Storskogen Group Stock

Welcome to the Storskogen Q2 presentation for 2026. [Operator Instructions]

Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Christer Hansson; and CFO, Lena Glader. Please go ahead.

Welcome and thank you for joining us for the presentation of Storskogen's interim report for the second quarter of 2026. I'm Christer Hansson, CEO; and with me today is Lena Glader, our CFO. When we spoke after first quarter, my message was that this year would bring an increased focus on growth in its broadest sense, organic and acquired. The second quarter has moved us in that direction, which I'm pleased with. We delivered positive organic development, completed further acquisitions and continue to build on a stable operational platform.

Growth was also the theme when we gathered more than 100 of our group's business unit CEOs in Stockholm at the end of May for our Global CEO days. Over 2 days, we discussed how growth is created in the businesses and how we, as an owner, support our CEOs in succeeding, including a half day on AI where the CEOs did practical solutions. The engagement was strong throughout, which says something about the ambition that exists across the group. I will shortly go through the quarter in more detail, including how our capacity for acquisition-driven growth develops going into the second half of the year and beyond.

But before that, let's take a brief look at Storskogen. Storskogen is a diversified international business group with sales of approximately SEK 33 billion over the last year and adjusted EBITA of about SEK 3.1 billion spread across our 3 business areas: Services, Trade and Industry. At the end of Q2, the group consisted of 114 business units with average annual sales of around SEK 290 million. Overall, I'm especially pleased with the development for Industry, an underlying positive trend can be seen in Trade as we move into the second half of the year and we are seeing improvements in Services.

Johan Ekstrom has taken over as an Interim Head of Services and I'm confident in the team while we are moving towards a permanent solution. So let's turn to the highlights for the quarter. The second quarter delivered growth in both sales and EBITA driven by organic development in the quarter. This is a shift we are working towards and it's encouraging to see it come through in numbers. Year-to-date, organic net sales growth stands at 4% and we are working hard to get the negative adjusted EBITA number towards positive territory.

If we take a closer look at the margin, the comparison period includes one-off effect and adjusted for that, the margin is unchanged year-over-year. Cash flow came in at SEK 465 million and somewhat lower than a year ago. This reflects a strong finish to the quarter where higher sales in June meant more outstanding receivables at the end of the period. We expect this to support cash flow during the second half of the year, similar to the pattern we saw last year. We completed 4 acquisitions in the quarter with a combined annual sales of SEK 214 million, in line with the gradual return to acquired growth that we have communicated.

Operational excellence and sales growth remain key priorities. The market environment is still mixed and disciplined execution in the businesses continues to be the foundation for both organic performances and our increased M&A activity. Next let's take a closer look at our cash flow performance, which continues to be a key strength. As mentioned, cash flow in the quarter came in somewhat below last year due to a strong finish to the quarter, particularly in Industry. Higher sales in June meant that receivables increased at the end of the period tying up some working capital, but with an expected reversal during H2.

On the right side of the slide, you can see that the group continues to be stable with cash flow on a rolling 12-month basis at around SEK 2.5 billion. It has come down somewhat. Growth ties up capital and with cash conversion moving down towards 70%, we are seeing the effect of the group delivering sales growth. The persistent cash flow achieved over the past years reflect continued disciplined operational execution across the group. That discipline remains fundamental to our business model and to our capital allocation going forward.

Next we look closer to the seasonal variation for the sales and EBITA margin. The second quarter came in stronger, in line with our historical seasonal pattern. As just mentioned, comparing with last year, Q2 in 2025 including a positive one-off effect. Adjusted for that, the margin is unchanged year-over-year. Quarterly performance naturally fluctuates by diversification across industry, geographies and end market provide relative stability over time as you can see on the right side of the slide. That said, the trend for rolling 12 months margin is slightly negative and we are not satisfied with that.

I continue to believe, however, that our target of at least 10% is reasonable especially if the economic environment improves. We are working hard to turn the trend and the organic development this quarter is a step in that direction. Let me now turn to the organic sales growth. Organic sales growth is picking up, which has been our focus for the past years through everything that we have done on pricing, customer offerings and operational improvements in the businesses. Seeing this work come through in numbers is a good start. Keeping and taking market shares drives profits over time.

A business that defends and grows its position in the market has pricing power, relevance with customers and room to invest. So the logic going forward is straightforward; grow the top line organically, we strengthen the margin and together those 2 grow EBITA. Next, let's take a closer look at the margin trend across the group. The chart to the right shows industry has turned its trend in the past quarter in a market that's been challenging, particularly outside of Sweden. The order book is solid and this is expected to support the second half of the year.

Trade is currently fairly stable, but the trend has moved in the right direction over the past 2 years and the economic environment is improving. Services level has leveled out and we are hoping for a better economic environment, particularly in construction, but our main focus is operational improvements company by company. And as we move into the second half of the year, we are moving in the right direction, which gives us confidence in reaching our targets for the long term. For a closer look at the business area, we will start with a more detailed look at Services.

Services developed well compared to last year with an increase in both sales and EBITA. Sales were supported by acquisitions and organic growth alike. Profitability continued to be affected by subdued underlying market conditions, particularly in the business units exposed to the construction sector, but with early signs of improving sentiment. Some of the business units in markets with structurally lower margins are recording improved sales compared to last year, impacted the year-over-year margin development.

Business services reported growth in both sales and EBITA, including digital services and logistics. In the quarter, 1 platform acquisition was completed and 2 add-ons. More on that later. In terms of visibility for the next quarter, Q3 is a seasonally soft quarter; but for the second half of the year, the outlook is cautiously optimistic. Now let's turn into Trade. Trade had a seasonally stronger quarter with net sales of SEK 2.3 billion, 1% lower than a year ago, but with organic sales growth of 2% year-to-date. Most business units in consumer products developed well compared to last year.

This was offset by business units in health and beauty who were affected by a weaker demand from several Scandinavian customers. Professional products reported a quarter with sales growth and improved profitability. In sum, the underlying trend, as mentioned before, remains positive for most segments. One acquisition was completed in August with sales of SEK 126 million. Q3 is typically a softer quarter than the second. Demand with professional products is expected to remain solid and the positive signals from the consumer side is persisting.

Next let's turn into Industry. Net sales in the Industry increased by 6% to close to SEK 4 billion for the quarter. This was the result of sales growth across all verticals with margin improvements in Industrial Technologies and automation. Organic sales growth was 5% at the half year mark partly driven by growth investment made in the past few years in addition to recovery in non-Nordic markets. We also saw organic EBITA growth in the quarter now standing at 7% year-to-date. To give one example of those growth investments. J&D Pierce, our structural steel business in Scotland, has invested in a huge coating facility outside Glasgow.

This investment was made through a period of weak demand and has now positioned the business in a strategically strong position to capture volumes as the market recovers. Another example is L&S that has also made sizable investment. Both of these are examples of successful capital allocation efforts that are achieving solid growth through CapEx investments. One acquisition was completed with annual sales of SEK 99 million and I will get back on that shortly. In sum, I think this was a fantastic quarter for industry with improvements on all key metrics. And as we head into Q3, the order books look strong.

Let me walk you through the acquisitions completed during this half year and just at the end of the quarter. In the past few months, we have added 3 platform acquisitions and 3 add-ons. They are all connected to Storskogen's investment themes that you see on the left side of the slide. First, Darlington EMS in the U.K. is a specialist manufacturer of electronic parts and components serving customers across sectors exposed to several of our themes, including automation, infrastructure and health and well being. Darlington has a strong position in a niche with clear barriers to entry.

The businesses join our automation vertical in Industry and further strengthens our U.K. presence. Second, Safi in Singapore is a provider of fire safety solution with more than 4 years of history, long customer relationships and a recurring services revenue base in a sector where regulatory requirements keep increasing. Safi fits our infrastructure theme and the business model is familiar to those of you who know SoVent Group while one of our largest business units in Services, which operates in a similar technical services sector and has developed strong with us.

I should add that SoVent also completed 2 add-ons acquisitions during the quarter. In Asia, we now have 900 employees via platforms of subsidiaries headquarter and outsourced. And third, Verdant in Norway is a distributor of premium professional hair care brands. Verdant sits in our health and well-being theme and complements our existing professional hair care business in the Nordics where we see a clear potential for collaboration and synergies. In sum, 3 platform acquisitions in 3 different geographies, all within our investment themes in addition to being margin accretive and done at good valuations.

Next up I want to provide some further insight into Storskogen capacity to further allocate capital towards acquisitions. Those of you who joined us last quarter will recognize this slide. It is for illustrative purpose only and we are showing it again because the message is worth repeating. The commitments we carried with us from the acquisitions of 2021 and 2022 are approaching their end and that allows us to look forward with a more focused strategy to achieve growth through capital allocation. I want to underscore that this does not include additional debt capacity from profit growth, which could further support our leverage headroom.

The 2 bars on the left show how we have allocated our free cash flow after CapEx and leasing in 2024 and 2025. As you can see, debt reduction in light blue represented the largest share of cash deployment in both years. That work is now largely behind us. For 2026, debt reduction is expected to be close to 0 and as a result, the capacity for M&A improved substantially already this year and you can see that in the size of the dark green portion of the 2026 bar. New on this slide is the bar for 2027.

Cash directed towards minority buyouts and earn-outs decreases significantly next year towards a more normalized run rate going forward. This frees up even more capital for acquisition. Taken together, the picture is clear. Step by step a larger share of our cash flow becomes available for acquired growth and we intend to deploy it in a structured way within our investment teams.

With that, I will hand over to Lena for a more detailed financial review.

Thank you, Christer, and good morning, everyone. Yes. So let me take you through the financials for the second quarter. Figures on this page are adjusted for items affecting comparability and I'll come back to that in a while. The reported income statement is of course in the appendix to this presentation and in the report that we published this morning. Net sales for the quarter were SEK 8.86 billion, up 5% on Q2 last year and sales growth was organically driven in this quarter. And I'll walk you through that bridge on the next page.

Turning to adjusted EBITDA, it rose 2% to SEK 1.13 billion. After depreciation of SEK 263 million, which is broadly unchanged year-on-year, our adjusted EBITA was SEK 864 million also up 2% year-on-year. And this corresponds to an adjusted EBITA margin of 9.7% compared with 10% in the second quarter last year. And let me pause here because it matters for the comparison and Christer touched on it just recently also. So the second quarter of last year included a positive effect from reversal of costs related to our long-term share-based incentive program and this actually affects comparison by SEK 22 million.

And adjusting for this, the margin was essentially unchanged year-on-year, which is what Christer also talked about. So after amortization of SEK 171 million, adjusted operating profit or EBIT was SEK 693 million, up 3% year-on-year. Our net financial items continued to improve notably here to a negative SEK 146 million from SEK 216 million in Q2 last year. So this is an improvement of 33%. And this is the continued payoff from 2 years of refinancing and debt reduction coming through as lower interest margins on an absolute lower or lower absolute debt level and also around SEK 40 million of the improvement is explained by currency items in the previous year.

So profit before tax was consequently up 20% and net profit after tax up by 18% to SEK 413 million. And finally, for completeness here, items affecting comparability, which are excluded on this page, amounted to minus SEK 33 million on the net profit level in the second quarter and this compares to last year's Q2, which carried minus SEK 89 million related to the bond refinancing that we did last year mainly. And then turning to the financial KPIs at the bottom of this page. Adjusted earnings per share came in at SEK 0.23 so that's up 23% year-on-year and for the last 12 months period, it came in at SEK 0.74.

EPS increased more than our net profit and this is explained by the buyback of shares in the parent company that we did in Q4 as well as buyback of minority shares in subsidiaries. Our adjusted return on equity improved to 6.6% from 6% a year ago and our adjusted return on capital employed was 10% so that's down from 10.4% a year ago. And as we've said before, our ambition is to show steady improvement in both of these measures over time. Now let's turn to the sales and EBITA bridges where we break down what actually drove the year-on-year change in the quarter.

Starting with sales. So we began at SEK 8.45 billion in Q2 last year. Organic growth added 5%, acquisitions added 2% and currency translation was broadly neutral in this quarter. Now this is worth noting because currency has been a meaningful headwind in the recent quarters. Divestments then reduced sales by 2% and that brings sales to SEK 8.86 billion for the quarter, which is an increase of 5%. And then moving to the EBITA bridge on the right here. We started at SEK 843 million a year ago and acquisitions and divestments together contributed a net 3%. This is because we have divested companies that were loss-making.

Now this of course improves current year's EBITA. Organic growth added 2%. This is helped by transactional currency effects. We're translating balance sheet items and this contributed positively in this quarter again from a period of negative contribution in recent quarters. Currency translation was again close to neutral. And group operations reduced EBITA by 3% and this is essentially the one-off I mentioned previously related to the incentive program. And this leaves us at SEK 864 million of adjusted EBITA for the quarter, up 2% year-on-year.

And on the next page, we show the same story basically expressed in margin terms and divided per business area showing how we moved from an adjusted EBITA margin of 10% in the second quarter last year to 9.7% this quarter, which is a net change of minus 0.3 percentage points. Industry contributed positively adding 0.3 percentage points to the margin and this reflects margin improvements, particularly in industrial technology and automation. Trade took off 0.1 percentage points and, as Christer described, the headwinds in the Nordic health and beauty segment continue to weigh on parts of consumer products while professional products actually improved their margins.

Services took off 0.2 percentage points and this is driven by the business units -- mainly within the business units within infrastructure services that are exposed to the construction sector where demand remains weak. And finally, again group operations accounted for 0.3 percentage points of the decline and this is again explained by this reversal of the cost-off item in the previous year. So that said, we are not satisfied with a flat margin excluding this central item. Our target is 10% and that remains both our ambition and improving it is where the operational work is concentrated.

And let's move over to the cash flow statement for the second quarter on the next page here. So cash flow from operating activities was SEK 465 million compared with SEK 527 million a year ago so that's down 12%. On a rolling 12-month basis, we generated SEK 2.46 billion, which is around the same rolling 12-month level of SEK 2.5 billion that we had last year. But looking at the year-on-year change in Q2, this is worth explaining because it's mainly a timing effect rather than a deterioration. So profit before tax was up 41% to SEK 514 million.

Noncash items contributed SEK 467 million and paid tax was minus SEK 138 million, that's slightly lower than last year. But the swing factor here is the working capital. which tied up SEK 378 million in the quarter against SEK 260 million a year ago and the biggest explanation here is higher operating receivables following a very strong end to the quarter especially in Industry. So we had a good sales month in June, but we had not yet been paid for it by the quarter end and this is the explanation. And we expect, as Christer mentioned, also to see a reversal during the second half of the year here in line with typical seasonality.

Worth mentioning is that inventory buildup was very low in the quarter along the same lines as last year. So it's mainly these operating receivables that explain this change. Turning to investments. Net investment in noncurrent assets were SEK 218 million, up from SEK 110 million, SEK 208 million of this is CapEx and this is higher than last year on the back of some growth investments again mainly in industry. Acquisitions and divestments accounted for SEK 181 million. This is the cash effect essentially in line with last year and this covers acquisitions completed in the quarter as well as buybacks of minority shares. And together, cash flow from investing activities was minus SEK 399 million.

And turning to financing activities, including leasing payments, the cash flow here was positive SEK 150 million. So adding it all up, net cash flow for the period was positive SEK 216. We ended June with a cash balance of SEK 1.4 billion and a total available liquidity of SEK 4.3 billion. This includes cash and unutilized credit facilities and that gives us the flexibility to keep executing on our strategic agenda of acquisitions that Christer talked about also. Cash conversion in the isolated quarter was 48% compared with 66% a year ago for the working capital reasons I just described and also the somewhat higher CapEx, which should fuel our growth going forward especially in Industry here.

But however, because this measure is seasonal by nature, we prefer to look at it over a rolling 12-month period, which is what we show on the next page here. So here we show the operating cash flow over a 12-month period defined as EBITDA less change in net working capital and less CapEx. And the cash conversion is this metric over EBITDA basically. So how much of the profit we generate actually turns into cash. And on the rolling 12 months, we ended the second quarter at SEK 3 billion having tracked between roughly SEK 3 billion and SEK 4 billion since 2024.

Our group target is a cash conversion of at least 70% over a rolling 12-month period shown here by the dotted line. So over the last 12 months, our adjusted cash conversion was 74% compared with 80% a year ago and 79% at the end of Q1. So we remain above the target, but the trend has moved towards a more normalized level as expected given that we are back on a more growth-driven agenda compared to a few years back. Our focus nevertheless remains firmly on growing profit while maintaining working capital discipline obviously.

And then very briefly on the next page about our balance sheet, some comments. Total assets amounted to SEK 43.5 billion at the end of June compared to SEK 42.3 billion a year ago so that's a 3% year-on-year increase. And the growth sits mainly in current assets, which rose 8% to SEK 14.4 billion. This also again reflects the operating receivables that I described a moment ago while noncurrent assets were mainly unchanged. And there is one shift, however, in the balance sheet worth mentioning and that's interest-bearing current liabilities which fell while interest-bearing noncurrent liabilities rose by approximately the same amount.

And in other words, we have moved debt from short-term to long-term maturities, which lengthens our maturity profile and reduces financing risk while at the same time, noninterest-bearing current liabilities rose and the equivalent noncurrent item fell. And this item includes these minority option liabilities that have moved closer to maturity. And as Christer illustrated before, we will be reducing a large part of the commitments coming due now within the coming 12 months. And during the second half, we expect this amount to be somewhere around SEK 800 million to SEK 900 million possibly during the second half of the year in 2026 and after that, lower.

And then turning to the KPIs, again leverage ratio, interest-bearing net debt over adjusted RTM EBITDA was 2.4x and I'll come back to that on the next page. So finally, we show the interest-bearing net debt and leverage ratio here over the past 9 quarters. The interest-bearing net debt at the end of the quarter stood at just under SEK 9.9 billion, which is down from SEK 10.2 billion a year ago, but up from SEK 9.5 billion at the end of Q1. The sequential increase reflects acquisitions, minority option buybacks and dividend paid.

Our leverage ratio was 2.4x, as mentioned, which is unchanged from the same quarter last year and marginally up from 2.3x at the end of March. And as you see, we've been at or below 2.4x since the end of 2024 and I would repeat that our ambition is to keep leverage below 2.5x and this is unchanged. So a stable balance sheet at this level of leverage combined with strong cash generation and the reduction of our minority commitment is what allows us to step up the pace of acquisitions and to do so with the same discipline on margin and valuation that we have applied since we restarted our M&A activities a year ago.

And with that, I will hand over to you, Christer, for key takeaways.

Thank you, Lena. So let me summarize where we stand. The second quarter delivered organic growth in both sales and EBITA in a seasonally stronger quarter. An encouraging step even if there is more work to do. Industry performed very well in the quarter and the underlying market trend in Trade is moving in the right direction. I'm also pleased that Services performed much better in the quarter. Operational excellence remain our key focus: driving organic growth, improving profitability and maintaining strong discipline and cost control. That focus is unchanged.

The same discipline generates our cash flow. And as I showed earlier, a growing share of it is now available for acquisition with debt reduction largely behind us and capital tied to minorities and earn-outs decreasing substantially during this year. So we entered the second half of 2026 cautiously optimistic with a strong acquisition pipeline across our investment themes, an increased financial flexibility. We see good opportunities to continue adding acquired growth and to increase its contribution in the group's total growth over time.

Thank you for listening. And with that, we're happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Anton Ingves from Nordea.

So if we start off in Trade here, would you say here that the sort of softness is entirely attributed to the health and beauty segment in the consumer segment here?

Correct.

And what are you sort of seeing here heading into H2 and sort of your visibility on the sort of development in the coming quarters here?

I hope that we are seeing a shift in the trend from the customers moving from kind of taking down inventory towards growth again. So that is what we are seeing -- hope that we are seeing. In a broader sense, most of the companies outside of the health and beauty sector in Trade are doing well. So it is in that sector that we have seen a slowness in the quarter.

Okay. And did you see sort of any change in momentum sort of within the quarter, sort of a pickup or activity towards the end of the quarter?

It was better in the end than in the beginning.

Okay. That's very clear. And sort of if we move on to Service and the margin compression here, how much would you say are attributed to the mix effect that you mentioned in the report versus the sort of higher material cost as well as the price pressure due to competition?

It is both. Guesstimate is 50-50.

And sort of on looking ahead here in Service on the margin side, how much do you think you can improve just from sort of operational improvements? And how much are you sort of relying on a pickup in demand especially within the construction sector here?

I do think that I mean we're seeing a pickup. For the first time in a long time, we're seeing sales growth in the quarter and that's a good start. Of course it will help a lot if the construction side come out and starts growing again and that would help a lot. But I mean we are continuing to work with operational questions in all companies. So it's a company-by-company question. So I think that we could improve margin over time.

Okay. Understood. And sort of on the sort of improvements you see, would you say that this is sort of incrementally more positive here in Q2 compared to the outlook in Q1?

I think we are seeing what we expected to see that we were hoping for a stronger Q2 and that's what they came in on. So I think it's fairly in line with what we expected.

Okay. Perfect. And in terms of M&A, obviously 2 platforms here in Q2 and 1 in July as well. All of these made outside of Sweden. And as you mentioned here during the presentation as well, you aim to sort of pick up the M&A pace further here going forward. In terms of geographies, where do you see the most potential here for the coming years?

I mean we have -- I think we've been clear about this message since our presentation in '24 on the Capital Markets Day that we want to improve or grow our exposure towards businesses outside of Sweden because it's been almost 50%. So we will continue to grow in the U.K., in DACH especially and also some acquisitions in Asia. So I mean we have been seeing a lot of good potential in the U.K. But as you see now, we have been doing 3 acquisitions in 3 different geographies. And I think that we have a broad market where we are looking at good opportunities. So I think that we will continue to do that working in the U.K. and in the DACH region.

Okay. That's very clear. And just on the sort of pipeline here, maybe short term into H2 and 2027 as well, it's fair to sort of assume same level of activity in H2 as in H1 here or the sort of acquisition you've made year-to-date?

Yes. We said we will gradually pick up pace. And as Lena mentioned, we are buying a lot of minorities in Q3. So after that, we will gradually pick up pace. We will allocate more capital towards acquisition this year than we did last year and that will increase next year. So that is -- so our possibility to allocate capital will increase quarter-by-quarter from now.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Dan Heimer from SEB.

Couple of questions from my side. Maybe starting a little bit on Industry, quite a strong quarter here. Just trying to understand what's driving that outperformance in industrial technology and automation specifically. Is it some temporary larger projects that we should be aware of or is it sort of broad-based strength that drives the performance in industrial technology?

It is broad-based strength and, as Lena mentioned, also picking up pace in the quarter with a very, very strong June. But it's a broad pickup in the business area.

And when it comes to industrial technology, we may add that we had a fairly -- some of the larger companies were struggling a little bit more a year ago and now they are performing and having really good momentum so with slightly lower margins than the automation companies, however. So we've talked about that before, but that's also a year-on-year trend and pickup that we see affecting us now positively.

Okay. Sounds positive. Maybe following up a little bit on acquisitions and looking at what you've done year-to-date, you have averaged close to 20% EBITA margin. Is that sort of ballpark what you expect in terms of profitability when you're looking for acquisitions now ahead as well? And also just to confirm in terms of multiples you paid, it looks like you paid SEK 220 million for SEK 46 million of EBITA. So that sounds quite low, it's priced little below 5x. If my math is correct or am I missing something here for this questions on M&A, please?

No. But I mean we've been saying that we are really working towards having multiples at 7x or below and we will continue to do that. We're also really trying to find margin accretive businesses. As you said, I mean the acquisitions that we have done since we started last year has been on a very, very good margin side and we will continue to look at. I don't think every single acquisitions will be over 20%, but we will absolutely try to be margin accretive on all of the businesses that we acquire. So that will continue.

We do have in Note 4 in the report, you can see how much we pay not only the cash out, but also 100% of the company. So this is what you should look at when you look at EBIT multiple.

Okay. Understood. And maybe a bit more general question on sort of the discrepancy between your Swedish and international operations. It surprises me a little bit. I mean most economists expect Sweden to outgrow the average in terms of GDP growth, but might be a timing issue? And do you expect a gradual improvement in demand in the second half or how should we think about that in general? I mean close to half of your operations are in Sweden so it's only a swing factor [indiscernible]?

I think that we are waiting for the Swedish economy to come back. I hope that that is improving now quarter-to-quarter kind of coming here. But as I said, we have been seeing a very, very strong pickup in our outside Nordic businesses. So that has been the pickup for this year. So I hope that Sweden and the Swedish business will see an improvement for the coming 2 to 6 quarters ahead.

Understood. If we look at sort of the last 12 months rolling EBITA margin, it's around flattish at 9%, you have a 10% target. Now at least on group level, a quite good organic growth now at 5%. So then it might fluctuate between segments and businesses. But what sort of the specific levers are needed in order to reach your 10% target? I guess M&A is part of it, but also do you need that Swedish recovery in order to reach higher margin as well?

I mean we need to continue to work what we have been working on for the last year. It's a company by company working on all the measures, pricing, cost control. So we will continue that work. And of course if we get an economic environment growth, that would help that. But we will continue to work on it. And we think in the long term that 10% is what we should be able to do at least, yes. So we are not satisfied with where we are today and we'll continue with the work that we have done. M&A will help of course and if kind of the positive sentiment come back in Sweden, that will also help a lot.

Makes sense. And maybe just a final small question on the cash flow here. I noticed a bit -- I think working capital we discussed a bit, but on the higher CapEx in the quarter, does that relate to you doing more forward looking on growth or are there other factors like timing or how should I interpret that?

Timing is one part, but you're absolutely right that we are looking on -- we are more positive on growth and done some growth investments. And we talked about 2 of the examples in prior years is J&D Pierce in Scotland and in L&S where we have made some large investments and they are now paying off. So we are actually more forward leaning and looking at growth initiatives going forward. Lena, any?

No. This is also what we've repeatedly said that part of our capital allocation discussions are also including of course CapEx investments. And not only in this case, it's mainly Industry of course and we also see the good result in terms of growth there from investments we've done in the past, but it also includes -- covers investments in automization in Trade for instance when it comes to inventory management and also when it comes to CapEx investments in selected Services businesses.

So it's for sure part of our allocation process, but there has to be the right return metrics of course there. But also I mean 2.3% CapEx to sales is maybe a little bit above a normal level for Storskogen. We've been talking about 1.5% to 2% should be a normalized level. So if we had been closer to the 1.5% in recent past few years, we may be reaching a little bit closer to the upper end on that target now going forward, but that's only because we see the momentum is there.

There are no more phone questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any e-mail questions and closing comments.

So thank you for listening in from outside here at Storskogen. I wish you a great day and a great further week. So thanks for listening in.

Thank you.

Welcome to the Storskogen Q1 Presentation for 2026. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Christer Hansson; and CFO, Lena Glader. Please go ahead.

Welcome, and thank you for joining us for the presentation of Storskogen's interim report for the first quarter of 2026. I'm Christer Hansson, CEO; and with me today is Lena Glader, our CFO.

As we closed our last year, our message was clear. Operational execution remained our top priority. We have strengthened our balance sheet, maintain financial discipline and navigate a continuously challenging macro environment. That work has put us in a strong position as we move into this new year. I expect an increased focus on growth in its broadest sense, whether it comes through organic initiatives, acquisitions, or the opportunities that arise when they both work together.

How we will achieve this growth? We believe that the groundwork laid over the past years gives us the platform to pursue our capital allocation agenda with confidence. I will shortly share more details related to this topic and why we believe there is potential for an interesting year for the group.

Storskogen is a diversified international business group with sales of approximately SEK 33 billion over the last year, and adjusted EBITA of about SEK 3.1 billion spread across our 3 business areas: Services, Trade, and Industry. At the end of Q1, the group consisted of 113 business units with average annual sales of around SEK 290 million.

Overall, I'm pleased with the development for both Industry and Trade. Order book are strong for Industry, and Trade continues its underlying positive trajectory from the second half of the last year. Services, however, is not performing where I want it to be.

Turning to the highlights for the quarter. Q1 is historically our softest quarter with fewer working days, weather disruptions and the tail end of the holiday period that weighs on performances from the start. None of this is surprising, but it's useful context as we walk you through the numbers. Overall, the quarter didn't meet our expectations, in part due to the few isolated areas that I would shed some further light on. In contrast, there is also several areas that gives us confidence for the remaining of the year.

If you look at the numbers, we had organic sales growth of 2% for the quarter with negative organic EBITA growth of 12%. The cash flow improved to SEK 188 million compared to SEK 113 million a year ago. It's also pleasing that we are maintaining the leverage ratio at 2.3x. We had FX headwinds on both sales and the EBITA, and the margin is down compared to last year.

We completed 2 acquisitions in April with a combined annual sales of SEK 103 million. Operational focus continues to be key as the market continues to be uncertain and this will remain our clear priority going forward to support our long-term growth alongside increased M&A activity.

I'd like to turn to our cash flow performance that continues to be very strong. Even in a smaller Q1 period that we have just left behind, you can see that we are stronger in Q1 in terms of cash flow and in comparable periods for the past 2 years. On the right side of the slide, I'm pleased to note that the group continues to be very stable, trending at around SEK 2.5 billion to SEK 3 billion in cash flow on an LTM basis. The cash flow achieved over the past years reflects continued disciplined operational execution across the group, which remains fundamental to our business model and capital allocation.

Quarterly performance naturally fluctuates, but diversification across industries, geographies and end markets provides relative stability over time and as you can see on the right, showing our solid performance on a rolling 12-month basis. Even with ups and downs in underlying demand, the group breadth supports resilience, margins and cash flows, which are key in the Storskogen model, which we will get into as we now take a high-level view of where we are focused our energy across the group and our 3 business areas.

At the group level, our priorities are straightforward, driving organic sales and EBITA growth, keeping the M&A pipeline strong, and ensuring cash flow resilience.

In Services, we're working to make our companies more efficient and scalable, standardizing some operations and improving digitalization to grow without unnecessary complexity. We are also improving cost structures and working to find the right balance between sales and profitability.

In Trade, we have a continuation of the initiatives that have been the focus in the past few years: sales, cost discipline, and improving gross margins. We're also seeing ERP rollouts to improve data quality and decision-making across the area. And Industry beyond sales and cost efficiency work that mirrors the other areas, we're also realizing returns from significant CapEx investment made in the last 2 years, expanding facilities in several business units and rolling out new ERP systems. Across all 3 areas, the common thread is supporting businesses to be more structured, more scalable and better equipped to grow profitably for the long haul.

If we go into the business areas. In Services, we have a net sales growth of 1%, the first time we have sales growth since mid-2023. EBITA showed a negative 30% for the quarter year-over-year. As expected, Q1 is seasonally soft quarter. Digital Services and Logistics continues to deliver strong results. Three areas, however, putting pressure on the results compared to a year ago.

First of all, business units in both Infrastructure Services and Business Services that are exposed to construction are faced with a general headwinds resulting in margin pressures. In addition to the general market weaknesses in construction, several business units were negatively affected by 2 additional isolated areas. An exceptional winter season affected operation more than usual, even in Denmark and in the southern part of Sweden. And lastly, the business units active in construction of industrial buildings have not delivered as well as compared to a year ago. These businesses are, however, seeing improved market conditions heading into Q2.

In sum, the general market conditions for construction and the 2 isolated areas explained an extensive part of the group -- of the drop in the results for Services when compared to a year ago. And I want to underscore that we are seeing early signs of recovery, but slightly suppressed margins.

Final comment. In the middle of the quarter, Jesper Kronstrand assumed the role as the new Head of Business Area Services. And for Q2, we are expecting a typically seasonally stronger quarter.

Trade had net sales of SEK 2.2 billion, 4% lower than a year ago with organic sales growth of 1%. Trade reported an adjusted EBITA of SEK 153 million, 9% lower than a year ago, where roughly 2/3 of the decline can be explained by FX headwinds. The result was negatively affected by timing shift of sales from January into December, as mentioned in the Q4 earnings, in addition to lower demand from the Nordic Health and Beauty retail sector. That said, when adjusting for these factors, the underlying trend in Trade remains consistent with what we saw in the second half of 2025.

Professional Products performed largely in line with last year. We have also completed a divestment of -- PerfectHair, a B2C-oriented Health and Beauty business. This follows the same strategic logic as the Motavo divestment we communicated last quarter, concentrating our Health and Beauty exposure towards B2B-oriented business with stronger structural attractiveness. Even though we did see an FX headwind in the quarter, a stronger SEK is margin supportive in the long term as much of our purchase are made in euro and U.S. dollars.

To conclude, the underlying trends seen as of second half of 2025 remains positive for Trade as we head into the seasonally stronger Q2.

Turning to Industry. We delivered organic sales and EBITA growth for the quarter, and we are confident for the rest -- for the full year. Investments made in '24 and '25 are increasingly bearing fruit, driving sales growth across several business units. A strong example is a new paint shop at J&D Pierce in the U.K., a significant capital investment that has become a strategic advantage for the business and a key driver of the performance of Industrial Technology that delivered growth in both revenue and profit, especially outside of Sweden.

Automation and Product Solutions had a slow start for the quarter, though ending the quarter more strongly. Taken together, the business mix in the quarter was favorable for revenue growth, but it came with a slightly lower margin. The structural demand environment for Industry remains good, especially in Automation, Electrification, and Industrial Systems. And this is showing up in a strengthened order books as we head into the seasonally stronger second quarter and beyond.

Lastly, we completed an acquisition in the early days of April, which brings me to the next slide. During the quarter, we noted a degree of deal inflow volatility due to the ongoing macro environment uncertainty. However, the pipeline remains solid across most of our investment themes, especially in automation, digitalization, and health and well-being. Equally, we have a strong pipeline of add-ons to support industrial logic and synergies.

We had one platform acquisition in the early days of April, Darlington EMS in the U.K., a leading manufacturer of electronic parts and components that serves a range of sectors which are exposed to several of Storskogen's investment themes in infrastructure, health and well-being, and automation. And as I mentioned in the beginning of the presentation, our focus will increasingly be on growth in absolute terms, no matter if it comes from organic initiatives or through acquisitions.

This slide illustrates our capacity to accelerate growth, specifically through acquisitions. And I want to emphasize that this is for illustrative purpose and does not include additional debt capacity from profit growth which could support our leverage headroom. The bars to the left and in the middle shows how we have allocated our free cash flow after leasing in '24 and '25. And as you can see, debt reductions, light blue represented the largest share of cash deployment in these years.

For 2026, debt reduction is expected to be close to 0. And as a result, the M&A capacity substantially improved for the year, which will support the growth agenda I mentioned in the beginning of today's presentation. Cash directed towards minority buyouts and earn-outs will be substantially smaller in 2027, which will further increase the room for M&A beyond 2026.

With that, I will hand over to you, Lena, for a more detailed financial review.

Well, thank you, Christer. So over to the financial review, and let's begin with the financial performance for the first quarter, adjusted for items affecting comparability. Now here is the income statement, of course, on this page adjusted, as I said.

Net sales came in at SEK 7.85 billion, representing a 1% decline compared to Q1 last year. Organic sales growth was 2% positive, and I'll show a detailed sales bridge on the following page. Adjusted EBITDA decreased by 8% in the quarter on the back of a 2% increase in cost of raw materials and goods. EBITA fell by 9% to SEK 639 million, representing an EBITA margin of 8.1% compared to 8.8% in Q1 last year. The key drivers behind the year-on-year EBITA decline are, of course, I mentioned negative organic growth, most notably in business area Services, but also currency effects. And I'll come back to that also on the next page.

EBIT for the first quarter was SEK 471 million, down 10% year-on-year. However, the past 2 years' work on refinancing and reducing debt continued to pay off. Our net financials were 21% lower at SEK 156 million, supported by lower interest margins, but also lower absolute debt compared to a year ago. Our tax line declined by 11%, leading to an unchanged adjusted profit after tax at SEK 236 million for the quarter.

You will find the reported income statement as an appendix and of course, in the report worth mentioning are items affecting comparability in the reported results that are excluded on this page. They were in total minus SEK 65 million in the quarter of '26 -- in the first quarter '26, related to capital loss from the divestment of PerfectHair in Switzerland. And last year, in Q1 '25, they were minus SEK 20 million related to revaluation of earn-out liabilities at that time.

Then turning to the financial KPIs below, apart from the EBITA margin that was already mentioned, our adjusted earnings per share was unchanged at SEK 0.13 per share. Our return on equity on a rolling 12 months improved to 6.4%, while return on capital employed declined slightly to 10%. Return on capital employed, excluding goodwill, was 24.9%. As we've said before, our ambition is to show a steady improvement of these metrics.

Then let's turn to the sales and EBITA bridge on the next page. Here, we break down the contribution from organic growth, structural changes and currency effects for the first quarter, starting with sales. Organic sales growth for the group was plus 2% in the quarter with positive or flat organic growth in all business areas, the largest driver being Industry with plus 4% organic growth in the quarter. M&A or the net of acquisitions and divestments had a neutral impact on sales growth in Q1, while currency continued to be a headwind, reducing sales by 3%.

Then moving to EBITA to the right there. Lower central costs had a positive plus 4% contribution to group EBITA change. Of this, around 3% is attributable to a fair value adjustment based on recent market transactions of the shareholding related to the large divestment we made back in Q3 2024 of the portfolio that we divested then. M&A contributed by plus 3%, while currency translation affected EBITA by minus 3%. But finally, organic EBITA growth. This was down 12%. Of that, minus 1% is currency transaction effects, all of which affect -- or the currency transaction effect hit business area Trade in the quarter.

As mentioned before, the largest negative contributor to organic growth apart from the currency transaction effect of 1% was business area Services that had a stable top line development, as Christer mentioned, but headwinds on the cost side as a result of delayed projects, cold weather and a continued slow construction market. Business area Trade also saw some negative organic EBITA growth, but the largest part, as Christer said, is also explained by currency transaction effects there.

Then let's move over to the cash flow statement for the first quarter. Q1 cash flow is typically a bit lower, as was mentioned, driven by seasonally lower profit levels, usually higher paid tax in Q1 and some working capital tie-up. This quarter did nevertheless hold up pretty well with 67% year-on-year growth in cash flow from operating activities summing up to SEK 188 million in the quarter.

Paid tax was SEK 254 million, which is more than last year, but also more than offset by lower change in net working capital. Of the change in net working capital item, inventory and receivables in work in progress, in particular, increased as is anticipated ahead of the sales-wise stronger Q2, while payables also rose, which contributed positively.

Then turning to investments of the SEK 125 million in net investments in noncurrent assets in Q1, CapEx represented SEK 106 million, and this corresponds to a CapEx to sales ratio of 1.3% Acquisitions and divestments totaled only minus SEK 23 million in the quarter, and all of this relates to buyback of minority shares in existing subsidiaries and some paid earn-out as no acquisitions were made during the quarter and the divestment was cash neutral.

Cash flow from financing activities, including leasing payments was minus SEK 204 million. And putting all of this together, net cash flow for the quarter was a negative SEK 163 million, which left us with a cash balance at the end of March of SEK 1.2 billion and total available liquidity of close to SEK 4.5 billion, including cash and unutilized credit facilities. Cash conversion was 60% in the isolated quarter compared to 39% a year ago. As I said, due to seasonality in this KPI, we like to look at the rolling 12-month cash conversion instead, which I'll show on the next page.

So continuing here, let's look at the operating cash flow and cash conversion, which, as you know, is one of our key financial KPIs. The bars show our EBITDA-based cash flow that our cash conversion is based on. So this is not the same as the operating cash flow that Christer showed, which is also after tax and after interest. This is purely operational here on this page. And it's been at a good level between SEK 3 billion to SEK 4.5 billion on a rolling 12-month basis over this period since Q1 '24 that we show here. Our group target for cash conversion is at least 70% over a 12-month period, illustrated by the dotted line. And as you see over the last 12 months -- over the last 12 months, our cash conversion rate was 79% by the end of March, so well above this target and also an improvement from 74% at year-end.

Two years ago, our cash conversion was around 100% as a result of the strong balance sheet focus that successfully rendered significant reductions in net working capital and hence, positive cash flows during this period. Now we are at more normalized levels with net working capital sales around 15%, which is significantly lower than what they were 2, 3 years ago and also CapEx around 1.5% to 2% of sales, which is a normalized level. Our focus nonetheless remains firmly on growing profit while maintaining working capital efficiency.

Let's move to the balance sheet. Our total balance sheet amounts to SEK 42 billion, around the same level as last year. Since March last year, so during the recent 12 months, our total interest-bearing debt, including leasing and pension liabilities, but excluding liabilities from minority options and earn-outs has decreased by SEK 258 million, and our net interest-bearing debt is down by SEK 357 million, supported by good cash flows.

During the quarter, net interest-bearing debt increased by only SEK 16 million, so that's fairly unchanged during the quarter. If we include liabilities for minority options and earn-outs on the -- like Christer showed on the bars just recently, our net debt reduced by more than SEK 600 million over the past 12 months. I would also like to highlight that our equity ratio has continued to improve now at 50%.

Here on the following page, we show our interest-bearing net debt and leverage ratio and how that has moved over the past 9 quarters. Our interest-bearing debt at the end -- or net debt at the end of the quarter stood at SEK 9.5 billion, which is essentially unchanged from year-end, as I said, but down from SEK 9.9 billion a year ago. And the leverage ratio was 2.3x, which is unchanged from a year ago, but also unchanged from year-end and comfortably within our target range of 2x to 3x. I'd like to repeat that our ambition is to keep it below 2.5x, and that remains unchanged. This is also the level that we've been since the end of 2024, as you see.

Then finally, a look at the debt portfolio. We have, as many of you know, over the past years, worked through our entire debt portfolio to reduce refinancing risk by distributing and prolonging our maturities. On the bank facility side, we have, during the first quarter, extended both the revolving credit facility, where we have SEK 3.3 billion unutilized commitments still and the term loan facility, and both were extended by a year to the first half of '29 and second half of '28, respectively.

We have, as you see, no maturities this year and a SEK 1.25 billion bond maturing in the second half of '27. So essentially, our refinancing risk remains low for the coming years, which puts us in a comfortable place when it comes to maneuvering external uncertainty while keeping our eyes on operational performance and value-adding M&A growth ahead.

With that, I hand the word back to you, Christer.

Thank you, Lena. So to bring it together, here are the key takeaways. We delivered organic sales growth in the first quarter, a quarter that, however, didn't meet our overall expectations on earnings. Operational excellence, therefore, remains our most important focus area to ensure that we will achieve profit growth across all business areas. Underneath all of this is a solid foundation, a stronger balance sheet, a more focused portfolio and a management agenda with clear direction.

Looking ahead, we see an attractive M&A pipeline across most of our investment teams with the capital allocation capacity to act on it.

Thank you for your attention. And with that, we are happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Anton Ingves from Nordea.

A couple of questions here from my side. So starting off in Service here. Organic sales growth was flat year-over-year, while EBITA fell 36%. Could you perhaps give some more flavor of the split between the different factors you mentioned here in the report affecting the margin? And would you also say that price pressure has increased since Q4 here in Service segment?

Thank you, Anton. If you start with -- I would say that if you look at the overall headwind, I think we are kind of on the same level as in Q4 for that general headwind in construction. But if you look at the two things that I kind of have on the isolated areas, first of all, exceptional cold weather, which affected a lot of businesses in the southern part of Sweden and even in Denmark with frozen grounds, that is one big part and also a big part of this construction of industrial buildings.

I would say that the isolated -- it's hard to give an exact, but I would say that the isolated factors, the two of them probably explains about half of the decline in Services in the quarter. And then the rest is then the kind of the general headwinds on the construction side.

If you look at the sub verticals, the organic, of course, sales growth was pretty much the same for both Infrastructure and Business Services. But on the EBITA side, it was Infrastructure Services that was hit much harder than Business Services.

Perfect. And then on the volumes here that you mentioned in Service affected by the cold weather, are these projects mainly shifted into Q2 or later parts of the year? Or have you actually lost a lot of these projects?

What happens is that the cost side increases when -- volumes could be pretty stable, but it costs more to do the projects when you have the frozen ground. So it's more that that is what happened on that side. And if you look at the construction and industrial building, where we have a significant cost for start-up cost in projects, that is actually pretty positive because we're going into Q2 and onwards with a better situation for that sector, but it was affected this quarter of high start-up costs.

Perfect. And then looking into Trade here, is it possible to quantify the net effect from the stronger SEK during the quarter? And maybe how to view the effect for the rest of 2026 here as I assume there's a lag here between the stronger SEK and what you actually see in your numbers?

Yes. I mean, it was effected on -- in Q1, we had a pretty significant effect, as Lena just said. Going in Q2 and onwards, we think that that will -- the negative effect will be less if the SEK are on this level, but it's really hard to put a number of it. But going forward, we believe that the headwinds will be less and probably go the other direction if SEK continued on this level.

It was, as we've indicated on the call just now, the -- so you have translation effect in Trade, which is roughly minus 2% on both sales and EBITA. And then you have transaction effects, of balance sheet items, and that was roughly closer to minus 5% actually of the 7% organic decline in EBITA.

I assume the stronger SEK on your like buying of inventories within Trade, is that effect -- how long is the delay?

But that will come from Q2 and onwards, I believe, because we have less affected, as I said, less affected from hedges that were made last year. So I think that we will see a continued strengthening of the margin from Q2 and onwards from the SEK if SEK stays at this level. Volatility is, of course, the big problem. But if we have a pretty stable situation for currency, I would expect that to be positive for Trade.

We're talking, of course, mostly euro is the largest exposure, but also dollar.

Yes.

Perfect. One final for me here, if I may. In terms of M&A, you kind of touched up on this during the presentation. You obviously closed the acquisition here of Darlington in April. But looking for the full year 2026, do you expect to accelerate the M&A pace in terms of added sales compared to 2025?

Yes. Yes, we do believe that. So I mean, Q1, we didn't do, but that is more kind of on -- sometimes it's just doing acquisitions, sometimes it just prolong the closing of a deal because it can be from 1 month to the next. But I do foresee an increase in M&A coming during Q2 and onwards, and we definitely believe that we will have a higher M&A than we had last year.

The next question comes from Dan Heimer from SEB.

A couple of questions from my side. Maybe starting a little bit on general momentum and demand throughout the quarter. You spoke that it improved in March versus January. Was that both in terms of earnings and organic sales growth? I think you had 2% organic growth for the quarter, but was it better than that in March than in January -- in January, just so we can get a better feeling on the run rate.

Yes. For all 3 business areas, it was better pickup in March. So March was strong and January and February was weaker. So in all areas, we saw a pickup in March.

In both sales and earning.

In both sales and earnings, yes. So on both levels.

Perfect. And I guess, so far, you haven't seen much impact from the higher geopolitical uncertainty here in April, for example. Or is that the correct way to, or is it...?

No. I mean -- but it's, of course, very, very hard to foresee. It's hard to make predictions, of course. But so far, we haven't seen higher cost prices on a big level. Of course, there are certain sectors, but not on kind of on an overall big level still. But that can, of course, come. But we haven't -- so it's more the uncertainty that people are talking about it, how it will affect kind of the consumer side. So it's more on that, but not seeing in kind of in the numbers, not in March and not what we're seeing in kind of in April.

Of course, there are some effects from higher freight costs and fuel and energy prices, but it's not material. But of course, we are affected by those kinds of increases. Some of it we can, of course, push forward to customers as well.

A couple of follow-ups as well, maybe following up on M&A here. Can you say something about the valuation multiples you paid for those 2 acquisitions? Is it in line with what you paid last year, given there was quite good profitability?

Yes, in line with what we paid last year, so below the 7% and continue to do margin increase. So yes, we continue the same journey that we started off last year.

Good. And following up on Services. Just from my understanding, can you explain a little bit on the mechanics of the start-up of previously delayed projects? I guess you take costs now in the start-up phase and then you get higher profit contribution in Q2, I guess. But what's sort of the duration? Do you take most of the costs now in Q1 and complete in Q2? Or is there an impact also, yes, in coming quarters beyond that?

The cost side -- first of all, there has been a lot of delays in projects in this sector from last year. And when it now starts up, we see a kind of a higher cost situation in Q1 for those sectors that will improve for the coming quarters when the kind of the projects get better and more ready to hand over to the customers, so to say. So we will see a -- and we have also seen a better order book buildup even in the quarter. So it looks promising for the next period to ahead.

Of course, hopefully, given this strengthening order book, we will have some start-up costs, of course, going forward as well, needless to say, in new orders that are being started up, but that's only positive as we view it.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you all for participating in this Q1 call. I hope you all have a good day and the rest of the week. So thank you from us here at Storskogen.

Thank you.

Welcome to the Storskogen Q4 presentation for 2025. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Christer Hansson; and CFO, Lena Glader. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of Storskogen's report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. I'm Christer Hansson, CEO of Storskogen; and with me today is Lena Glader, our CFO.

As we close the year, operational execution has remained our top priority. We have continued to strengthen our balance sheet and financial position throughout the year, while navigating an uncertain macro environment, and we are now in a new phase where we are able to increasingly focus on achieving long-term growth.

Storskogen is a diversified international business group with sales of approximately SEK 33 billion of the last year and adjusted EBITA of approximately SEK 3.1 billion spread across our 3 business areas Services, Trade and Industry. At year-end, the group consists of 114 business units with an average annual sales of around SEK 290 million.

On this slide, you may note a new face. Jesper Kronstrand has joined the group as Head of Business Area Services, and he is succeeding Peter Ahlgren, Storskogen's first employee beyond the founders and a key architect of the group. We are very pleased to welcome Jesper, who most recently served as the CEO of our business unit, SoVent. I will return to some additional management comments later in the presentation.

Turning to the highlights for the quarter and the full year. I'm pleased that we have, for the first time since 2022, concluded the year with organic sales growth in the quarter of 5% and 2% for the full year. On the other hand, in terms of profitability, the picture is mixed across the business areas. For the quarter and the full year, we had a decline of 5% of the adjusted EBITA, which includes significant FX transaction effects.

During the quarter, we completed 4 acquisitions with combined annual sales of approximately SEK 142 million. We had a share buyback of SEK 100 million that came to completion in January. Overall, I'm not satisfied with the full year outcome in absolute terms. Going into 2025, we anticipated a stronger sales, higher earnings and clear margin expansions. However, given the environment we have been operating in, I'm pleased with the progress that we have made in many areas across the group.

Our companies have delivered solid cash flows and done significant work on balance sheet discipline. This has put us in a meaningfully stronger position and allow us to move into a new phase with more emphasis on growth-supporting initiative, as we clearly outlined already in Q3. Operational focus remains key as market continues to be uncertain and that will remain our clear priority going forward to support our long-term growth.

I'd like to turn briefly to our cash flow performance, that continues to be a key strength enabling, for example, the just mentioned completed share buyback and resumed acquisitions. Worth noting, Q4 last year was an exceptional quarter, while Q4 of 2025 is in line with our expectation as cash conversion is moving towards the 70% target. The year-on-year change is mainly due to change in working capital.

In these fairly challenging markets, I'm pleased that the group is trending at around SEK 2.5 billion to SEK 3 billion in cash flow on an LTM basis. This cash flow over the past year reflects continued disciplined operational execution across the group and remains fundamental to our business model and capital allocation.

This slide illustrates seasonal variation alongside our solid performance on a rolling 12-month basis. Quarterly performance naturally fluctuates with Q1 typically being the softest quarter, but diversification across industry, geographies and end market provides relative stability over time, as you can see on the right. Even with ups and downs in underlying demand, the group's breadth supports resilient margins and cash flows, while it's core -- which is a core advantage of the Storskogen model, which we will get into, as we now take a closer look at the development of the 3 business areas.

In Services organic growth for the full year was minus 5% in net sales, whilst EBITA showed a negative of 10%. The fourth quarter was softer for Business Services, while full year performance was broadly in line with last year. Infrastructure Services was negatively affected by continued weak demand in construction-related segments. As always, Q1 is seasonally softer for Services. But it's worth noting that Q4 of 2024 as well as Q1 of last year provided strong indication of improvement -- improved sentiment with strong margins. This changed quickly due to uncertainty related to global trade.

Business units exposed to construction continue to be negatively affected. That said, the current comparables are quite unfavorable. Jesper Kronstrand steps into his new role as Head of Services, bringing both experience from within the group and also adding fresh operational energy and focus as we continue to navigate a challenging market.

Trade delivered positive organic sales and EBITA growth for the full year as well for the fourth quarter, and we continue to see momentum into 2026. Consumer Products was positively affected by improved demand and certain orders landing in Q4 rather than in Q1. Professional Products was largely in line with last year, but improved margins. A strong SEK was margin supportive. And Q1 continues to be a seasonally softer quarter even for Trade. Overall, the development in Trade compared to Services provide a good example of the diversified approach in action, with Services currently dealing with a bit of headwinds and Trade benefiting from current tailwinds.

In Industry, the sales growth for the full year was 5% with EBITA declining with 5%. The negative organic profit growth was significantly impacted by unfavorable FX transaction effects. We continue to see FX headwinds in January as well. Divestments affects fourth quarter sales and EBITA by approximately minus 2%. Underlying organic sales growth in Q4 was 7%. Development for Industry compared to Services and Trade is somewhere in between, with order books remaining solid, and we're heading into 2026 with good visibility for parts of the portfolio.

If you look at our capital allocation over the past 12 months, we've gradually begun to deploy capital towards selective acquisitions. For 2025, this sums up to 9 acquisitions, 3 platforms and 6 add-ons, with collectively annual sales of approximately SEK 400 million and a margin north of 20%. We've also made one divestment in 2025 on Motavo Group, a chain of hair salon with annual sales of approximately SEK 280 million and a margin below our 10% group target. The divestments as part of our continued effort to refine and sharpen our portfolio.

With hair care, we are increasingly focused on our exposure towards the B2B-oriented businesses where we see stronger structural attractiveness. More broadly, organizational and portfolio streaming has been an ongoing theme for Storskogen since 2024 with fewer verticals, clear investment theme and strategic divestments when relevant.

With that, I will hand over to Lena for a more detailed financial review.

Thank you, Christer. Let's begin with the financial performance for the fourth quarter adjusted for items affecting comparability on this page.

Net sales in Q4 came in at SEK 8.7 billion, representing 2% growth compared to the same quarter last year. For the full year, sales declined by 3% to SEK 33.1 billion. We will walk through the detailed sales bridge later on in the presentation in a while. Adjusted EBITDA decreased by 3% in Q4 and EBITA fell by 4%. For the full year, both metrics were down 3% year-on-year, which means that our full year EBITA margin remained unchanged at 9.4%, as Christer illustrated before.

There are 3 key drivers behind the year-on-year EBITA decline. First of all, we had, as mentioned, a currency effect, which continued to weigh negatively on results in Q4 and that also explained actually a large part of the EBITA decline. Further, we had mix effects, as we also discussed before, in this quarter. We have seen strong growth in verticals with somewhat lower margins such as, for instance, the industrial technology within Business Area Industry, that also explains a part of the margin decline.

And finally, Business Area Services faced a tough comparison against a strong Q4 last year, and the slower construction market this year made it challenging to reach the same levels, as Christer just described. On the positive side, however, we saw a solid margin uplift in Trade and lower central costs, both of which contributed favorably to the margin development.

EBIT for the fourth quarter was SEK 640 million, down 2% year-on-year and corresponding to a margin of 7.3% compared to 7.6% in Q4 last year. For the full year, EBIT declined by 1% to SEK 2.4 billion. We continue to see a positive development in net financials supported by reduced interest margins and lower absolute debt levels. The lower funding costs, combined with a continued reduction in the effective tax rate, helped lift adjusted net profit by 2% in the quarter and by, all in all, 15% for the full year.

You will find the reported income statement as an appendix to this presentation and, of course, in our financial report. Just noting that items affecting comparability, which is the difference between this one and the reported P&L were in total minus SEK 10 million in Q4 and minus SEK 109 million for the full year '25.

Let's turn to our financial KPIs shown here from Q4 '23 onwards. Our adjusted rolling 12 months EBITA margin remains stable at 9.4%, broadly unchanged from last year but below our target, which is more than 10%. Our efforts to reduce debt, our lower funding costs, our increased tax efficiency and buyback of minority shares in our subsidiaries have all in combination resulted in 7 consecutive quarters of steadily improving adjusted earnings per share measured on a rolling 12 months basis. Our adjusted EPS now stands at SEK 0.70 per share.

The return on working capital has remained above 60% for the past 5 quarters, reaching 62.2% in Q4. Our adjusted return on equity and return on capital employed are still not at the levels we ultimately want them to be; however, both metrics are trending in the right direction, we believe, especially return on equity, and our ambition is to continue improving these metrics over time.

Cash conversion remained solid at 74% on a rolling 12-month basis, which is above our long-term target of more than 70%. In the isolated fourth quarter, cash conversion was more than 100%, signaling strong underlying cash generation despite lower working capital released this year compared with previous periods. The normalization from the above 100% conversion back to the 70% to 80% range is something that we have expected and we've mentioned in many previous earnings calls.

Finally, our leverage ratio of 2.3x is well within our target range of 2x to 3x and has trended down. This reflects the reduction in interest-bearing debt, thanks to strong cash generation and it provides us with strategic flexibility as we are resuming acquisition activity.

So all taken together, this set of KPIs, we believe, shows that we are -- our financial foundation is strong, we maintain margins, improving returns, healthy cash generation and a solid balance sheet. Although some KPIs are below our own targets, we are, all in all, well positioned for 2026.

Let's now turn to the sales bridge here. On this page, we break down the contribution to sales from organic growth, structural changes and currency effects for both the fourth quarter and the full year. Organic sales growth for the group was strong in the quarter at plus 5% and plus 2% for the full year, as Christer highlighted earlier.

M&A, that's the net of acquisitions and divestments, had a neutral impact on sales growth in Q4, but a negative effect of 3% for the full year sales development. Currency continued to be a headwind also on sales, reducing sales by 3% in the fourth quarter and by 2% for the full year. Overall, we are, of course, pleased to see the contribution from both organic and acquired growth during the year and particularly in the fourth quarter.

And then let's move to the corresponding EBITA bridge. Overall, EBITA declined by 4% in the quarter and 3% year-to-date. And I'll highlight 3 main key drivers behind this development, positive and negative. First, the impact of divestments and acquisitions combined with lower group costs added approximately 3% to EBITA in the quarter and 4% year-to-date.

Second, currency translation effects continued to be a headwind. FX translation reduced EBITA by 2% in both Q4 and the full year. These are effects from converting earnings in other currencies into Swedish krona.

And then finally, on the negative side, organic EBITA growth was down 5% in Q4 and year-to-date. But it's worth highlighting that of this 5% decline, transactional currency effects related to balance sheet revaluation, primarily within our Industry segment, account for roughly 70, that's 7-0, percent of the negative organic impact in Q4 and about 40, 4-0, percent of the full year organic decline. So in other words, currency effects had a significant negative impact on our top line and an even greater negative impact on EBITA.

Let's move to the cash flow statement for the fourth quarter and the full year, starting with taxes. Our continued work on the tax side reduced paid income tax by 41% or by SEK 269 million in 2025, which we're, of course, very happy with.

Next, change in net working capital contributed plus SEK 232 million in the quarter, which is in line with our expectations, and this was driven by lower levels of inventory and accounts receivable in the quarter. Cash flow from operating activities reached SEK 1.2 billion in the fourth quarter and SEK 2.5 billion for the full year and this is also in line with expectations, given that we've anticipated a normalization of working capital in combination with lower -- the positive effects from lower interest costs and paid tax.

Turning to investments. Of the SEK 137 million in net investments in noncurrent assets in Q4, CapEx amounted to SEK 171 million. This corresponds to a CapEx to sales ratio of 2%, typically a bit higher in Q4; for reference, Q4 last year was 2.4%. Acquisitions and divestments totaled SEK 173 million in the quarter and SEK 759 million for the full year. These amounts include acquisitions of minority shares in existing subsidiaries and some earn-out payments.

Cash flow from financing activities, including leasing payments, was SEK 640 million in the quarter and SEK 1.7 billion for the full year. Putting all of this together, net cash flow for the quarter was SEK 201 million and for the full year, minus SEK 508 million. Our cash balance at the end of December was SEK 1.3 billion and total available liquidity was an ample SEK 4.5 billion, including cash and unutilized credit facilities.

And now let's move to a quick glance at the condensed balance sheet here. Total balance sheet amounts to SEK 41.5 billion compared to SEK 43.2 billion a year ago. Over the past 12 months, our total interest-bearing debt has decreased by roughly SEK 800 million, and our net interest-bearing debt is down by SEK 180 million, supported by the strong cash flows we just walked through. During the quarter alone, net interest-bearing debt was reduced by SEK 675 million. I would also like to highlight that our equity ratio has continued to improve, now at 50% compared to 48% a year ago.

And then finally, a quick glance at the debt distribution here. Over the past years, we have worked through our entire debt portfolio, both bank loans and bonds, with the aim of reducing refinancing risk by distributing and extending our maturities and of course, with the aim of reducing also our funding costs.

During the autumn, we refinanced our last shorter-dated bond by replacing it with a SEK 1 billion note with maturity in 2030 at a margin of 265 basis points. And with this refinancing now completed, we have no maturities until the second half of 2027, as illustrated here on this slide. You can also see here that our margins have been reduced with every new bond issued during '24 and '25. And I'd also like to add that both the larger term loan and the shorter or the smaller revolving credit facility do include extension options, which would further strengthen our flexibility, of course.

And with that, I hand the word back to you, Christer.

Thank you, Lena. Before moving into the key summary, I would like to briefly highlight the 2 management updates. First, Jesper Kronstrand has been appointed Head of Business Area Services, as I mentioned before. And Jesper most recently served as the CEO of SoVent Group, where he led the strong profitable growth, combining organic development with acquisitions.

Since 2018, SoVent sales have grown from about SEK 130 million to SEK 600 million. Jesper brings deep operational experience and a strong understanding of the centralized service businesses. SoVent has about 40 subsidiaries and can be viewed as a mini Storskogen in some ways. And we are very pleased to have him step into this new role -- or this role.

Second, Chris Pullen has been appointed the Head of Storskogen U.K. on a permanent basis. Chris joined Storskogen in 2022 and brings extensive leadership experience from CEO roles across multiple U.K.-based organizations. We are very pleased that Chris has agreed to take on this role permanently providing stability, strong operational leadership and continued M&A expertise, as we develop the U.K. operations further.

And as we close the fourth quarter of '25, here are the key takeaways: One, we delivered organic sales growth and see positive signs of an improving business cycle heading into 2026. Acquisitions resumed as the second half of 2025 and Storskogen enters '26 with a solid position of continued value creation.

Thank you for your attention. And with that, we are happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Carl Ragnerstam from Nordea.

It's Carl here from Nordea. A couple of questions from my side. Firstly, on Services. I, of course, acknowledge the tough comps you had last year. However, sequential deceleration versus Q3, 10 basis points, makes me a little bit puzzled, especially, I guess, since Q4 from a product perspective should be favorable. So could you help me understand a bit of that dynamic? And you also guided for a bit of a colder winter impacting some subsegments entering Q1, so should we look at the same kind of year-over-year margin drop in Q1 as we saw during Q4?

Looking at Q4 for Services, it is -- the sentiment for the construction part has been pretty much the same as we have seen in Q2 and Q3. So we have gone into that in Q4 with pretty much the same level as this year has been. And as we said, Q4 last year, we absolutely saw an uptick in margins and we also saw that the sentiment was going in the right direction. However, that changed, as you know, in kind of with all the turmoil in -- after kind of in Q1 and with the trade effects in April of last year. So Q4 has been in line with Q3 for Services.

Okay. And could you also help a little bit on Q1, how you look at the cold winter, as you guided for how -- what of an impact would that have? And also if you could give some flavor on the comparison in Q1?

But as I said, I think Q4 of 2024 and Q1 of 2025, we had -- we saw margin expansions in Services. And I would guess, and it's super hard to say now we have only had 1 month, and January, as you know, is a small month starting off the year. But I would guess that we will see pretty much the same situation for our Services business as we have seen in Q3 and Q4.

Okay. That is very clear. In Trade, you mentioned some kind of pre-buy in Q4, at least orders were taken in Q4 instead of Q1. Do you know what is behind that? And also if you could sort of give some magnitude on it...

Yes, I would -- guesstimate is that it's like SEK 10 million to SEK 20 million in sales. And there has been companies putting orders ahead of us increasing prices, but I would -- my guesstimate is around that SEK 10 million to SEK 20 million of sales.

That's very clear. And what is the price increase that you expect in Q1? And do you also expect to fully materialize the price increases given that your procurement costs are down due to the cheaper dollar?

we will continue to kind of -- I would say that 2026 and 2025 has been a more normalized -- if you look at an overall level of our companies, it's a more normalized way of a couple of percentage portion of price increases yearly that will affect kind of coming in -- usually in February -- January, February or March for different kinds of companies, but I would -- it is a more normalized level kind of prior -- the same level as prior to the inflation increase in '21-'22.

Okay. That is also very clear. In the report, you talked about the financial targets, right, 15%, '25 to '27 earnings growth. With what you see in Q1 and I guess what you see in orders in the Industry, could you help with the building blocks a little bit from -- I mean, obviously, you have delevered balance sheet, your M&A pipeline and organic recovery and so on, especially for perhaps '26?

Yes. I mean looking when we set that target, as I said, in Q4 of '24, we absolutely, as I guess, most of the company saw an uptick in 2025, which didn't materialize. So, of course, that's a disappointment for us of not doing the sales target as we wanted to come in. But of course, for us, we have had the ambition to continue to take on that target, and that comes from acquisitions and of course, an uptick in organic growth.

And if we see what people are viewing now that kind of the uptick in the economy will come as further we go in the year, that would help us, of course, in both Trade and Industry. And of course, if we see -- also see an uptick in the construction sentiment that would also help our Services part.

And in '26, do you see a greater contribution from M&A or organic or do you see 50-50, in general?

But I would see a greater impact from acquisitions compared to 2025.

The next question comes from Dan Heimer from SEB.

A couple of questions from my side. Maybe starting a little bit on 5% organic growth in the quarter. My impression was in Q3 that you sound a bit optimistic on demand there, primarily in Sweden. Meanwhile, you have some challenges now in Services this quarter, as you spoke about, and I guess, that mainly is a Swedish business. So are you still as positive on demand now in general in Sweden going into next year or have you changed your thinking there in any ways?

I think I'm optimistic. Further the year will go, I think we will see an uptick in demand, especially if we see that they materialize what kind of the growth expectation for Swedish economy. I don't have any other view than most of the banks, and that will materialize during the year. So in 2026, I'm absolutely more optimistic for an uptick.

Yes, makes sense. And a follow-up question on Trade. The continued strength of the SEK. Could you remind me a little bit of the lag between when you see the full impact? Is it like 1 or 2 quarters from when the SEK moves, so to say, could you say that...

Yes. I would say, 2 to 4 quarters. It's a little bit -- because you have -- first of all, you have a hedge effect that companies a lot of the Swedish trading they hedge, so they -- at least half of what they're selling is hedged. So there, you have kind of -- and then you also have -- you have to sell out the products from inventory levels, so you also have an effect of that.

But you should see -- and I think we've seen some of the effects already in Q4, but you should anticipate that, that's kind of the strength of the dollar, if this level is here, we will see an impact further the year goes.

Also bear in mind that all of the purchases are, of course, not in dollars. We still have a big exposure to the euro as well, I think even more purchases in euro rather than a year or 2 years ago.

Yes. So that's one effect. And also, of course, having some -- we also have an effect of the weak Norwegian kroner when we take in the -- because we have some large trading companies in Norway. So we had some effects going both ways, even for Trade. But both -- when SEK strengthened from -- to euro and dollar, that will have a positive effect on a net level for Trade. But you will see -- the further on we go, I think we see a more positive side.

Yes. Makes sense. And maybe moving on to M&A and maybe starting with divestments. Perhaps you did one in the quarter as part of the portfolio review, a smaller one, but still, would you say you're basically done now? Or could there be some fine-tuning of the portfolio? Or how should we think about the divestment part into 2026?

I mean we did a large divestment of '24. And then, I mean, we've done -- outside of that, we did 2 small divestments in '24 and then the big ones, and we've done 1 divestment of 2025. We will continue to always kind of look at our portfolio and optimize that. But I mean, as I said, we took care of the big things in '24, but we will continue to work on always looking at the strategic level of our portfolio.

Perfect. Maybe a final on how do you view the M&A pipeline and how it's building? It's not been that many quarters where you've been back with the acquisition activity. But how is it building? Do you see a ramp-up now in pipeline versus maybe 1 or 2 quarters ago?

Yes. I mean I think I mentioned that. I mean we started off doing in Q3. And of course, haven't not done many acquisitions in several years, so it has been a build up. But it's getting stronger and stronger, and we have a lot of interesting dialogues with companies. So that is going in the right direction for sure. But always with M&A, it's super hard to say exactly when you close the deal. It's so many things that affect that, as you know.

Yes, I fully understand, but it sounds like the pipeline is at least building, as you expect.

Yes.

[Operator Instructions]. The next question comes from Johan Dahl from Danske Bank.

Just a question on those transaction FX effects you talked about in the quarter. What does that represent, more specifically? If it's just a sort of a balance sheet on the end of day sort of valuation of receivables, et cetera? And do you anticipate that effect to be similar in Q1 given where FX is right now? And also, if you could update us on minority repurchases here in 2026 where that may end up?

Sure. The transaction effect is, as you say, it's a revaluation of balance sheet items, not only on the balance day, but on the average during the quarter. And it will -- well, we don't know where the currency is heading in Q4 -- in Q1 now, but speaking from January when the corona is continuing to strengthen, there would -- if that trend continues, there would likely also be a negative effect in the first quarter, but it's -- again, we've only seen 1 month out of the 3 so far, if that helps.

And then the second question was around the minority liability, which is approximately a little bit short of SEK 1.5 billion on the balance sheet right now. Quite a large part of that is short term, which means that they may be repurchased by us this year. I think you can assume that approximately half of that will actually be bought back during 2026 by us during this year. The majority of that will likely happen in Q3; some of it in Q2 as well; a smaller part, if any, in the first quarter.

And then there is a small earnout liability of SEK 75 million on the balance sheet, but that's quite small. But yes, we will spend some money on buying back minority shares this year as well. Again, reminding you that this will -- I mean, increasing our share of the subsidiaries does help our EPS growth as well because the EPS is only measured on the profit that belongs to the parent company shareholders.

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you for the questions, and thank you for listening into this call. I hope that you all have a great day and a great week. Thanks a lot for being with us and looking forward to see you and talk to you in the quarter. Bye-bye.

Welcome to the Storskogen Q3 presentation for 2025. [Operator Instructions]

Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Christer Hansson; and CFO, Lena Glader. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of Storskogen's report for the third quarter of 2025. I'm Christer Hansson, CEO of Storskogen. And with me today is Lena Glader, our CFO. A continued focus on operational execution continued to be the key during the quarter, especially in the light of the uncertain global environment. We have a strong balance sheet and financial position, which enable us to selectively pursue acquisitions to support our long-term growth. More on this shortly, let's start with an overview of Storskogen.

Storskogen is a diversified international business group with sales of about SEK 33 billion over the last 12 months and adjusted EBITA of SEK 3.2 billion spread across our 3 business areas. At the end of the third quarter, we consisted of 114 business units with an average annual sales of about SEK 290 million.

Before we move into the highlights for the quarter, I want to mention that Peter Ahlgren, after 11 years in operational leadership at Storskogen, has decided to step down as Head of Services and member of the management team. A process to appoint his successor is underway, and Peter will remain in this role until the transition is complete. I'm pleased that Peter will continue to support Storskogen in an advisory role. And on behalf of the entire company, I want to thank him for his instrumental contributions since joining Storskogen as the first employee beyond the founders.

But let's move on to the highlights for the quarter. Our third quarter of 2025 is in line with last year if adjusting for divestments and FX. This corresponds to sales of about SEK 8 billion and adjusted EBITA of SEK 759 million and adjusted EBITA margin of 9.5% for the quarter. Our organic sales growth for the first 9 months of 2025 is at 1%, our Q3 organic sales growth at 4%, and flat organic EBITA growth. Overall, we continue to manage a challenging environment well. Our focus is on improving profitability and our companies are making steady progress with its initiatives to support organic growth. We've refinanced our last outstanding bond with short maturity. This was done at an improved rate, in fact, the lowest we've achieved so far. With this refinance, we don't have any maturities until the second half of 2027.

Next, under the AGM mandate, the Board has decided to initiate a share buyback with the purpose of optimizing Storskogen's capital structure by reduction of the capital and to create an increased value for the Storskogen shareholders. Subject to AGM 2026 approval, repurchased shares could be used to secure the delivery of shares to participants of current and future incentive programs. Storskogen continues to generate strong cash flows. This has allowed us to seize the opportunity for share buyback and in addition to our main priorities to grow organically as well as through acquisitions. Our most recent platform acquisition is Frameda, a platform investment in professional hair care in Finland, which completes our Nordic footprint.

I'd like to turn briefly to our cash flow performance, which underpins both of the actions just mentioned, the share buyback as well as the acquisition of Frameda. Our continued strong cash flow over the past 2 years have played a key role in achieving today's financial position. Third quarter is typically softer than Q2 and Q4. And as highlighted in the Q2 report, payments for a few larger projects in Q2 were received in early days of Q3, effectively reversing the usual pattern between Q2 and Q3 this year.

On the right-hand side of this slide, you can see how cash flow evens out when viewed on an LTM basis. This view eliminates the effects of seasonal and timing variations and provide a full picture of our underlying performance, showing consistently strong level of operating cash flow over time. Maintaining strong cash flow generation year-after-year is fundamental. It supports our balance sheet, enables strategic initiatives such as selective acquisitions and underpins our long-term growth.

Next, I want to draw your attention to the net sales and EBITA margin. Net sales was in line with last year, whereas divestments had an impact of negative 2%. The remaining change is a result of FX of negative 2%, offset by organic growth of 4% in the quarter. Adjusted EBITA margin for the quarter is now 9.5% compared to 9.8% a year ago. The decrease is largely explained by effects from divestments, FX, and lower central costs. Similar to our cash flow, the rolling 12 months numbers at the right are most relevant given the seasonal variation. And as you can see from the left side to the right side, we have improved or maintained our LTM margin since the start of 2024.

But now let's take a closer look at the performance of our business areas. First, Services. Services reported net sales of SEK 2.2 billion, down 6%, mainly reflecting divestments and our deliberate choice to step back from projects with insufficient margins. This explains the negative organic sales while improving our EBITA growth so far this year. Adjusted EBITA amounted to SEK 239 million for the quarter, down 9% year-on-year and corresponded to a margin of 10.8%, slightly below last year.

On a rolling 12-month basis, the margin improved to 11.5%, supported by ongoing efficiency measures and management's focus on profitability. The third quarter is normally affected by the summer slowdown, demand among companies exposed to construction, primarily found in infrastructure services, remain muted, while Business Services continued to perform well. Looking ahead, the fourth quarter is normally stronger with several companies entering their high season. Market conditions remain mixed, but sentiment is gradually improving. During the quarter, we also added 2 new platforms that I'll mention a bit later.

Looking at Trade. In the third quarter, the trade business reported net sales of SEK 2.3 billion, an increase of 3% year-on-year. For the first 9 months, we are in positive territory for organic sales, but slightly negative still for EBITA. However, I'm happy that we are seeing improvement in sentiment, which is also evident in our recorded positive sales and EBITA growth for the quarter. Adjusted EBITA increased by 4% in the quarter to SEK 211 million, corresponding to a margin of 9%.

On a rolling 12-month basis, the margin improved to 8.4% from 8.0% a year ago, supported by continued cost control, efficiency initiatives and support from a stronger SEK. In Consumer Products, growth was driven by Health and Beauty and Sports Accessories, while interior design companies improved margins despite soft demand. Professional Products saw slightly higher sales but somewhat weaker profitability, largely due to the continued muted construction markets. Looking ahead, the fourth quarter is typically stronger with major sales periods ahead.

In the third quarter, Industry reported [ net sales ] of SEK 5 billion, an increase of 1% compared with last year. For the first 9 months, sales decreased by [indiscernible] organic sales growth of 4%. Adjusted EBITA decreased by 7% to SEK 329 million in the quarter, corresponding to a margin of 9.5% compared with 10.3% a year ago. On a rolling 12-month basis, the margin was 10.1%. The decline reflects soft demand among companies with larger production facilities, primarily in Industrial Technologies and Product Solutions, resulting in a lower capacity utilization. In contrast, project-oriented companies, especially in automation, saw solid demand and improved profitability year-on-year.

Across the business area, the focus remains on sales growth, cost efficiency and productivity improvements, measures that are expected to support profitability going forward. Order intake was solid in the quarter and order books for the fourth quarter remained strong and of high quality. While macroeconomic uncertainty and currency volatility make the timing of a broader recovery difficult to predict, structural trends such as automation, digitalization, and green transition continues to support growth. During the quarter, one add-on acquisition was completed by the Wibe Group, strengthening its offering with cable management system.

Before we move into the details of recent acquisition, I'd like to take a moment to revisit our capital allocation model. It starts with capital we have available, generated through strong operating cash flows and financial management. From there, we allocate capital in 2 directions. The first is organic expansion. This includes CapEx and OpEx to strengthen operations, drive sales or efficiency efforts within our existing portfolio. The second is acquisitions, either to form new platforms or add-ons to our existing business units [indiscernible] offering or to unlock synergies. Our guiding principle remains the same, to allocate capital where it delivers the highest and most sustainable return.

If you look at our capital allocation over the past 12 months, we've generated strong operating cash flows of about SEK 3 billion. A portion of this has been reinvested in the business through expansion CapEx and lease payments, while the remainder represents capital available for allocation. During the period, we have deployed capital towards selective acquisitions and minority share buyouts, while the majority of about SEK 900 million has been directed to debt reduction.

Turning to the third quarter specifically. This illustration highlights that it's primarily from Q3 onwards that the growing share of available capital is now being directed towards acquisitions and minority share buyouts, reflecting that capital allocation is once again shifting towards growth, a shift we expect to continue.

Before we move on, let me briefly touch on the M&A activity. Up until today, we have completed 3 platform acquisitions and 3 add-ons. We mentioned 2 of the platform acquisitions during our Q2 presentation. LEP, a Swiss provider of digital solutions for the healthcare sector with strong recurring revenues and exposure to our digitalization and health and well-being themes. Carry Gently, a U.K. based niche logistics operator, serving tech and healthcare, the business completes our existing Stop Start Transport business, adding synergies and further exposure to the digitalization and health and well-being theme. Today, we have announced the acquisition of Frameda, a Helsinki-based distributor of professional hair care products. And Frameda completes our Nordic presence and it fits squarely within our health and well-being theme.

Turning to the add-on previously announced in service to the [ signatory Wibe Group ], SoVent made a small add-on in the first quarter. In Industry, Danmatic, our baking machinery manufacturer completed an add-on in Q2, strengthening its recurring revenue base. And also in Industry, Wibe, the cable ladder manufacturer closed its acquisition of Pushpak in Q3, expanding its offering within our energy and infrastructure investment theme. In total, these acquisitions contribute of about SEK 300 million in sales with an adjusted EBITA margin of about 23%.

And that concludes my remarks for now. Over to you, Lena.

Well, thank you, Christer. So let's start with the Q3 financials on the first page here, showing the financials -- or the P&L rather adjusted for items affecting comparability. Christer mentioned the net sales in the third quarter of SEK 8 billion, unchanged from last year. For the first 9 months, sales declined 5% to SEK 24.4 billion. I'll show a detailed sales bridge separately.

Adjusted EBITDA decreased by 1% and EBITA by 3% in the third quarter. Both were down 3% year-to-date. There is an element here of mix effect, whereby sales growth, which was 4% organic in the third quarter, has come from businesses with structurally somewhat lower margins. EBIT came in at SEK 587 million, down 2% with a margin of 7.4% compared to 7.5% in Q3 last year. The biggest change, however, in the P&L is on the net financial items of minus SEK 138 million in the quarter, which is 43% lower year-on-year, driven by a significant SEK 68 million reduction in interest costs.

Lower costs and the reduced effective tax rate coming down from 29% to 25% helped lift net profit by 36% in Q3 and by 22% year-to-date. And [indiscernible] KPIs, adjusted EPS grew by 40% to SEK 0.18 in Q3 and by 28% for the first 9 months. I'll come back to this. Adjusted return on equity reached 6.4% for the last 12 months, up more than 2 percentage points year-on-year. Our ambition is to continue improving our return on equity by reducing financial costs and growing operating profit. And the same goes for the return on capital employed, which was 10.3% and 25.5% net of goodwill. As stated before, we remain focused on managing working capital, driving operating profit growth and complementing now with value-accretive acquisitions such as the ones Christer just showed to continue improving our return on capital employed going forward.

And then a few words also on the reported profit and loss statement for the quarter, which is broadly consistent with the adjusted results. Adjustments in the third quarter amounts to approximately plus SEK 10 million, which reduces the adjusted results by the same amount. And these adjustments relates to the revaluation of earn-out liabilities. Looking at the 9-month period, however, reported net profit for 2025 includes items affecting comparability of minus SEK 100 million, the bulk of which related to the bond refinancing in June this year. And the last year's 9-month period includes minus SEK 1 billion in EO items related to the portfolio divestments made last year.

And turning to the year-to-date sales bridge. On this page, we break down the contribution to sales from organic, structural changes, and currency effects, such as what Christer just mentioned. Organic sales, plus 1% year-to-date and plus 4% in Q3. FX reduced sales by 2% and divestments by minus 4% year-to-date. In Q3, not shown separately here, divestments had a minus 2% impact on sales. The last divestment we made was in Q4 last year, which is expected to affect Q4 growth this year by about 1 percentage point and that's of course -- but we're pleased to see overall that both acquired and organic growth contributed with a stronger impact in Q3 than on the year-to-date figures shown here.

And then let's move to the corresponding EBITA bridge for the first 9 months. Overall, EBITA declined by 3% as mentioned before. The main drivers behind this change is, first of all, lower group costs combined with divestments and acquisitions, adding about 4 percentage points to EBITA year-to-date. Further, currency translation had a negative impact of 2%, reflecting pure translation effect, so when converting earnings from other currencies into Swedish krona. And then finally, organic EBITA growth was down 5% year-to-date. And it's worth noting that roughly one-third of this decline comes from transactional currency effects related to balance sheet revaluations [indiscernible] industry segment. For the isolated third quarter, included in these numbers, of course, organic EBITA growth was approximately flat with no transactional currency effects during the quarter.

Over to EPS growth here on the next slide. This page shows our adjusted EPS or earnings per share growth on a rolling 12-month basis. The bars illustrate sales development. While organic sales growth has been positive year-to-date, reported sales declined due to divestments and currency as highlighted earlier. However, where we see a significant improvement is in earnings per share, which have grown for 6 consecutive quarters in Q3 alone by 40% year-on-year. This positive trend is driven by 3 key factors. First, lower net financial costs on the back of ongoing debt supported by strong cash flows and the full refinancing of our debt portfolio, which has significantly lowered our interest margins as well. So overall, lower absolute debt and lower margins on -- that has improved the net financials.

Second, the fact that we bought back minority shares, hence, increasing the parent company's share of net profit also enhances EPS. And third, a lower effective tax rate through internal restructuring that enables more efficient interest deductions. And in addition, of course, lower base rates from central banks have provided some support to net profit as well.

And let's move over to our cash flow statement for the third quarter. First, following up from the previous page, our work on the tax side has reduced paid income tax by 24% year-on-year down to SEK 116 million. Next, change in net [ working ] capital, minus SEK 88 million, reflecting a slight buildup during the quarter. No single line item stands out here, but inventory increased slightly ahead of anticipated seasonally higher Q4 sales, driven by events such as Black Friday and Christmas, particularly within business area, Trade. So summing up cash flow from operating activities, we reached SEK 659 million in the third quarter, which is about SEK 200 million higher than last year. And as Christer mentioned, SEK 3 billion for the last 12-month period.

Looking at investments. Of these minus SEK 75 million net investments in non-current assets, CapEx was SEK 112 million, corresponding to a CapEx to sales ratio of 1.4%. Acquisitions and divestments totaled SEK 400 million in Q3. The largest shares, SEK 220 million relates to [indiscernible] existing subsidiaries, while acquisitions amounted to approximately SEK 170 million in cash paid out. Cash flow from financing activities was minus SEK 185 million, including leasing payments. And putting it all together, our net cash flow for the quarter was approximately 0.

Our cash balance at the end of September was SEK 1.14 billion with total available liquidity of SEK 4 billion, including cash and unutilized credit facilities. Our cash conversion rate was 80% in the quarter compared to 72% in Q3 last year. And it's worth noting here that there can be significant seasonal variations in the cash conversion, which is why we focus on the rolling 12-month figure for cash conversion showing on the -- that we show on the next page.

So continuing from the previous page here, the cash conversion is shown here, which is one of our key financial KPIs, of course. The bars illustrate our EBITDA-based cash flow that our cash conversion is based on, and this has been between SEK 3.5 billion and SEK 4.5 billion on an LTM basis over this period, as you can see. Our group target for cash conversion is at least 70% over a 12-month period shown by the dotted line on this page. And over the last 12 months, our cash conversion rate was 82%, so above target, helped by somewhat lower CapEx.

As we've highlighted in previous earnings calls and we repeat this, the high cash conversion levels of around 100%, which we saw in 2023 and '24, driven by significant working capital release are not sustainable, we believe. We have expected this to normalize and that's what we're seeing here. But looking ahead, our 70% target remains intact, of course. And while we anticipate less working capital release as organic sales growth returns, our focus remains firmly on growing profits. But cash conversion will, however, remain a highly prioritized area for us.

And then let's move to the condensed balance sheet on the following page. Our total balance sheet amounts to SEK 42.3 billion. Turning to the debt items over the past 12 months. Our total interest-bearing debt has decreased by around SEK 900 million and net interest-bearing debt is down by SEK 725 million, supported by strong cash flows that we just showed. During the quarter, the net interest-bearing debt remained unchanged.

I'll return to the net debt and leverage on the next page, but I would also like to note here that our equity ratio has improved to 49%, up from 46% a year ago. You may also note here a 109% increase in short-term interest-bearing liabilities as of Q3. This relates to the bond that we refinanced and repaid in October. So this was after the quarter closing, meaning that we now have no debt maturities until 2027.

And finally, over to this page, where you can see our interest-bearing net debt and leverage ratio and how that has developed over the past 9 quarters. Our interest-bearing debt at the end of the quarter stood at SEK 10.2 billion, which is essentially [ unchanged ] from the second quarter. As a result of unchanged net debt and flat organic profit growth, our leverage ratio also remains stable at 2.4x, which is comfortably within our target range of 2x to 3x. And I'd like to repeat that our ambition is to keep it below 2.5x, and that remains unchanged.

And with that, I'll hand over to you, Christer.

Thank you, Lena. And just the final key takeaways from my side. Now closing the third quarter, of course, our operational focus across our business group continues to be prioritized as we are yielding strong cash flow despite challenging markets. Our financial position is strong with no maturities until the second half of 2027. We have significantly lowered interest costs and have comfortable leverage position. This is allowing us to be gradually resuming our acquisition during the second half of 2025. Lastly, the Board has decided to seek the opportunity to initiate the share buyback in line with our AGM mandate. This reflects our confidence in Storskogen's long-term value creation and financial position. Subject to AGM approval, the share buyback could also be used towards our incentive programs.

And with that, thank you all for listening, and we look forward to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Dan Johansson from SEB.

A couple of questions from my side. Maybe starting a bit on your outlook comments, which sounds a little bit more optimistic now compared to Q2 and in particular on Sweden on services trade, so that's good. But if we look at the industry, is there any changes at all throughout the quarter? I mean, did you have a strong September and start of October, for example, or better momentum? Or is it still a little bit hampered by the whole situation and the slowness among global industrials? How do you think about the industry from here?

Thanks, Dan. Our Industry is, as I said, pretty much in line with the situation that we had in Q2. Automation companies are doing really, really well. However, as you said, some effects of kind of all the industrials, we haven't really seen the pickup there yet. So there's kind of a little bit of the same situation as in Q2, I would say.

And on net financials, very positive development there, as you highlighted. Have you seen the full effect now from all refinancing? And this is the sort of the base level that we should expect going forward, assuming change in base rates?

Yes, pretty much in what you can expect going forward, I would say.

I can add that there is -- there may be a slight reduction still because that bond that we refinanced in early October, we paid 300 basis points on the previous one and on this one 265 basis -- it's only SEK 1 billion. So that may bring it down a little bit. And of course, interest like central bank rates, let's see where they go.

Pretty much in line.

And then maybe wrapping it up a little bit on your M&A strategy here. You've been able to acquire businesses with 20% margin in the quarter while paying multiples in line with what you usually pay. So is it fair to assume that M&A will continue to be margin accretive also for the future? And also a little bit on the pace of M&A going forward. Will you still be selective? Or will you increase the pace now a little bit gradually as you have a good balance sheet funding situation and typically strong cash flows now in Q4 at least?

Yes. Looking at -- first of all, we are really, really happy with the acquisitions that we have made and we're also happy with the pipeline that we're building. And yes, on the question, will it be positive for margins going forward? That is the case. We're absolutely looking at that. Maybe not all will be above 20%, but absolutely a margin positive. I think we're monitoring this really, really carefully. And as kind of -- do we see a stronger economy? We could gradually improve and increase the pace. But this is something that we are working really, really hard. And then, of course, it's really, really hard to say exact timing of when you close a acquisition. But we are absolutely building a stronger and stronger pipeline for every month that goes by. So -- and looking for really, really good opportunities ahead.

The next question comes from [ Jacob Backman ] from Nordea.

This is Jacob from Nordea. Hope you can hear me well. Three questions from my end. The first one is looking at trade performance or performance in trade. You commented on an early sign of market recovery and also an industry with solid order book development. Could you expand a bit on how we should view a prospective recovery split across the separate segments?

Yes. Hello, Jacob. Looking at trade, I think that we have been seeing it in especially our consumer-related companies in the quarter that has had a gradual improvement and that has been much stronger than in the past. There's still some muted in -- also in trade. But all around the consumer, I think we're looking forward for a stronger market, that also goes with kind of what we're seeing in the Swedish economy and the consumer confidence. So I think that's a sign that we're seeing. Looking at industry, as I said, it is really kind of hard to exactly view it when kind of the comeback is coming. It's still different. Automation companies are doing really, really well, and we're also increasing sales. But it's a mixed effect that some of the increase comes into companies with a little bit lower margin. But we do see some hesitation still in the market in industry, especially.

My second question is, you announced buybacks amounting to about 5% of outstanding shares. So where are we standing today with the acquisition multiples in the market in mind? And where do you see the greatest capital allocation opportunities going forward?

We announced SEK 100 million, so it's 0 -- it's not 5%, so it's less than that. But we see this under 1%. We see this as a good opportunity, and together with what we're doing on acquisitions and driving organic growth. As I said, we also believe that we -- with the mandate of and if the AGM are agreeing to, we can also use these shares to our incentive programs and in future incentive programs. So you should more see it as a part of kind of our ongoing -- we're still going to do -- continue with our acquisitions and grow organic. This does not affect that strategy going forward.

And then my final question is regarding the announcement acquisition in trade after the quarter. Could you elaborate a bit on the margin profile of the acquisition pre-synergies? And what do you expect to be able to realize in terms of synergies here?

Yes. This is a company really familiar to us. As you know, we have built up a really, really strong position in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in health and beauty. I mean, prior to this acquisition, it's -- I think it's around SEK 3 billion of sales. And we have a super strong position in -- especially in professional hair care in Norway and Sweden and Denmark. Finland has been a kind of a white spot for that, and Frameda will fit perfectly into that group of companies, and we will have positive effects of some brands that we have [indiscernible] and our other companies that will be able to sell that in Finland and the opposite where Frameda has some own brands that we probably can sell in our companies in Norway and Sweden. On the margin, they are also kind of trending north of 20%, and we believe that that's the case going forward. And we see that there will be some great opportunities for Frameda to come into the family of other professional hair care distributors that we have kind of really built up in this group.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Well, thank you for questions, and thank you for listening. And from our side here at Storskogen, we hope you have a great day and a great rest of the week. So thank you all.

Thank you.