Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Investment AB Latour's year end report 2020. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen-only mode, and afterwards, there will be a question and answer section. Today, I'm pleased to present President and CEO, Johan Hjertonsson, and CFO, Anders Mörck. Speakers, please go ahead. Thank you. Welcome to Latour's call presenting the year-end results and the fourth quarter results. I'm joined here by Anders Mörck. We had a very strong quarter in our wholly-owned operations. We're right in the middle of the pandemic, and we're absolutely not over it yet, and we're still prepared to take further actions if needed as a general statement. Our group structure is a little bit changed since last time. We still have two major business lines with the wholly-owned operations and the investment portfolio. As you can see, we have added Latour Future Solutions to the wholly-owned operations, and I'll come back to that a little bit later in the presentation. I think we can go to the next slide then. If we talk about the investment portfolio, there's no major changes in the portfolio during the quarter. Earlier in the year, we divested 20% of our holding in Tomra, which gives us a shareholding of 21.1% in Tomra. We're still a solid main owner in Tomra and supporting Tomra success going forward. We have increased our investment in Fagerhult to 47.8%, which brings us back up to the level we had prior to the Egencia acquisition. Alimak we have increased slightly to 29.6%. The value development during the year was 9.1% compared to the SIXRX of 14.8%. I think that's a quite satisfying result, however, given the pandemic and the circumstances. The underlying development is good. Some of our businesses are struggling with net sales with an organic decline, but generally, the profits are protected very well. Until yesterday, portfolio value increased to 68.4 billion SEK, and the total amount so far this year is 0.5%, whereas SIXRX has increased 5.9%. We go to the next slide then. Where we have some comments on our wholly owned operations. I would say it's a year really marked by the pandemic with mixed pictures depending on geography and segment. We have put the employer safety first, which is absolutely the most important, and I think we managed quite well in that regard. We've also managed in continuing to build our businesses and protect the profits in our businesses. It's a very strong result, and I think it's due to dedicated management teams and committed employees and an overall very strong cost awareness that has given a strong profit development. You can see, we report a very strong quarter and a very strong full year in our wholly owned operations. In the quarter, total growth of net sales was 11%. Operating profit growth actually 37% to SEK 593 million, and the EBIT margin almost reached 15%, we came to 14.8%. On the full year, total growth of orders was 9%, net sales also 9%, and operating profit were grown 16% to well above SEK 2 billion, SEK 2,117,000,000. That very strong EBIT margin of 14.3%. We're very happy, and we're very proud of these figures, especially considering that we're right in the middle of the pandemic. We're very well positioned for future growth. Even though we've had high cost awareness, we have still continued our investments in product development, sales, and marketing to drive a sustainable growth agenda going forward. Sustainability and digitalization are very important aspects, and we have continued to increase the focus in these two areas. We have set sustainability KPIs in all of our wholly owned businesses. It's always on the board agenda. The same goes with digitalization. It's something we're highlighting and driving to a quite high extent. Furthermore, as I said in the beginning, we have launched Latour Future Solutions, which is a new investment initiative where we will do minority investments in the younger and smaller companies to help them drive and make the world greener, so to speak, and to help them grow both domestically and internationally. We provide, of course, capital, risk capital for these companies, but as important is also that we will provide our expertise and our network to support these companies going forward. I'm happy to announce that Pelle Mat is recruited as the new CEO of Latour Future Solutions. He is on board and in full swing. If we go to the next slide. We can talk about the acquisitions we did during the last year. We had a high acquisition activity in the fourth quarter. As you know, we slowed down the activity at the onset of the pandemic in March of last year. I'm very happy to say that we caught up quite strongly in the fourth quarter. In the fourth quarter, we acquired SLT, Schanze Lufttechnik, to Swegon with an annual net sales of about SEK 100 million. They supply diffusers, mainly in the German market. We signed an agreement to acquire VEGA to Latour Industries, an Italian company. It was finalized and closed in January of this year with an annual net sales of about SEK 200 million. As I said, it's an Italian designer and manufacturer of passenger interface systems and electronic systems for elevator and platform lifts. We also signed an agreement for Elsys to Bemsiq, and that was closed now in January, with an annual net sales of about SEK 50 million. They are a manufacturer and seller of LoRaWAN sensors for applications for smart building and cities. We also signed an agreement for Fristads, Kansas, Leijona to Hultafors Group, and it is expected to be finalized 1st of March or beginning of March with an annual net sales of SEK 1.2 billion. Fristads and Kansas and Leijona are leading professional workwear brands for a variety of end user segments. In total, we did eight acquisitions during the year, adding an annual net sales of almost SEK2.2 billion to Latour. Latour Future Solutions, we made an investment in Gaia BioMaterials during the quarter. They develop and manufacture biodegradable biomaterials from renewable sources to replace fossil-based plastics. Now in January, after the end of the quarter, we acquired VM Kompensator to Latour Industries. They're a Danish designer and manufacturer of compensator and expansion joints used in industrial applications. I'll come back a little bit later in the presentation, and now I'm very glad to hand over to our esteemed CFO, Anders Mörck. Over to you, Anders. Thank you so much, Johan. We go to the first business area for a few comments, which then is Caljan. There was a very good momentum for the e-commerce sector last year. The demand increased, and that is also a very good sign for 2021. Caljan had a very strong net sales and also excellent profit in the fourth quarter like they had in the third. There was a very strong second half of the year. We had an excellent profit margin in the fourth quarter of 21.8%. We have continued during the year to invest in Caljan's expansion. We have a new factory in Latvia and also established a factory in the U.S. that will be completed during 2021. Looking back at the first year together with Caljan, we are really happy what they made last year, and we can summarize the year with EUR 112 million in turnover and EBIT of around EUR 20 million, which is very good and over expectation. Thank you so much to our colleagues at Caljan for this delivery, so to say. We go to the next page, which then is Hultafors Group. Hultafors continued its excellent development in the fourth quarter, where we had good development for more or less all product areas and also all markets. In total, net sales grew by 20% in the quarter, of which 16% is organic growth. That is really impressive, and we can wonder, do they even feel there is a pandemic going on in this business area? We also had very good cost control in the company, combined with the high net sales, that contributes to a strong operating result and an operating margin of 17.4% in the last quarter. We have high focus on development of the sales organization and on marketing as well as product development and digitalization. That said, we welcome our new CEO, Martin Knobloch, to Hultafors Group, that puts the agenda for next year, I think when we have had this strong year in 2020. Very welcome and good luck, Martin, coming here. Finally, as Johan said before, Hultafors closed or signed the deal with Fristads, Kansas, Leijona recently, we hope to close the deal in the coming weeks going forward. We go to the next page, which is Latour Industries. We saw a continued recovery for most of the business units during the fourth quarter. In total we had flat growth in net sales. We can say that Bemsiq had an outstanding development of the business units with really good development both in net sales and profits. Good cost control contributes to a very good operating result with an operating margin of 12.3%. I think we can say that this is really impressive as well, because you should remember that Latour Industries was the business area that was the most hit by the pandemic, not least by their presence in Southern Europe, in Spain and Italy, and so on. Thank you very much everyone in Latour Industries for this contribution. We will continue to build the basis for future business areas and use Latour Industries as such an instrument. We also know that we are doing a lot of efforts in these smaller companies, which will lead to higher profitability going forward, as we have said before. The trend is important, and the trend is positive. We have also made acquisition of VEGA, Elsys, and VM Kompensator, as said by Johan before. We go to the next page and the next business area, which would be Nord-Lock. 2020 was a really challenging year for Nord-Lock. Both markets were down before the pandemic. We had the pandemic happening, also we have to fight with the currency because Nord-Lock is probably the most international company we have in the group with a high dependency on income in dollars and euros. It's very impressive to see that Asia Pacific during this year has continued to grow and showed a really good fourth quarter, and that have mitigated the effects from other markets somewhat. We have a few one-off costs during the quarter, and together with the currency effects, even though we have decreased in net sales, say that the underlying result for Nord-Lock in the fourth quarter actually was in the same level, adjusted then, of course, as last year, which is really impressive. This is not a company in crisis, but we had a little tougher situation last year. We stand still and stand strong going forward, and we see a lot of opportunities with Nord-Lock. We go to Swegon. That also was very much affected on top line by COVID-19. As before, there has been a mixed picture because they are represented in so many different geographies. Sweden developed very positively and also the business area residential. In total, net sales decreased by 6% in the quarter. Considering that, I think we can say that the operating margin during the decreased organic sales is really impressive, coming in at 11.6% compared to 9.9% last year. We can also say here on Swegon, they acquired Schanze Lufttechnik in the beginning of the fourth quarter, and we look forward to Swegon also going forward. Must say a big thank you to all business areas for what they contributed to Latour's total profit this year. We go to the next page, and we have the net asset value. As you can see, the net asset value increased by 13.7% during the year to SEK 153, and that can be compared to 14.8%, that was the development of SIXRX. When you look at this valuation, you should bear in mind that our valuation is just an indication of a prudent view of our value in a very difficult stock market where quality companies are rewarded with very, very high multiples that we have not reflected in our indicative valuation. I think we can say, and we can also see what have been achieved during the year, that we really think that our companies are quality companies. You could have many different views on the spread between normal valuation, if you want to use that word, and quality companies on the stock market have been so wide. It's really difficult to decide which multiple that should be the right one for our companies. Our share price at the end of December was SEK 200 per share, that corresponds to a premium to our net asset value of 31%. Yesterday, on February 11th, the net asset value was unchanged, SEK 153 per share. With the same comparison, the share price was SEK 196 and the premium was 28%. On the debt side, you can say that we had a very good cash flow at the end of the year, bringing down our net debt to SEK 4.6 billion from SEK 6 billion last quarter. In this context, we would also like to bring forward that we had received an official rating during the fourth quarter from Fitch, which put us on the level A-. For those who know about rating, that is a very good rating. We are very happy about that. The total net debt now corresponds to about 4% of the total market value of our investments, which is 2% lower than last reporting date. This brings us to the conclusion that we have a very good capacity to do new acquisitions and invest further in the growth of Latour going forward. Johan, thank you very much. I'll leave it back for the next picture and you once again. Thank you, Anders. Very good. Our financial targets, if we summarize where we are, we should have an annual growth of about 10%, is our target operating margin, about 10%, and return on operating capital somewhere in the area of 15%-20% are our targets. Growth last year was 9.4%, so slightly under the target. I have to say that we grow 9.4% during a year with almost 10 months of full pandemic. I have to say that we're very happy about that. The EBIT margin is well above on 14.3%, and the return on operating capital is just below on 14.6%. That has to do with a lot of acquisition activities that we did in 2019 and 2020. That plays in there. I think we can go to the next slide then. Given the good development and the very strong financial position that Anders disclosed and talked about, our Board of Directors proposes an increased dividend to SEK 3 per share. Last year the proposal was revised to SEK 1.25 due to the COVID-19, and the original proposal was SEK 2.75. This year's proposal is truly in line with our dividend policy. Lastly, next slide, if we go there. Latour is a sustainable long-term investment company. Our long-term ambition is not changing due to the ongoing pandemic. We're still investing in growth. We have a strong financial position, and that helps us to expand our existing holdings and invest in those operationally, so to speak, and also do add-on acquisitions to support further growth. We will come out of this crisis even stronger. That's my clear view. Therefore we continue with all the strategic long-term initiatives in our company as before. Like very many people, I hope that we will soon be out of the pandemic, and we can go back to more business as usual. As you can see, so far Latour has managed the pandemic very well, and we have protected our employees, and we have protected our company, and we have continued to invest in our holdings for the long term to come out of all of this even stronger. That concludes the presentation from Anders and myself, and then we hand over to the Q&A session. Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you do wish to withdraw your question, you can do so by pressing zero two on your telephone keypad. There will be a brief pause while questions are being registered. Our first question comes from the line of Joachim Gunell from DNB Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Thank you very much. Good morning, Johan and Anders. First of all, congratulations to the appointment of the Financial Profile of the Year in Western Sweden. I'd like to kick off with a few questions, and I'll get back in line. Hultafors has really scaled up here with recent acquisitions. You seem to really have an industry-leading sales force at Hultafors, but can you talk a bit about what opportunities and challenges you see with the newly acquired Fristads brands? They seem to have somewhat of a challenging last few years operationally, and perhaps you can comment a bit more on the profitability of the acquired brands and synergy potential. Thank you, Joachim. I can allude to that. Please fill in Anders, if you wish. We're very happy that we have acquired Fristads and those brands. They are very strong brands, especially Fristads in the Swedish market, Kansas in the Danish market, and Leijona are a niched, well-positioned brand in the Finnish market. It's correct, if you go back some years, they have been struggling a little bit with profitability. That has, however, picked up. It's not on Hultafors' average margins yet, I should say. We think this complements the Hultafors business very well. If you take the Snickers workwear brand, that is our brand, they have actually a comparatively weaker position in the Swedish market where Fristads is very strong. That actually makes a lot of sense in complementing that way. It's the brands that we have acquired, and we intend to keep the brands and develop these brands. Obviously long-term, there are synergies, especially on the sourcing and the logistics side of that business. We're quite confident that over time that we should bring the Fristads, Kansas, and Leijona colleagues up to the profitability levels of Hultafors. Very interesting. Looking into now 2021, where will your attention be as a management team, say for the unlisted businesses or the industrial operation in terms of trade-off versus focusing on building the Latour Future Solutions versus strengthening your current platforms? Then also is it possible to quantify? Would you say that your financial muscle is still somewhere in the range of 5 billion SEK? Yeah, I would say our financial muscle or firepower or however you want to phrase that is a little bit above SEK 5 billion going forward as at the stance of today. An absolute lion's share of that is to be invested in our wholly owned operations or new platform investments in that sense. It's very much business as usual going forward. All right. Turning to your investment portfolio from a principal owner perspective, can you provide your thoughts on the recent board changes in Securitas? In Securitas, I think it's absolutely natural from one time to another that we can do changes. I think Carl Douglas has shown an extremely strong commitment in the Securitas board. He's been 28 years on the board. Last time I checked, that was not a lifetime engagement. I think it's natural that we change. I'm happy that we have a new chairman in Securitas, Jan Svensson, coming up, my predecessor, who obviously is quite connected to Latour. We also have Johan Menckel that we announced earlier, who will start as Chief Investment Officer in Latour this summer that will join the Securitas board. We are still very committed and well-represented on the board, and we deliver a lot in Securitas going forward as well. Understood. In the light of the recent Alimak transaction, can you provide your thoughts on the competitive landscape, say from private equity and other investment vehicles, and how does that impact your ability to continue to source and execute on your proven M&A machine in this rather concentrated region? Yeah, good question, Joachim. I think valuations are quite sometimes a bit challenging or stretched, if I say so. In the Alimak case, we made a business case, and we thought made a lot of sense on actually the price that we proposed. We could stand by our proposal, but we thought the increased prices there were a little bit too high. That's nothing new. We see that in many transactions where we back out, where we see that the valuations are very high. I see no slowdown because of that. That's always been like that, and we continue as before. We have a good pipeline that we work with, and M&A is part of our base strategy. We could say we're going forward, we're strengthening our team, and we expect to have at least the same pace or even more going forward. Thank you, for that. I'll get back in queue. Thank you, Joachim. Thank you. Once again, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. We have no more questions from the line. I will hand it back to our speakers for their closing comments. Thank you. I think that concludes everything from our side. On behalf of Anders and myself, thank you so much for your time, and thank you for listening in, and hope to speak to many of you again in about a quarter's time. Thanks a lot.
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