Hi, and welcome to Sdiptech's webcast. Jakob Holm, the CEO, and Bengt Lejdström, the CFO of Sdiptech, will be presenting today. My name is Martin Westerlund, and I'm from Finwire TV. If you have any questions to Jakob and Bengt, you can ask them in the form on their website that is located to the right. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can find that form in the description. With that said, I'll give Jakob and Bengt the stage. Thank you very much, and welcome everybody to Sdiptech's report for the first quarter. My name is Jakob Holm, CEO for Sdiptech, and as always, I have with me Bengt Lejdström, our CFO. The agenda for today, the normal one. First, a brief business overview. We dig into the first quarter and the financial development, and finally an outlook looking ahead. Starting off with having a look at the overview of our report. It's a very strong report. We're proud to present it. The profit growth is strong, both organic and from acquisitions. We have a solid sales growth organically, and we've completed some important deals really shaping our future as well, and we will get back to those. If we have a look at our overall goal, which is to create shareholder value in a sustainable and long-term way by increasing profits every year. Our business model is, as some other companies, to acquire niche companies and develop them, of course, we've decided to do some things differently as well. Our acquisitional work is structured in a different way. What our focus is. Our focus is on one hand on markets with long-term investment needs. The drive for more sustainable, efficient, and safe societies is something that we have focused on for a couple of years. We believe it's important. Infrastructures, important sectors for us as well. They are under-dimensioned and aging. All in all, the underlying growth in our markets are good. We also focus a lot on acquiring companies with strong and defendable positions, high-margin companies, that's also how we develop our existing companies. If we look back five years, actually one year before our IPO, we've grown at the profit CAGR at 36%, and actually the last 12 months at 40%. The trend is continuously positive. That is the basics for our business model, and this will, of course, continue. We are rigged to do this for a long time to come. Moving into the first quarter. We're very happy to present, we did so some time back, the acquisition of the quarter. We welcome Rolec to Sdiptech. Rolec is specialized in electrical charging solutions. We've been in contact with the company for about two years. We were happy to get into a position where we could actually agree with the owners to take over the ownership. For us, it really confirms to the market and to all of you our position as a group focused on sustainable and really leading customer offerings. Sustainability for us is very much a source of revenue and something important also for society. It's our largest acquisition so far in terms of profits, SEK 80 million in EBIT. Profitability margin last year was 30%, expecting going forward, rather 28%. Moving forward, one more page to describe Rolec. To start off, three business areas. The electrical vehicle charging solutions, charging solutions for marina services, and also caravan parks. Rolec has been doing this for about 30 years in the marina and the caravan park area. That really means that those type of solutions are larger parks of many charging points. The kind of solutions in marinas and caravan parks, they are more complex. It involves, of course, a lot of hardware, but also software. The design of those more complex solutions, the installation of those solutions, and then also sales of the solutions worldwide, actually, and then service of them worldwide. Rolec has been doing this for 30 years, and that was really the reason why we found the company especially interesting. Because Rolec is not a new startup in a fast-growing market. It's definitely an established company. Of course, the electrical vehicle segment is, of course, extra interesting. Two customer segments there, business to business to consumer. Once again, the reason for why we wanted to acquire Rolec was really the business to business segment. The business to consumer side is, of course, interesting. It's highly profitable. It's growing at a good pace. However, in the long run, we believe it will be commoditized. For us, Rolec in the future is really to build upon their strengths and establish strong niche positions within the business-to-business segment. Expanding that a little bit, to start off with the hardware, once again, with experience 30 years going back, they have a complete range of chargers ranging from the smaller ones, 3.6 kW, up to the really large ones, and also the super-fast direct current-based chargers. The 200 kW chargers have a very high capacity, actually larger than what you could see could be available from other Nordic similar companies. The range is really complete. The software is a very important side of more complex solutions. On one hand, it's very much about monitoring the technical specifics of a larger park, but also to manage to add additional charge points and all of these things. The technical management aspect is highly important. The other side is the administrative side that also this software caters for. Adding customers into charging park billing, and not only billing for the charging, but also billing for additional services. This is also an experience that comes from, for instance, marina services, where the software solutions are a lot wider than only the focus on the charging side of things. That part of the offering is extra interesting for the business-to-business customers. Equally important is really the network of sales agents in U.K., 2,000 wholesalers selling Rolec chargers and solutions. Equally important is, of course, the service network, the technicians. Together in the training courses, there are 80 of them to really ensure that the service technicians are well-trained on Rolec products. These networks are, of course, very important in a fast-growing market. It's not only the ability to sell your products, because that, as I think everyone understands, the demand is high, but it's also equally important to service the products, and especially for the more complex installations. About 200,000 charging points installed in the U.K. for 10 years. Rolec definitely has established market position. Of course, the customers presented here is one example of the established position that they have. We're very happy to welcome Rolec to Sdiptech. In addition to acquiring Rolec, we've had high activity in terms of doing important deals this quarter. We've also completed divestments of five business units from the business area Property Technical Services. It goes along the line that we've had for a couple of years to focus our growth to the Water & Energy and Special Infrastructure Solutions business areas. Those areas where we believe our solutions and products, they are really towards critical needs within infrastructure, very important. Also more along the lines of delivering services that really create sustainability, efficiency, safety to societies, because these are really long-term trends that we believe in. If we have a look at the deals, it's interesting to put them side by side. Of course, Rolec is larger in terms of profits, but it's also a higher margin. High margin also, in this case, comes from a high-quality company as well. The growth pace is also higher from Rolec compared to the divested businesses. All in all, we're also happy to also demonstrate on a page like this that we've actually bought higher growth, higher margin at a lower multiple compared to what we are divesting. That's really result that we have planned all of this for quite a long time. It's not just something that is happening. We really had the patience to wait for the right opportunity. As a result of these deals, we bring a profit margin with Rolec, and we are, of course, divesting more lower margin business. We've raised our guidance to 19%-20% for the full year. Also, we've completed a share issue. The purpose there is, of course, that we always want to have the flexibility to do acquisitions or really good deals when the opportunity is presented to us. That's also an important step to ensure that we can continue do acquisitions in the way we want to. Moving into the three business areas before I hand over to Bengt, starting off with the Water & Energy area. Sales increase up about 34% in our existing businesses have performing quite well during the pandemic, although the restrictions in the societies have made it a little bit more difficult in our business units in this area. We're happy to see that now in the first quarter, a slight uptick in sales for the existing businesses. However, the primary sales growth comes from Rolec, of course. The same explanation there for the increase in profits. If we have a look at the margin and profitability, it is more significantly up. Once again, Rolec has actually performed extra well during the period, so there's a significant contribution there on the profitability. Also U.K. businesses, they've also showed improved profitability compared to the previous year. It's very much a collective effort to deliver this increase all in all by 14 business units in the business area. Special Infrastructure Solutions, sales increased significantly, 70%, largely driven by the acquisitions. We acquired GAH Refrigeration in December. They are coming in at the full quarter. We've acquired Alerter Group prior to that. The acquisitions are coming into the numbers as expected. If we have a look on the profit side of things, of course, the acquisitions added to profit increase there as well. If we then look at our existing businesses that we've owned for quite a while, the two U.K. business units showed extra strong profit growth. One being the one focused on road security and safety, speed cameras, and the other one is focused with insurance clients, delivering services for claims management on underground infrastructure. Very positive development in those two areas. Quite interesting to have a look then at the dynamics. If we have a look at the profitability margin, as we've said previously, GAH, which is developing very well, they have a lower profitability margin than the business area as a whole. When that company eventually gets their full numbers into the books, that will be reflected also. That's a trend of the profitability margin going down that is expected. All in all, 13 number of business units in this area. Finally, Property Technical Services. It has been an area where we have worked quite intensively with the companies. Sales increased about 2% in the quarter. This is also the area where we did five divestments. Four of the divestments were in the Elevator Division. It's also an area which everyone knows that we have worked with profitability programs, and they have continued to pay off. The development in the quarter is good and strong. Actually, not only the Elevator businesses, but also our shell completion business has also added and shown good development. Anyway, these divestments of the businesses, we feel that we are doing it with a good timing in terms of the life cycle that they are in. Okay. By that, I will hand over to Bengt. Thank you, Jakob. Looking then at the Group as a whole and the sales to start off with, we can see that we have had a very positive trend also then in sales last 12 months compared to one year ago. As you can see, it's a 20% up, and we show then organic sales growth of almost 4% in the quarter. Of course, a big part of that is our acquisitions that have been rolling in during the quarter, specifically the GAH and Rolec. Also, as Jakob has mentioned, that a number of other business units which have performed very well. Looking up, and you can see also the EBITA margin increasing steadily as our acquired companies with a higher profit margin than average is then making this slightly going up quarter by quarter. Looking on the right side, you see the sales by country, and I must just clarify that this is for the quarter, and it's also including last 12 months from the quarter, and it's including the Elevator businesses, which we eventually divested on the April 7th. They have been included fully for the quarter in all results figures, but they have actually been excluded in the balance sheet because of these IFRS rules, how you should account for these kind of activities. Here on this picture, the Elevator business is included. The U.K. businesses all in all are about a third of the Group's total sales revenues. If we would exclude the Elevator businesses, this number would slowly get up to a higher number, of course. Almost up to 45% or so. That you will see going on then quarter by quarter as we go ahead when this effect is then decreasing bit by bit. If we go to the next slide, we see that the EBITDA margin, as we said, is increasing, but not the least the EBIT itself, 40%. If we compare the last 12 months, this quarter compared to a year ago. The increase in the quarter as such was a strong 64% EBITDA increase, of which 52% came from the acquisitions. Also very strong organic profit growth. Of course, we happy to announce that the companies have performed very well, even though last year, quarter one was also a strong quarter. The pandemic hadn't really affected that much. The restrictions came along during mid-March, but it was mainly in the second quarter that the effects from the pandemic were affecting the group. It was a tough comparison, but strong performance from many of our business units then ended up with a strong organic profit growth of 16%. We actually then had some tailwind from the currency, of course, mainly the British pound, which in average during the quarter had a less favorable foreign exchange rate than a year ago. We had a negative 4% effect from that currency. The EBITDA margin of the quarter was a little bit higher than the last 12 months, of course, because of the acquisition of Rolec, not the least, pushing up the margins slowly. As Jakob already mentioned, we increased our guidance. Even though it's 17.5% now on a rolling 12 months, when we come to the end of 2021, we expect it to be somewhere between 19%-20%. Turning to the next slide, we see some additional metrics and key figures. As you may have learned by following us for some quarters and years now, when we go from the EBITDA profit measurement down to the earnings per share, we have some other items in the results. We have costs for acquisitions. We have amortizations of intangible assets that we have acquired. We have our financial revenues and costs. Also the tax itself. We have as an Appendix to this presentation, the bridge, where we show all these different items, and you can also find them in the report. All in all, as a summary, we had an increase in the earnings per share that was roughly about some 8%-10%. Both on the quarter on the last 12 months was actually then a little bit lower than that, the increase. One major part of that came from the acquisition costs. These transactions that Jakob mentioned, of course, cost some money for different types of partners helping us in the transactions. Also when acquiring companies in the U.K., we need to pay what's called a stamp duty based on the enterprise value of the company. We actually paid the stamp duty of a little bit more than SEK 5 million. We had all in all then costs for performing the acquisition of Rolec and the divestment of the five business units of about roughly SEK 10 million. That was, of course, extraordinary high in this quarter. Looking at the cash conversion, which is also important, we are proud that we typically have a very strong cash conversion. As you can see on the last 12 months, we are above 100%, which we were also a year ago. This quarter was lower, was actually only 48%. You see that also last year it was below 100%. Typically it is because you pay taxes in this quarter belonging to last year's results. Last year, many of our companies were cautious about their cash management and their expectations for the profit of the year, so they did not pay perhaps as much as preliminary taxes. They had to kind of catch up during this quarter to pay for last year's high profits. That affected the cash flow. We also had some buildup of inventory and stocks in some of our companies. In U.K., it was partly because of the Brexit situation, where it's still not fully clear how that will affect the flow of goods. Just to be cautious, some of our companies then invested in some extra stock, just not to be affected so much, increased administration or bureaucracy, so to say, when they import goods. Which is good that they do this buildup of stock. They're also in some businesses just to be sure that it's not running out of some components, that they also then bought in some extra inventories just to be on the safe side. That affected the cash flow, but that's you could say is for positive decisions and reasons. We also have our debt leverage ratios, one which we think is the most important, the net financial debt over our EBITDA, which is still very solid below one. Then our total net debt, which also includes all our contingent considerations, which of course then assumes actually a higher profit level than we have today. This figure is not really showing the true situation for that debt. That's why we don't focus so much on that figure, we always present it. It's still on a healthy level below three, also very strong figure. Yes, thank you. Jakob? Okay, thank you, Bengt. Finally, have a look at the outlook for the future. As I think we've experienced throughout the entire pandemic, the underlying demand from our customers is solid. In this quarter demonstrated by approximately 4% sales growth. The profitability continues to increase. It's driven by acquisitions, as Bengt has described, but also by the organic profit growth. Organic profit growth in businesses with more scalable business models, of course, also increases the profitability percentage. That's really how we focus our business development also. The guidance we talked about, having a look at the acquisition pipeline, we are well capitalized, of course, since our capital raise during the quarter. Our focus is very much on high-quality businesses. I think both the two recent acquisitions, but actually all the acquisitions from the past years really demonstrate that. Also Rolec, of course. High quality is really what we focus on. The restrictions, especially in terms of the travel restrictions, that to some extent prolongs the discussions that we have. Nevertheless, our acquisition pipeline is very strong, so it's just a matter of it takes a little bit more time to get to the final discussions before you could come to an agreement. Also, we would like to share our view on the acquisitions market in the Nordics. It is, to some extent, overheated. That's the way we experience it. There is a lot of capital available in the market. The interest rates have been low for quite a while, and then we have all the stimulus packages that have been presented as part of the pandemic. There's a lot of capital available out there. For us, however, we don't change the way we work. We are very thorough in our analysis. We make a decision on what is a correct price for a company based on analysis, not so much about the existing competition. We have pricing discipline. That's what the right thing to do in the long term. The acquisitions that we do now, we will live with forever. The pricing and the balance sheet that the acquisitions create should be healthy. Anyway, we have a good pipeline. We are working as we always have done. Finally, we believe that we are well-positioned towards good trends in the society, especially sustainability, efficiency, and safety. These three trends we've selected them a couple of years ago, since they are long trends. It's really based on human drivers to increase the sustainability of the environment surrounding us. It's nothing new. The drive towards more efficient everyday lives is nothing new. The drive to create more safety and security around us, that's nothing new. It's very much long-term trends. Lately, there's been more focus from politicians, especially around sustainability from investors, and all of that has created some additional focus on that area. For us, it's very much a long-term focus for us. It's not something that we are doing just because it's a trend at the moment. With that, we open up for questions. Thank you very much, Jakob and Bengt. Like you said, now it's time for the Q&A. If you have any questions to Jakob and Bengt, you can ask them in the forum on our website, and I'll ask them if time allows. If you're watching this afterwards or that we don't have time to answer your questions, I'll make sure to send them over to Sdiptech. We'll move over to the first question. You mentioned that you've implemented some price increases. Could you comment on the magnitude and also if it's reactionary to rising costs or more in preparation of potentially rising costs? Okay, well, the price increases are really standard for us. It's normal price increases based on inflation, but also based on the balance between supply and demand. It's nothing extraordinary. What we are happy to see is that we were able to do the normal price increases that we would do any year. We were a bit unsure about the situation in some of these segments, since the pandemic does present some insecurity in the society as a whole. It was more a normal step for us, which we are pleased that we were able to do despite the circumstances. Thank you for that answer. The next question is, in regards to the component stock building now in Q1, do you think the effect could be more significant in Q2? Are you seeing any stock building from your customers as well that could pull demand forward? The stock building that we have done, to some extent it's related to Brexit, as Bengt explained, but it's also related to shortages in plastic, shortages in metals, semiconductors, and so on. We experience that. We have built up stock for that reason, and we will most likely continue to build up stock when we see that it's responsible from a cost perspective. We have not seen the stock build up so much from our customers, but we believe it's an important step for us to take. At the moment, we don't have any shortages, and we will continue to monitor it closely. It will take up some cash, also in the second quarter, we believe. Of course, we are in a good position. We have a healthy balance sheet, good cash position. We are able to support our companies while the situation is the way it is. We are moving from a strength position and trying to do what is best given the situation. Thank you for that answer. Moving to the next question: Could you comment on the activity in the U.K.? My perception is that January and February were slow, but with March being really solid, which would then imply a solid momentum into April and Q2. Is this something you recognize? We haven't seen that specific change between January, February, and March. For our businesses, it's never been a big problem throughout the entire pandemic. In the beginning, it was troublesome because it hit the world in a very unprepared way. Eventually, our businesses, they have been delivering. It has been working well. For us, it's not been big swings. It's been rather stable with a slight uptick now in first quarter. Thank you for that answer. The next question: Is the acquisition market hot in every region and segment? Good question. We experience the hot acquisition market specifically in the Nordics. The situation on the international markets, specifically U.K., where we definitely are active, we do not experience it in the same way. It's very much related to the Nordics and specifically the Swedish markets. Thank you for that. The next question: How do you define cash conversion ratio? Yeah. Well, we have full definitions in our report, but it's the cash flow then divided by the results before tax, but adjusted for non-cash items. If you want the full long definition, you can look at page 24, I believe it is, in our report. Thank you for that. The next question. Regarding the overheated Nordic market for acquisition, is your view that this market has become increasingly overheated over the last three to six months? A slight inflation in price has been going on for a couple of years, that we believe perhaps over the past year, or actually from autumn last year and forward, we've seen that the willingness to pay prices that we believe are not acceptable, that willingness has been quite high since the autumn going forward. We stay cool in this hot situation. Thank you very much, Jakob and Bengt, for your presentation, and thanks to all you who have been following today's webcast. I hope that we see each other soon again. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you, everybody. Thanks.
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