Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Sweco Q2 2024 financial report webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Alternatively, you may submit your question via the webcast. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Marcela Sylvander, CCO. Please go ahead. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this presentation of Sweco's Q2 report. Sweco's president and CEO, Åsa Bergman, and CFO, Olof Stålnacke, are with us today to take us through the results of this second quarter. Please, Åsa. Welcome everyone to Sweco's Q2 presentation. Before we present the second quarter of 2024, let me give you a quick overview of Sweco. Sweco is Europe's leading architecture and engineering consultancy, with operations in eight geographical business areas across 15 markets in Europe. We are a well-diversified business operating across three different segments with a good balance of private and public clients. The foundation for Sweco's long-term success is our mix of competencies spread across 22,000 experts, our focus on organic and acquired growth, as well as our efficient and decentralized operational model. The strong financial track record and financial position, we are focused on continuing our growth journey and build on Sweco's success. This introduction, let's move over to the Q2 highlights. Q2 was another good quarter for Sweco. We continued the positive momentum from Q1 and delivered a quarter of solid growth and improved margins. Net sales increased by 11%, and the organic growth amounted to 6%. EBITDA improved by 12%, adjusted for the positive calendar effect in the quarter. As a part of our efficiency measures, restructuring cost of SEK 58 million are also included in the result. The positive development was mainly driven by higher average fees, higher billing ratio, and a continued FTE growth. I am very pleased that the margin improvement increased to 9.8%. This summary, let us dive into more details. We continued to build on the momentum from the first quarter with a positive operational trend. six of eight of our business areas reported organic growth and EBITDA improvements in the quarter, and we continued to keep a good pace in recruitment. I would also like to highlight that seven out of eight business areas achieved margin improvements in the quarter. Over the past few quarters, we have put increased emphasis on our efficiency and billing ratio, and I'm pleased that we are now seeing a higher billing ratio in the second quarter. Let me give you an update on our work to improve our efficiency. Efficiency improvements are key to improve our margins, and over the past quarter, we have implemented a series of measures. This includes redundancies, mainly in the UK, but also in Sweden and Finland. Have also initiated a group-wide organizational review to streamline the organization. We are now pleased to see that these measures are starting to have effect. The repositioning in the UK is progressing according to plan, and the business area reported a positive result in the quarter. We are also seeing an uplift in our profitability across most business areas and improvements in our billing ratio. This will remain a key priority going forward, but we are pleased to see that we are taking steps in the right direction. Looking then at the overall market situation, it is generally in line with previous quarters. The overall demand for Sweco services remained good, especially related to the green transition. In water, energy, and industry segment, we see continued strong demand related to the transition in the energy and industry segments, and a strong demand in water. We see a weak demand in traditional industry services. In the transport infrastructure segment, we see good demand supported by infrastructure investments and transition to more sustainable transportation. In the buildings and urban area segments, we see stable demand in public buildings and a continued weak demand in residential and commercial real estate, with variation across markets and subsegments. With that, I will hand over to Olof to walk you through the numbers. Please, Olof. Thank you, Åsa. Starting again with a summary of the quarter, we see net sales of SEK 8.1 billion, 6% calendar-adjusted organic growth, 3% from M&A, and no significant FX effect. EBITDA is SEK 794 million, excluding the significant positive calendar effect, or SEK 68 million, or 12% up, and margin is at 9.8%. In the EBITDA, we have also taken SEK 58 million in restructuring costs, a bit more than we announced in Q2, where we talked about around SEK 45 million. Excluding these restructuring costs, the EBITDA increase would have been 22%. Leverage is down significantly from last year, at 1.1, after a strong cash flow quarter. Looking at net sales, adjusted for calendar, again, 6% organic growth, and we see organic growth in six out of eight BAs. Denmark and Germany and Central Europe continues to show very strong growth, and we see solid growth also in Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium. Finland, and especially UK, has negative growth. These are also our weakest markets, and the markets where we have taken the most significant restructuring action. The growth drivers, again, have been continued fee increases, also FTE growth. We maintain recruitment, and personnel turnover has continued to decline in the quarter. This quarter, we are also very pleased that billing ratio contributed positively to growth. And finally, one can add that there was no significant impact from absence in the quarter. In EBITDA, we see a 12% increase adjusted for calendar, and as said, excluding the restructuring cost, the EBITDA growth would be about 20%. The positive calendar impact, we see margin improvement in all BAs except Belgium, who still delivers 12.9%. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden also deliver double-digit margins. Finland is at 9%, Netherlands at 8%, and Germany and Central Europe delivers 6% in another solid quarter. Norway, again, has the biggest calendar effect, 40 more working hours, primarily due to Easter. UK remain marginally profitable, despite taking additional restructuring costs in the quarter. If we then look at the EBITDA bridge by business area, overall, higher average fees continue to be a positive driver, together with FTE growth, and now also billing ratio, while higher personnel expenses, including the restructuring costs, had a negative impact. Looking at the BAs, six out of eight delivered increased EBITDA. Belgium is in line with last year. Denmark and Germany and Central Europe, just for the, just as for the growth, once again, delivered the largest EBITDA improvements. Netherlands also has a strong quarter. This is Sweden and Finland improving, despite taking significant restructuring costs in the quarter. We took SEK 35 million in Sweden and SEK 15 million in Finland. In the UK, we have concluded our restructuring actions in the quarter, adding another 100 FTE reduction to the 100 FTE reduction we did in 2023. The calendar effect from 13 more working hours corresponded to a positive SEK 162 million in net sales and EBITDA impact. The financial position, net debt, is significantly down versus Q2 last year after a strong cash flow quarter, with a working capital release, and also decreased M&A outflows. Leverage is at 1.1, also significantly down versus last year, and well below our target. We remain financially strong, with available liquid assets of SEK 3.3 billion. And as last quarter, we have a slide on the calendar effect, and with the end of Q2, we have now put the big calendar swings from Easter behind us. We have a significantly positive calendar in Q3, high number of working hours in the quarter, but of course, it's also the holiday quarter, making it our smallest from a financial perspective. Positive calendar is also in July, meaning that it will probably have limited practical impact in the Nordics, so we may not get the full impact of the calendar effect. We have a small positive total for the year for the first time since 2020, and with our increased size, one hour now corresponds to approximately SEK 13 million. With that, back to you, Åsa. Today, I am happy to announce two new acquisitions. First one is a company called Frilling + Rolfs, and this is the first new acquisition in Germany for some years, and this is a milestone for us in Germany. This acquisition adds 30 experts specialized in the growing market segment of water treatment, enabling us to capture more business opportunities. The second company is Valstar Simonis, and this is an acquisition in the Netherlands that will further strengthen Sweco's position in the field of technical installations for sustainability, comfort, and safety in buildings. This acquisition is adding 60 experts to Sweco in the Netherlands. The projects won in the quarter reflect our broad and diverse expertise across several growth segments. Energy sector remains an interesting growth area. In the quarter, we won a project to support VoltH2 in the development of a green hydrogen plant in the Netherlands. Defense is another sector with growing demand, and here we secured a four-year contract with the Danish Ministry of Defence to support in construction and development of military properties. Need for more sustainable transportation is shown in two different types of projects, one in Finland, where we will support the development of a tramway in the city of Turku, and another project in the UK, where we are transforming a major road into a corridor of walking, cycling, and public transport. Let me now conclude by presenting our key priorities and focus areas going forward. We remain focused on capturing business opportunities by further strengthening our market position in Europe's green transition, and by tapping into attractive growth segments such as healthcare, pharma, and defense. We also focused on executing on our M&A agenda, announcing two new acquisitions today, and are actively working with a broad pipeline. We will continue to focus on our efficiency to improve our billing ratio and margin. This includes all the initiatives I have presented today and a strong efficiency focus across the organization. All in all, Sweco remains well positioned to continue our journey of profitable growth. We are committed to capture growth opportunities. Thank you. Thank you, Åsa and Olof. And now we will open up for questions, and as said before, it is possible for you to ask them directly through the phone line or through the chat function. So please, Melanie, if you could steer us. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click Submit. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. Our first question comes from the line of Dan Johansson from SEB. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes. Hi, Åsa and Olof. Thank you very much for taking my question. Hello. I have three questions here. I'll take them one by one, if it's okay. Maybe first one, it's quite encouraging to see the billing rates improving this quarter. Did you see most of the positive impact on the efficiency measures already now in Q2, or is that sort of a more of a boost ahead of you as well, that you only saw a minor impact on these measures made? Thank you. I think you should see it. It will be a gradual impact, and obviously all the actions we have taken has not happened at the start of the quarter, but gradually. So assume that the improvement will continue, sort of all things equal. Okay. Sounds good. And another question, more market related, perhaps. Yeah, as you know, the weak demand for within residential and commercial real estate has been around now for many quarters, but in your more early cyclical exposure, I guess, such as parts of architecture, are you not starting to see more projects coming in now, perhaps starting now in H2, although from low levels, I guess, but or is it just still very, very, very, very dark out there in the real estate segment? Thank you. There is no change in the segments you refer to. It's still weak, and as I said in the previous quarter, we will start to report when we see effects in our orders received and in our order book, related to those segments that you refer to. They are still weak. Yep. Fully understand. And maybe final question. Interesting to now see the first acquisition in Germany for quite a long time. I guess we could see more of that coming in the coming years. But how do you assure that you expand in a controlled way this time, so you don't run into similar challenges as you previously had in Germany? It would be interesting to hear your take on that. Thank you. I mean, of course, you, you learn from, whatever you, you know, experience, and, and it's the same with us. So, we work with a very strict DD process. We are working with a broad pipe of targets. So first of all, we are making sure that we focus on the right areas, the right competencies that we need to continue the growth in Germany in the right way. And then, of course, we're very selective in that process. So, yeah, and a very strict and firm DD process, I would say. Be selective and have a good DD process. I think, I mean, worth adding to that is, of course, that we are making the acquisition is a sign that we see that we have ways of working and processes in Germany that are now sort of a stable foundation to add companies to. ... Yeah, sounds good. I think that was all my questions for now. Thank you very much, and have a good summer. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, and bye. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Fredrik Littell from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Thank you very much. I can, hi, Åsa, hi, Olof. Congratulations to a nice and strong report. I have two questions for you, and it's really on your weak spots, UK and Finland. So I would like to hear you elaborate a little bit on the UK Is that a good enough platform, do you think, for bolt-on acquisitions, or do you need to sort of restart the UK, given where you are and, and, and what you're working with right now? And in terms of Finland, it has been a weak market situation in general, and Finland is our assessment. Anyhow, it would be interesting to hear from you if you feel this is mostly a market situation, or is it something in your organization that is troubling you as well? Would be interesting. Thank you. Hi, Fredrik. If I start with the UK market, we refer back a bit to the Q1 report, especially the public market has been challenging for some time. So when we're talking about positioning the UK market, it's really to focus where we see more stable growth. So with- Mm. -with that focus, and the measures and redundancies taken, we foresee a more stable performance going forward. But what you see in the quarter is that we see a gradual process related to the activities that we have taken. And we are optimistic about the business opportunities in the UK market going forward. When it comes to Finland, I have to say, it's mainly and have been mainly a market situation, if you refer to the weak performance going back in Finland. Mm. We see that with the measures taken in and the redundancies that we have taken in in Finland both in Q1 and Q2 that we are in in we are well positioned in in the Finnish market. And then, of course, related to the efficiency measures that we talk about, that of course covers Finland as well. So we work both with the, you know, the market and with internal measures to become even more competitive on the Finnish market. Thank you. Very good answers. Just a follow-up on Finland there. I mean, it, it, as you say, it has been a weak market, broad-based more or less, and there are other places there as well that also have suffered and are struggling a little bit, evenly. Do you feel that you have the same pricing environment in Finland, or is it so that that is a, a, also a weak spot in terms of pricing? Well, I would say, and hi, Fredrik, I would say- Hi -that Finland has had the same price increases as other countries. So we have sort of not sacrificed pricing for volume in that market either. Okay. Maybe that is good to comment on, that we are, and Finland is also very good at this, to select the right project, projects, and also to be able to utilize what we have to be efficient when it coming to the pricing as well. Okay. Very clear. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Please stand by. Our next question comes from the line of Johan Ljungqvist from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Good afternoon, Åsa and Olof. Thank you for taking my questions. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. First one is on the order book situation. You didn't give any comments that I have found in the report on the order book situation. Is it possible to quantify or put any direction of how the order book has developed quarter-on-quarter? Order book, the order book has continued to grow in absolute terms. It is slightly down in relation to LTM net sales growth, but we don't see any break in the trend. It's growing in absolute terms, as said, and we still have a good order inflow. So, no sort of directional change on that one. Excellent. On the cash flow down, working capital release here in Q2, while you had the working capital build up in Q2 last year, was there anything particular that triggered the strong working capital release in this quarter? I think a couple of quarters back, we talked about taking action on working capital, and I think we are. Part of that is what we are seeing right now. So as you say, Q2 normally seasonally weak when it comes to trade working capital, but we have made reduction. And on trade working capital, we are back to the levels we saw in 2021 and 2022, before the acceleration of growth. So that's very positive. ... Excellent. I guess my final question is on the M&A outlook. We have touched upon it during the presentation already, but just to give more color on the kind of M&A pipeline, how you're thinking about the German business in more detail, regarding what pockets do you want to strengthen? I guess you have had quite a lot of time during the turnaround process to kind of study the German market and work with lead generation, et cetera. First of all, if I start in Germany, I mean, in Sweco, as you know, every business needs, you know, to have the right to grow with acquisitions, and we are there now, even if you will see it gradually coming. And, I mean, the areas we're looking for is where we see the green transition. So it's about the water segment, as you see now. It's about making sure that we strengthen ourselves in the infrastructure, transportation, transport infrastructure segment related to the rail and light rail. It's really about sustainability services in different, you know, aspects. But so in all segments, it's related to that we can meet and support the green transition and what our client is needing in Germany. So we, I mean, we look at the German business both in a geographical perspective, but we're also looking at it when it comes to competencies to make sure that we find companies that fits us both geographically but also competence-wise. And we are working with a broad portfolio and try to intensify the dialogues. And it's the same way we work in all countries to make sure that we, you know, when we get the opportunity to buy the right companies, then we will do it. But it's more of a timing question in an overall perspective. In Germany, it's very much to be, you know, in it step by step and being very selective. Excellent. My other question has already been answered, so I get back in line. Thanks a lot, and have a good summer. Same to you. Thank you. Thank you. Same to you. Same to you. Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Johan Dahl from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes, thanks. Hello, everyone. Just a few questions. Firstly, on the pricing. I mean, we've talked over the quarters lately about sort of prices being accretive to earnings, the net of pricing and wages. This quarter seems to be, you know, many other things that are driving sort of strong results. I was just curious to know, do you see a sort of a diminishing effect from prices versus wage, and its accretion to earnings? Is there any cause for concern for that reason, or why is that, if that's the correct conclusion? I would say, I mean, you will always have some fluctuations between quarters, and Q2 is also when we get the, the impact of the salary revision in Sweden. So, it's probably sort of the most difficult quarter from that perspective. But we see no general change in that trend, and we are quite confident that we can continue to balance prices and salary increases. Gotcha. Interesting too, also, your long-term ambitions with regards to efficiency. Do you think that it will be required by Sweco sort of to do the type of restructures that you've done in the last two quarters? Will that sort of be a recurring event, do you think, to continue to drive efficiency in the coming years, or do you expect this to be a, if this is sort of a subnormal position right now, where you're taking sort of accelerated action? Obviously, if you look over the last twelve months, we have—I mean, there is somewhere around 500 FTE reduction in total in Sweco. And I think that's probably—and that obviously includes the turnaround in UK. I think that will continue to be a sort of a high number for us, but so not on those levels going forward. But I mean, we, if we need to make restructures, we will do that, but there is nothing in the plans right now. All right. Finally, also, on the if you just look Northern Sweden, Northern Scandinavia, so, you know, pulp and paper, battery manufacturing, et cetera, what are you seeing currently in your tendering activity? Is there any red flags occurring here for you guys in terms of demand from clients, or is it too sort of small to be relevant for Sweco in total? Yeah, I would say, I mean, hi, I would say, Åsa here. I would say that, I mean, overall, it's part of our portfolio, but no major red flags. We see a diverse portfolio or our orders received is quite diverse. So, all in all, we're good. It's when it comes to industry, it's really related to the more energy related industries, we see demand. And it's also fair to comment that we also work quite a lot across when it comes to those projects. So we work across the different Sweco markets here. So when we build them, we build up our project teams, we build them across borders, meaning that we utilize all markets at the same time, in a way. Gotcha. Oh, it's just interesting to hear your - there's been a lot of chatter about it lately, obviously. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you. Have a nice summer. Have a nice summer, everyone. Same to you. Same to you, thanks. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click submit. We'll now go ahead with our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Raymond Ke from Nordea. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, Åsa and Olof. A couple of questions from me. First, regarding sort of the improvement in utilization, what is a level of utilization that you consider to be satisfactory on a full year basis? Should we sort of look at your historic levels at close to 75%, or do you have other industry peers as a guide here? How do you look at it long term? We obviously have internal targets for each business area, but we do not communicate them externally. And I think in general, Q2 is a good sign that we are moving in the right direction. We expect continued gradual improvement, but we'll not talk about it more than that. Got it. And restructuring costs there in Denmark and Belgium, sort of surprised about those. Are you sort of seeing signs of a market becoming weaker there and trying to get ahead of it? Or could you provide some more context for these restructuring initiatives here? Well, we have talked about the bigger actions we are taking in UK, Sweden, and Finland, but we have also talked about reviewing the organization in all the business areas, and these are sort of minor such actions taken in Denmark and Belgium. So not, I would say, market related, but related to our overall internal efficiency. And if we hadn't had the other restructuring cost in this month, we probably may not even have mentioned them since they are so small, but now it felt like we should sort of present the whole picture to be very clear externally. Got it. Makes sense. And, I just, think I sort of missed the answer there, but, as you see now, you don't see any need for more restructuring efforts already in Q3, if I understood that correctly. Is that correct? We have, I mean, if we had something big planned and sort of agreed, we would of course talk about it, but right now, I mean, we will continue to take whatever measures are needed to improve our efficiency, but nothing that we have in the plans right now. Okay, brilliant. Thank you very much. I'll get back in line. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further audio questions at this time, so I'll hand the call back to Marcela. Thank you, Melanie, and there are no more questions for this regarding this presentation. So with this, we want to thank you for joining us and wish you all a nice summer vacations, and see you, if not before, on October the third, when we present our Q3 report. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.