Good morning everybody, and welcome to the Nordic Waterproofing earnings conference call for the first quarter. Please be aware that this conference call is being recorded as well as that names will be disclosed in the meeting invitation here. With that, I hand over to CEO and President of the Nordic Waterproofing, Martin Ellis. Please go ahead. Yeah. Thank you very much, Palle. Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for listening in on our quarterly call. The headline of our report is harsh weather and weak residential new build demand lead to a drop versus exceptionally strong Q1 last year. Moving on to Page 2. We have a drop versus Q1 2022 in our results. Net sales are flat. We have a composition of the -10% organic growth, where volume is 20% down, so a significant drop in sales volumes. Prices have increased by 9%. 7% increase in sales comes from our acquisitions last year and 3% currency effect. EBITDA decreased to SEK 30 million versus 91 last year. Operating profit, EBIT decreased to - SEK 11 million versus a profit of SEK 56 million last year. Adjusted EBIT, which excludes impact from two terminated operations, essentially asset write-downs, amounted to a positive SEK 7 million. Cash flow from operating activities was - SEK 58 million against - SEK 15 million last year. Earnings per share at - SEK 0.83 versus SEK 1.64 last year. Moving to Page 3. There we have a few comments and highlights. First, very important demand impacted by a slowdown in residential new build, while we see renovation remaining stable. Weaker demand from residential new build is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. There are variations from country to country, but we clearly see a significant slowdown in residential new build in Norway and also in our EPDM business, which we'll talk more about in a second. Bitumen-based waterproofing operations in the Nordic countries were negatively affected by extremely harsh weather conditions. We had late snow in most of our countries in the Nordics, and we also had a historic record, I believe, of rainy days in Denmark this year. Quite, quite exceptionally unfavorable circumstances. We also had a slight positive impact last year from hoarding by our customers ahead of a price increase in April of last year. This effect obviously we did not have this year since our prices are stable, so that has impacted the volumes also. Weaker sales for EPDM products, synthetic rubber, are driven by increased competition at lower prices. As you probably know, we had extremely successful and profitable years in this business up to last year. We've now seen with a certain reduction in demand, the start of price competition and also lower volumes, which again, come essentially from private homeowners who have cut back significantly on their purchases of new construction elements. Prefab elements, in Denmark and Norway are slightly down in sales, both in Denmark and Finland, and have actually increased in Norway. Here again, we might see some demand reduction from the residential new build element, which is significant in this business. Our Green Infrastructure business had a very strong quarter in a seasonally low time of course, but compared to last year, we've made good progress. Our order books and Installation Services also continue to be on a good level. Moving on to Page 4. Looking into our gross profit and operating profit performance. We have had a significant drop compared to last year. The weather we have already mentioned. Lower volumes and decreasing margins in the synthetic rubber business and prefabricated wood element businesses were also at a slight decrease in margins. On top of these developments, we had one-off impact in the quarter compared to last year of SEK 18 million, where we wrote down two loss-making entities, which we have terminated late last year and the beginning of this quarter. We are faced with the somewhat soft demand, planning and executing contingency measures, rightsizing of our overhead costs, basically. Those are being implemented as we speak, to mitigate the consequences of the lower demand level. Obviously a weaker cash flow from operations. We have continued to see slightly lower input costs on our material buying, and we basically expect that to continue also in the present quarter. Since the interest environment as you know has been more challenging, we have sharpened the focus on our debt level and adjusted multiples we are prepared to pay for acquisitions. I might add that we will continue our acquisition policy along the lines we have followed in the past. Basically a strong focus on environmentally friendly construction products and also a continued emphasis on downstream integration in our EPDM synthetic rubber business to protect our market share. With that, I pass it on to you, Palle. Okay. For some more financial details. Yeah. Thank you very much, Martin. I move to Slide 5, and we start looking at the net sales in the quarter. That was SEK 911 million, so flat versus last year. As we have already seen the organic development and what that is, the changes composes of. EBITDA decreased to SEK 30 million versus SEK 91 million last year, and operating profit decreased to SEK -11 million from SEK 56 million. EBITDA margin decreased to 3.3% in the quarter, and on a rolling twelve basis, we are at 12.0% right now. The reason Martin already mentioned that affects both gross margin and EBITDA is a combination of weather, lower volumes and the one-off effect from terminating two entities in the quarter here. With that, moving on to Slide 6 and just give some reflection on the EBIT development of SEK -11 million in the quarter versus SEK 56 million last year. Adjusting for the impact from the two entities that we terminated in the quarter, we are at SEK 7 million positive in the quarter. It's worth noting that the comparables for Q1 2022 is exceptionally strong. We also had a stronger Q1 2021, the adjusted Q1 EBIT for 2023 now is similar to most of the years between 2015 and 2020, I would say. Moving on further to Slide 7 and looking at the income statement here, we can see that the gross profit, gross margin for the quarter was 22.1% versus 26 last year. The erosion, as we said, mainly driven by the synthetic rubber membranes and the prefabricated wooden elements businesses. EBIT margin for the quarter negative with -1.3%, and on a rolling twelve basis, the EBIT margin is 8.4% now. Not surprisingly, the increased interest rates had a negative impact on the net financial items, moving that from SEK -4 to SEK -13 in the quarter. Moving on to Slide 8 and looking at the balance sheet, I would say we have a continued strong balance sheet with a net debt to EBITDA ratio just below 2.0, compared to 1.6 at the beginning of the year. This remains well below the covenants we have in our financing agreement. The interest-bearing net debt increased in the quarter to SEK 997 million here. Generally, I would say we have a strong balance sheet and good KPIs for the balance sheet here. Taking us to Slide 9 and looking at the ROCE that decreased in the quarter in line with the drop in results. We're now at 13.1%, which is above our threshold of 13% in the financial targets. We have an increase in capital employed, as you can see, from higher cost and prices, and the acquisitions are contributing as well. The decrease in the ROCE driven by the lower operating result. Cash flow from operations on a rolling twelve basis increased from SEK 292 million to SEK 317 million, and cash conversion increased from 52%- 61% here in the, on a rolling twelve basis. Moving on to Slide 10 and looking into the segments here a bit. Products and Solutions, where we saw a net sales drop of 9%, down to SEK 701 million, where organic development was -14%, where price contributed with 8% in the quarter and volume was down 22%. Acquisitions, 2%, and currency was as well 2% in the quarter. Looking at the different markets, Finland was flat with a negative organic development. Denmark, - 13%, where we saw maybe the highest effects of hoarding last year, organic development was - 21%. Sweden, up 5%. In Norway, we were up 4%, but due to the currency change with the organic growth was 9%. EBITDA for Products and Solutions decreased to SEK 52 million from SEK 110 million, and operating profit decreased from SEK 83 million to SEK 22 million. That led to an EBITDA margin to 7.5% versus 14.3% a year ago. For the latest 12 months on a rolling 12 basis, we are now at 14.3% in the quarter. I think the, all the reasons for the decrease in EBITDA for Products and Solutions, we've already mentioned here before. Looking at Installation Services, where we saw a growth of 40% from SEK 171 millionto SEK 239 million. Organic development was 6%, whereof price 12% and volume -6%. The acquisitions contributed with 30% and currency with 5%. The first quarter is traditionally weak for Installation Services when it comes to result, and we had a result of SEK -12 million on the EBITDA versus SEK -7 million last year, and an EBITDA margin that decreased to 4.8% versus 4.2% last year. For the latest twelve months, we are at 7.3% in margin for Installation Services. This is a quarter that has quite high seasonal impact from. Weather is obviously a big factor for us in the first quarter here in Installation Services. With that, I move to Slide 12, sorry, and back to you, Martin. Thank you very much, Palle. These are our financial targets, which you're well familiar with, I guess. We still tick all the boxes. I would say the one where we are a bit at the limit now is sales growth, of course, because we had obviously this exceptionally low weather-related sales, but also certain reduction in the EPDM business especially, which might continue in the future. We still believe that we have held on to our market share overall, but it's now a mixed bag of some areas where we probably slightly lost market share and other areas where we continue to gain significant market share. I'm thinking especially of our bitumen-based waterproofing material in Sweden, in Denmark, and probably also in Norway. Uh, same is true, um, in our Finnish Installation Service, uh, business, where we, both through acquisitions and through our organic growth, are, are taking market share. Uh, profitability, we are-- we're just at the, the threshold level of thirteen percent right now. Uh, we, we might see a, a certain, uh, period where we're slightly below that, uh, uh, percentage as we move forward in the year. But, uh, we are right now a-above that level. Uh, the capital structure, as Palle mentioned, we, we continue to have a, a strong balance sheet, where we are significantly below our, uh, target level of, uh, 3x, uh, debt on EBITDA. Dividend policy, um, as you know, we have proposed a seven SEK per share distribution, which is, uh, uh, above the thirty, so 50% of net profit, uh, threshold we have defined. That's our presentation, and we very much look forward to your questions now. Yes. With that, we will open up for questions. You can ask questions by either raising your hand in the meeting here, or you can send a question in the Q&A feed here in the meeting. If you're on the phone, press star five to raise your hand for a question. Yes. With that, I will then open up for Operator. I've opened up your microphone, and you need to unmute yourself to ask your question. Welcome. All right. Thank you. It's Sofia here from Carnegie. Thank you for the presentation. Let me start with some questions about the market demand. You had a quite a significant decline in volumes, around 20% for the whole group. You mentioned the reason for this volume decline, but could you give us some more color on the split between Waterproofing, Green Infrastructure, and Prefabricated Wooden Elements, how these different segments has declined year-over-year in the quarter? That's my first question. Yeah. I think to generally answer your question, it's quite clear that the bitumen-based waterproofing products have suffered from the weather, essentially. We don't see any loss of market share. We have a very small segment in Denmark where Katepal, the Finnish producer, has come in with low prices, but the effect is quite marginal, and we don't expect this effect really to increase in the future very much. Other than that, the weather is really the key element. In Norway, we have a slightly larger proportion of private home building as a customer to our products, and there, obviously, we've felt the drop in demand for private home expenditures quite significantly. In the prefabricated elements, basically we see quite a stable situation. As you know, we continue to have a profitability challenge, which we are working on. Mm-hmm. That already existed to some extent last year. In terms of our order books, we don't see any dramatic drop. There has been a slight drop in Denmark for a while, right now, we're reasonably confident that the order book is there and that we will have a stable demand situation for those products. All right. Maybe last, the Installation Service business in Finland, which is very significant. Again, there we have had a clear weather impact, and our order books are good. Then last but not least, we have the EPDM situation which we've de-described already in extent, so. All right. Thank you. Maybe a follow-up question based on your graphical split. It seems like Denmark is the perhaps a little bit of an outlier compared to Sweden and Norway at least. What would you say is the main reason for that? Yeah. I think, in Denmark, we have slightly extended our network of franchisee companies. We basically have taken market share in our outlet, our franchisee system of contractors. We probably gained some market share. That's that has to be obviously put in front of the weather situation, which was very unfavorable. I think the indication is really that we've been hit by the weather, but quite successful in terms of increasing our market share on a lower demand level. All right. Could you say something about the order trend during the quarter and when the weather has had a negative impact? Usually you mentioned that your exposure to renovation market and new build market is 50%/50%. What is your experience now? Is it more 60%/40%? What are your expectations ahead? Yeah. Yeah, that's a very good point. There has probably been a slight shift. The distinction we also make, and which is really very important, is the type of customer in the new build area, because where we've seen the dramatic demand drop is the residential new build and the private owner expenditures for ponds, for example, which we sell in Benelux. Mm. That's where we see a very dramatic development. In the new build of big boxes, which obviously is a large part of what we do in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, we haven't really seen any drop. There's been the weather effect, but we don't see at this point in time any significant drop in volume demand. All right. When you say renovation remaining stable, how do you define or what does that mean remaining stable? Is it similar to last year, previous year, or is it slightly positive volume growth? If you can give us some more color on that comment. Yeah. I think the underlying demand, it's fair to say, is probably slightly down compared to last year also. Mm. -not as dramatic as the private customer base, but still probably slightly down. We basically benefit from the slight market share gains I mentioned to our sales figure. All right. Yes. Then I have a last final question on profitability. You mentioned the EBITDA margin in Products and Solutions has decreased to roughly 7.5%-14.3%, same quarter last year. You mentioned if we remove the SEK 18 million from the loss-making entities that you terminate during the quarter, would you say that the negative volume effect and the weather effect, what is your expectations on how it will impact margins going forward? I don't know if I got the question correctly, but you mentioned... Yes, yes. for example, volume decline in EPDM synthetic rubber. Do you expect this volume decline to have this negative, significantly negative margin impact also in Q2 as in Q1? Or do you expect that you could increase prices more ahead or? Yeah. Yeah. If you can tell us. Yeah, yeah. That's obviously an interesting question. Well, what we see is that we don't see a pickup in demand in EPDM, and we don't really see a strong pickup either in the prefab elements. In the foreseeable future, we'll see similar levels of demand, I would say. No, no profit improvement from that area. We do have some contingency actions which will have a positive effect. They are not It's not gonna be a huge effect, and it's not going to come this year because we will have some restructuring costs which will come on the negative side. For next year, obviously, there will be an impact from those measures. I would say it's difficult to see a dramatic improvement other than the normalization of the weather situation. That's, that's our perspective right now. You might see a further drop in private demand. We don't really see that because it has dropped already quite significantly. You could also, if you're a pessimist, you could say that the solid demand we have seen in the big box area, new build, might eventually be impacted by if we have an ongoing economic crisis or if interest rates, for some reason, rise even more dramatically, then obviously there would be impact of that. Mm. It's not something we see immediately. All right. I mean, to sum it up, we are certainly not going to match last year's performance in profitability. It's clear that last year was a record year after the last 10 years. We were certainly not going to be able to compensate for the first quarter performance to hit last year's very high level. We believe that demand is solid enough to get a reasonable profitability on the rest of the year. All right. That's great. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Then I've unmuted Max Bäckman. from SEB. Please unmute and ask your questions. Yes. Thank you. Good morning, Martin and Palle. Good morning. Just a few brief questions from my side. We saw that the price component here in the organic growth was 9% in the quarter, which is just below the 13% we have seen previous quarters. Is it reasonable to assume going ahead that the price component will start to fade away going forward? Yeah. That's absolutely correct because, basically most of our price increases were done by May last year. From that point onwards, we had a stable price picture. Okay. Perfect. Within the two terminated entities, last year they had a negative contribution on EBIT of some - SEK 25 million. Could you say anything of the sales contribution in those two entities? Yeah. Yes. I can say the combined sales of the two entities last year were SEK 40 million. Okay. Okay. Quite small then. In the order book, I guess the visibility is two, three quarters ahead. What can you say about the profitability in the order book? Is it... You touched upon this, Martin, but it's a decent level at least. Yeah. I can take that. I mean, we have the order book in Installation Services in Finland that's basically on the same level as last year. In the Danish franchise companies where we allocate our share of the profit, it's again, it's the same thing there. It's more or less on the level with last year. Okay. Perfect. Beside the EPDM business, have you seen any other price pressure in the market now, given that the input cost is starting to come down, or is it stable so far? I think overall it's stable so far. We have this very small effect I mentioned in Denmark where our Finnish competitor has started to export to compensate basically for the business they lost in Russia. Mm. That has an impact on a market segment which is not critical to us and which is quite limited. There is a significant sales price differential. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. That was all from me. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm opened up for Hanna Forssell from ABG. Please unmute and ask your questions. Hi. This is actually Adrian from ABG. Oh. Apologies for the confusion. A few questions from mine. Some of them have been answered, just a follow-up on one of Max's questions on the two disposals. That SEK 25 million loss from last year, should we expect to see that sort of gain on the run rate for directly in Q2? Should we expect an increase of SEK 25 per annum from Q2? I think it's limited. I mean, it's quite seasonal business, I would say. They've had a better result during the summer, so to say, than in the winter here. On a, on a annual run rate, I mean, we should see that going forward. Yeah. Okay. They are completed as of now, so there is no sort of delay? There's no half effect coming in for a few quarters? It's the full effect immediately. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Okay. There shouldn't be any more coming from either of these two. No. Okay. apologies if you already talked about this, but can you specify the contingency measures that you're talking about to deal with lower volumes and perhaps a bit on how much of the sort of under absorption you can actually mitigate using those? Yeah. Most of these measures regard the EPDM business, and we're talking about some white collar positions. We're talking about a few blue collar positions in the prefabrication units, especially in Benelux, which we're looking at right now and starting to execute. The impact, as I mentioned on this year, will be, if anything, very small because we usually have to, in business, three to six months of pay to if we let go of people. Not a huge profit impact. Ultimately, we might talk about maybe 15 positions. You can make an estimate of the impact, the positive impact next year from those. In the other entities, we have decided right now for the foreseeable future a hiring freeze, unless there are very unusual circumstances. We should see some impact from that if anybody leaves the organization. Again, we don't see any huge measures in the other businesses as long as we keep the present volumes. We're obviously extremely alert to anything we have to do if things in terms of demand reduce further. Okay. A final one on the pricing as well. You've made it clear that you can maintain these prices, at least for some time. What are your competitors doing at the moment? I believe last year you talked about some of your competitors being a bit more aggressive on price increases. Have competitors been forced to decrease prices at the moment? Yeah. Big picture, no, so with the exceptions I already described. Clearly in the EPDM area, we have seen price aggressiveness already. It's a type of product which travels much better than the bitumen-based products, which means that basically the European market is one market where the 4, 5 competitors exist in Europe who might and have started to react to volume reductions by trying to keep their volume through price decreases. We also have a player from Saudi Arabia, which I think we already mentioned, who generally is quite price aggressive, who so far serves the segment which we don't really serve, but who obviously will try over time to also compete with our type of product. Our response to that, which has been quite successful so far, is to downstream integrate as much as we can. We're looking at acquisition opportunities, for example, in the U.K. to be able to guarantee that we can stream our products and not a competing product or in some cases even take market share by stopping buying from a competitor in those operations. We are very much focused on trying to continue in that direction. Okay, perfect. Thank you. In that case, that was all for me. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you very much, Adrian. Are there any further questions? Please place them now then. Okay. There are no further questions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, thank you all very much for participating. Okay. Have a good day. Okay, tha nk you. With that, we close the meeting. Thank you very much for participating.