Good day, and welcome to today's presentation of Troax Group AB third quarter report 2023. This meeting is being recorded. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to Thomas Widstrand. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much. Happy that you are joining me in a little bit of this presentation of the third quarter. As usual, I will refer a little bit to information and reports that are now presented into our webpage, our homepage, troax.com, and you will find some reference to what I'm saying, in what we call a third quarter presentation, which you will find on the Investors, and then Presentations. If you don't have it, you will still be able to follow me. I will try to explain, but if not, it is always good to be able to follow a certain structure. I'll go straight into the presentation, and the first pages that we have in this presentation are, of course, a little bit of, like, introduction. If you go to the third page, I think it is, I'd like to introduce the first business segment or division that we are reporting. We call it machine guarding, which is approximately 60% of our turnover. As the picture to the right there implies, it's obviously so that our type of fences, because this is what we do, could be called machine guarding, could be called perimeter guarding. As you see from the picture, we then divide people with potential hazardous areas, and that's actually our business idea, of course, to create a safe environment for people working in workshops or factories or, you know, wherever. Next one, which we're also reporting, is called warehouse partitioning. As you can see from the picture also, it's obviously connected with warehouse. It could be the more traditional types, as this picture implies. This is approximately 30% of our turnover, and I'll come back to you with a few explanations then over the hybrid that we have, which is both machine guarding and warehouse partitioning, called automated warehouse installation. The third one, now I'm at the fifth page, it's called Property protection, approximately 10% of our turnover, and it's, it's not so important, probably from a safety point of view, but it's, it's of course, so that it's quite important for you and I, when we have, for instance, in multi-story buildings, we have in the cellar, some sort of cage, which is locked, and where we then, as the picture shows, keep our stuff that are not needed on a regular basis, like bicycles, skis, or, luggage or whatever. All right. Then I come to Automated warehouse, which, also then says, I think in a good way, safety on all levels. And where, as you can see from this picture, this automated warehouse part, which we have been selling a lot during 2020 and 2021, this then is actually warehouses where you put in a lot of money. And I stress, there is a lot of money in these kind of huge investments, for mechanizing or automating the warehouse, warehouses, and especially the big companies, they are, of course, investing in this. And this is a combination of what we do in machine guarding and warehouses, and we don't actually disclose on the turnover, but, as we said before, officially, this was one of the parts where we were growing in a very hefty way in 2020 and 2021. The rollback of that was when these kind of big international customers realized that they had overinvested, the then turnover or the order intake in this sector went down. Now, having said this, we think now that from the third quarter, things have started to normalize, because we don't have a lot of orders in the comparison figure from last year anymore, in this sector. Which means then that the core of what we are doing, which we've been doing for many years, that shows more than the more, let's call it, normal development or representative development without automated warehouse. Having said this, we still think that the automated warehouse will come back, because, there are lots of these investments which are ongoing or is planned to get started, and we have quite a good, reputation in this and a good, market share. So we think that, when these things now get more active again, we will, you know, take a good part of the market. So it will obviously then enhance our turnover and our profitability, but we don't think that that will have an immediate effect this year, but probably these kind of big international customers that I'm referring to, will probably start to order in a, maybe in a slow way, but nevertheless, start to order during 2024. Next page is more historical, that we, in 2022, had a turnover of SEK 284 million, and you can see the sales per region. So what we're doing is, of course, then that trying to maintain the figures and of course, continue to grow in Europe, which is our home market. And we, of course, then put in a number of efforts into get growth in, both in North America and in new markets. And this was how it looked for 2022. And as I said before, the main target is, of course, to get growth in all areas, but there's, of course, a specific need to get, I would say, more growth long term, especially into the Far Eastern markets, which are today quite a small part of Troax. Go very briefly to the next one, that we are the global leader of indoor perimeter protection. In this market, we are clearly the leader. We are three times bigger than number two player, and we are then a growth company, even based on this development of automated warehouse. We haven't had, I would say, much growth in 2022, and not for 2023 either, up until the third quarter. But behind this, when I've explained this development of automated warehouse, it's still so that the core of our business or the traditional part of our business is continuing to grow. So it's actually so that we are not at all unhappy over the total situation. Financial targets is the next one. We have cumulative, then on the sales growth, have organic, minus 5%. Not a very impressive figures, but as I said, since the comparison figures now including automated warehouse start to fade off, we see that for third quarter we actually have a small organic growth. Not impressive, but nevertheless, it shows that there are possibilities to get continued growth. So I think that we, we at least internally, see this as a, in a positive way. Regarding profitability, we should be around 20% or a little bit higher. And cumulative, we have reached for this year 19.5%, despite and the volume decrease compared with last year, which we think is quite acceptable, seeing the, you know, the market development. Regarding the capital structure, we have a very good balance sheet, which means then that if there will come up interesting companies for sale, we of course continue to be very interested to acquire those, if they fit into the framework that we've set up for possible acquisitions. I go to the next one, which is some sort of summary for the third quarter in 2023, that it was characterized a little bit by a continuation of the lower market activity, especially from automated warehouse customers. However, and as I said before, we note that the figures are starting to stabilize, which means then, again, that the core business is increasing compared to previous quarter, which is a sign of stability. Positive is, also that despite what is written in newspapers and information that we all get to take part of, the rest of the market also have relatively good activity levels. It's not really any booming market, but we've seen a reasonable development in all customer segments, with the exception, actually, of the building market in the Nordic area, where we see that requests for new quotes for new buildings is obviously going down. This is something which we have seen for some time, or that we have expected to see for some time, and now we think we're starting to see it. There will be some reduction in this segment as the building market and the contractor market for buildings in the Nordic area is obviously reducing as we speak. What's important for us is, of course, the steel price, and it's been stable or even reducing during this quarter, so, I wouldn't like to comment anything specific on this. And, as I tried to say before, we've had a positive EBITDA result and margin, especially then I think we should be a little bit positive over this. Since the volume then for automated warehouse was substantially lower than in 2022, which means then that we've increased on the, you know, efficiency in our, not only in our manufacturing units, but also in our processes, and that's a good sign. Gross margin have reached more or less the targeted levels. We've had reasonable sales levels in all areas, with the exception of the Nordic region, already commented on. In Great Britain, Great Britain still had, still had some sales level last year, which were positively influenced, by bigger projects, both in automated warehouse and in other segments. When we compare now into the third quarter, I wouldn't say that, that it looks like they've, they've lost, but it's actually so then, that this major projects then have not, come back in this, in this quarter. The base of what we're doing in, in U.K. is still ongoing in a good way. I think there are good possibilities that, we will have a more normal development, meaning positive development, in the quarters to come. In the new markets, we saw then, of course, markets, especially in, Asia Pacific and South America, that they've had quite good development. Of course, the customer base is a bit lower there, so one good project will of course show good mean that we show good figures, so you shouldn't take this as an example, that everything is suddenly moving in the right direction. I've said before that if you should look at the long-term development, but for this quarter, we had good development in this, in this market. Earnings per share. Unfortunately, then because of that, the sales team was slightly lower. It was slightly reduced than compared with last year, but again, seeing that the interest rates are higher and that the volume was lower, I think that we as shareholders might not think that this was anything fantastic, but I think that seeing, seeing this development is quite okay, I think, short term, at least. Working capital is on a lower level compared to last year. We have reduced especially the inventory level, which means that the cash flow was strong in the quarter. That's something that we don't see should you know substantially change in the coming quarter. We've, in the previous quarters, commented a little bit about Natom Logistic, the company that we bought a couple of years ago in Poland, and they have, of course, been negatively influenced by the lower activity from these automated warehouse customers. But in the third quarter, we saw some better activity level in this area. So we will see in the coming quarters how it's developing. But maybe we are through with the low activity in Natom for this, at least for the time being. The other small activities we did last year in Spain, called Claitec, and in Sweden, called Svenska Cykelrum, they have continued to develop well also in the third quarter. Regarding investments, we've continued to do the building work for yet another expansion of the facilities in Ljusdal, Sweden. Also, the ending of the quarter, just as a small information, we acquired also our distributor in Croatia, so they are now part of our own sales team, so to speak, working with those local customers and international customers, of course, in this area. Going to the next page, which are the financial highlights. You probably read about it before, and I've indirectly commented a little bit. Order intake is on a similar level as last year for this quarter, actually slightly higher than if you take into account currency development, et cetera. The gross margin is substantially improved, primarily because then, of course, there's now stability on the pricing side, and the raw material, especially steel, have then continued to go down. We have also increased efficiency somewhat in some of the manufacturing units by reducing then people and increasing, generally speaking, efficiency. The EBITDA margin is down 20.8% in the quarter compared to 18.5%, and as I already said before, it's 19.5% cumulative versus 18.3%. We've increased the margin even in market, which is perhaps not supporting this kind of development. Going to the next page, where we show then the regional development, and I think it's most interesting for you to have a few, a little look down on the order intake and on the sales side for the last quarter, which is seen here on the left part of the, on the report. And as I said before, the U.K. was not so brilliant, but it was quite positive in new markets and also Nordic region, as I said, was suffering a bit from this weakening market. The rest are either positive, like in North America, or more or less than plus or minus zero, like in what we call Continental Europe. So from order intake, I would say it's quite stable. Not fantastic, but quite stable. On the sales side, shows similar pattern, but since we had a few projects being invoiced in the third quarter last year, you will then see that, for instance, Continental Europe, when you compare invoicing, is a bit lower. And also on the U.K., you have an even worse figure than on from an invoicing point of view, and the same in North America. Whereas, on the new market, some of these orders which came in have been invoiced in the third quarter, meaning then that the figures there show, of course, a positive, positive development. So, so far, for the first nine months, we have done a deterioration of the volume. We are 5% below in order intake for nine months, which is nothing that we, so to speak, are particularly happy about. But since the automated warehouse now is gone out of the figures, and we see that they will probably start ordering at some sort of level from the beginning or at least first half year next year, we are pretty positive overall then that this can be turning to a positive development, just like we've been having for many years in a row before. Now, I go to some conclusions, which is certainly to some extent repeating what we said in the summary, but we continue to receive several important orders in all segments, and this quarter it refers mainly to customers within machine guarding, less within our warehouse system. This is actually then a, a sign of stability, I would say, both on the market and for Troax, so we intend, of course, to continue, to continue to do that. We've had continued positive development in result, which I've now said several times, reflecting both the improved gross margins and on despite then that we've had lower utilization levels in the manufacturing units. We've had decent activity levels in most markets and, good success in orders. No signs of any major decreases in demand, with the possible exception, then we have to see that, it's not only for a quarter, but our gut feeling is that the building market in the Nordic area is starting to go down, and as far as we can judge, from requests for new quotes. We are of course late in the processes in the building markets, means the customers then wants to have all sort of cages done at the end of the processes. So even if probably the licenses for new buildings have already started to decline for some quarters ago, we see it first now, and this is probably typical for where we are. The planned investment in Natom is more or less finished. We have moved most part of the old factories to the new one, which we have in Środa, which is outside of Poznań. But we still have some things to do, so it will continue a bit into next year. But the big part, I would say, is done. So in total, you could say that we regard this development in the quarter quite as stable and actually quite positive, even if the volumes are still lacking. And as I said before, we expect that the demand of some automated warehouse will start to increase then again during 2024. To what level, we have to come back to, but we are positive over this development. So that means if you go to the next page, the growth factors, factors are still the same as we've been showing now for several quarters. So it's what's really driving the growth for us, is to continue the industrial automation, the growth in e-commerce. I get a lot of questions regarding onshoring or manufacturing, which of course, there's a lot of talk about. I wouldn't say that this has influenced our market terribly much at this stage, but I'm pretty sure it's going to have a positive effect over the quarters to come. But so far, very little effect for us. Next page shows our production units, and I think we are doing some investments right now, which will have some effects from machine point of view. So when we report next quarter, we probably will then improve some of the figures here, which means then that we are preparing for some volume development, which will come, you know, sooner or later. But I need to come back to that when we have our next meeting in February next year. Troax Group, working for a safer world, and these are the brand names that we're working with, even if, of course, Troax is the main brand. We've been working with a safer tomorrow since 1955. On this page called number 18, you can see what we focus on today. I've been reviewing this several times with you before, so I won't go into this again. Generally speaking, you can say, of course, that we are working a lot with reducing CO2 consumption, and of course, being quite, quite careful about the environment, especially then, since we use a lot of steel, and where we purchase steel has, of course, a huge impact on our, let's say, imprint on the environment. Our R&D center is working on our products, and we are certified by TÜV Rheinland, protecting people, property, and processes. That has all then come together in that I showed this already last quarter, so it's nothing new this quarter, but we've then introduced a complete new product, which is called Panel Detection, which means then that we can have an automated peak monitoring of panels. And that, if something then would be missing from the panel point of view, which actually could be rather dangerous for the people working there. Let's assume that something is missing of whatever reason, then these Panel Detection, if you have it installed, would immediately aware and indicate that this is dangerous, and you shouldn't get started whatever process you're doing. So this enhances further than the safety levels that we've been working with for some time. So I think that's a good achievement for customers who are, let's say, interested in the safety part of this kind of installment. Right, I jump through the rest, and because time is running, and I would like you to be able to get some questions answered. So I will, with this then, stop my little presentation, and I'm waiting for your questions. So thank you so far. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question at this time, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. And please make sure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. Again, it is star one to ask a question. And our first question comes from Gustav Berneblad, from Nordea. Please go ahead. Yeah, good afternoon, Thomas. It's Gustav here. Hi, Gustav. Just hi. Maybe start off, you comment in the report that sort of other customer segments continue to increase volumes during Q3. Mm-hmm. Could you specify what sort of end markets this is? These are not homogeneous market, of course. It's a wide range, everything from automotive, even if automotive, this quarter was not so brilliant, I would say. So it comes back to what we normally calling them general industry, which consists of everything from, could be, food industry, the guys and girls who are buying robots for some installation work or whatever you're doing. So it's not so that one or two single segments are you could be identified and say that these are the ones who are positive. We've had actually a positive development, albeit small figures, in a lot of these small sub-segments, because, and as I already said, the automated warehouse and also the automotive, this quarter was not that strong. But the other type of segment, sub-segments like steel, and what I already said, general industry or food, has been developing in a good way, including data centers. Ah, okay, perfect. And then maybe on automotive here, as you said, it was a bit weak, but you comment on not seeing any general drop in demand. Do you think that this is mainly- No Due to seasonality, maybe more- Yeah Specific, the summer vacation, or are there other impacts, or? No, I need to repeat, and that's we are not the biggest supplier to the automotive industry, so you have to take that into consideration. But as far as we see, this is more of, you know, one quarter, we get some good quotes, or even orders, and this, this quarter, we didn't get a lot. So I think it's more of, seasonality or that, that these type of customers, they need a number of, quotes, also quotes or orders just before the vacation period. And now there are some assembling new ideas for the next phase, which might come in the fourth quarter or in the beginning of next year. So I, I think it's much more like that than any trend or so. We don't see that. Ah, okay, perfect. And then maybe if we look at the order intake in North America, it was up some 6% there. What are you seeing there? It's a healthy development. I would say generally, and since we didn't have this big influence from automated warehouse. Actually, in North America, the order intake from the currency is not bad, it's not good either, I would say. It's otherwise coming from different sort of this, as I call it, sub-segments. Everything from, you know, beverage to more automation company, which are working now with new investments in different sorts of areas. I would say it's a vast number of smaller sub-segments which have had a positive development, even if I said the figures are not fantastic in any way, but still slightly positive. Okay. And given if we sort of see flat volumes today, in terms of the margin here, would you say that it is possible to drive the margin even further, or are we sort of at peak levels, would you say? No, we can drive it further if the volume or when, rather when the volume then returns in a positive way. We have clear possibilities to come further with this. But it's of course a combination of everything from, you know, purchases of steel and other things, energy costs and prices to customers and everything in between with our own processes. But to answer your question, yes, we can further increase our gross margin. Okay. Then maybe the last one here. The gross margin was up quite significantly, if we compare just to Q2 than sequentially. Mm-hmm. Is it possible to sort of give the split, how much is driven by, by sort of the lower steel prices, and how much is due to the internal efficiencies you have made? We don't disclose that, unfortunately, but I can say in a general way, then, that of course, since the steel prices have been relatively stable, even if it's going down, it has the possibility to inflect in fact in this third quarter. But the bigger part of the gross margin improvement in this quarter, not in earlier quarters, but this quarter, has come more from the internal improvement. Ah, okay. Perfect. That's, that's all for me. Thank you very much. Thanks, Gustav. Thank you. And our next question comes from Daniel Lindkvist, from Danske Bank. Hello, Daniel. Hi. So if we just continue on the gross margin, we're not digging too much into details, but I'd say very impressive gross margin given the volumes, what we expect to be the price development year-over-year, but not the least, the regional split. I mean, from what I've learned historically, the Continental Europe and the Nordics divisions or regions normally boast the highest gross margins, and those were slightly weaker in this quarter. And from what I see, should have some pent-up order conversion to be done in Q4 or Q1 and going forward. So how should we view that with the gross margin? Can you just comment on that dynamic? I think you're thinking in the right way, Daniel. Normally we have, of course, since Europe is our home market, we normally have, of course, some better processes, both from a manufacturing and sales point of view in the organization. Normally you can say, then, we get a better margin if those developments are more positive. This quarter, even if the invoicing was lower, we had already taken precautions to reduce the number of people in the manufacturing units and doing other possible things you could do, you know, to improve things. I think that that's been more than compensated by the lower volume in Continental and the Nordic. And if you then see it from an invoicing point of view, it's of course so that the U.K. and North America were even reducing more than Continental Europe and Nordic region. So which means that the mix, actually, from an invoicing point of view, was actually more positive than even if, in absolute terms, they were going down. I'm not sure if you follow me, Daniel, but- Okay, okay. That's at least how I see it. Yeah. Is there any effect from your smaller and mid-sized customers buying at higher prices? I'm sure there is. We haven't analyzed this, but you have a little bit point, because generally speaking, we get a little bit higher margin, of course, from small and medium-sized customers. And since the big ones have been a little bit lacking in the last quarters, you get a general positive influence on margins. That is correct. You shouldn't take, but you have some sort of positive impact. That's correct. Cool. And then if we just look at the order intake in Q3 and going into Q4, how the price development year-over-year, could you give some, just- In the third quarter, we have no price changes at all compared to the third quarter last year. Exactly on the same level. Okay, but going on into Q4. And we're going- Prices should be somewhat lower? Yeah. Prices should be somewhat lower, yeah. Correct. Okay. Not, not to any significant extent, but mathematically, yes, there will be a slight deterioration. Correct. Okay. So that should be interpreted then, that I believe when we talked about this a year ago, then you expected more price reductions than what's been the case. Is that so? Well, it's obviously a bit sensitive to talk about price reductions because there could be people listening in here who could use this. As you know, I want to refrain a little from this, but, but there could, of course, there could, of course, be an influence of this kind of development, yes. Correct. Cool. And then just to, on the order conversion, I am a bit hooked on order conversion and gross margins- Yeah As you know. So with the order conversion, have you lost orders during the year, or should we expect for the orders that have been in the order book to be converted at some time? Yes. As far as we see it today, the orders that we have now, in the cumulative, they should—most of them should be invoiced in Q4. So the order book that we have at the end of September should be converted to sales invoice in Q4. I'm not aware of any bigger projects that will be sold in the first half of 2024. So it could very well be one or two, but the major part will definitely be invoiced now in Q4. Perfect. So because when I saw the gross margin from the beginning, I was almost expecting you to have a line of using the written off automated warehouse product. Ah, no. No. But they're still in- Yeah Still in the warehouse? Yes, they're still in the warehouse. That has not influenced the figures at all. Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much, Thomas, and congratulations on setting some type of bottom in the development there. Looking forward to the continuation. Thanks. Thank you, Daniel. It was nice talk. Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. We'll pause for just a moment to allow you to signal. There are no further questions in the queue. I'd like to have the call - oh, we have a pop-up question from Anders Rudolfsson, from DNB Markets. Please go ahead. Hi, Thomas. Hope everything okay with you, and I would like to. There's been some really extreme years, the last couple of years. And looking into, it's hard, of course, to know where the normal demand would be now- Yeah From here- Mm-hmm G oing on forward. Where, where - what do you think? I mean, this is, of course, looking into something very hard, but looking into 2024 compared to the last couple of years, where, where do you think- Yeah It would be? Is it a normal year or would be- Yeah Another weird year? Good question, Anders. It's a good one. It's a really good one. I think that what we've been trying to say here and communicate is that this huge impact we had in a positive way, from the automated warehouse in 2020 and 2021, was not any normal development. So if you take a line and draw that, you know, more from 2018, 2019, until we are now, then you will see that we have a more normal development and on our, let's say, core or our base volume. So we've actually been continuing to increase on the core of our development, even if there was influence and positively in 2020, 2021, and negatively in 2022 and 2023 by the automated warehouse. So to answer your question, going into 2024, you know, if you exclude that something new will happen on the world market, which of course could always be like this, we are seeing that 2024 could actually be even more of a normal year, and not these kind of ups and downs. And again, if nothing extraordinary is happening in the world, we do see a possibility in 2024. At least, we will work hard for some organic growth, even if the market will not probably support that comment, generally. So in other words, I see 2024 possibilities to have some sort of normal year, but not any fantastic year, obviously. That's clear, we were not going to get. Yeah. Thanks. And just on that theme, what are you most worried about for next year? Is it something specifically? I mean, everything can happen, but in within Troax, so to speak, what are you the most challenging thing to get to work? Without putting myself in a center, but I think what's important is that we get, you know, successes for myself that can take the company to the next level and the next level. And I think that's not anything I'm worried about, but spontaneously, that comes into mind. That's one of the most important things. I think that we want to, you know, transform in a good way in next year, so that the organization feels and also the customer feels, and that, you know, we continue to rely on Troax, and we can continue our long-term growth trend. Well, well, I think we will have left that very well. Thank you so much. Thank you, Anders. Thank you. As there are no further questions in the queue, I'd like to hand it back over to Thomas for any additional or closing remarks. Over to you. In that case, thank you very much for your interest and for your questions, of course, and I look forward to talk to you again then in February next year, when we're going to report on the fourth quarter and the full year of 2023. And I think some of your questions that you had today will probably be a little bit easier then to explain, because I think this possibility will be a little more stable situation. Let's see about that. So thank you everyone, very much. Talk to you next time. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.