Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Investment AB Latour's Q2 report for 2021. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Afterwards, there'll be a question and answer session. Today, I'm pleased to present Johan Hjertonsson, President and CEO, and Anders Mörck, CFO. Speakers, please begin. Thank you, madam. This is Johan Hjertonsson, and I'm here together with our Chief Financial Officer, Anders Mörck. Welcome everybody. Our intention is to present the half-year report and answer eventually some questions at the end. I think we can go to the next slide. We're very happy. It's a very strong development from all aspects. It's a record quarter with very strong growth, and we're continuing the excellent performance in all of our operations. I'm very happy on behalf of all employees what we've done. It's strong order intake, strong sales growth, and that coupled with very strong EBIT margins. Overall, I'd like to say the pandemic, of course, still lingers around, but I would also like to point out that we see less effects of the pandemic, but there are still effects. Main focus right now overall in our operations is really the supply of goods. We have component shortages, disruptions in the supply chain, and heavily increased raw material prices. It's been quite a lot of work to compensate for this and to work with this and make this still happen from an operational point of view. We have implemented price increases to compensate, especially for the raw material prices. Overall, our group structure is unchanged. We have two major business lines. We have the wholly owned operations with our five business areas, Caljan, Hultafors Group, Nord-Lock, Swegon, and Latour Industries. We also have, since a year back, our newly founded Latour Future Solutions, and we have some smaller part-owned holdings. We have the investment portfolio, which is unchanged with nine listed holdings. I think we can say that it's a good lead-in to the next slide, where we talk about the portfolio, the listed holdings. There's no changes in the portfolio during the quarter. The value development of the holdings was 22.2% during the year compared to the SIXRX of 22.4%. Overall, I would say the underlying development is satisfying. Most of them have reported and have reported good orders and sales and profits during the quarter two. Quite high activity when it comes to acquisitions in many of our holdings during the first half or in quarter two. Until Friday of last week, the portfolio value had increased to SEK 88.3 billion, therefore a total return of 31.3% so far this year compared to the SIXRX of 32%. That's counting for the listed portfolio only. We go to the next slide and we should comment the wholly owned operations. Very high activity on many markets with excellent growth for several of our operations, actually for all of our operations, especially order intake, I would say. We have a very high order stock at the end of the quarter. As I said, less direct effects from the pandemic and a big focus in our wholly owned operations on the disruptions in supply chain, price inflation of raw material and component, as said. We're very happy with the positions our operations have in growing market segments, and therefore that gives a very positive development all over the line, I would like to point out. That makes me especially happy that it's a strong result in all of the five wholly owned business areas. Organic growth in order intake is a staggering 51%, and that is growth of 26%. Of course, this is compared to last year, which was heavily hampered by the pandemic. Even if you go back to another year, to 2019, I would like to say that this is strong growth, if we compare to a more normal quarter in Q2 of 2019. The operating profit had a total growth of close to 60% and amounted to SEK 753 million with a very strong EBIT margin of almost 16%, 15.9%. This is primarily driven by good cost control and high volumes in quarter two. A very good drop-through effect on that increased sales in the quarter. We're continuing with high investment pace to meet the growing demand, as well as driving the sustainable growth, to have a sustainable growth and strengthening our position further. As we usually say, we are investing heavily in product development, sales, and marketing. Now I would also like to point out that we invest a lot in logistics and manufacturing in order to cater for the strong growth. Sustainability and digitalization is two strong focus areas. We would like to push the development even further going forward. We are now implementing the TCFD. For those who don't know, it stands for Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. This is very important to analyze the risks and opportunities connected to the climate change, not least after this summer's extreme weather, which makes this question even more important to work with and talk about, I think. The TCFD work is quite important work, and that will be presented in the sustainability report for 2021. We change slide again, we go into acquisitions. Far during this year, 2021, we have a continued high acquisition activity also going forward. At this point, I would also like to point out that we have announced earlier that now Johan Menckel has joined Latour and the Latour Group, and is a member of the group management team together with Anders Mörck and myself as Chief Investment Officer. Very welcome, Johan. I think this is the second week starting today on your new job. We have also in queue to hire Fredrika Ekman and Niclas Nylund as new investment directors to the team. Very welcome, both Fredrika and Niclas as well. We have made an acquisition of HK Instruments, a Finnish company, which was acquired by Produal, which is a company within Bemsiq Latour Industries, with net sales of EUR 8 million. They offer advanced measuring devices for building automation. Latour Future Solutions invested in Aqua Robur Technologies in June, which is a Swedish company that offers solutions to water companies in order to digitize the water networks. For example, detecting water leaks in the water network. After the reporting period, Swegon signed an agreement to acquire the majority of 720 Degrees, a Finnish digital software company that will accelerate Swegon's offering in digital services. Aritco within Latour Industries signed an agreement to acquire the Swedish Motala Hissar with an annual net sales of about SEK 200 million. In total, so far this year through M&A, we're adding about SEK 1.6 billion on our top line in acquisitions. Having said that and commented all of that, we are now super eager to listen to Anders Mörck that will present a little bit more in detail the different business areas and so on. Over to you, Anders. Thank you so much, Johan. We start with the Caljan, our Danish business area. It has been a very strong momentum for Caljan also this quarter. Increased demand contributes to excellent growth. The order intake grew by 218%, which is more or less unbelievable during the quarter. You might remember that also the first quarter was very strong on order intake. The order book now is on record level. Sales have taken off from Q1, organic growth by 75% and is expected to increase even more than the coming quarters due to the high order intake. The operating profit was EUR 6.1 million with a margin of 17%. Despite, you can say, adding a lot of staff and also doing other investments to support the growth. For example, we have established a factory in the U.S. which is now completed to meet the demand from U.S. customers. As all other, you will hear me say that often now there is a lot of work done now on sourcing due to the shortage of, for example, electrical components. Okay, we go to the next business area, which is Hultafors Group. We can see a continued excellent development for Hultafors Group also this quarter. Also Hultafors suffers from supply chain challenges and price increases and delivery disruptions, mainly than from Asia. In total, the net sales grew by 76% in the quarter, of which 37% was organic, and that is also very impressive. The good cost control combined with the high volumes contributes to a strong result of SEK 266 million with a margin of 18.1%. The integration of the newly acquired Fristads, Kansas, and Leijona is developing very well, and we also can say that we have a new distribution center in Poland established and has been taken into use during the second quarter. We go to the next business area, which is Latour Industries. Also here we see a very, very good order intake and growth in sales. Well above last year for all units, which is important. The organic growth was 31% during the quarter. Then also here we see and have concerns regarding price increases and lack of raw material and other components in the production. In the short term, this will affect the margins. Overall good cost control in combination with good volumes leads to a very good operating result, with an operating margin of 10.4%. This should also be said that this quarter was hit by a one-off cost of SEK 20 million. Without that, it would have been even higher. We have said it before, Latour Industries is the business area where we build and invest a lot in the future for smaller units to become future business areas. The companies within the business area have the capacity for even higher profitability. We turn to the next page and where we find Nord-Lock. We can conclude that the market recovery continues for Nord-Lock. It was strong growth during the quarter, 24%, and even higher growth on order intake. Now I feel like a parrot repeating myself, but you wouldn't be surprised that as increased raw material prices and supply chain challenges also for Nord-Lock. It's a lot of hard work being done to be able to fulfill all orders coming in. The operating profit anyway was increasing and amounts to SEK 98 million with a margin of 26%. Of course, to meet these incoming increases in raw materials, we have made price increases that will be implemented quarter by quarter going on forward. A lot of strategic initiatives that support further growth and profitability continues as always before. Finally on Nord-Lock, we should say that they won the silver in the Swedish Content Awards in the category business to business with their fantastic video, When Safety Really Matters. Congratulations for that. Very well done. We go to the next page where we find Swegon. Again, a quarter with a good development. Many markets now shows recovery where it has been weak before, and order intake has been very strong, especially in Sweden and in the U.K. The order intake grew by 28%, which is a very good figure, and net sales by 8%. We also see improved productivity that resulted in a strong operating profit with a margin of 14.5% in this business area, which is the biggest when it comes to net sales. Now we repeat ourselves once again. We have issues with raw material pricing, and we try to do price adjustments to cover that. Also we have disruptions in supply chains, which is a challenge in production in many units. We turn page once again, and there we find the net asset value for Latour. It has increased by 25.4% so far this year to SEK 188 per share. Our share price at the end of June was SEK 281, that corresponds to a premium to a net asset value of 49%. As you remember, our valuation of unlisted assets is just an indication of a prudent view of the net asset value. If we instead would compare our wholly owned operations with other well-known listed companies with mixed industrial holdings and similar acquisition agenda, the EBIT multiple could be [29%] instead of [17%]. That is our figure. We shall also say that this Friday, the 20th of August, the net asset value increased to SEK 197 per share, the share price at that time was SEK 306. That gives a premium to the way we describe the net asset value of 55%. Finally, Latour's consolidated net debt increased during the quarter due to acquisitions from SEK 5.9 billion-SEK 6.7 billion. This corresponds to about 5% of the market value of our investment, which is more or less the same level as at the end of March. Thank you very much, and I leave back to you, Johan, to conclude. Thank you, Anders. Great presentation. We have the slide with our financial targets. As you probably all know by this time now, our financial target is to have an annual growth of about 10% operating margin, above 10%, and a return on operating capital in between 15%-20%. If we look at these three targets with a rolling 12 months mindset growth, the last 12 months was 16%. EBIT margin rolling 12 months, that was 15.5%. The return on operating capital, I'm happy to report, was 15.5% for the rolling 12 months. We're very happy with that performance, and I would like to thank all colleagues within Latour for this really great performance. I think that we are fulfilling all of our three financial targets during a period rolling 12 months than looking back with full pandemic during that time. I think that merits a comment of strong performance. Thanks, everybody, for contributing. We have the last slide here. International growth with great potential. As both Anders and I have said now, all in all, a very strong first half year for Latour. Latour is a long-term sustainable investment company. Our long-term ambition is not changing. It's to continue to grow and to become more and more international. Even though the pandemic has been very tough and there are some short-term disruptions, we are still investing in the long-term growth ambitions for the group, and that's very important. As you can see on the map here, 80% is in Europe, 7% in Asia, and 13% in North America. There is a lot of room for growth, I would say, everywhere, both in Asia and in the Americas, but also in Europe going forward. Our financial strength enables us to continue investing in our existing holdings, add-on acquisitions and new holdings. We continue with all long-term initiatives in our companies as before, and we act with a long-term forward-looking view going forward. Thank you so much. That's the presentation from Anders and myself. I think if we go to the next slide, it's the Q&A slide, and there we open up for questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for the speakers, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Our first question is from [Joachim Gunell] of DNB Markets. Please go ahead. Thank you, good day, Johan and Anders. A couple of questions from me. We can perhaps start off with the financial targets that you alluded to, Johan, that you have clearly outperformed as of recently. I know these are over a cycle, but still, given that these were communicated already prior to [Caljan] being a part of the industrial operations and with that quality growth outlook and from a profitability side, would it be fair to perhaps at least update the profitability target for the industrial operations going forward? Any comments on that? Thank you, [Joachim], for your question. Let's see if Anders wants to add to this, but we have no plans to update our financial targets at this time. We're very happy, as I said, that we have overshot them during this period, but we have no such intention to change the financial targets at this time. You want to add, Anders, to that? Yeah. I think we have communicated many times before that this is more or less qualification targets as minimum targets. It's not the target that we should deliver with our EBIT. We have so many different companies, and of course, we have a much higher target for those companies that have the ability to be much above. Some have the ability to do 25%-30%, and some 15%-20%, and some 20%-25%. It's not so easy. This is actually more important for us when we do acquisitions. We shouldn't acquire companies that cannot do more than 10%. That's clear. With regards to nice order backlog here going into coming two quarters and strong volumes here, in which case are you perhaps slightly concerned that it will be hard to raise prices enough to offset input material headwinds, raw mats, et cetera? In which business area will that be the toughest, perhaps? As a general comment, I would like to say that, believe it or not, but actually it's not so difficult to increase the prices because everybody knows that the raw materials are going through the roof. Our customers know that. I'm not saying it's easy, but in that sense, it's easier than normal, I would actually argue, to increase the prices. I don't want to point out one particular business area where this is more difficult than another. We're quite happy with all the five business areas in how they have managed their price increases to offset components and raw materials overall. Understood. A final one from me. With regards to having strengthened or boost up here the team and the investment organization perhaps in particular, could we sense any nuance shift on your investment priorities for the coming years? You have this very systematic agenda for the industrial operations, will these new hires in any way change the strategic direction of what investment opportunities you see? We have no such intention to change our investment strategy. As you can understand, we're very happy with the strategy we have. These criteria and thinking has been carved out during many years within Latour, and we're strengthening the team more from a point that we are growing. We are a larger group, and we need more capacity. That's the main reason for strengthening the team going forward. No particular changes in our base thinking when it comes to our investment strategy. Okay. Just a follow-up on that, sorry. Can you say anything about if you still see some attractive opportunities within a listed environment, as we saw perhaps with [Allgon] late last year, or should we expect a more tilt towards bolt-on acquisitions within the industrial operations going forward? We see opportunities across the board. We see opportunities in our wholly owned operations, lots of opportunities going forward, even though, of course, prices are coming up a bit on targets. We see opportunities when it comes to new portfolio investments. We're monitoring that all the time. As I said, we see a lot of opportunities within the existing portfolio of nine holdings, where they can do a lot of add-on acquisitions. It's across the board in those three dimensions, I would say. No change to that. Perfect. Thank you very much, and have a good day. Thank you, [Joachim]. Thank you. Just as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, that's zero one on your telephone keypad. There'll be a brief pause while any further questions are being registered. There are no further questions at this time, I'll hand back over to our speakers. Okay. Thank you all then. On behalf of Anders Mörck and myself, thank you all for listening in, and looking forward to talk to you again when we will present the Q3 results later in the fall. Thanks, everybody.
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