Good afternoon, and welcome to this Q3 presentation and Q&A with Movinn. With us today, we have the CEO of Movinn, Patrick Blok. First, there will be a presentation, and afterwards, a Q&A, where the CEO will answer questions submitted via Stokk.io. There have already been pre-submitted questions on Stokk.io, and the Q&A is still open so that you can submit questions live as well. This event is hosted together with Västra Hamnen Corporate Finance, and therefore, we also have Equity Analyst Johan Larsson with us. I will now hand over the mic to Johan and Patrick to start the presentation. Your line is now open.
Yes. Thank you, Anders. As Anders said, my name is Johan Larsson. I'm a analyst at Västra Hamnen Corporate Finance, and thank you for having me here today. I'm gonna be quite quick in leaving the word over to you, Patrick, and you guys will hear more from me later in the Q&A session.
Thank you, both of you. Thank you, Anders, and thank you, Johan. Great that we could do this as a joint exercise today. I'm gonna get my presentation up. Hopefully, everybody can see it. And then let's get on with it. So we recently published our interim report for the third quarter of the year. Continue to be a quarter with kind of performance not in line with expectations. We continue to trail a bit on our revenue, and we are also incurring a larger cost base than we would like to see. So that's some of the things that we are taking actions on. In this period of time, we have realized revenues of DKK 21.1 million in total, on group level.
That's divided by 19.7 in Denmark and 1.4 in Sweden. We are doing DKK 62.5 million on group level year to date, and which corresponds to a 9% growth compared to the last year of the quarter. The 9% looks kind of at face value, maybe a bit low, but it's a combination of us trailing a little bit in comparison on where we wanted to be at this stage. But it's also a direct product of our new sourcing strategy.
Those of you who have been listening with us for a while will know that us coming out of last year, where we did a very big jump in units, in unit growth across five different cities across our portfolio, will remember that fairly early on in that session, we realized that growing like that is both investment intensive, and it's also tearing a lot on our margins. So, the overall master plan was to finish up last year and then utilize that growth momentum we already secured last year into this year.
So it's a combination of us changing the sourcing strategy, aiming to do the bigger projects in the same locations, like the one we already presented in our H1, the big project we did in Copenhagen, which is now in the pipeline. That is the future for us to grow more efficiently, both measured in kind of CapEx, but also measured in performance. So we're not tearing, we're not generating as much cash burn as we've been used to, et cetera, et cetera. So that strategy is completely sound and remains our core focus and will not be changed.
So that is why, you know, at face value, looking at the revenue growth in percentage, it might look a bit low, but it is mainly a function of our new sourcing strategy. So when we do these large projects, when they come in, the jumps will be significantly higher in one go, and we won't have that capital tear, both measured in investment needs, but also in bottom line performance as well. Other than that, if we focus on the positives, Sweden is performing as expected. It's at the moment, balancing around the break-even point, which is very positive for us. It gives us a sound foundation to keep growing in Sweden on.
Sweden is, in general, performing as expected. And then we have Denmark, which is not performing as expected. It hasn't done so in Q1 or in Q2, or and now into Q3, and that's something we are, of course, working extremely kind of tirelessly on, trying to figure out what we're doing wrong and where we can improve and where we can do some fundamental changes and improvements to the market we're operating in. So that's kind of what we are battling on now, or working on now. And that's also why I stated in my quote, when we did the Q1 or released the Q...
Sorry, the Q3, when we released the Q3, that I'm actually fairly positive, even though the numbers don't look right. I'm actually fairly positive because we are making some sound decisions, and we are working on some like structural changes to how things are, how we do things, and how we can position ourselves stronger in the future. I'll come more into it a bit later or and elaborate on it a bit later, but that's it. Other than that, in Q3, we did a soft launch in a new market in the Stockholm region in Sweden. It's a very underserviced kind of blue ocean market called Ludvika.
So if you look at it from afar, you would say, "What, what are you talking about? What are you doing in Ludvika?" But it's a very good market for us. We have the Swedish CEO, who has some very strong market insights, and we're kind of utilizing that to our benefit at the moment. So a soft launch, the aim is to grow the portfolio in Ludvika as well. And Ludvika was also part of that reshaping exercise we mentioned in the Q3. I'll also come into that later, but we could take some of the operating equipment from markets in Denmark not working as we expected it to, and then redeploy that operating equipment into markets with a stronger potential.
So we're kind of keeping the revenue potential intact while cutting direct costs in this in the same exercise. So kind of coming to these sorts of decisions, it's not something to do lightly, and it's not something that you jump on the second things start to get a bit jumpy. You are, of course, you are working on how can we get this improved instead of it having to reshape. But the reshaping exercise is good, and as you can see a bit later, it'll have a very significant direct impact, and it's a relatively small trick up our sleeve. Other than that, we are painfully aware that the fundamentals, bottom-line fundamentals, is not working as we would like them to see.
But it's an ongoing battle of ours, and we are deploying tactics to kind of get that improved ASAP. The group structure, same as the last couple of quarters. We have the Danish parent. We have some subsidiaries, one in Denmark, and then two in Europe, one in Sweden and one in Germany. So our focus remains intact. We are not overreaching. In my day-to-day work, I get approached from a lot of different angles all the time, people who wants to do stuff with us in all parts of the world. But we are focusing on the short-term plan that we've already kind of set into the sea, so to say.
Which is upping the presence in Sweden, in key markets, and focusing on the key markets in Germany, where we're already doing the initial exercises in. So we're not going to overreach, especially not now when we have our home markets, which is performing subpar. We are not doing any new weird stuff that will kind of stretch us even further. If we dive into the highlights, you can see that our you know our EBITDA levels are not where they should be compared to the guidance. And that goes down all the way to EBIT and earnings levels. Sweden is as it should, but Denmark is not, and that comes to a group result that is not in line with expectations.
That is what we are currently gonna still continue to work on and improving on. We've kind of shown the markets in the segment that we've taken Germany out of this column for this report, because in Germany there's still no activity, commercial activity in Germany. We have, instead of having that kind of column sitting empty, we have done the nine-month accumulation column, so you can kind of keep tracks on where we're at in the nine-month group level performance as well. Our balance sheet is shown in key metrics here on the top part of the screen. It's fairly the same.
We are reporting a loss on equity, but we're also we've also used this quarter to pay off some debt. We had a loan to the Danish Vækstfonden, which had a fairly high interest rate, so we repaid that to get our interest costs down. And that means that our equity ratio, those sorts of financial risk metrics, are still strong. And we are obviously also balancing the debt and managing that in our total kind of capital management, capital budgeting, that sort of thing. You can see that from the cash flow statement, we have the cash flow from the quarter, and then we have the nine-month accumulation cash flow.
In that, you can see our operating cash flow is positive. We, of course, you know, a natural, a natural, consequence of our original guidance would mean that this should be way stronger than it is, but, but the— our cash flow from operations is positive. We report a DKK 1 million positive operational cash flow in Q3. And if you take it over the, the accumulated nine-month period, we— our operations have been generating DKK 600,000 in positive cash flow. So, you know, even though we are performing subpar, we still, deliver a positive cash flow on our operations. And then... We have the themes below, our total investments, our financing, our debt service, and etcetera.
As you can see, we in Q3 have a net negative financing of DKK 3 million. That's because we repaid some debt. Our net change in cash flow for Denmark in Q3 was negative DKK 2.3 million, and that's because we are still investing a bit, and then we also have serviced a big one-off debt payment. So if you then extrapolate that into the nine-month column shown in the right side of the screen, you can see that our we still have, you know, invest both growth and in the in on the balance sheet, and we have our debt service.
It means that our net liquidity for the first nine months here has been a DKK -4 million, which means that our cash balance going out of Q3 is DKK 9 million in positive. So we are keeping—it's important for us to keep, you know, all the powder dry. And with our kind of new sourcing strategy in place, we can keep the powder even drier than what we've been used to. So again, some good learning curves is also coming out of this, even though we are now in the third quarter in a row where stuff is a bit below expectations. We are kind of utilizing the adversity in order to position us for the longer term.
And, and then all in all, I think, I think we're managing that part of it pretty well, even though our kind of P&L performance is not where we want it to be. If we look at our key ratios, again, it's the all the, all the bottom line fundamentals, ROICs, EBITDA, EBIT levels are lower than, than, than, than what we're used to, and it's lower than what we expected it to be, so, so nothing positive to say in that sense. We have... If you look at Q3 last year, it was a quarter where we added a lot of units. We had a lot of tear on our bottom lines. We had a cash burn in Sweden that had a negative impact on our, on our, on our EBITDAs.
You could see that we were managing 12.4, juggling all that in one go, you know, juggling new markets with working capital, deteriorations, naturally occurring, and then growth domestically, which is also a natural tear, and we were still managing 12.4. So that compared to our long-term kind of guidance targets, where we say, "Okay, we have to be above 15% in EBITDA," that's still-- that's for sure possible. But it doesn't show in the figures we're reporting at the moment. That's apparent. And so we know what it can do, and we know what we have to do to get it back on track, and that's kind of our main focus right now.
So still balancing growth and international growth, but doing it in a way that is so we're not kind of putting ourselves under any, what you call it? You know, unneeded stress, so to say. So again, bottom line, metrics subpar. If you then look at some of the financial kind of risk metrics, you can see that our cash conversion remains fairly strong. We have a good equity ratio still. We have a good quick ratio. So and our cost of debt, even though it is in this quarter, a bit high, that's due to some, some, what you call it in English? Per was saying, you know, some, some adjustments.
And also there was some one-off cost incurred on repaying the loan to Vækstfonden. So even though the cost of debt is a bit high in Q3, it's on group level for the nine-month period, it's 3.5-ish, which is better than expected, so we're happy on that. So for us, it's about, okay, how can we limit the short-term interest payments for to give an example, to then position us stronger for the future when we kind of get our P&L performance back where it should be. Operational data, we've added units in Sweden. That was the soft launch we did in Ludvika. And other than that, we are not adding units aggressively in Denmark, again, due to the sourcing strategy.
I'll come back to it a bit later, but we have that 94-unit project in the pipeline, and that is... We're looking at similar things both at home but especially abroad. Doesn't have to be that many, but if the project is strong, then we will pursue it. And we will prioritize that over doing smaller projects that will incur cash burns. If I give you a very specific example, if we do, say, a 30-unit thing in Germany, that would probably not be enough to service an organization. So what do you want to do?
Do you want to do a short-term, 30-unit project in Germany, or do you want to do a bigger one, where you can plan out your organization properly in the beginning and not have a big tear on working capital? So that's it. Those are the things we are balancing, and so these numbers are totally in line with that, and no surprises there. Again, another important value driver is our vacancy rates, and they are higher than they should be. In the long-term guidance or roadmap, we want to have it below 10. Right now, we're reporting 17 in Denmark, and 16-point-something on group level, 16.5 on the nine-month accumulation. So that is the reason why we are not-...
kind of where we should be. We have too much vacancy, mainly driven by the rockiness of the secondary markets in Denmark. We also kind of elaborated on this earlier on. We have Aarhus who's kind of acting up, and we have Odense, which is also kind of acting up. So we are deploying different strategies in those markets to kind of get it back in line. And that is it. So in general, Per, totally as expected, the sourcing path and growth path, vacancy rates higher than they should be, and that is what we're trying to manage at the moment and improve on. The guidance is adjusted downwards as a result of another kind of weak quarter. It's...
We started off in the top bracket, that's the original guidance, and then you can see the current updated guidance, which is a downwards adjustment. We went into the year expecting to do DKK 11 million-DKK 12 million in Denmark on the EBITDA level from the operational EBITDA. We expected to lose DKK 1 million in Sweden or reach around zero, somewhere in that range. Sweden is again going as expected, so no changes needed there. But in Denmark, we have just been hit by some different things that is forcing us to kind of do this exercise and optimize this. So of course, not something we want to do. We wanted to do it the other way around.
Nobody likes to hear this. I don't like to face this, but going on the positive note from this updated downwards guidance, it's kind of forced us to think differently and kind of not be relying so much on business as usual. Trying to make some tougher decisions on some things where we historically has been more optimistic, and then trying to do a joint thing of kind of reshaping the portfolio, reshaping cost structure, but also deploying the operating equipment in stronger markets, and then taking, killing your darlings, so to say, in a place like Aarhus and downsizing.
So if we take this brief market outlook, I know it's a bit text-heavy, this slide, but the general gist of these are that we've seen some demand drops in secondary markets. We've also been hit with some internal issues. We had to rebuild our sales organization early on in the year. I'm not blaming anyone but myself, really. It's when you have to depart with staff members with a lot of experience, and you have to rebuild, the new people coming in obviously don't have the same level of expertise and that is something you can feel, and that is something that is obviously also taking a hit, us being still a fairly small company and not a 10,000-person company.
But the demand in secondary markets has been rocky, and that is something we're working on still. Trying to, to, you know, just replenish the client portfolio, which is going fairly well. But again, if you're dragging vacancy along, it'll have some time before the effects will kick in. But obviously also trying to rethink how we are selling and could that be done smarter than what we're doing now? If you look at the supply in home markets, again, we did a huge jump last year. And that was what we kind of wanted to capitalize on this year and then do a big... a couple of big projects on the side. Super strong idea.
And if the Danish kind of metrics had been with us, then it would have been an even stronger idea. Right now, it's hard to see, but we're making the right calls for sure, even though it is tricky to see in the short run. And again, reshaping a portfolio is a decision not to be taken lightly, but it is a it's very efficient, and I'll show you in a while. The new markets to give you an outlook on that, we have we did the one in Sweden kind of a soft launch. We still have to communicate it, of course, and it is still a good result, no doubt about that.
Closing in on the Stockholm region is a good result. It's, it's where naturally there's the business activity is highest, so that's definitely a place you want to be if you're serious about operating in Sweden. So, it is a very good result. But the guys—those of you who kind of know me, I also I like to tone it down a bit, so we call it a soft launch. The dream is to do more, but we also like to do it in a pace where we don't overreach or in a pace that we know the market can keep up with. So it's all right. And then we continue to look at Germany, Berlin and Hamburg being the markets that we are most interested in.
The current product portfolio is, it's unchanged from last time, and there's no new groundbreaking products on the way. The reason for that is that we need, of course, to call business to work as we know it can and perform as we know it can.... If you think about the comparable numbers we talked about a bit earlier, just focusing on the EBITDA alone, we know that, you know, for one year ago exactly, we were reporting 12.4, and we were a bit unhappy about that ratio, but we know we can get it. We know that's the potential and more so, so that is the short-term focus. As a natural consequence, we're not going to do anything new.
We are going to be happy with what we have. We have the corporate apartments that are the core business still. We have the Coliving, which is a very popular sub-brand, you can call it, and in high demand, and people kind of love it. If you go online and look at the reviews we're getting, we are throwing ourselves in five stars up and down the street, so everybody's happy, we're happy, and it has potential, but we are not eager to kind of expose ourselves more before we kind of have the core business running smoothly. The furniture rental, we did a launch in earlier in the year, a super strong. It is a fantastic business model, no doubt about it, but again, it doesn't make sense.
There's way more value to bring to our shareholders by focusing on the core business than kind of trying to grow a new upcoming segment. So that furniture rental thing, even though it is, it has a lot of potential, it is great. It's a great synergy to our business as a whole. It's not being prioritized at the moment. So we are focusing on just ramping up our core business and putting it back to where we know it should be. The client concentration is fairly unchanged from last time. There are some minor shifts, but nothing major. Again, this, we had a very important learning here. We measure each client and how much revenue they bring in.
We don't want one client to be too big. We don't want a cluster of clients to be too big. And what happened to us in Odense was that we had a lot of different clients, and at no face value did we have any huge client concentration, but a lot of them were on the underlying kind of demand driver, so to say, which was Facebook's large data center, and we were not good enough at catching that. Or we, you know, we would look at our portfolio, and it looked well diversified, and we thought all was good, but there was a lot of correlation in that. So it is an important metric, this, and it is important to keep track of this, and that's why we keep reporting it.
So that you guys also kind of know how it's evolving, and how it's looking. Keeping good track on your concentration of clients is definitely a good, good idea, because it means that if you are well diversified, you can take a hit in one sector, and then another sector might be on the up. If we use our client number one as an example, they're in an industry right now that is a bit beta resistant. So that means that they can then up their share a bit in times where other segments might be low. I don't know, construction, shipping, what do I know? But it's a good exercise, too, from a risk perspective.
Downsizing Aarhus, this was a slide that we thought was very important to kind of display, because this is an exercise we can in theory do forever. It's not something that should be done lightly, and it's not free. It obviously will cost some money to close down parts of your portfolio, but if you have, as a manager, looking at a market where you see structural challenges, and there's no doubt that I think in Aarhus, there's a structural challenge. There's a huge oversupply of everything right now, both regular apartments, but also serviced apartments. So why run around trying to fight for every penny when you can decide to say, "Okay, we will then focus on the strong locations we have in that city.
We'll take secondary locations and cut it, the roster, and then we will take the operating equipment and put it in Sweden or put it into units in Copenhagen, where demand is stable and strong. So it's an important exercise both to do from time to time and also show the market that it is possible to do this because there's a double effect here. The operating equipment is of high quality, so it can be reused. There's no written down, you know, there's no depreciations on that. It still has a lifespan. And why not deploy that lifespan somewhere else where it makes better financial sense, and has a better revenue potential?
And then with the other hand, you're doing, as you can see on this slide, just by cutting these 13 apartments off the list, we'll be improving our bottom lines with a 100 and... Just, if you just take the direct cost, there's other costs as well. There's also fixed cost and manpower and stuff like that, that can diminish as a consequence. But just doing this exercise alone will save us DKK 1.7 million a year, DKK 140,000 a month. It's a massive kind of bottom-line potential, and keeping in mind that the revenue potential can then be deployed elsewhere, so the revenue is still kind of the outlook on the revenue is still intact. So, an important exercise to do.
You have to think about it very carefully before doing so, because of course, it deteriorates your relationships with your landlords if you just cut the units from the roster. If, let's say, Aarhus bounces back in a year, and we want to upscale in Aarhus, then, you know, we're probably not going to do that with the landlord that we are disappointing by cutting these ones. So it is also an exercise to be used lightly, but a very good one. Then we have this tech stuff. This slide is a generic one I've shown you a couple of times.
It's just to show we have a portfolio of tech products that we employ to help us operate and to be efficient and to be good on our service deliveries and to make our user experience extremely strong for the persons who arrive and that sort of thing. But, the main learning that I've come to realize this year, especially, we had as a consequence of rebuilding the sales department for one. So you lose someone with five years of experience, and you try to replace them the best you can, but, you know, there will always be this kind of break-in time.
People need to know their way around, and I would say the way we've sold stuff the last 10 years has always been kind of the same, very relationship-driven. Very, yeah, relationship-born. You know, you have a relationship with a key person in a big company, and that's fine. But what happens when you lose your part of that relationship? Or what happens if the part of the relationship on the other end is being lost? So people also change positions in the big C25 companies or in the big agencies around the world. People are also migrating from chair to chair. So what happens in that situation? And you can kind of feel it. It's not something you can feel long run, but you can feel it in a month or two.
You know, if it then kind of breaks a month or two months out of a 12-month period, then it's clear that it has an effect that nobody likes. So, realizing that we need our sales system, we need our technology backbone to be an added salesperson basically, or two added salespersons or whatever. So I think we've been taking this adversity and this kind of rockiness and used it to our advantage, which means that we've now kind of figured out and deployed some extremely interesting features to our platforms. We'll be doing a direct booking feature. It sounds kind of basic, but it's not really.
You have to really, you have to think it through before you can deliver a, a direct booking feature in our end. But if you think about it, you know, people are used to booking hotel rooms or flights or buying stuff, sofas or whatever, off the internet. Why not, why not have them book, you know, four-month corporate housing? I'm, I don't think it's really a big thing anywhere. You can, you can put in requests, and you can get quotes, and you can... Not even on Airbnb, not most of the places can you do a direct booking.
You always have to get approved by someone in the end, and if you have that, then you need people, and if you need people, the potential to scale stuff or the potential to make mistakes are bigger. So by doing this, we think we are kind of changing the game a little bit, and that is a big thing for us. So we can basically take bookings directly. People can source and make those purchasing decisions directly from the site. They can then be redirected to a third party we use that will validate their identification and that sort of thing.
So we still keep our, you know, KYC stuff in place, so we know our customers, and we don't let, you know, people in we don't want to let in and that sort of thing. So we're gonna we're doing that now, and it's gonna be implemented here in, in, by the end of the year, at the latest. So, that's exciting. We're also doing a booking platform, for we have a lot of strategic partners that book a lot with us all the time. So again, people are migrating from one chair to the other in that end, but also when we have to replace people in our end, that has an effect.
So instead of sitting and kind of moaning about that, why not build a tool or a platform for these partners to use structurally? So you can basically have them book instead of having us being the gatekeepers on what they can book. So we're figuring that out, and we're deploying some AI as well that can help people to make these purchasing decisions directly, so they don't need to kind of ring us up or email us 10, 20, 30 emails back and forth, kicking tires before making a call. We can deploy a very clever AI feature that can support people while making a decision.
So the dream is that, you know, a person in Australia or the U.S. can sit around in the weekend and book and don't have to wait for our team or our policies or whatever. All that will be built into the system. So that's kind of why I'm happy in a way, because it's this is stuff that is very innovative, I would say, and it should give us... It should not make us as exposed towards towards changes in the future, internally or externally. Our furniture brand, it's, it's and the same little gimmick we've been telling you about for some time.
We have a website very close to getting launched, and the idea is not to be a big furniture salesperson or whatever. Not at all. The idea is to make, turn it into a little loyalty club so we can strengthen the moat around us. And then it's also an idea to... It also sets us aside, so when we're talking to landlords everywhere, Germany is a good example. When they see and hear that we really go into this level of detail, it sets us aside very positively when you are kind of competing for the same projects. So this is a very big differentiating factor.
The clients love living in kind of high quality stuff and, at competitive rates and the landlords that we're working with, especially abroad, they really, they're really impressed by this. So it's a good strategic little add-on we are working on. So, that's still on the table. The sourcing strategy is just to give you... In Q3, we formally signed that project. It was, we already knew it would be, it kind of overlapped a bit from when the Q3 ended and then when we actually signed it. So we communicated it last time as well, but we formally signed it here in Q3. And, it is, you can see the rendering of the building.
It's the water you can see in the bottom of the image. So a very well-located, impressive property with 94 units under one roof. And it goes without saying, you know, that operating 94 units under one roof is easier than operating, you know, 94 units in 20 different properties. There's no transport needed. You can have it really efficiently, and you can design the building as you need it to be, totally to your specs.
So, you know, there's a basement with utilities, but also a basement with some crowd-friendly stuff, you know, a spa and a sauna and that sort of thing to help create this sense of a concept and that is attractive, of course, to our clients and also to potential new clients. The current markets, the change here is the one, the Ludvika one in Sweden. So, so you can see, that has come to the list, and you can also see the pipeline, in the far right. In Copenhagen, we have, we are increasing with five units in the long run, and then we in the short run, and then we have the 94 in the longer run, taking that to 99.
Then we did the Ludvika ones. We have a few more in Malmö coming, and then we are taking 13 out of Aarhus. Again, it's showing our potential to reshape and optimize the portfolio ongoingly. If we see a market not performing, we can cut off and deploy it better. The new markets in focus also unchanged. As I said earlier, I'm getting approached weekly on opportunities everywhere both in Europe and also outside Europe. But we are committed to these markets, and this is what we want to do next. When that's done, then let's see what happens then.
But again, not overreaching, and staying focused, so we're not running around, and not ending up not delivering anything. So that is, that's still the target. I would say if we look at the unit targets, you can see that there's a minimum 30, minimum 30, minimum 40, minimum 40. In Sweden, it's still fine, and it can still be fine to do these small ones because we have all the overheads already. So if you add 10, that's just, you know, we'll just... Or 20 or 30, that will help to service your overheads and your profit potential. But Germany, we are probably looking to do it a bit bigger than that in how we can kind of drive that and what we're looking for.
And that's again, if you only take 29, 30-some, you are going to have, you are going to carry some losses around, and do we want to do that? It's a trade-off. It's just to say that Sweden can still do—we can still do the smaller increments in Sweden, but in Germany, it's probably not a fantastic idea. If we are to be measured on burn, working cap, that sort of things, which we are, and which is completely fine. So it's probably a bit bigger. The focus is probably shifted to something a bit bigger in Germany. The roadmap is the same you've seen. Those of you who've been following for some time, it's the same.
So I'm not going to go into details on that, but it's basically to show that we've taken some value driver guidance points and if you want to try to extrapolate a bit on our potential, then you should be able to do so using these value drivers. But the general roadmap is unchanged. It's you can look at the domestic growth and say, "Yes, our growth is probably not going to be linear as we set out to do earlier," but we will then take bigger jumps when we do so. So the end game should be the same, maybe a bit delayed. I don't know, but it's trying to grow more profitably and more efficiently.
If we then track progress, we do this every time we report something, and I promise you guys in the beginning that we would do it when everything was green and dandy, and also when everything was not green and dandy, and you can see that we are missing the mark in some places. Then there's a kind of value driver targets that we hit, and then there's value driver targets that we put in yellow. The red ones are apparent, you know, there's no explanation needed for that. EBITDA margin below expectations, vacancy above expectations, ROIC below expectations. Those three are, you know, correlated. So that, that's a natural kind of consequence. The revenue per unit is within the bracket.
And then we have the unit growth, which is in yellow, and that's because of the sourcing strategy. So, you know, linearly, no, we are not doing 20% annually, linearly, but when we then up by 100, then it's a 40% boost in one go. And, similarly in other markets, it's, it's, it's some bigger boost than, than just taking five units here, 10 units there, ongoingly. And then the two new markets a year is in yellow, and that's because the Ludvika one is a soft one, it's a soft launch. So, so we don't have that substantial big unit, jump. It is a bit, it's, it's a bit more cautious, and that's why it's in yellow. So thank you for your time. That was it for me, on the, on the presentation side.
My camera is messing with me, so forgive me for that. I'll be happy to take some questions, so, fire away.
Perfect. Thank you for that, Patrick. Let's jump directly into the questions, and we have one live question, so let's start with that. Could you give an update on the situations in Aarhus and Odense? What impact has the work you have done there since the Q2 report had?
Yes, I can. In Aarhus, we just see Aarhus is fundamentally changed for us. It's, there's a lot of apartments just sitting empty. There's a lot of apartments still getting built. And even though a normal apartment does not have any direct kind of... it's not a substitute directly, but it is like a complementary product. So, it'll have an effect on our value proposition. But other than just normal apartments, we've also seen some very ambitious projects coming to the market in the city, which has shifted the equilibrium like structurally forever, and those units are not going away.
You know, it's a big high-value big value projects, so they're here to stay. And so having the kind of supply line getting overbuilt so much, you know, it has changed the equilibrium forever in our opinion. What we're going to do, so we have reshaped it because we still have some very strong locations that are, you know, that will remain competitive, but some of the secondary locations we had, we came to that, you know, conclusion that why try to run around and try to make that work? It was like beating the dead horse, basically. So that's one of the fundamental things we've done on the supply part of it.
And then, of course, we might be... Aarhus is driven by a bit fewer industries than a company, sorry, than a city like Copenhagen is. So we have deployed some strategic desire to look for totally new segments. We want to do more private rentals. We want to do more insurance market rentals. So we are taking meetings with all the big insurance agencies and figuring out how we can be, how we could do more together, that sort of thing. Insurance, the genhusning segment for us right now is maybe 15% of our total volume. And I've had that strategic wish, and I've said it many times to my people, saying, "We need to up that." But now we, I've kind of thrown myself into that mix as well.
Sometimes you need someone with an officer's title to help you knock in some doors. So we are in talks with them, wanting to up our segment. But basically, we're looking at instead of just, you know, running around speaking to the same companies we've always been in talks to, we're looking to focus on newer segments so we can get a better diversification in general. And look, if we take then a market like Odense, Odense is that you know, our issues in Odense has been more kind of demand driven.
And all of it is demand driven, but there's a difference of having a structural change on supply like you have in Aarhus, and then have an interim kind of drop in demand like we see in Odense. So but Odense has then been a thing, you know, we engage more locally. We, you know, do a sponsorship in the local football club, trying to get closer to the local business community there. Again, we are Copenhageners, you know, so you have to be a bit humble, you know, when you approach a market like that. And getting that local relationship up and running is also something that takes time, but we've made some very good progress.
We've done a structural onboarding agreement with a very big local company in Odense. So all their people that they are bringing in, they will start at us, with us, and then, and then as part of their kind of hiring thing. And those sorts of agreements, obviously, we're trying... in the super short run, we are trying to replicate them as much as we can. You know, basically looking for other potential partnerships like that. We are also in talks with a very big kind of construction giant company, Danish construction giant, that has a lot of different people coming in, engineers... whatever, and kind of working to see if we can do some structural stuff with them.
The reason I say this is Odense for us, it's important that we keep it kind of, obviously, we want it to be performing at super high fundamentals tomorrow, but it's a process that'll take some time. But the reason for our focus in Odense is that there are some things in the pipeline in Odense, some very big factory construction stuff, to name one, that we know is going to be a big driver of demand in the next 10 years, maybe, when they're ready to kind of launch that.
And that means that because we already cater to a lot of these clients, because similar builds are being done, or in parts of Zealand and so we know - we both know the companies doing it and kind of controlling it, but we also know all the sub-suppliers that are kind of delivering to these sorts of projects. And that's why we know that Odense will be fine in the long run. We just need to get it up and working as best as we can, as fast as possible. But we're basically doing the same thing in Odense. Is there other segments we can work with in the meantime? How can we - can we do more private? Can we do more insurance?
You know, just targeting different segments than instead of sitting around and waiting for the big companies to call.
Yeah, perfect. And then the next question here: Looking at your website, it seems like the vacancy rate can increase to some quite high numbers going into November and December. Is this usual seasonality, or what are you doing now in order to decrease the expected vacancy rate?
It's a perfect question. It is. There is a norm. The seasonality is the standard seasonality for us is that it kind of slows down in December. So that's like if you look at the reporting we've done ever since we went on the exchange, we've kind of said, yes, there is a natural slow period in December and a natural slow period around the summertime. But we are looking to, again, it's kind of part of that strategy. I wouldn't call it a strategy, because we've been figuring out how to offset the seasonality pattern, like, ever since we started out. There is, if you can really efficiently play the different segments that we already cater into, one being insurance for one.
Right now, we're seeing a lot of. I've had some very interesting meetings with insurance, different insurance companies. They're seeing a lot of increased kind of need for rehousing. We have all that water, you know, storm floods, and you name it. Increased water, wind, downpour, and that's increasing the need for this rehousing thing. So we're looking to do some structural deals with them. And the beauty of insurance housing is that it's non-cyclical, you know, natural disasters or whatever we call it, don't know the time. So that is like the short, super short term thing for us is to do that, is to branch more into these different segments, be that insurance or a private rent, or a private segment.
People who might have, you know, they have a construction that's delayed or they bought a house and waiting for the new one or whatever, doing that sort of thing. So targeting new segments in general and also looking into is there anything we can do with short-term stuff? Can that be done in a clever way? So if we have a few weeks, can we rent that out basically as a sub in the periods of the year where stuff is down, and how can we do that cleverly and correctly and that sort of thing? We're looking into some different options there. Great question. It is mainly due to seasonality.
There's still. It's not like the world is dying down now and waking up again in January. There is still happening still, and we can see that our order flow is still fairly strong, but it is true that November and December, there's an added need to replenish your rotation.
Perfect. And then the next question here: It seems like it will be difficult to scale up the number of apartments in Ludvika to a high amount. So how will you operate in such a small city profitably?
It's a great question. Now we have our infrastructure, and again, the technology infrastructure we've done already is really good on that entire user experience, you know? So if you've been following for a while, you know, we have developed this access system in-house so that, you know, people can arrive without keys, and so you don't need a person to do that. And the apartment, and then we have the direct sales relationship with the—a big company up there who's renting from us. So all that is totally without any manpower needed. Then we have the cleaning and if something breaks, and that is done by employing, you know, ad hoc subcontractors in the short run.
So the fundamentals is, you know, the unit economics is still sound and, you know, the six units, all other things equal, when they're rented out, they will contribute a lot to our overheads as they are right now. So of course, it's important for us to keep our variable costs low, and we'll be doing that in the short run by just employing subcontractors. It was a similar kind of life cycle we had when Movinn as a total company was smaller. We had subcontractors in the beginning, and then at some point, when you go above a certain and then we had me and, you know, a tech guy and, you know, maybe someone else that had to get paid. So of course, it was not.
fundamentally strong having 20 or whatever, but at the moment you can do it with subcontract. At some point, you will grow out of that, where it makes sense to have an in-house person, but up until that, it can easily be done like that.
Okay. You went into Ludvika after a request from your customers. However, so far you have had a very high vacancy rate. Has some of your customers disappointed, or is this an expected slow start-up rate?
It's an expected slow start-up rate. It's a good, it's a very good question. It's also kind of, you know, there's all that kind of when and how, and you, you'll never hit the rotation perfectly. You know, you don't have a company or companies that has like, 50 people sitting in a shed somewhere just waiting for you to arrive. They have, you know, they will sort it out. You know, people will then be at a hotel or whatever, but, or they will be in a city an hour and a half away, getting... That's the thing, right? We have a very big client up there, that has a, they commute people in by buses from, like, cities two hours away.
and so they are very happy that we are now here, and it's expected, I think two of—I think they, they've done the first two or three. And we have little... It's like a 60,000-person headquarters that, so we're not that, we're not freaking out about that. So I would say it's like a normal, it's a, it's probably just a normal inbreak of catching that rotation. When we did Sweden in general, it was the same pattern kind of. You know, you always have that inflow of persons. It was the same in Odense. It's been the same everywhere. So it's, it, it'll, it'll...
I wouldn't be, you know, I expect it to be fully rented out, you know, in the next few months. And then when you're on the right side of your vacancy, you know, you have a date, you have someone leaving at the, on the fifteenth in two months, then you are on the right side of the rotation, so your clients will then come and say, "Okay, I have someone coming in two months. What do you need?" And that's where you can be efficiently on the right side of it. When you start something up, it'll always, there's always this kind of startup stuff.
Yeah. And then before handing the word over to Johan for some questions, there's a question here: As I understand AG Gruppen, usually they do not start a project without an investor or a buyer of the finished project in the other end. Is that true? And has the development of the project started, or do AG Gruppen need to find an investor buyer before starting the development, or are you, in this case, actually the investor/renter?
It's a very good question, very good insight, and it's true. AG Gruppen, they're not, they want to tie a bow around it. I think, I think AG Gruppen is also, maybe not on this one, but looking to have, to kind of build their own books and stuff because they're so good at sourcing and building at the right cost and all that, so why not keep some of their supply? But it is true, and I think we've also mentioned this both in the press release and like everywhere, that it is conditional that they—before they start building, they will be looking for an investor. And there is a period now, where it's where they're looking for that.
They have a very strong advisory team looking for that, and when they kind of have some sort of commitment in that end, that's where they'll start the build. Us and AG Gruppen are working in parallel on the permits and on the practical matters of doing the development, so talks with the municipality and that sort of stuff, so we're keeping, like, some parallel tracks. But it's true. It's, I think we mentioned it, or we did mention it, and it's true that it's they need to sell it off to an investor. But I don't know, they work with some very big ones, some pension funds and stuff like that, so I think that they are in a good position to do so.
That being said, of course, the market conditions is different today than they were 18-24 months ago. We signed it in early Q3. We initiated the talks back in November last year, I would say. So it's been a six-month thing, eight-month, nine-month thing, where we were - where we've been, you know, negotiating and, and doing these sorts of things. But - and of course, the property market in general is not, it's not kind of, you know, super hot right now. It's improving. If you, if you look at the... If you, if you hear at the, the signals you're getting from the brokers and that.
But yeah, it would probably have flown off the shelf a couple years ago, and I think it's a longer, there's a longer lead time to it today than there was two years ago, but that's just the macro climate in general. I would say that if, let's say that the worst-case scenario, that they can't find a buyer, then we would try to find a buyer. And we are not the buyer in-house or ourselves, but we are the, you know, the tenant. We've committed to a long-term tenant operating agreement, and of course, we expect a lot from that. We'll be branching into tourism, which is gonna be like a brave new world for us because that's gonna be a very good supplement to our core business.
We will then try to see if we can find someone that wants that on their books, for sure. Not saying that we can, but we will do what we can.
Perfect. Now I will hand over the word to Johan for some questions on his side.
... Yes, thank you. I'm just gonna get right into it, and I thought we would start off a bit in Sweden. So in the last quarter, you reported that the Swedish operations broke even in June. And although you reported the vacancy rates for the half year, you had a vacancy rate in Sweden of roughly 23%. This quarter, the vacancy rate in Sweden was 3.6%, I think. And it's still, you know, just about break even. So I was just wondering if you could comment on this and also, like, what this means, if it means that you will have to add more units in Sweden in order to be profitable, or if you think you can optimize your current portfolio there?
No, yeah, good question. Now, yeah, again, you have to—these vacancy rates are a bit fluid, and there is some, you know, if a couple of units are—if you have a 48-unit portfolio like we have in Sweden, then, you know, if we have eight sitting empty, it's 20%, so it's a lot. And it's a lot in, like, looking at it in, like, an instant image. But right now, the... And there is rotations, you know, so there's—we're constantly rotating, and then we'll have apartments sitting empty and that sort of thing. I think that we can break—we can break even on what we have now. We need to optimize a bit. We need to...
Because our current occupancy levels are so high, we have been discussing should okay could we up the pricing a little bit and and see how the market accepts that, or what do we do? So it's a constant thing, you know. For Sweden in general, it's been this, you know, when you want to go to a point where the market knows you. You also want to come to a point where you will have persons who have been in and out as well, so they can see how easy it is when they leave as well, because and we are also strong in that. It's very efficient and flexible and that sort of thing.
So we also need the client to understand, "Okay, it's that easy?" And that's probably, "Okay, this is super high value for us." And, but that being said, we have been looking so basically, the price points we have, it's also we've probably also priced it a bit aggressively to get that kind of... Just to get a lot of inflow in. As you can see, it's still servicing the overheads and more or less, we're reporting a negative DKK 40,000 on the quarter. So it's like we're in the region of things, and I think we did DKK 30+ in June, and then there's probably been a bit of rotational stuff going on, and that takes that number down a bit.
But, we can definitely break even with the current portfolio we have, and adding more should just increase the kind of the bottom-line metrics. We need... But we need, again, it's not that I wanna—we can easily up in Malmö, just slowly and cautiously. But we could also do something that was a bit more ambitious in Malmö, and we could also, what we really wanna do is do something ambitious in Stockholm, but-
Mm
... those opportunities, you know, we—you just have to be patient and waiting for them. So as long as we break even, which we can do on what we have now, then I don't want to force anything, if it makes sense. I don't wanna, I don't wanna jump into a vacancy that I, that I feel pressure to deliver on. I want to get the right portfolio, at the right price, so we have a stronger long-term potential than instead of chasing around quarter to quarter, you know, and trying to, "Okay, we need 10 more units, and then we'll, we'll probably do DKK 100,000 in..." You know?
Yeah. I understand. And, a quick another question about the vacancy rates in Sweden, considering they were 3.6%, and I'm guessing it's like you said, that it's because you have so few units, so one unit here and there, that's a lot of difference. But you previously explained that you want to keep vacancy rate at roughly 10% in order to always have available apartments. I was just wondering if you could comment quickly on that.
Yeah, sure. It's not, you know, it's if people want to rent something from us, we're not saying no, like, actively. Of course, it's not terrible to have a low vacancy rate. It's a good thing. But it is also an... You know, and that's where you become confident, and that's where you say, "Okay, cool, we-- it's working. The clients are responding well to this. We're getting the portfolio rented out very efficiently. Let's do more," you know? And if we were doing the reverse exercise, you would not be confident.
So yes, you could say that the low vacancy rate, that's a proxy of our intention and desire to let's do more, because you are right. We need always to be ready to deliver. At the moment, it's fine because in the markets we're in right now, the, we don't feel like we're saying no that often, so it's kind of all right. But yeah, we don't want to say no. We need to be able to deliver, otherwise the clients will go other places, and we don't want that.
Yeah, no, I understand.
But-
You also touched a bit on you know raising prices, and looking back at the quarters of this year, one of the main issues have been a lower gross margin. And I was just wondering, what's the main driver behind this? Is it you know higher costs in general, which move faster than your rising of prices, or is it the vacancy rates that are the main driving force behind the lower gross margin?
Yeah, on group level? Yeah, on group, that is, that's a combination. I would say it's a... We are trailing a bit on the revenue, for sure. If you look at the full year thing, we've also adjusted the revenue bracket downwards by DKK 4 million, and so we're trailing a bit on the revenue. But it's more a... it's, so, so yeah, the vacancy rates, if you take-- you could do that exercise yourself.
If you take our existing supply, and you know the monthly potential, and then the per unit potential, and then if you take the vacancy rate down from 16 to below 10, where it used to be, you can easily find a good amount of revenue lying in that, just in that small kind of 6.8%-6.7% bracket. But it's also a product of that changing sourcing. You know, it's not like we can't find the units, but you know, we wanna do it in bigger increments and not doing it in smaller increments. So now we're adding some to Copenhagen because we wanna reshape Aarhus and put it into Copenhagen, which is a super strong structural market.
Fine, we're doing that, but we would much rather than, you know, grow on bigger stuff in one go than having to add five, four, three, 10, 12 units in the same property.
Yeah. Yeah, considering we're running a bit low on time, I'm just gonna end on a quick question. The six units in Ludvika, are they operational as of now, or?
Yes, they are.
Yeah.
They are completely operational, and I can't remember; I think two to three are out. It's, again, low numbers, you know. It's, again, we're making the right decisions, taking the right steps, and I'm sure there's no doubt they'll be rented out, and there's gonna be a lot of demand towards them. They are operational, and they will be fine.
Yeah. Nice to hear. Well, that would be all for me. So thank you, Patrick, for answering my question, and thank you, Anders, for inviting me here. Yeah.
Perfect. Thank you for that, Johan. And before we end the webcast, let's hand over the mic to Patrick for some final remarks.
Yeah, final remarks. Again, I'm actually kind of happy, even though the numbers are not making... If you just look at it isolated, it doesn't make me happy to look at them. There's no doubt about that. That annoys me, of course, but in the overall stuff, I'm happy we're making the right decisions, making some tough decisions. But it's also, you know, you can't grow everything is not just going totally according to plan, so it's your ability to adjust to it and rethink clever shit that will set you aside in the long run, instead of just sitting around, you know, and not performing on and pouting of you not performing. So I'm actually fairly happy, actually.
Perfect. And, thank you to everyone listening in, and, see you next time for the next Movinn event. Have a nice day.
Thank you. Thank you for hosting it.
Thank you.