Hello, and welcome to the Loomis Q2 2021 report. Throughout the call, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question- and- answer session. Just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded. Today, I am pleased to present CEO Patrik Andersson. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Q2 presentation from Loomis. As said, I'm Patrik Andersson, CEO of Loomis, and with me here today I have Kristian Ackeby, CFO, and Anders Haker, Chief Investor Relations Officer. I will give a short overview of the quarter and then open up for questions. Let's start the presentation and turn to the next page, which is the disclaimer. We continue to the next page, which is about cash. I will not repeat myself and go through all of these things again, but I get a lot of questions about cash and how it's used and how the payment landscape is looking in general, and then cash in particular. It's important for me to state that cash is the dominant payment method globally, and that has not changed during this pandemic. What I would like to highlight is the third bullet point on the market development, which I think is very interesting, and that is that ECB expresses strong, so the European Central Bank, expresses strong support for cash, and they have announced specific strategic targets. What that is about these four targets is, first of all, it's about efficient access to cash, so to support the supply and demand for cash in the Eurozone. That's very important for us, that we have the right circumstances to work under. The second bullet point, which is even more important, is that they will ensure that cash is a widely accepted payment method among all retailers in the Eurozone. That is good news, and I like to send that signal also to authorities and politicians in other countries outside the Eurozone. There are two other points which has more to do with the environmental friendliness of the cash and coins, but also the design, but I'll leave that out. I think that's important to state. I would also like to state that after the recent cyber attacks in Sweden and in many other places, and now also with the natural disasters around the world, I think that shows that cash is needed and wanted, but also in Sweden and other places. Let's turn to the next page, which are then the highlights. Let me just go through a couple of them. We have a close acquisition with Swiss Post in May, and the business complements well the Swiss Loomis business we have already. It gives us a boost when it comes to SafePoint. In my view, Switzerland will be a very important country for Loomis in the coming years with that market position we have now. We are also working a lot with ESG or sustainability, and I'm happy to announce that we now have ordered additional 20 trucks in the U.S. to be used in our business. Real growth was at 23%. Of course, then the acquisitions made in Finland, in Sweden and in Switzerland is then, of course, pushing the real growth to 23%. Organic growth was at 70%. We see, as we have said in the previous calls, that there is steady improvement month by month. We also expect that volumes will improve further as more and more societies will open up. Lately it was U.K. that opened up this Monday. We see positive developments, of course, in the U.S. We've seen that for a long time, but also now in Europe, and that's really encouraging. Operating margin then landed at 9.6%, excluding Loomis Pay to make the comparison. We see margin expansion both in Europe and, of course, also in U.S. as we have seen for some time. Cash flow at 68%. Of course, we are now building up accounts receivable as organic growth is coming back, so that's quite natural. Let's turn to the next page, which is then operating margin development. As you can see, we are recovering from the low point we had in Q2 2020. You see the margin then at 9.6%. Let's quickly turn to next page, which is then Europe. Of course, we mentioned the acquisition, so I will not go into all of that. The integration, which is of course very important for us to get the margins at the right place, is going according to plan. We have completed the acquisition of Nokas in Sweden. The integration in Finland and Switzerland is going according to plan. Organic growth was at 14% in the quarter, and as I said, it's going better and better month-on-month. The quarter started at a I would not say weak, but it started at the lower point, and we experienced that the volumes came back month-by-month during the quarter. Of course, that's coming from less restrictions in societies. Then when the last restrictions are taken away, we will see even more volumes coming back. Operating margin, for us, it's an important sign that we have the efficiency in the business, that when the volume is coming back, we also see the margin coming back. We saw that during the quarter. Of course, then we have the synergies in Sweden and Finland which will help us. Of course, we have made huge cost reductions in Europe, and we also see that is together with cost control, helping the margins. All of these programs are now complete, and that will strengthen the margins further. If you summarize Europe, I think that for some time I've said that volumes will come back, and with more volumes, the profitability, and I think that is exactly what we're seeing in Europe right now. Let's turn to the next page and going to U.S. It's another very strong quarter for the U.S. business. Organic growth, 20% versus -9% same quarter last year, and we're also growing substantially versus 2019, which is really a signal of strength. We are now having also growth in CIT, which we haven't had for some time, and also of course, SafePoint continues to expand rapidly. We have now more than 20% organic growth in Q2, much more than previously. I think that SafePoint will be another record year in 2021. Then we can see that SafePoint is now 18% of the total revenue. On top of that, we have seen the positive trend with the ATM business, and that is unchanged. I think that all parameters now in the U.S. business on the top line is going in the right direction. When it comes to the margin, it's all-time high, 15.5% for Q2, of course. Then you see the mix coming from SafePoint and ATM business, which have higher margins, but also then efficiency programs in all branches. As you can see, of course, when more CIT volume is coming back, that has a bit of a diluting effect on the margins. That in itself, that's a very good sign. All in all, I think that it's a very strong quarter in the U.S. and the business continues to perform. Let's turn to next page and then talk a bit about Loomis Pay. We have ambitious activity plans both in Sweden and Denmark. We launched in Denmark last year and in Sweden this year. We continue to build up our sales efforts, marketing, sales, optimizing the sales organization, and also having a lot of dialogues with our customer, how we can improve the offering and so on. Also when it comes to the technology, the technology is never ready. We have also a couple of things ongoing to improve the technology. I think that all in all, we are still in a build-up phase of Loomis Pay. We have very good customer response, and I was myself actually visiting a couple of customers who have the full package, so CIT, CMS, SafePoint, and Loomis Pay, and it looks very good, and they're very happy with the offering. We have stated many times that there is quite a big market in the Nordics, SEK 15 billion, and we remain very confident that the targets we have for 2023 and beyond are within reach. We have in our plans to launch in further Nordic countries, of course, but then also move in with this concept into other European countries. We turn to next page, which is the statement of income, which is more a reference point. I think I mentioned all the important things right now. Let's turn to next page, and I say, operator, we now open up for questions. Thank you. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two. There will now be a brief pause while questions are being registered. The first question comes from the line of Daniel Thorsson from ABG. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes. Thank you very much. My first question is on Loomis Pay, obviously quite slow growth, a small decline from Q1, all the very low numbers. What's the main reason for that? Will it be a transactional driven revenue model? What's the visibility going forward? How should we look at the ramp-up from now, basically? I think that it's still in early stage, as I said. We have taken some more time also to update the technology platform. Then you should see, these are more roundings right now for the time being. The Danish model we had before was that we sold hardware upfront, and now we're moving into a transaction model, which also takes some time to build up. You should see the volumes or the transactions or the revenue should be exponential in the coming quarters. We're still in a build-up phase and a start-up phase, I would say, in Loomis Pay. Okay, I see. When you launched Loomis Pay last year, I think it was in September, did you expect back then that revenue should have been zero in Q2, or the three quarters after? No, I think that our focus for 2020 and 2021 was really to get the concept up and running, the fine-tuning of the sales efforts, fine-tuning of the sales organization, marketing, and so on. That was our focus for 2020, 2021. We didn't expect any substantial numbers actually coming from Loomis Pay. Okay, fair enough. Second question on the U.K. market, how is that playing out right now? Are you done with the cost reductions and how are volumes developing? I remember they were down like 45% a couple of quarters ago. How is that going? Yeah, it's going much better. Volumes are coming back. It opened up fully, I would say, maybe a couple of days ago. There's still some more volumes to come back. Overall, we see a good recovery in the U.K. We have done substantial cost reductions, and that's all done. That's behind us. We have a much better cost situation in the U.K., which should help us. U.K. is trending absolutely in the right way. Okay. Thank you very much. I'll stop there. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes, good morning. I'll continue on where you stopped on the U.K. Could you give us some more color maybe also on Spain and France, what you are seeing there? Because I guess when I look at U.K., as you said, seems to be recovering nicely and going up, whereas it still seems to be much slower in France, and obviously you did the acquisition of the Prosegur business there as well. How do you see the French market playing out and the Spanish market? We see both in all our big countries. If you look at Europe, we are dependent on a couple of bigger countries, and all of them are moving absolutely in the right direction. Both Spain, France, U.K., Switzerland. Switzerland has been very good all the time, I would say. These bigger countries are moving in the right direction. France is now, I would say, a two-player market, which is also helping, and we have done a lot also. We talk a lot about cost reduction in the U.K., but I was visiting France two weeks ago, and they have done a lot on the cost side as well. I think that in a country like France with so many branches, such an infrastructure, you need to have a certain volume to be profitable. That's what we're seeing now, that we are lower that level to become really profitable. When the volumes come back in France, it will look much better. I'm quite confident for all the bigger countries in Europe, I would say. When you look at it, do you feel that France is the market that is lagging the most for you for the moment, where there should be, say, the biggest reopening opportunity to still to come? From a volume point of view, the lagging country is still U.K., I would say. I will not rank them in that, but U.K. still, there is more to be done on the volume side in U.K. Lagging, I would not say France. I would say U.K. Finally on France, to finish that off, you feel that you have the structure now in place, that Prosegur's operation is fully integrated, and you have everything on the one platform that you would like to have? Yeah. We have, as I said, I visited France some time ago, what they've done is they've now integrated all the volumes from Prosegur. Basically, more or less all the costs are gone from Prosegur. We just added all the volumes from Prosegur, of course, then COVID impacted of course, but landed that on the existing platform. Again, that's an example how important it is to make these kind of acquisitions in existing countries. I think it looks very good in France, also from a market point of view. It's quite interesting, if I may, 30 seconds, we also see now, for instance, in France, opportunities when many banks close their ATM business and so on. We have a dialogue also with the municipalities around France that they would have ATM or smaller automated bank ATMs. We're moving in with that. That's also a new opportunity, for instance, in France opening up. I think that COVID has also, we talk about a lot of the negative impact, but as I said, both in the U.S. but also in European countries, they're opening up new possibilities, I would say. Excellent. Looking at the process of now integrating the Swiss operation, is that a major event that is going to slide into 2022, or are you thinking about that being basically completing during the H2 of this year? I think that most of the work will be done this year. Most of the work I think there might be something in next 2022 a bit. Most of it will be done 2021. I think that Switzerland will be a very good country for Loomis going forward, I'm sure. It will be margins, very good margin volumes, of course, but also very good margins, I'm quite sure. Excellent. One final from me, if I may. I noticed the announcement last night from the board of commencing share buyback as a capital allocation tool. Could you give us some guidance how you see share buyback as a capital allocation tool? Is it a certain gearing level you want to keep on the balance sheet, or how would you work on this, say, going after this first attempt of SEK 150 million? As we have said before, I think that this is just another tool for us. First of all, we invest in the business and in acquisition and so on to grow the business. We have the normal dividend, and then we have this. I think that, of course, it has to do with capital structure. You should also see it as a signal of strength. We think that we have been handling the COVID situation in a positive way with strong cash flows and so on. It's also a signal that we're quite confident about the business and this is also a sign of that, I would say. There are multiple reasons for doing it, of course. As I said, this is the first time Loomis is doing it. We start with this, and then we'll see what would happen in the future. Sometime in the future, you might announce a more target for where you want to have your gearing level and these kind of things. Is that logical? Yeah. I think that we are still aiming for a capital market day quite soon, I would say, or relatively soon. That would be, of course, on the agenda how the capital structure will look like. Let me come back to that. Let us come back to that, of course. Thank you very much. Good luck out there. Thanks. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Johan Dahl from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Thank you very much. Good morning. Just wondering on the European operations, if you could in any way describe how June looked compared to April, for example, just to get a feel for how this inflection is looking for the European operations. Secondly, if you could just talk about the substantial cost savings, how much of that was realized in Q2, and what remains to be realized looking forward. Thank you. No. I mean. I think it's a substantial difference between the first month of the quarter and the last in Europe. It's substantial. Of course, it has a bit of seasonality at June. It's a bit better, I would say it's a massive change from first month to last month. As I said, that is showing that the theory or what we have said before, that first of all, volumes will come back, and then also that will have an influence on the margin. It's a substantial difference. Apart from the restructuring we're doing in Finland and in Switzerland, the cost savings due to the pandemic should be over. I'll look at Kristian Ackeby to confirm that or say something different, but in my view, it should be more or less done. What do you say, Kristian? It's correct. We have completed the restructuring programs as such, and we'll have full impact from the end of Q2. Taking that into consideration, it is of course important now that the volumes continue to grow to make sure that we see the positive impact here, because it will be part of what is the volume based in our business. Okay. Are you able to say at all how close you were to SEK 1 billion in revenues in June in Europe? I don't have those exact numbers here right now, but I can assure you that both from a volume point of view, revenue point of view, and market point of view, June was a really good month for Europe. All right. I guess I have to be content with that. Thanks so much. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Viktor Lindeberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Thank you. I think actually some questions were answered, but maybe we can elaborate a bit further and continuing on Europe as June was a very good month. I suspect you also have a good start going into July and Q3, which is the seasonally important quarter for you guys. In light of the positive trend and the cost savings now coming through, how do you think we should think about Q3? Also more holistically, maybe longer term margins in Europe post pandemic and the cost savings as such. Do you think that you can accomplish or exceed the margin levels that you were operating at before? Or should we see higher levels in light of easing competition, stronger market positions, cost saving initiatives bearing fruit, et cetera? If you could elaborate a bit. Thanks. I start with the last one. I think that with the actions we have taken and what we expect when it comes to volume, we plan that the margins should come back to pre-COVID levels as a first step in Europe. That's absolutely vital, and I'm quite sure we can achieve that. I think that when I look at June, then I'm quite sure that we've come back to margins pre-COVID in Europe. The next step is, of course, to develop those margins even further. I'm sure we can do that as well. That's more like a capital markets day discussion, I would say, where that will end. The reason for saying that is that first of all, the cost level is in a different place. Second is that we will see that the mix is changing. Less CIT, more CMS, then as I said, more ATM business, more SafePoint business, more Loomis Pay business. That is all, we see that in U.S., that has quite an impact on the margin. I'm very optimistic about Europe. I base that on what I've seen this quarter. When it comes to Q3 and Q4, don't forget that Q3 last year was quite good. Be a bit careful now, because then everything opened up. We thought that everything was over. Then we went into Q4. Q3, we're meeting quite a good Q3. Keep that in mind. That's important. In the long run, I'm quite sure we'll get back to the same levels. I'm sure. All right. Thanks. Two more from my side. One nitty-gritty on group costs or other costs. It jumped a bit in the quarter to about SEK 50 million. Can you help us out? Was this a new level? Is it something in the numbers that we should be mindful of here? Kristian, can you take that, please? Yep. That is partly related to timing. You can see that in the Q1 it was slightly lower, Q1 slightly higher. If you take both of them together, you will have a good estimation about the quarterly cost longer term here for the year. Okay. On the buyback program, these programs, I guess, can be structured in different ways. Either you can outsource it fully, or you can have an ad hoc mandate to your banking partner, they would, of course, play out slightly differently. Just curious to understand this buyback program you launched now. Will this be something that repurchases shares on a daily basis, fully outsourced, it will fill the SEK 150 million mandate throughout the quarter? How will this be structured? Kristian, do you want to take that, please? Of course. To clarify, it's not a safe harbor agreement. We have the options to treat it differently, and our intention is to spread it over the period. Understood. That's all from me. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Just a reminder that if you would like to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. There will now be a further pause while any questions are being registered. The next question comes from Johan Eliason from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yeah. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I was just wondering, coming back to this announced share buyback program, you mentioned it as a sign of strength of your balance sheet. You might also see it as a lack of M&A opportunity. I would have guessed that the M&A opportunities would be high now after the pandemic. How does it look like? No. This is not because we have less M&A opportunities. Not at all. I think now again, after the COVID, it will open up new opportunities. We don't see this level of buyback any threat to any M&A activities. We have such a good, strong balance sheet. We can do all the M&A activity we want. It will not impact M&A activities at all. No. It doesn't affect that. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of [Ultron Palapolo] from [Santal Dili]. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Good morning, Patrik, Kristian, and Anders, and all the employees. Congratulations for a strong quarter. I have two questions. First of all is regarding the buyback. Could you elaborate a little bit more on what was the discussion of the board of directors to recommend the first buyback? Of course, you said organic growth in the business, acquisitions, dividend, and buyback. What was the discussion and what are you actually targeting? Then regarding, well, it was asked, but it didn't go in much detail regarding the pipeline of M&A. If you could, let's say, put a little bit of detail on what we could expect, let's say in 18- 24 months of acquisitions, regions, products, what are you looking for? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the question. I think that we have had a discussion in the board around the buyback program. I think there are two aspects of that. One is that we have such a strong balance sheet. We have such a strong position financially, and it's quite natural now to also include buyback programs as a part of that. To support the shareholders, so be more shareholder-friendly, if you like. That's one aspect. The second aspect, I think for me, it's so important. A year ago, everything was shaky, and volumes went down a bit and so on. Even though we had strong confidence in the business, we were not sure. It's also, for me, a sign that we now do this to show that we have things very much under control. We are very confident about the future for Loomis, that you should see that as a sign of strength. You can always debate, the level and so on. I think that it's more like a signal also to the market. To be honest, I think that many companies have done this program now, during the last quarters, also our competitors. For us, it was quite natural to do it as well. We wanted to wait a couple of more months to see that everything was under control. On the M&A piece, we still have the same focus as we have had before to buy companies, core business, CIT, CMS business in our core market, especially then Europe, also U.S., and Latin America, of course. More and more, we see now opportunities for technology companies to add technology into our ATM offering, to add new technology to forecasting and so on. I think that we will see more a twist towards technology going forward. That has to do also with the acquisition we have done in the U.S. with Logicpath and things like that. If anything, I see a twist towards more tech companies that will help us with our core offering, if anything. I stop here. Okay. Thank you very much. Maybe regarding M&A, could we see something, let's say, big or transformative before year-end, or you never know when M&A operations close? No, we never know. M&A, it's always until the paper is signed, you never know. Everything can happen. We have a good pipeline of different targets which we are working with. I think we have done, if I count it, since 17, 18 transactions, something like that. We will continue on that path for sure. Okay. Thank you very much, I will support. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Just a final reminder that if you would like to ask any final questions, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. We have no further questions. I will pass back for any closing comments. Yes, I would say thank you very much, and thanks for all your good questions. I wish you all a nice summer, and for some of you, some vacation. Thank you. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.