, have been around since 2012. Doing it been a very strategic important move for the group to do that. That we're also now translating into what the International division is doing. The Niche Products division is doing it in some building sort of different type of clusters from different areas within the Niche Products area, some Niche Products companies really, proprietary products all along. We're planning to do the same thing in International division in some new markets, especially addressing the U.K. at the moment, but also looking into Germany and other markets as well. We have strong positions in Denmark and Norway as well. Those are the five divisions we launched. We're looking at page number 13. I think it's also important to see that we have a very strong portfolio of companies. I usually try to highlight how many units, how many profit centers or units that we have within each bracket here. This is the benchmarking we're doing from the least to the best to the worst, really, in terms of return on sales or net margin, EBT margins that we see. You can see that's how that's evolved this year compared to the same period last year. You can see that we are moving up with more having more 18 as opposed to 13 units, about 20%, 12 as opposed to 11 units last year in between 15-20. I think we are building a stronger and stronger portfolio along the way, moving up more companies to blue here. That's really great. Of course, that also has to do with the acquisitions with the companies we're looking to acquire, that we preferably would like to have them up well above 10 or above the 15% that we have as an ambition for the full group, really. One thing, looking at page number 14, you can see the aim of having 75% proprietary products, and you can see how that's evolved over time, and you can see that we are currently at the 73% as opposed to 70% here, some nine months ago. We are basically approaching the 75%, and we are currently discussing what to do in the next phase. Probably we will aim even a little bit higher here looking going forward with the proprietary products, which is a very specific ambition for us. We see that margins are higher and growth opportunity in export, for instance, are better with proprietary products. Therefore we would, that's a key strategic ambition for us to grow the portfolio of proprietary products within the group. Last but not least is the acquisitions. We have built our organization slightly. We are moving more to in a decentralized way, working with this in the divisions along the way. That's very been very important for us. Here in 2022, the calendar year, we have acquired some nine companies you can see there, adding some SEK 1.2 billion in revenues. At current previously, I said SEK 1 billion, that is in a nine-month sort of period, so that's during the fiscal year. For the last 12 months, it's been SEK 1.2 billion then, as you can see there from page number 15. We normally put together some data sheet for each of the companies we acquire. Looking a little bit on those, you can see on page number 16, the Tykoflex. The Tykoflex is our most recent acquisition. It's a leading supplier of high-quality solutions for optical fiber joints and enclosures, which is a, it's important acquisition for our Electrify division, with some annual revenues of SEK 140 million. You can see they made SEK 24 million here in 2022. not fully closed the year yet, but that's the way it look. That is the calendar year then that we also announced in our, in our report here. A very strong company coming in and doing it very well, and will be an important part of the Electrify division. I also like to repeat, on page 17, you could see the PcP Corporation, the fact sheet for that. That is the company that we acquired here this summer. This is the biggest acquisition we've made in within Lagercrantz in recent years, they're very important to us along the way. They're still doing it very well. They have a slightly slower winter period, otherwise, they're according to plan. The ambition we have here is to move them to the 15% EBITA, which, you can see they have not entirely reached historically, but we are really having a strong plan for delivering that. They started out in during the high season, they're already at that level, while in the low season, they're slightly below that level. But still doing it very well for us. On page 18, I also like to repeat the Door & Joinery Solutions company we acquired in the U.K. This is the first lean acquisition we made in the U.K. We as, we have said already, we have put some feet on the ground in the U.K., looking at quite a lot into the U.K. market and see lots of opportunities there. We would like to move ahead there as well. The Door & Joinery we acquired here this summer is coming beautifully in the group with some strong numbers along the way, doing it very well. I'd also like to repeat on page 19, the Waterproof Diving International, which is the company we acquired here this summer, also doing it very well. Was highlighted here in the comments earlier and came in very nicely for us. On page 20, we have the Tebul, which came here in September. A strong Finnish company, high margin, and doing it very well for us. Very good start within the group. Just a reminder of the acquisitions we've made. To conclude, I think I posted a very strong quarter. We had some good organic growth. We had some pickup in our EBITA margins doing it very well for us, both organically and through acquisitions. We also had a very strong cash flow. We also then posted some 7 acquisitions here during the fiscal year, adding very, very nicely to the, to what our performance really and coming in very nicely, most of them. Looking at the last 12 months figures, you can see how that's evolved, and you can see how we have on page 21 as a wrap up here, you can see how that our current status and how we're, how we're working with these things. With all that, I think we'll try to open up for questions. To do that then you, and do the Q&A. To do that, I think you should need to press star six on your phones, and will you unmute yourself, and then you can return to mute by pressing star six again, I think. Anyone would like to start? Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yes. This is Max Bacco from SEB. Thank you for taking the question. As usual, congratulations on another very strong report here. A few questions from me. First regarding the cash flow, as you said, and as we could see, it was very strong, and a nice release from working capital. Should we expect a similar pattern going ahead the following quarters where you basically get the boost from working capital? Yeah. Well, we are struggling and working with that. I mean, we would like to tie up as little as possible. Some quarters then it's, yeah, it depends on how we sort of invoice in the last month of the quarter and stuff like that. It's not entirely predictable from a group level what's happening. I think we've had some strong cash flows along the way. I think we see a clear tendency that the safety stock is coming down, that we don't need to sort of have the large safety stocks due to the long lead times from our suppliers as the sort of delivery times come down a bit. I think we could expect some better cash flows. I think it's also good to highlight that, I mean, if we see a more of a not as strong growth, and things, and even if the market even went down a little bit, usually what happens in these companies, ourselves and our peers as well, I think, is that cash flows is then usually very strong. That, if that would happen, I think that this cash flows are usually very strong. We saw that in the 2008, 2009, and we saw that in the pandemic, and we saw that in a couple of instances, looking back. I think our intention of course to keep the growth up and that's what we will see. The safety stock thing will help our cash flows going forward. Okay. That's right. Perfect. The next question, you touched upon this during the presentation, but what have you seen so far here in January, and the first quarter or the first month during your Q4? Any change to Q3, or is it the same in terms of the moment and so on? We think that things are moving along quite nicely, and that the pace is keeping up. Okay, perfect. The next one, I know this is quite tricky for you, but in the organic growth of 10%, what is your best guess, the split between price and volume? I think that we've earlier said that the price component is probably around the 10%. I think that that is coming down as we see the comparables from versus last year is coming up a little bit. I don't think the price component no longer is as high as 10%. I think most of it, the majority or maybe 7% or so I would is my guess is price. Okay, perfect. Then, one, two final questions. As you said, Niche Products, the segment, I mean, it had the lowest growth, organic growth of the segment. Did I understand you correctly that you might expect a pickup here in the coming quarters? I think the companies that we have within the Niche Products division are very strong. I don't expect them to sort of start to do worse, or I think that it's a matter of how things turn out this specific quarter or so. I don't want to sort of predict anything going forward, I'm not worried about the companies or the market positions or how things are run at that division. Okay, perfect. The final one, I couldn't find it in the report, but what was the organic growth in the Control segment? I think it was slightly minus. Okay. - 6, - 6%, yeah. Okay. Yes. Perfect. That was all from me. Thank you very much. Thank you. Hi, can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Yeah. Great. Victor Hansen, Nordea here. Good morning, Jörgen and Peter. First question here. Good morning. Yeah. You mentioned that your Q3 order intake was similar to sales. Are there any specific segments that sticks out here, in terms of the order intake? Maybe a follow-up, I'm also wondering what visibility you have, how long is your backlogs? I think it's the ones we've commented really. The Electrify are doing it well in terms of order intake. We also see the TecSec division doing it quite nicely. We also see the International, especially, also with some good order intake here along the way. I think we've highlighted that a little bit. The visibility we normally have is two to three months. It varies. I mean, it's 70 different businesses, right? It varies quite a lot. I think we have a number of businesses that have order backlogs maybe six to nine months ahead, so they have good visibility, while others have basically two to three weeks. On average, I think the average would be two to three months. Okay, understood. Here on cost inflation, I'm wondering what's happening to input prices here? Are they still rising, maybe at a slower pace? Are you able to raise the prices fully or is it getting harder? Basically is there an input-output mismatch in the quarter margin-wise? Not really. We are really keen on... We love working with pricing and revenue management in our different businesses, and that we do every day. I think it's about timing. Sometimes it's about when you can raise prices and when price raises take effect in the businesses that we're running. I think we have compensated largely. I think we have a few more things to fix in a couple of companies. We also see some prices coming, I mean, stabilizing. I think the general sort of... As you're sort of indicating, I think that it will be increasingly difficult as consumers and others, sort of customers and eventually B2B are struggling to compensate and raise prices along the way. It was easier a year ago, but that is also true. Yeah. Yeah. On the same theme here, given the price hikes year-over-year on a flat order intake, that should mean slightly lower volumes sequentially. I'm wondering here, this should impact your operating leverage negatively, or how should we think about this? Yeah, to some extent that's true. I think the amount of really fixed costs that you can't adjust along the way is very low in Lagercrantz as a group. It's not like I see that as a big problem. We will compensate and work with adjusting along the way. I think we have I think it's been quite a lot of things to adjust here in the last few years. You could see from the numbers that we've been quite good at doing that, those type of adjustments along the way. If we need to reduce fixed cost, then normally you could do that, even it might take a little bit longer time to do that. Yeah. Yeah. The share of really fixed cost is not very high. Can you give a number? Not really. It varies quite a lot. It depends on how you define things. Generally speaking, I think we have been very good at adjusting and compensating in and keeping gross margins and keeping costs at a fixed costs at a reasonable level. Yeah. My final question here, if we stay on this topic. You reduced the headcount quite a lot to cope with the financial crisis, a lot of years back. I'm wondering, will you use more of the same if we would see a scenario where volumes would start to decline here? What other levels will you pull? Yeah. How are you preparing for a recession? What action will you take? Yeah. I, I think that is our most it was and is still our most important lever. Yeah, that's what is necessary. I think we are all very cautious about recruiting new people. We are cautious about building costs or, or that we do just from listening to what, what the market or, or really what the general climate is talking about. But if we were to run into problems or, or that we see volumes deteriorating, that is definitely an important lever. I think other levers is of course to negotiate better with suppliers, negotiate better with suppliers, or it might be sort of reducing office space or, yeah, a lot of things that goes on in our companies when we see the necessity for that. So far we don't really have that as a big thing for us. Thanks a lot. That's all for me. Thank you. Do we have someone else? Hello, can you hear me? Yeah. Hi, Jörgen. Niklas Sävås here, Redeye. Hello. I want to ask you about the really strong cash flow you had, both operating cash flow, but also the financing cash flow with the optimistic move you did selling your own shares over the market. I just want to ask, how did you reason doing that move? Sorry, how did we reach? How did you reason when you, when you decided to do that? Yeah. I think we've back in the days, we've owned those we own our own shares since many years. To a large extent, they are used as a hedge for our incentive programs. Along the way, our incentive programs have been smaller, and therefore, we have some extra shares that we felt that we didn't need. In order for us to, yeah, gather some firepower and really feel strong that we can be active in the M&A market, we felt that it would be a good thing to just sell those shares off, which we did here during the quarter. That is affecting our capacity, and I think that's a very strong thing. We have been quite acquisitive here during these 9 months, with many acquisitions, but also slightly bigger. I think it's good now that we have some more firepower and a stronger balance sheet that we can work from in going forward. We have an equity ratio of some 35% that increased by 5 percentage point here in the last quarter. That's I think it's a good sign here, moving forward that we have some increased firepower along the way. This is not something we will do. This was a one-off. This was, as you said, more opportunistic. This is not really something that we will do a lot of, but, I think it's also good to sort of, yeah, take good care of your balance sheet really. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Having spoken to a few brokers, we hear that I mean, at least they say that there are quite a few quality companies for sale, but that the acquirers are getting more hesitant, so it takes more time to close deals, which may be good because as I understood from my anthology for a while, some processes with brokers have been too short. Maybe can you give us a favor on how the situation is currently? We believe that the situation is favorable. I think that, I mean, it was picking up, the competition was picking up, the speed and the processes were picking up here a year ago, when everything happened very fast and things was moving on very quickly and maybe, yeah, the DD processes were very short and stuff like... Very sort of unheard of from us, really. We'd like to be diligent, we'd like to go over things, we'd like to be well aware of what we're buying. So in that, a year ago, we felt that it was difficult to close deals. We also felt that the price tag was very, very high. We put aside a few processes where we felt that the price has gone too high. Here during the summer, after really since March or so, we feel that the price tags has come down a little bit, maybe a point or two. We also feel that It's a lot more sort of seriousness about sort of that we, the buyers want to be very sort of aware of what they're buying, and therefore, the due diligence processes are more sort of aligned with what we normally have been doing and are doing. Therefore, I think the market for us as a good solid owner Has been very appreciated. We feel that also the sellers, that they want someone that is very long-term, that they know what they're selling their company to, and therefore, that we will be around for a very long time, and that's usually good arguments for us being in a favorable spot and a preferred buyer. I think the market has sort of developed in a favorable way for us. We feel that there are a lot of companies out there that we feel are in sort of for sale and that are all interesting for us. Therefore, I also think it's good that we have a good, strong balance sheet that we can work with. We will be very picky. We will be very selective in finding the right, the right sort of companies to really acquire. We won't sort of. We won't run around and buy a lot of companies at present. We will be very selective along the way here. Perfect, Jörgen. That's all for me, and congratulations to the great quarter again. Yeah. Thank you very much. Anyone else? Yes, on Handelsbanken. Luana? Hello. I have a few questions. Firstly, going into sort of the margin development in each of the divisions, you explained quite clearly on what happened in the Control division. Could you give us any additional comments on what happened in the Niche Products segment on the margins as they're slightly down year-over-year? Yeah. I think it's important to highlight that the Niche Products division consists of a number of companies, but it's five to eight really clusters, different dependencies that we see in different parts of the business. I think most of them are doing very well. But they also have some different numbers. It's also a matter of mix within the Niche Products division of the different companies. What we've seen here during the quarter is that we are struggling a bit with Westmatic, which is doing it very well here in the Nordics, but is struggling more in the U.S. We also see that, and they're holding up very well, but that has affected the numbers here during the quarter. We've also had a couple of others, also, a couple of others did very well. Wapro, for instance, and a couple of others did very well. It's usually a mixed thing. I think also that what has been done within the Niche Products division is I think we have a very interesting portfolio of companies, but not all succeeded here during the quarter. Okay. That's very clear. Thank you. If we go over to the financial cost, of course you have the currency effect, that you've written about. Yeah. Basically, if we look into the financial costs, they are increasing, and, even as your balance sheet is looking a bit more healthy this quarter than last quarter, what's your sort of thinking on the debt level for the group sort of midterm, now that we're seeing interest rates going up and so on? I think that, since we are acquiring these smaller companies and they have usually a very strong performance, I think we can. We have a broad-based group in many different markets and segments. I think we could live with some debt and debt level. I think we are currently at, what is it, 1.9 or something like that, the net debt to EBITDA. I think we can move at least to 3.5 or so before we feel that we are fully, that we, that, yeah, that we are more reluctant to go further really. What normally happens in this company is that, and that you probably can see from our peers' development as well, I think we have a strong underlying cash flow. What normally happens then is that we wait or more sort of peaky for a quarter or two, and then the cash flows catch up, and then we can move on from there. That's normally what happens. I think currently we have a very strong balance sheet. As you pointed out, it's, I think with the moves we made here during the quarter has improved that situation. I think we have good firepower now if we feel that the market is for acquiring more companies are there really. We are looking at some nice opportunities and promising opportunities here at present really. Okay. That's very clear. Thank you. My last question is basically relating to the PcP business, because my assumption is that sort of a big part of their costs should be related to steel. Maybe if you could sort of describe what's happening on their margins as we've seen the sort of steel volatility in the last couple of quarters. Because some companies have been lagging quite a lot and should expect sort of a margin boost as prices have now stabilized, and we have some other companies that have experienced sort of the opposite. So maybe if you could sort of give us an idea of what we should expect on the sort of margins volatility going forward. I think that PCP is in our world at least, a relatively big company, and they are present in some, what is it, six or eight different markets. I mean, they have their headquarters and their main business in Denmark, but they're also present in Norway and in the Benelux, in Sweden and in the U.K. Therefore we are sort of the picture is also affected quite a lot about currency exchange rates and stuff like that. It's also affecting their. Yeah. Their Talking about steel prices, I think the raw materials have been stabilizing or even declining a little bit in terms of raw material prices, which is in our favor of course. but then again also I think the customers are also expecting that to have an effect on the end product really or the product we're selling. It's a little bit of a mixed picture really. I think What we see from a total level, it's been very stable. The pluses and the minuses has really leveled out along the way here. It is excitable and therefore a fairly or all in all a fairly stable business. Okay, perfect. Thank you. That's all for me. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Hi, Marcus here from Pareto. I have a question, a couple of questions. The first one is on the benchmarking slide. Very helpful, so thank you for that. I know that you have four companies at the bottom end of the range. And then the second range has gone from one to... Well, from four to one. The unchanged and the below 3%, first of all, are those unchanged? Second, is it kind of how do you plan to get these up? Because you know how that could affect the whole mix of the portfolio companies. sorry, what was the first question? Yeah. What has changed? Yeah. The first question is, you have four companies in the bottom end of the range. Those were margins of below 3%. Yeah. And that- Right. That number has been unchanged from last year. It's four last year, four this year. Yeah. My first question is it the same companies that are in that bracket? Yeah. That is there something structural in those companies which keeps margins low, or is it possible to get them up? That's my first question. Yeah. Let's start with that one then. I think three out of the four are the same. To be specific. I think that normally what we do is that we see some. We are struggling, yeah, but we also see some good opportunities to change that. At least two of them are definitely better off this year than they were last year, but they're still in the same bracket. I think we are really taking good action in those companies, and we see some promising development here lately in a couple of companies. There is one here in Sweden that is, they made a write-off last year and that is sort of keeping them in that bracket. Lately they've been doing it quite much better, as an example. Mm-hmm. The next bracket, the 3%-6%, same question. That number has gone from one to four. Is it also something temporary that you think you can get these up? Yeah. And I think a couple of those that are in there are also affected by the downturn. There are. Mm-hmm. we see some downturn in that type of company, and that is usually where we have the plan B, in working right now. Okay, okay. excellent. My, my second question is? I think it's good to know about that. I mean, we are not patient with underperforming underperformers. I think. We are definitely working with these things and taking measures and changing things, changing business ideas, changing management or downsizing or restructuring or whatever. We're doing different sort of measures in different companies. We are not the patient kind that live with this. I also think it's really important for you guys to realize that if you have a group of 70 companies, you will always have someone that is below the mean earnings, right? Yeah, of course. Of course. Also. It could also have a quite a big impact if you manage to turn around the ones in the lowest bracket, it can have a quite big impact on the total, so to speak. Yeah. hence my question. To be- Yeah ... to be also specific, most of these, both in these brackets, we don't have any big companies there. They're smaller companies, all of the eight that you see there in those two brackets. Okay. Okay. Great. My second question is, I mean, you have a focus on... Or your biggest areas which you service is Northern Europe. There is a lot of talk about the change of supply chains and how they are moving home, and you have onshoring, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Are we starting to see some of this actually materializing? Is it something that you have also noticed in your companies? Also in this area. Yes, we have. We see that customers are more sort of more interested in local production. That we had many years back where everyone basically looked for suppliers in foreign countries or Far East, really. Basically, just by being local, you were at a disadvantage. I think those times are past us. Mm-hmm. Perfect. Excellent. Thank you very much. Okay. Someone else? Hello? Can you hear me? All right. Yeah. Okay, good. Yes, we can. Okay. Thank you. This is Karl Bokvist at ABG. Good morning. My first one is just on the organic earnings growth. I appreciate the transparency here and an impressive number. I was just curious, is it mainly about you getting leverage on volumes, or is it that you have mix changes over companies with higher margins growing the strongest organically? It's a little bit of both. When we look into our portfolio, it's usually at that we see that some companies are doing it very well, and building with both top-line growth, being very sort of affecting bottom line quite nicely. Here we basically had it in Electrify and especially in Electrify and in TecSec. Those divisions were sort of had some really strong performance performers here. Understood. The negative organic growth in Control, how do you view this and your sense of, you know, if it was mainly related to particular challenges in the quarter or if it's a weaker organic environment for the companies as a whole, and also related to that component shortages still remain in that division, I believe you wrote? How should we think about these headwinds, so to say, going forward? Yeah. We are definitely dealing with that as well. but, to be fair, I think it is. It, it's not like it's just a quarterly thing. I think it's been going on for a couple of quarters and probably will take a couple of quarters before we fix this as well. I think, but it depends also how the market develops and, and how different businesses are doing it. we see some improvements in some businesses, but we also see some challenging times in a couple of others, especially the lightning business in Norway and, and in Denmark. They, they are struggling a bit there. Understood. My final one is just on Niche Products. They still continue to grow. Organic growth rates have come down a bit. Do you believe it's mainly related to the division, increasingly facing tougher comparable figures or that you've actually seen a weakening demand environment? No, I think it has to be comparables and a couple of units that didn't really succeed here this quarter. As said earlier, I think the portfolio in Niche Products I feel very comfortable with. Thank you. That's all for me. Thank you very much. Okay. As normal, I think we will round off there. If someone is not really urged to have a few more questions, otherwise we'll round off there. Me and Peter are available over the phone if you have some one-on-one questions you would like to pose to us. Talk to you later if that's the case. Otherwise, we will talk later. Thank you very much for listening in. Thank you.