Yes, good morning, and welcome to today's Earnings and Acquisitions Call by Scandinavian Astor Group. I'm happy to have Wictor Billström by my side, who will guide you through the presentation in a minute. Before I hand over, just the information for you that after the presentation, there will be the opportunity to ask questions either via audio line or via the chat functions. I will explain that in detail how that works after the presentation. Without further ado, Wictor, I'll hand over to you.
Thank you, Philip. Hello everyone, welcome to this earnings call. It feels like we had a chat not so long time ago, but it's already quarter one numbers and a lot of acquisitions here coming out. Let's dive into a presentation to walk them through here. For those who don't know me, my name is Wictor Billström. I'm the CFO of the Scandinavian Astor Group. I have a background from finance and accounting. I'm also the fourth largest investor in Astor. I own about 1.7 million shares and hold a few warrants as well to increase that going forward in my holding. If you exclude Avanza Nordnet, I'm the second largest behind Anders Danielsson, who is our biggest shareholder. A little more about Astor for those of you who don't know Astor too well. AirSafe, these are our main subsidiaries. From left to right, we have AirSafe.
They make aviation safety parachutes mainly for military purposes. We have Marstrom, it's a carbon fiber manufacturer with a lot of production capacity in Sweden. We added a new acquisition to Marstrom today. We announced it and we expect to close it here soon. We have Microponent with laser cutting and etching in the south of Sweden. We added an acquisition in Finland last. We announced it last year. We completed it early this year. We have Osilion, the electronic warfare company, which actually is the founding partner in Astor Group. They have a lot of exciting products in the electronic warfare space and hopefully in the future a blockbuster product with the Astor Eclipse. We have Scandi Flash with a flash X-ray company in Sweden with a big market share all over the world.
They are a truly niche company and really excel in their business. Here are some recent events. If you have not seen this, we took part in one EV conference in Rome. To the left, if you go from left to right again, Mattias was there with a few members from the electronic warfare part. It was a very successful event, a lot of new contacts, lots of good people visiting this event in Rome. If we go to the right, last week I was presenting in Frankfurt in an equity conference there. You can see Equity Forum in Frankfurt. It was a very good conference. I met, had almost two full days booked with one-on-one meetings with German investors. They were quite excited about Astor as an investment object. Let's see what that can bring in the future.
If we go on the top here to the right, we had a very good inauguration here of our new production facility in Marstrom. We had a top high-ranked military official from Ukraine there speaking. It was nice to finally see this 3D printer, this Italian Bellotti 3D printer showing what it can do. Hopefully we will see a lot more of that going forward here in the future. Last week we also got the news that we were, or we will be by end of May here, incorporated into the MSCI Global Share Index in the micro cap segment. Of course that's a milestone for us. We have all the prerequisites to be included in the larger small cap version going forward because we have a, it's a good turnover in the share. There's a high free float in Astor.
We have all the prerequisites if we continue on this track to be included in the bigger small cap index going forward. That is obviously where the bigger money managers look and the asset managers. There are a lot of ETFs and funds that have the MSCI Global Small Cap as a benchmark. They have to follow or not follow. Either they include Astor or not include, and then they have to include something else. Obviously you need to follow your benchmark. That is a very good thing that we started off. Of course we are looking higher. Today we announced two good acquisitions here with Carbonia Composites. I will come back to that acquisition later in the presentation. We also announced investment into Nordic Shield Group, which is a very exciting Swedish defense group.
Again, perhaps a few of you have seen this, but for those who have not, for those who do not, there is just a brief introduction to Astor. We have a revenue pro forma here rolling 12 months of about SEK 350 million. One thing about Astor is that we have a very strong M&A pipeline. I will come back to that one. Today we are in three countries. As I told you before, we would like to put down a flag in another Nordic country or North European country here as soon as possible. We will see when that happens. Looking forward to that. We have the market cap, which is about SEK 1.6 billion. We are listed in NGM in Sweden and in Boerse Stuttgart in Germany with a dual listing. If you include our recent acquisition here, we are above 170 employees.
We will have 10 production sites now, three business areas, and roughly 30,000 shareholders. If we look at the quarter one numbers, we had, it's a good quarter. There is still some seasonality. I mentioned that in the last earnings call that Q2 and Q4 are our strongest quarters. Q1 is a little bit softer, but we are still happy about these numbers. They could have been a little bit higher, but still all in all, it's a fairly good quarter with EBITDA margin still above a healthy 10%. We're almost one to one in net sales and orders booked for the quarter. There is still a slightly increased order backlog that we can continue and deliver on. Obviously, all the acquisitions we announced today and hopefully here going forward, acquisitions add to the order book.
It will rise with both our current businesses and with the businesses we acquire, of course. That is part of the M&A agenda we have. We had a positive order operating cash flow again here. We had it in Q4 as well. That is really good. We showed a net profit. If you look at it on a segment basis, we have two profitable segments here going forward. We are not showing Astor Protect here, obviously, because it was included from 1st of April. It will show in the quarter two report. It is a good quarter. As I said before, we are doing our best to keep our overhead costs down. We do not have a dedicated M&A specialist. I do a lot of M&A work together with the CEO. We hire competence where we need, but we do not want to add to our overhead too much.
Here are the numbers. It's a few quarters here back. You can see the trend is very good. If you would have extended this further, obviously the trend is even more visible. You can see that there's a strong growth here, about 100%. You can see that it's starting to scale very well here as well. We can see the profit levels are coming up. Obviously, Q4 was very, very good. Q1, as I mentioned, we're still happy about it, but it could have been a little bit higher. Q2 and Q4 are our best quarters. Of course, with M&A, with the M&A agenda we have, it will be somewhat smoothened out. There will be different seasonalities maybe in the businesses. Q1 will be a little bit stronger here in the future, I think.
As I mentioned, we are present in two countries here in the Nordic, in Finland and Sweden. We have a sales office in Germany. We would like to expand that to the German market. That was why I was there in the investment in the Equity Forum last week. Our CEO, Mattias, he used to be responsible for SOPS business there on the EV side. We have a lot of, obviously, it's a very good market for the defense business in Germany. Obviously we want to expand our presence there in the future. For those of you who have not seen this slide, we still keep it here to mention for you that we are looking for state-of-the-art companies. We like the niche companies. They have obviously good margins. They are very good at what they do.
It is easy once you get hold of a good company that is in a certain sector, it is easy to do a lot of add-on acquisitions. I will come back to that later as well. Here is the integration into the business areas we have. We have Astor Tech with Scandi Flash and Osilion. We have the industry part now also with Carbonia Composites there. It is Marstrom, Carbonia, Microponent, Velas, and a lot of add-on acquisitions to Marstrom there. We have the newly founded business area in Astor Protect, where we have AirSafe. Now we have an associated company there in Nordic Shield Group. We might look into expanding into another big business area here going forward, but more about that later. This is the journey we are on. We took a big step, we think, a big leap here to where we are today.
The next step, I think we are on track on that one. We are trying to keep the pace up and moving to become this mid-market player here as soon as possible, really. It is in the long-term goals. Obviously, that is the next slide there. I think we will reach that at a certain point. When we put this into a number, it is roughly SEK 2.5 billion in 2028. It is an EBITDA margin of above 15%, equal to or above 15% in 2028. Now over to our first acquisition here. It is Carbonia Composites there. We are very happy about that one. I will show you in the next slide. They are a very good complement to our current business. I can see there that the EV/EBITDA multiple did not come in, but in the numbers there to the right.
It was made on a healthy multiple of 3.9 on the full year numbers for last year. Here is the sort of the synopsis for making this acquisition. I've been waiting to, I've been talking about this picture to the right a lot of times, but now you can see it here. To the right and in the explanation to the left, you can see in the carbon composite market, there are three qualities or three production methods, if you want. It's a pre-preg, autoclave based that we do in Marstrom, or that's the only production method we have used until now. Then we have the RTM, the resin transfer molding, which Carbonia Composites does very well. Then there's the wet lamination, where there are a lot of competitors, but obviously it's a different technique and it's not really suitable.
It's suitable for a lot of things, but the pre-preg and the RTM is a much more efficient technique. It gives the customer a lot of better qualities they are looking for. For example, if you go to the spider chart to the right, you can see the surface finish. You can actually do the best in this RTM technology. That's what we are adding with the acquisition here. Of course, especially the defense industry, they are looking for very complex constructions. There is a lot of structural capability. It needs to be very firm. It needs to be harder steel and with carbon fiber. That's obviously where this autoclave-based technique is the best. That's why we are focused on that. If you want to do a lot of automation, it's the same version in a lot of ways, 2D versions.
The RTM technology is the best. You can do so much with automation there and just get a lot of products out of your business. That technique is suitable. The manufacturing time is obviously that you can do it very fast with the RTM technology. Have a look at this spider chart. You will see that we are now filling all the market needs in every sense. Of course, this technique can be used for drones, blades to drones, or other more high production volume parts to the defense industry that we could not do with the autoclave-based or the pre-preg production that we have until today, the only technique we had to sell to the market. Now, as I mentioned, we will have a broader portfolio here to show to the prospective customers.
We have this exciting investment into Nordic Shield Group. You can see down to the right there in the pictures, the new Chairman of Nordic Shield Group will be Bernd Grundvik. He is a highly respected military official from Sweden. Our own high-ranked military guy, Gabe, will also join the Board of Directors. I will as well. We will have two of our members in the board of Nordic Shield Group. We will help them with what we can, but I think they have a very good team. They have a very good CEO in Peter Alderson. They have a lot of exciting things to come up here. They are looking to acquire Cesium, which is a manufacturer of shelters. They are making secure buildings. They have a lot of good business coming their way in the defense industry.
Obviously, we cannot mention their customers, but it's looking very good for them. This Nordic Shield Group will strengthen our offering in the Astor Protect business area. There are a lot of synergies here, we think, for the group. One thing to mention here as well is that since it's an associated company, they will not contribute to the top line, but they will contribute to our margin going forward. They will be part of the income statement, but on the operating profit level. Here is a picture I wanted to show you guys before, but I didn't have time to make it. I think this explains fairly well our M&A agenda here with add-on acquisitions to market leaders. I think we have had a very good success story with Marstrom. We acquired them.
You can say they were the real first acquisition Astor made. They were done in 2022. That was the time when I came in as owner. It was done early 2022. You can see the numbers are shooting away. They used to have a turnover of around SEK 35 million-40 million Swedish. Now they have really excelled. I will not say it is completely up thanks to Astor, but we have tried our best to help on that journey. They have a very successful CEO, Fredrik Lindblom, of course, who made this journey possible. We made a lot of or a few add-on acquisitions. This year we added ID Modeller Ljungby. Now we added Carbonia. You can see just in quarter one, they almost had the same turnover as in the full year of 2021.
In just one quarter, they had the same turnover as they did for a full year a few years back here. Of course, you can see that started to scale quite well as well with the numbers coming through on the EBITDA level there. You can see that the earnings are shooting up as well. If we look at the rest of 2025 and beyond, these are still the instruments we are looking to pay with: equities, debt, and shares. In the Carbonia case here, we pay with 30% shares. We are looking to pay with about 50% debt. Obviously, there is not a lot to pay in cash from our cash reserve. Of course, that can vary over time. Just to give you, this is the toolbox we have. There are a lot of possibilities to pay with various instruments going forward here.
I mentioned a few of these before. We have a strong acquisition pipeline. We are making continuous preparation for being in a regulated market here later this year in 2025. I also added here that competition has started thanks to the recent turmoil in the political landscape. Obviously, this has affected us somewhat and the business we are in. We're not really seeing too much competition, but at least we see actors popping up like private equity or special purpose vehicles focusing on defense business or defense startups. We will see more of that later. We do not feel any stress about it. We are long-term investors. If private equity buys a business, we can buy it from them in five to six years. Obviously, the price will be higher, but we can buy other businesses in the meantime.
We have the long-term perspective on this. We do not see this as a big hurdle for us going forward. Obviously, there is a lot of innovation going on. We will, as I mentioned before, one in every ten investments will probably be into a more R&D-focused business. This is roughly the same numbers as before. If you compare them, you can see that the split has somewhat increased on the Europe side of our pipeline split. We are looking more into not just domestic players, but looking on the North European level. That is it. Moving over to the Q&A section here. Thanks for listening in.
Thank you very much, Wictor, for those very interesting insights. As I said in the beginning, there are two options for you to ask questions.
The first option is to raise your digital hand to ask questions via the audio line. Afterwards, I will give you the permission to unmute yourself. The second option is to enter the Q&A section. Here you can enter your questions in text form, and I will read them out afterwards to ask them to Wictor, and he will answer them. For the meantime, we do not have any questions in the chat. We will start with Henry Wendish, who raised his hand. Henry, you can unmute yourself here.
Hi. Thanks, Philip. Thanks, Wictor, for your presentation. A couple of questions from my side. First of all, I also congrats on the strong results and the two acquisitions. They look very promising at first glance. First question is the seasonality that you mentioned. Q1 was okay in your view, could have been a little bit better.
You say Q2 and Q4 are the most strongest quarters in terms of sales or also in terms of then profitability because operating leverage would obviously kick in properly. The question is, is it Q2 and Q4? Are they strong also in terms of profitability?
Yes, I would expect that. I lost maybe a word or two from you there, but I think I got the question. I think margin-wise, I would expect Q2 and Q4 to be a little bit higher than Q1. Obviously, we are sort of in the middle here of Q2, so I cannot elaborate too much about it. With the general seasonality we have, you would expect on a general level that Q2 and Q4 are stronger. Q1 and Q3 are a little bit weaker. Obviously, that will change as we go forward. We buy businesses abroad.
They do not maybe have the same vacation at the same time, sort of. They will have because we are looking at Northern Europe. I think seasonality will start to decrease over time here as we move forward with new acquisitions, not lots of new, hopefully not lots of new business, just both from M&A and from current business that we start to increase our order book and start to deliver even more things.
Okay. Maybe following up, is this seasonality also the same when it comes to order intake from your customers?
That is a little bit different, I would say. That can vary a lot. It can be very lumpy as the defense business is. Both on our defense side and on the civilian side, it can be very lumpy.
From quarter to quarter, it can be very strong or it could be a little bit weaker on the order intake. That can vary a lot. Obviously, again, some of the businesses we have, they are just delivering on a rolling basis. They are fully booked like Mikroponent, for example. They are fully booked three months ahead every quarter. They do not have the same seasonality. That will also somewhat decrease over time.
I see. Yeah, very interesting. Thanks for this. The second question is regarding Astor Eclipse. You mentioned it could be a blockbuster product. I think you wrote it in your Q1 report that the commercialization might start even this year. Is there something you can add to this in terms of what we could expect maybe in terms of sales?
Or are you sort of waiting behind lines to tell us when it is due when it actually is operating?
Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that question. I would so much like to elaborate on that, but it would not be the best. What we have currently told the market, that is all I can say as of now. Once we see orders coming through, I think it will be very interesting.
I see. Okay. I am thrilled to get to know you soon. Let us talk about the recent M&A. First on Carbonia, please. If I got it right, it complements Marstrom in that sense that Carbonia is more of a high-volume producer, whereas Marstrom is sort of like a little bit sort of a manufacturer, but also going on to higher volumes going forward. Is that the right view I have on this?
That is correct.
That's correct.
Maybe just following up, how do you then explain the strong margin? I think it's above the industry segment's margin and probably also above Marstrom's margins, so Carbonia in itself. Why are they so strong in margins?
Yes, that's a good question. I think I shouldn't elaborate too much about that either. The only thing I can say, it's pure financial logic to if you acquire a business, you want to move your margin higher. We don't want to acquire businesses that make our margins lower on a group level. Obviously, this is a perfect match for us. We get an exciting business that complements us very well and with good margins. That's the whole purpose about Astor, I would say.
They are not doing too much defense at this point, but with the defense connections we have and our knowledge about the defense market, we can sell defense-related production on this site as well. With the high automation and with the margins, I think that could serve Astor Group very well here in the future.
I see. Maybe also regarding the acquisition multiple, you mentioned it's 3.9 EBITDA multiple. If we include the real estate, which you have, I think, an option for to buy at a later stage, it would be like an eight multiple. How are you looking at acquiring this real estate going forward? Is this something that you'd like to have, or are you just interested in the business, continue leasing, for example?
Yes, that's a good question.
I think we definitely at some point are looking to acquire the production facility as well. We set our own environmental targets that we want to invest in instead of doing these CO2 offsets when we fly and stuff. We would like to invest in solar capacity, battery capacity in the production sites, keep the energy costs down, and in that sense, help the environment as well with having solar panels on the roofs. Yeah, I think going forward, where we can, we would like to own our properties.
Okay. Very interesting.
It also goes well with security-wise. If things go as we want with Astor, there will be some outside pressure maybe on Astor on security levels. It is much better if we can invest in our own security and perimeter defense and stuff.
I see. Yeah, that makes sense.
Is it just the building itself or is it also the machines and then all the assets that are used for operation and producing, which are in the SEK 57 million?
Yeah, that's just the outside building.
Okay.
When we do the purchase of the business, all the machines are included, obviously. Yeah.
Interesting. Good. We can move on to Nordic Shield Group. It is, in my view, also a little Astor, I would say, in terms of that it is a defense-oriented group. If I got it right and I did a quick calculation, if you just include the payment that you do just for Cesium, it would be a 7.3 EBITDA multiple. You would also get, of course, the NSG business on top. The total acquisition multiple would be below that.
Do you have any numbers that you might share or could share with us what is NSG in itself doing in sales and EBITDA, excluding the Cesium acquisition that is soon to follow? So we can have a little grasp of how it is operating and how big it is.
Yeah, of course, of course. We tried to keep the press release a little bit shorter, not to expand too much at this point about NSG. I think we will follow up on this going forward once everything is completed with all the with ISP. We want them to have a smooth process in their acquisition of the Cesium. I think we will expand more about NSG here after the summer.
It is too early to tell, so.
Yeah. Yeah. It is a little early.
I think we will obviously, we know a lot of good stuff happening around this company. I do not want to expand too much about that at this time. Obviously, with Sweden being part of NATO now, there will be a lot of demand for this kind of equipment that Cesium does in concrete. They are a true market leader in that sense. Also, NSG on their level, they have a lot of exciting owned products they are planning to get sales on here in the future. We are really looking forward to that acquisition. If things go well, we would like to increase our share of that business.
Okay. Very interesting. Maybe if I let loose my imagination a little bit more, is it also, I think they have one subsidiary, which is a software-centric business, right?
Is it also the start of Astor integrating into software defense services, or is this just my image?
No, that's a little too early to say. I think what you need to focus on is if you look at them, for example, this NES business. NSG is the mother company, and they will have two subsidiaries in this NES. They make server halls, but on a fortified level. They are made with the concrete from Cesium. It is very hard to make a physical breach, and it is not possible to put through electromagnetic pulses and stuff. There are a lot of synergies between them. It may look like we are going into something else, but I think we are not at this point. Who knows?
Very, very interesting. That explains a lot. One more detailed question.
I think on page 19, you showed us the development of Marstrom. If you could go to that again. Yeah, exactly. Page 18, sorry. On the right-hand side, the SEK 12.5 million in 2024, this is adjusted EBITDA per quarter. It's not. Per year. Per year. Per year. Okay. I was confused about how the margins have gone up. That's okay. That's the clarification.
Yeah. It's also important to mention it. It's adjusted. The only thing we have adjusted is, obviously, we are a group, so we have management fees to be able to work on the group level. That's the only thing that's in this adjusted number. Apart from that, it's the same numbers as the official accounts that's reported to the official every year.
Okay. That's been it then from my side. Thank you very much. It's been very helpful.
Yeah. Thank you.
Oh, Philip, we can't hear you. Sorry. Excuse me.
Thank you very much, Henry. In the meantime, we received one question in the Q&A section, which is as follows. With the defense sector showing those strong order intakes, how are you able to buy companies at such low multiples?
Yes. Yes. I think it's based on this dual use. They are not too much into defense at this point, but obviously, when we buy them, we can put in the defense business there. They are looking to move into that business. They have started the discussions, but they really need a player like Astor to come in and help them with selling to the military industry. That is why I agree.
It's a good question, but obviously, if we go, say, when we're looking at going abroad, buying a completely new business somewhere else that maybe is already doing 100% defense, that could mean we obviously have to go higher on multiples. I don't want to expand too much about that, but you would expect a little bit higher.
Perfect. I think that answers the question adequately. Thank you, Wictor. For the moment, I don't see any raised hands and also no more questions in the Q&A. Once again, the reminder, if you want to ask a question via audio, raise your digital hand. If you want to ask a question via text, you can put it into the Q&A section. Maybe we give it another couple of moments and see if there are any questions left.
If not, of course, you can also send your questions in afterwards to the Astor IR team or also to the analysts here at Newways. As there are no further questions, I would say thank you for participating. Thank you, Wictor. That's it from my side. I would leave it to you, Wictor, to have some final remarks on your presentation.
Thank you, Philip. Yeah. Thanks for spending 45 minutes with me and Astor here. Hopefully, we have a lot of other exciting stuff here coming up, so we will probably speak again here at some point. Thanks a lot.