Welcome, and thank you for joining this Per Aarsleff Holding Q3 conference call. With me today, I have Group CEO Jesper Kristian Jacobsen, and Group CFO Mogens Hestbæk. After the presentation, we'll continue to the Q&A session, where all speakers will be available for questions. Today's Q&A session will be conducted by phone. For questions, please dial the listed phone numbers and enter the provided conference code. The call details will also be disclosed at the final Q&A slide. The conference call will be recorded and published on aarsleff.com. The call is scheduled to last 45 minutes. Please be aware that the presentation contains forward-looking statements subject to uncertainties. Over to you, Jesper.
Thank you, and thank you for listening. Figures for the first nine months: revenue DKK 16.5 billion , EBIT results DKK 773 million, and an EBIT margin of 4.7%. Revenue, as expected, and earnings satisfactory to our expectations. Construction segment: revenue of DKK 7.7 billion and EBIT of DKK 418 million , and EBIT margin of 5.5%, and here again, revenue, as expected, equal to same period last year and a satisfactory EBIT result. The picture you can see on the left-hand side of the slide is our Lynetteholm Harbor project in the North Harbor in Copenhagen.
Looking at the Construction segment, as I said, revenue in line with our last financial year, high activity level, especially in Denmark, especially with regard to civil engineering projects, driving both revenue and also the EBIT results, and the result is in line with our expectations, 5.5%. Many tender opportunities, especially within civil engineering projects, infrastructure projects, and especially we see an increase now in inquiries regarding critical infrastructure and defence, and also projects linked to the green transition is also still on a relatively high level.
Our large ongoing building projects: Mindet, you saw that on the first slide, high-rise office building in Aarhus, Møllebryggen, another project in Aarhus, and Terminal 3 in Copenhagen. All are progressing as planned and as expected. Looking at the North Atlantic region, both of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland, we see good market conditions and also on a high activity level. The picture you can see on the left-hand side is a brick laying machine where we can use for doing pavements and used on a project in the center of Aarhus.
The benefit of that piece of equipment coming from the Netherlands is that the working environment for the workers is being much better. They don't need to lie down on their knees. So that's actually a piece of equipment that we expect that we can use for more projects going forward. Technical solutions: revenue of almost DKK 2.9 billion , DKK 113 million in EBIT equal to 4%, and also again, as expected and in line with our expectations.
Revenue growth: 17% and a satisfactory EBIT margin of the mentioned 4%. High activity level also here in Technical Solutions, Wicotec Kirkebjerg, industry division and project divisions seeing high activity level. Again, projects linked to the green transition, energy-driven projects is on a high level, especially district heating projects that Wicotec Kirkebjerg are doing together with the construction segment for Vestforbrænding is progressing as expected.
The picture is from a sewage plant in Copenhagen where we have converted the whole system into more energy-effective processes. This is Damhusåen, and we have done the same type of conversion for the sewage plant in Lynetteholm. Also here, good market conditions, also to a certain extent with regard to pharma, the pharmaceutical sector, especially Novo, still have a lot of projects in their pipeline, also benefiting Wicotec Kirkebjerg.
Rail: a decrease in revenue landing at DKK 1.5 billion, and the segment sold of DKK 54 million equal to 3.7%. The picture you can see is from civil engineering projects on the western part of Funen, where Ground Engineering, Construction, and Rail is doing two parts of a new railway line between Odense and Middelfart.
Yeah, as I said, declining revenue of 9%, basically driven by a low activity level in especially Norway and Sweden, but EBIT is as expected and satisfactory EBIT margin of almost 4%. Market conditions: Denmark, as we have said earlier, on a high activity level, many opportunities, and we are being very selective, many opportunities, and Norway, and Norway also good tender opportunities, but as we have mentioned on a few earlier calls that we have been through a difficult period both in Norway and Sweden.
We are most advanced in that process in Sweden, to a lesser extent advanced in Norway, so in both countries, we are reorganizing and also being very selective of what we take in of new orders. The picture is from Aarhus, Aarhus Central Station, which is being converted into being able to be used for electrical-driven trains. There, we have in total won three to four contracts. This is the biggest one that we won earlier this year, converting the station itself, a contract to around DKK 300 million, which is to be expected to be finalized and handed over to the client end of 2026.
Ground engineering: the picture is from Gothenburg, the Masthuggskajen project that we have talked about a few times earlier. A project is in the final phase, expected to be handed over to the client within the next six months. Revenue of DKK 2.6 billion and a second result of DKK 15 million equal to 0.6%. As we have mentioned earlier, ground engineering has experienced a difficult year. We talked about that also in the first half year. Those difficult conditions have continued, resulting in a decline in revenue of roughly 6%.
Driven by the same main facts as we discussed in the half-year presentation, there's a lower demand for our precast piles, especially in Denmark, Sweden, and the U.K. We also do see projects being delayed. We also discussed that in the half-year presentation, and we also do see still projects being canceled. We have recently seen two bigger projects, one being postponed in the Netherlands and another very big project with precast piles in Denmark being canceled very unexpectedly within a few days.
Going from that, we believe that we should have delivered piles two days later, that the project would not be built at all by the owner. It's still difficult market conditions to operate in, but we do see, looking forward, the pipeline of projects is still positive. There are many opportunities out there. The question is, the picture that we have seen this year, that projects are being postponed or canceled, how far will that continue, but we do still see a lot of opportunities out there, so the pipeline going forward is good, but this year, the first nine months, low capacity utilization, also price pressure to a certain extent, but especially on the precast concrete piles, there's a low demand, which is basically the reason for the lower results in ground engineering.
The picture you can see on the left-hand side of the slide is also from Gothenburg, the Haga project where we together with a colleague in the industry, Bauer from Germany, over the last five to seven years has done a number of ground engineering projects in the city of Gothenburg, building ground engineering structures for the so-called West Link projects, an 8 km rail track where 6 km of those 8 km are built in tunnels below Gothenburg center, and this is one of the projects that we are working at right now together with BAUER from Germany.
Pipe T echnologies, very good first nine months, DKK 1.9 billion in turnover and EBIT result of DKK 173 million equal to an EBIT margin of 9%, all-time high we believe it is. That's basically driven by good market conditions in Pipe Technologies, revenue growth of 7%, and a very satisfactory EBIT margin of, as I said, 9%. Good level of activity on all markets that we are in and resulting in good capacity utilization. That's basically what drives both the revenue growth and also the very good earnings.
Yeah, the Baltic countries is maybe the only market where we see a lower level of demand. The Polish market still remains difficult, but our main markets, Western Europe and Scandinavia, do have very good market conditions. Order backlog, order intake, order backlog close to DKK 25.1 billion , as you can see on the graphs. Very good in almost all segments. Also order intake, DKK 17.3 billion for the first nine months. I think in Q3 alone, we have order intake of roughly DKK 5.6 billion .
And that's positive in almost all segments. And it consists of no mega or no big projects. So it's small and medium-sized projects that is a part of the DKK 17.3 billion order intake. So that's also positive looking forward. Guidance for this financial year, we have narrowed in the guidance span. We have now said that we expect a revenue growth of 2-4%, meaning between DKK 22.2 billion and DKK 22.7 billion in revenue and an EBIT that we have also narrowed in from between DKK 1,100 -DKK 1,200 now to be between DKK 1,125 and DKK 1,175. And again, EBIT margin around our 5% that we also reached the two past years. That was a very quick run-through of the quarterly report, and then we can turn over to questions and answers that Mogens and I will try to answer in the best way possible.
If you do wish to ask a question, you will need to press a five star on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press five star again. Our first question comes from the line of Kristian Tornøe from SEB. Please go ahead . You line will be unmuted.
Yes, thank you. A couple of questions from my side. Yes, but you mentioned cancellations of projects in ground engineering. In such a case, would the customer not have to pay you some sort of penalties or compensation, or how does your contract normally work when customers cancel?
I mentioned two reasons, Kristian. I mentioned postponement of projects. That's contracts that we have already signed that we see being postponed to a larger extent than in the past. The projects that we have seen being canceled in total is contracts that we do not have got signed yet, but that tenders that we have worked on for a long period. One fresh example is a very large, very huge precast piling project in Denmark that we have worked on for the last, I would say, year.
Four weeks ago, we got an email from the main contractor that was on a Wednesday. We got an email four weeks ago that they would like to meet with us, with the end client, the same week on the Friday, to basically finalize the, you would say, the piling works, the scope of the piling works. We were ready to go down and finalize those talks on the Friday.
And then Thursday morning, we got an email from the same main contractor saying that the end client has decided to cancel the project. So cancellation is what we see that is basically tenders that we have worked on for a long period, not yet being signed, and contracts that we have signed are being postponed. So I think that's a more accurate description of what we see in the market right now.
Okay, that makes sense. Thank you for clarifying. And then to sort of understand the profitability in ground engineering, is it only low utilization on the factories, which drives down earnings, or is there an element of project write-downs as well?
No, not the last part. It's low capacity utilization. And then I think we also mentioned on the slide. I might not have said that, but we also do see price pressure, where there's low demand, especially in Denmark, Sweden, and the U.K. A natural consequence of low demand is that you see price pressure, and that's also part of it. But no write-downs of projects, no.
And when you then see a materially better result in the fourth quarter, what is it that you expect should drive up the earnings? Just to understand the dynamics here.
Yeah, that's some of the projects that we believe that we should already have been executing that have been postponed. What we see now is that they will ramp up in the fourth quarter.
So basically, Kristian, we have had a contract that had been postponed due to a truck, and the truck is now gone. I think we are delivering 17 trucks a day here in Aras. We already can see some of these deliveries are taking place. We are more confident than the past, but of course, there's always an execution risk. The revenue has started to come on some of these, at least one of the major projects that we've been talking about for a long time.
The project that Mogens has mentioned here is the one I mentioned that in the Netherlands, we have got signed also a big precast piling project. The storage area where we should store the piles, a protected truck was sitting on that storage area. We were being asked not to start to deliver piles before that truck was gone, but it has been gone for three weeks now. That's some of the difficulties that we are experiencing in the daily work.
Okay, understood. And then my last question was more on the construction sector here. Obviously, we are seeing some press about the Fehmarnbelt Project and challenges and delays and so on. So could you sort of elaborate to what extent that actually impacts your Q3 numbers and also what you should expect going forward, what the risk on this particular is?
We have also read the articles. The media has also in the past had articles about the Fehmarnbelt Project . And I think we have also said in the past calls when that issue has arrived with that. The project has been discussed that, yes, it's a big project. There are different issues. There are also some restrictions in Germany that have become apparent.
And there are other issues on the table that we are discussing, have been discussing with the client in a long period. And that's still in good discussions between us and the client trying to resolve those more issues that are on the table. I can see we can all see in the media that the articles are concentrating about some of the equipment down there. But there are more issues on the table that we need to see. They all combine and interlink. And as I said, we are in good dialogue. We are in good dialogue with the customer and the owner to try to see how to resolve those issues in the best possible way.
So in terms of the potential risk of revenue delays here, how should we think about that?
Can you try to be a little bit more specific, Kristian?
So, I mean, if there are discussions with the clients, so on, I guess there's a risk that you will go slower forward and hence cost to complete will be impacted and lower your revenue. Is that something you saw in Q3 and are you expecting that for the coming quarters as well, or is it not really a thing?
I think it's to a minor extent compared to the overall figures in construction.
I would say there is a revenue effect, but as you always are aware, with large projects, we don't take the margin up front when it comes to margin. So it's more a revenue effect. It's not affecting our bottom line to a certain extent. We are, as all other big projects, careful about taking earnings up, and that's the same we have done here, Kristian.
Okay, that makes sense. Excellent. That was all for me. Thank you.
The next in line is Sebastian Hougaard from Nordea. Please go ahead, your line will be unmuted.
Hi, Jesper and Mogens. Thank you for taking my questions. I would like to start asking to the construction segment, if I may. So you guide now for slightly lower growth, yet the profitability looks really solid. So just trying to understand the dynamics in play here. Is it simply a question of projects being postponed or why the lower revenue? And for the other part of the equation here, the margin performance, are there any exceptional project write-ups or anything boosting the margin performance, or is it simply underlying profitability of the backlog improving here?
Yeah, the projects are going, as we said, the majority is going as planned or better. As we also said, it's good market conditions. There are many possibilities out there. Also, many possibilities that have a quite good fit with our competencies: civil engineering projects, energy-driven projects. As we said, defense, critical infrastructure projects are also ramping up. So it's basically a result of good project execution and good market conditions.
I would say when we did the last guidance, there were some projects that could start earlier. And as I said, but with large projects, it can easily postpone one, two, three months, and then the revenue is. So there were some opportunities, and it's always how much do you take in? And that's difficult. And we can see some of them slightly slipped. We lost the projects. Some of them came a bit later, for example, up in Iceland, and we had hoped, but we got the contract now, so.
Okay, small movement on projects, basically, without anything that's a big concern to us.
It's not because we're losing projects, and you can also see on the projects that we have a nice order intake in Q3 in the construction segment, and we have also signed some contracts here in Q4 already.
Yeah. It's a project business that we are driving. It's not an industry. There will be smaller movement of projects, and we can easily have that, especially on the bigger projects, without any big concerns.
Sure. I fully understand. No, thank you for the color here. Maybe asking to the opportunities out there, including you note in the report, the larger infrastructure projects out there, trying to understand how are you really positioned in terms of capacity to take on these projects. I note projects like the Third Limfjord Link and Marselis Tunnel, according to official government documents, at least are going to be tendered within the next years. So is it fair to assume that you are looking at these projects, or are there any capacity constraints or anything in the way?
Yes, there are more really big infrastructure projects in Denmark being close to come out in tender. And we, of course, have a natural interest in those. We also believe that a number of these projects have, again, a good fit to our competencies. And the tender phase is on some of those, as you said, soon to come out. There will still be some time for execution. But we believe that we will have the needed capacity for that pipeline coming out.
And basically, Sebastian, we will try and find partners for some of the projects. So some of them might fit for us alone, but for capacity and risk reasons, we will find partners for most of these. Yeah. Yeah. Good decisions. Yeah.
That makes sense. And then just my last question, if I may. On the ground engineering, also, as Christian alluded to, the implied Q4 guidance suggests an improvement here near term. Is that sort of the exit rate that we should sort of extrapolate into next year, or are there any sort of exceptional dynamics in play here for Q4?
As I said, we mentioned this project in Holland that will contribute a lot to our Q4. But as Jesper also said, we have a fairly good pipeline also of quite large projects. Of course, if all of those postpone and are canceled, then the next year could also be difficult. But that's not what we see at the moment.
And we also see, for example, in Sweden, in general, the housing market is starting to come back. We are more busy. We are much more busy over there here in our Q4. So that's also helping. That's been the worst market for us this year. But we see here Q4, we will be busy over there. Prices still have to come up, but it looks on a positive trend. And that's what we expect for next year, that we will see this recovery to continue.
I think when we had our half-year call, there was one question about whether we believe that this was a more permanent change in the structure of the ground engineering market. And then we said, no, we believe it to be an intermediate challenge. And that's still what we see, as Mogens said, the pipeline is good.
Yes, we have seen more projects being postponed/ cancelled this year than in the past. But the pipeline is good. And we do see specific projects in that pipeline, also some of them close to being coming out for tenders. So we are positive looking forward.
That was very clear. Okay, thank you both.
Thank you, Sebastian. And as a reminder, press five star to ask a question. Next up is Aras Pratsman from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Thank you very much. And hi, Jesper. Thank you for taking my questions as well. If we go back to the construction segment, you note in the report that you are seeing, as well as critical infrastructure, also an increased focus on investments in the defense sector. I was wondering if you were able to elaborate on this, maybe give us some examples of projects where you would be relevant in regards to the defense sector.
Oh, that's a bit difficult. Many of those projects are being treated as highly confidential. So we will not be able today to give any specific examples.
But it could be harbos, for example.
It could be harbos, yeah. But there are more projects out there, but we have signed very strict NDAs. So for the time being, we cannot disclose more information.
Okay, yeah, that's fair. But do you maybe have an indicative timeline on when we should expect to see defense projects starting to come in for you? Is it something you would be able to announce when they do? Should we expect it for next year, or is it more like a three to five-year timeline you reckon right now?
It will come quite soon. If it's about DKK 1 billion, we would expect that we will be able to announce it, but there will not be much details, let's say like that. It won't be just that we signed a large contract. It's closer to one year than three to four years. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. That is clear. Thank you very much. If we move on to the pipe technology segment, I mean, a guided forward EBIT margin of 8.6%, that is very impressive for pipe technologies. I was wondering if there's a sustainable margin going forward for the segment, or do you expect some kind of normalization in pipe technology?
The market is quite good. It is. We've had some good products this year. That's also helping.
Whether those very good market conditions we see right now will continue into next year is right now difficult to say. On the other hand, also here, we have a good pipeline looking forward.
There's no signs of it changing in the near future. Whether we can keep a margin at the current level, we'll see. I think the market is definitely giving us some good opportunities at the moment. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you. My final question, although it's already been asked 2x in different iterations, is also on the guidance for ground engineering. And it's just to be completely sure of what your message is here, because the jump in EBIT margin that you expect quarter- over- quarter, just to read the bottom of the guidance for the full year on ground engineering, I think it's around 5 percentage point increase in EBIT margin versus Q3. And that would be the highest jump in quarter over quarter margin you've seen, as far as I can tell. And talking about delayed projects, maybe some of them are starting up. You have one big project coming in with all the trucks that are delivering. I'm just trying to understand how you can make such a big jump in profitability when it hasn't really been showing at least for Q3.
But this thing about we have all our factories and we have all our installation equipment, and the utilization rate is far too low, then we're not making money, as we've seen in the first three quarters. And when we suddenly see big volumes coming through, then it can change rapidly how much we're in. So basically, the forecast is based on existing orders. Of course, if some of the things that we're supposed to deliver in September suddenly move to October and November, there's a risk, but that's really. And then it's only one major project we have in, and the supply has already started.
Yeah. So the market, you could say the project outlook is there. As long as the pipeline looking further forward, it's good. But of course, if we see further delays on some of those big projects, yeah, that will, of course, affect the results.
So I think you can see it. The people said earlier that we do see it coming in ground engineering, but it's also that segment that has the highest uncertainty. I think we said the same when we had the half-year call.
Yeah. And I think, Aras, if you look at our fourth quarter last year, we were able to do quite well. So if the orders are there and the prices are better, then you can see a rapid turnaround.
Okay. That is very clear. Just to be sure, so of the five segments that you have and that you guide for, ground engineering is the one with the highest uncertainty, also to the bottom end of the guidance for Q4.
Yeah. Clear.
Okay. Thank you very much. That was all for me.
Thank you.
Thank you, Aras. As no one else has lined up for questions, I'll now hand it back to Jesper for any closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you for the question. Thank you for the dialogue. Thank you for the interest in our company and movements. I want to wish you all a nice day, and then we see you in Q4. Thank you.
Welcome, and thank you for joining this Per Aarsleff Holding Q3 conference call. With me today, I have Group CEO Jesper Kristian Jacobsen and Group CFO Mogens Hestbæk. After the presentation, we'll continue to the Q&A session, where all speakers will be available for questions. Today's Q&A session will be conducted by phone. For questions, please dial the listed phone numbers and enter the provided conference code.
The call details will also be disclosed at the final Q&A slide. The conference call will be recorded and published on aarsleff.com. The call is scheduled to last 45 minutes. Please be aware that the presentation contains forward-looking statements subject to uncertainties. Over to you, Jesper.
Thank you, and thank you for listening. Figures .