Scandinavian Astor Group AB (publ) (FRA:Y73)
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Last updated: Apr 29, 2026, 8:02 AM CET
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Investor Update

Mar 28, 2025

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Everybody, welcome to today's investor call with Scandinavian Astor Group. My name is Henry. I'm the analyst covering the stock from NuWays, and I'm pleased to welcome Victor on the call with us, who will guide us through his presentation today, give a little bit of insight into the new midterm strategy, and describe the capital increase that was done this week. Let's start with a few organizational stuff. If you have questions, please raise your hand via the virtual raise your hand button. Also, there is the Q&A function where you can type a question in the chat. We will do a Q&A session after the presentation, which will be moderated by me. Without further ado, I think we're good to go, and I will hand over to Victor to guide you through the presentation.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Thank you, Henry. Yes. Welcome to this investor presentation where we will go through our new midterm targets. I want to start off by thanking all of you who are shareholders today. We see a lot of support, and we will try to make the best of the confidence you show in us. For those of you who do not know me, my name is Victor Billström, so I am the CFO of Scandinavian Astor Group. I have been at Scandinavian Astor Group since before the IPO, but I have held the CFO position since about two years now. I am also the fourth largest shareholder now in Astor Group, as we know as of now. If you exclude Avanza and Nordnet, I am the second behind Anders Danielsson, who is a big supporter of Astor Group.

This week, we made a very good, a successful share issue here to a lot of really skilled investors. We are happy here to welcome three really strong institutional investors into Astor. The Global Security Fund with Joakim Mårtensson, which has had a really good traction since its inception. I think it's the first directed rights issue where they have participated. We are really thankful for them being part of the owner group now. Also, DNB invested, a mutual fund at DNB. We're very happy to welcome them and get some institutional investors on board Astor. We also had a big investment from a top-tier German mutual fund, but they do not usually give out their name. We are very happy to welcome them. We raised, we increased, we said SEK 125 million, but we ended up getting SEK 150 million.

It was made at a not too heavy discount, we think. It's 11%. I think the reaction in the market was quite good the day after. I hope everyone was happy with this capital raise. For those of you who don't know Astor, Astor in brief here is we have about SEK 300 million proforma revenue with the companies we have today. It's a split of 60-40 defense civilian. We are about 150 employees. We have a market cap, of course, it's fluctuating, but about SEK 1.5 billion. We are listed both at NGM in Sweden and in Börse Stuttgart. I think with this mutual fund coming aboard, we are already seeing that it was a good decision to start our listing there in Germany. The shareholder base is increasing.

As I said, we thank you for the support, and I hope you will continue as shareholders. Here is Astor today. We are in Sweden, mostly eight locations here in Sweden. In Finland, we are in Vaasa, up in the north. In Germany, we have a sales office in Munich. With the acquisition pipeline we have, we will probably set a new flag somewhere else as soon as possible. Where are we on the journey here? For those of you who haven't seen this picture before, we made an IPO about two years ago, down there in the left bottom corner. We have transitioned to a bigger player today.

The big leap will be made in the coming years now, also with this new financial target, when we will try and establish Astor as a mid-market player in between the large caps and the smaller companies out there. For you who knows how to build companies, there are a lot of smaller players out there. Maybe they have one product or they are just focusing on their maybe a small core business. It may be a great company. There are many of them. It's hard to compete on a global scale when you're just a small company. Even though you have a very great product, it's impossible to be able to sell on a global scale, doing all the events and everything. It costs a lot of money. If you're part of a bigger group, we can advertise all the companies at the same time.

The costs come down a lot, and we can do a lot more of these exhibitions and events. Here is Astor today. It weighs on three pillars, three business areas. We have Astor Tech, we have Astor Industry. As of next week, the 1st of April here, Astor Protect will be launched, and we are moving AirSafe to that business area. I will come more into that later. Here, we see a lot of future acquisitions being made. This business area will really be a lot bigger, we hope, in the near future. We have AstorX there as well. It might be that we are looking into adding another business area here going forward. We are not sitting back, as you maybe know by now. We are on the front foot, and we might add another business area here in the future.

More about that when that happens. One question here could be, we hired this Business Area Manager, the Head of the Business Area, Gabor there, up to the right. We already have a subsidiary CEO there for AirSafe. Of course, this could look like we are a bit top-heavy, a bit overhead cost. In the short term, it has to look a little more top-heavy. As we grow, we will not, we are focused all the time on not increasing the overhead too much. Short term, it might look more top-heavy. That will eke it out going forward. Here is the new revised financial target. For those of you who have been a shareholder in Astor, you probably know that the old target was SEK 400 million. Now we set a new target of SEK 2.5 billion.

I will come in more to that later here in the presentation. The new target is SEK 2.5 billion, and we have held the EBITDA margin goal of 15%, at least 15% margin. How will this be possible? I will come more into that in the presentation here. You remember this one, maybe the mind the gap. When we set our old goal, we had a sales of SEK 53 million. We said that at that stage, we said that in 2026, we will do SEK 400 million. That was eight times the revenue at that point in time. It is about the same ratio now. We are proforma here at SEK 300 million with the companies we have and the performance they made last year. It is actually slightly above SEK 300 million. It is the same ratio here, eight times.

I think the journey from 53 to 400 is a lot tougher. Once you get the momentum going, you know, the snowball effect or catch-up effect, say in Swedish. It's a lot easier. Now we have the momentum, and we see that we have a new goal of SEK 2.5 billion in 2028. It might look like a big number, and how will we get there? It's actually the same ratio as we did last time. I think we show that we can embark on this journey, and we will get there. How will we get there? This is the short-term M&A pipeline and some sensitivity analysis here on the growth. On the short-term, the short-term M&A pipeline, like we said in the press releases here, that would add SEK 500 million with an EBITDA of over SEK 60 million.

Actually, it's almost up to SEK 65 million EBITDA on the performance of the companies we're looking into what they had last year here. If we include that and we grow from next year here, we grow 20% per year, we will get to two-thirds of that target with the group we have today and this SEK 500 million short-term M&A pipeline. We will get to two-thirds of the target in 2028 without any other acquisitions if we grow 20%. If we grow 30%, we will almost get to the target by this group only. The group we have today plus this M&A pipeline. No further M&A from here. Of course, we will do more M&A going forward as well next year, the year after, and so on. We see that this is achievable, and especially since the growth in 2024 was 44% organic.

Of course, there will be bumps on the road. There will always be one quarter that is not as we hoped. This is year-over-year level on a full year, 44%. It is actually, I think it was 70% in Q4. I think we will achieve this target. Here is a waterfall presentation of the goal. We are going from left to right. We are proforma SEK 300 million. We are looking at short-term M&A targets of SEK 500 million. Adding those together, we will be SEK 800 million proforma last year. With the organic and acquired growth, we will reach the financial target at 2028. How will this be made? We made this equity issue now, SEK 150 million. It will go to acquiring companies. We see that we will tap into the bond market or increase the debt position here.

Going forward, we have a very, very small debt position before this capital raise we made. Now, of course, we have a strong net cash position. We are in discussions here going forward with how we can add more debt. It will be made in a prudent way. We will not jeopardize anything. One thing that is very important to mention here, it's slightly highlighted here. We can pay with in-kind. We can pay with shares a lot more. We see a very big interest in the companies we have detailed term sheet discussions with here with the SEK 500 million that a large chunk can be made through in-kind with our own shares. They want to participate in the Astor journey here. It is good. Of course, they will accept some lockup as well. Those shares will not be tradable directly.

It will come at a later stage. They want to be part of the journey here in Astor. We see this is important to know here that we made this equity issue now, but that is just the start. Next up is adding debt. We can pay with shares as well. There are several ways to acquire companies. With that said, I leave over to the Q&A session.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Yes, perfect. Thanks very much for the presentation. If you have questions, please press the raise your hand button on the bottom of your screen, and then we will put you on the audio line. You can ask a question directly to Victor. Also, there is the Q&A box where you can type in a question. Please type it in English.

I'm not a native speaker in Swedish, so I have no idea what you're typing then. This will complicate matters if you type it in Swedish. Please do it in English. If you have questions, please go ahead and raise your hand. Okay, so far, no one has raised a hand yet and there is no written question in the chat.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

I could add one more thing here when people are thinking about questions. We also want to welcome a new board of directors here. We have a new chairman coming in, Mats Örn Karlsson , who is currently a board member at a very successful company in the VBG Group . They are listed on the main market on NASDAQ. He is very good at making acquisitions and building a big company. We are very happy to welcome him here as soon as possible. He will start a little bit before he will join in May.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Interesting. Yeah, now we have one question from Sampo Kärkinen . Please go ahead and ask your question. You're still on mute. If you unmute yourself, you can directly ask a question to Victor. Does not seem to be the case. Okay, we will hand over to the chat. We have a few questions coming in right now. First one is, do you expect acquisition multiples to increase in light of the industry's strong news flow?

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah, the time to buy is now. We want to execute here as soon as possible on the M&A pipeline we have. Of course, we see now with the recent turmoil in the political landscape and the increase in defense spending here that there is a lot of interest for the defense market. We are happy that we made a lot of acquisitions before this latest move in the market. We will try and execute as quickly as possible on the good discussions we have so we can close them and then move ahead with the next phase, the next companies to buy.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Great. I hope that answers the question. We have another one who wants to raise a question by audio line. It's Shashi Shukla. Please go ahead. You're on loud.

Can you hear me?

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yes.

Hi, Victor. Very nice presentation. You raised the confidence like always. It would be really nice to listen from you time to time. I have a question. Like in one of the slides, you showed that SAG is almost halfway to becoming a very large cap industry like SAAB. SAAB is like 150 times higher if roughly we say that. How do you take this question?

Yes. Thank you for the nice word there, Shashi. If we move to that slide, I think you're thinking about this slide.

Yeah, exactly.

I wouldn't say that the lines are exactly as it would look, but it's a graphical picture of the journey. Of course, the big companies are the big ones driving the market, really. We see that there's a great opportunity to become a mid-market player. We see that there are not too many companies in this space. We definitely see here that there's a great opportunity to be able to execute on our growth agenda, buying companies which the big giants, they don't have time to look into companies that have a revenue of SEK 50 million or SEK 100 million. It's too small. We see that we can be that force. Of course, new people or new companies will enter the market here. We see that we are established. We are on the stock exchange.

We have a lot more firepower than they have in the short term. We are established. They probably have a good idea, but it's easier to put money into a company that already has good momentum, as I said before, than putting money into an idea about buying defense companies.

One more additional question, if you don't mind.

Yeah, no problem.

When you say, for example, you are trying to attract the investors, but at the same time, you move to the NGM from the Spotlight, do not you consider moving to the First North or the Stockholm Börsen where you will have more viewing or something?

Sure, sure. It's a relevant question. We have a lot of support from NGM. They also made this journey to NGM, are owned by Börse Stuttgart. We could move to Börse Stuttgart, do a listing at Börse Stuttgart at no extra cost. They are very helpful getting us out there. Of course, we are the Stockholm NGM that has the highest turnover. I think we have a very good partnership with NGM. We will continue to nourish that. We are moving to their regulated market as well. That's important. We are not staying on the SME, the small market. We are moving. The plan is that we are being traded on the NGM regulated in the autumn here. We are very happy with NGM at this stage.

Thank you. Thank you, Victor.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Thank you, Shashi. Now, let's move over to the chat. We have a few more questions there. The next one is from Erik Lagerström . Would you mind elaborating a bit on the investment in DoldRob and how do you see that going forward? How will their partner in the NATO acceleration program impact their presence in the Astor Group?

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yes, thank you. Good question. I think I said that during the earnings call that in 9 out of 10 cases, we will buy profitable, high-growing companies. We might look into adding a little bit of a venture investment as well. Of course, the DoldRob is a venture investment, but they are already in, they are part of the Diana program. They are already embedded with the defense in Sweden. I cannot elaborate further on that, but they are already getting established as a player in this field. We think it was a great opportunity to get some really exciting technique into Astor as well. We bought 15%, so it will not affect our earnings anything. It will not in any way. The investment. Of course, we started this new company or we changed the name of Auxilium.

We changed it to Auxilium Naval Systems. That company we already own, and that company will pay a royalty for the sales we make with this technology. We hope that we will already start seeing sales as early as possible, maybe this year or early next year. We see it as a very exciting technology.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Perfect. I hope that answers the question. There is one question in the chat, which is in Swedish. I hope you can see it, Victor, if you mind translating and then give an answer.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Oh, yeah, sure, sure. Yeah. Is it the latest one or?

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Yeah.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Let's see the time here.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

The one from September 18.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

9/18, okay. I see. There's a lot of questions coming in now. Is it the 9/18?

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Yeah.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah.

Yeah, we wanted to be this, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the anonymous. Okay. Is there going to be any dividend in the stock in the future? Of course, but that time is not now when we're buying companies. We want to use our cash flow to buy and invest for more growth.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Perfect. I can take over again. Thanks.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

There's one from Thomas Blixet. He says, "Thank you very much for the good presentation. Is it possible to give some more color on the acquisition agenda, size versus frequency, geographical, and business area focus?

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah, good. Good question. Thank you, Thomas. Yeah. The acquisitions we have, they span all over our business areas. There is one for each business area there at least. We, especially in the short term here, as I mentioned, we want to really expand this Astor Protect business unit. We hired a great business area manager to take this business area forward. Also, the company we have there today, we want to get more scale on it. It is very important that we add acquisitions there to be able to execute on the growing market. Other questions, geographical. I think, as I said, we want to put up a flag in another Nordic country here as soon as possible. We think it is important to have market presence, and it really helps us in many ways. Size versus frequency.

There are bigger acquisitions that we're looking at and smaller ones. It's anything from SEK 30 million-SEK 40 million sales to over SEK 100 million-SEK 200 million in sales. It's a diverse acquisition pipeline we have.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Thank you. We have some multiple questions on Astor 4 and Astor Eclipse. I'm going to read them all out at once. The first one is, when is the drone jammer ready for the market? There was one more. How is the progress with Astor 4? Can you tell us something about the Astor system tested in Ukraine? Any test results? How is the interest from the market? Finally, when do you expect to be ready for full-scale sales? There is one more, where are we concerning the business with the French Air Force? I think all of these questions are mostly related.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah, I think what we said with Astor 4 is it's a little bit more delayed than we hoped when we communicated in the Q4 report. I will not make any specific update on that now. We hope that it will fly high here as soon as possible. It is not really in our hands. We hope for the best. We do not see anything, any negatives. We only see that it should work, and it should be great when it comes up in the air. With regards to Astor Eclipse, it's a great product. As I said before, it's a spinoff product from the Astor 4. There is a huge market potential for it in this U.S. market. I have seen a lot of really big budgets going into this market, but it's just on a startup level.

We are established, and there are not too many electronic warfare companies out there in Europe. It is a high priority from the EU at this stage to increase our electronic warfare capabilities. We hope that we, of course, as soon as possible can show traction in this market.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Perfect. Thanks. The next questions are also regarding M&A. I tried to pull them. The first one is, are you only focusing on companies that are already in the defense market, or are you also looking at civil companies to implement to the defense market? There are two more questions regarding M&A. Thank you for your great work. When will the upcoming acquisition be official? Could you spill any information regarding what type of companies you are in serious discussion with regarding the next new acquisition?

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah. Yeah, these are good questions. We're looking into, I think Astor is a good success story of taking more civil business maybe on the industry side and making it more and more tapping into the defense market. I think we are looking at this. If we can turn, when we're looking at acquisitions, if there's a company that is only selling to the civil market today, if we can turn it into a defense company. Of course, with the multiples going through the roof, maybe with the defense companies, that could be a prudent way to make acquisition as well. If we look at the companies in the pipeline today, there's a lot of defense in those acquisitions. There's a lot of defense in those. Of course, going forward here, I think we will see more and more of these dual-use companies entering the market.

Of course, we will be there to talk with them if we can cooperate or if we buy part of them or if we buy the whole companies. That remains to be seen. We are investigating everything.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Cool. Two more questions also regarding the topic. I think one you already answered. Are you in due diligence with any company now? I think that's a yes. Also, do you want to broaden your geographical focus or will you continue focusing on the Nordics and Germany? I think it's already been more or less answered. If you'd like to get more color, you can please do that.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah, yeah. I cannot go into any specific on company level or if we are in any where we are in the processes at this stage. Of course, our plan is to execute as quickly as possible on our acquisition pipeline we have here. We say the immediate short-term pipeline is SEK 500 million. Of course, we have other discussions. If one company falls out, we might add another one to this short-term M&A pipeline. We cannot promise anything, but we will try, as I said, to execute as quickly as possible on acquisitions.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Perfect. I think then we have a different topic we can talk about now regarding growth. I think you had this eight times factor on your slide, and I think it's regarding this. Did I get correct? Is it the toughest journey in the past now? Is it easier to grow from here? The jump from 53 to 400, was this harder or is 300 to 2.5 billion harder?

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yes, thank you for your question there. I think the journey, as I said in the presentation, the journey up to our old target has been tougher. I hope so, at least than the other one. It's important to mention here, being a small company at the stock exchange with all the press releases, everything going on, it's a lot easier when you grow to a certain level. As we said, the size matters. It's important to get bigger because a few things at least become easier. We switched to IFRS, and that's a huge investment. I think we made that very cheap. It cost us less than SEK 1 million. We didn't include that in the adjusted EBITDA numbers. I think other companies spend a lot more, maybe more than SEK 5 million on making that kind of switch.

What I'm trying to say is that we have taken a lot of the costs for growing into a bigger business going forward here.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Perfect. Two more questions just came in. First one is, how do you think a more friendly relationship with the U.S. would affect your business? Are there any barriers in place? I think this is the reverse question from the Trump administration.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's not up to me to go into any politics, I think. Yeah. I think the answer is there for yourselves to see.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Okay. That's an awesome answer.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Okay. I think the last one in the chat, and we have one more hand raised. I also have two questions. The next one is, in the moment you make 60% of your revenue in the defense area, how many % of the expected SEK 2.5 billion in 2028 will come from the defense sector? I think it will be more, but maybe you can give a little bit more number.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah. Of course, we want to increase our defense part of our business as much as we think it will increase. As we said before, we want to have a civil part as well. We think it's good to have the mix to be able to move from one to the other. One product can be good in the dual-use thing we talked about. One product is good in the civil market. It could be used in the military market. It's a lot easier to drive innovation in the civil market. That innovation we can use in the defense industry.

Perfect. It is Charlie again with a question. Please go ahead. You are now on loud.

Victor, on this slide especially, specifically, sorry, you have got very good success in this turbulent time. The sales have increased enormously, like 200 something, some percentage. Considering, I mean, that this time will not last very long. I mean, your expansion until 2028 is based on this, or it is based on the normal time? Because now Europe and every other country, they are increasing their defense budget. Do you take this into account, or is it just the normal business, and then you see a very great demand of your products into the defense sector? How do you see that?

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for the question. Yeah. I don't know if you saw this presentation. I think it was not yesterday. It was the day before. It was on Wednesday with the Swedish government. They are increasing their defense spending with SEK 300 billion in 10 years here. They are moving from 2.5% of GDP to 3.5%. They also said that it depends on the goal in this NATO meeting in the summer here, if it will be 3% or 4% even. A lot of countries in the Baltic, they have a defense spending of around 5% or even higher than that, 5.5%, 6%. I think as an analyst, you look two, three years ahead. This market, with this kind of underlying effects, it's hard to look more than 10 years.

If you look 10 years out, it's still a great market here for the defense business. Maybe it's, of course, a bit sad as well, but it's the business we are in, and we are trying to make it as good as possible for our shareholders. Yeah. Hopefully, that answers your question. We don't see any less demand going forward. We see, and the defense market moves slowly. Of course, the big orders, they start at the top level at SAAB and Kongsberg, but then they have to come down to the other players as well. The big players are not enough to supply the defense market with products. There's a good space there for a mid-market player.

Also, one small related question. Compared to other industries like SAAB and other top defense companies, how much of this, for example, the orders they get, and what is the size of their company? Do you have any analysis and where, I mean, the SAG stand in this ratio, if there is any ratio? For example, if SAAB takes like 10%, is it that Astor also takes like 1-2% of the overall defense budget or something like that for the expenses?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand your question. It's not that easy to just transfer the percentages like that. I think it's a question more for the analysts of Astor, maybe to Henry and NuWays and Pareto and the ones that follow us to comment on that, I think.

Yeah. I expect to hear from NuWays very soon because they are the analyst. Yeah.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Yeah. Be surprised whatever we'll publish.

Thank you.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

I cannot talk about future publications.

Yeah.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Cool. We have one more question, but I think my question was also regarding or similar to yours, Charlie. Thank you very much. For Victor, please, if you go to the slide with the SEK 500 million. Yeah, exactly. And the 20% organic growth. I mean, how confident are you that you can do this growth rate for every year until 2028? I mean, we've talked a lot about demand and increasing budgets, but it's a tough number to beat. In my view, I'm a little bit below my estimates. How high is your confidence that you can reach this 20% at least?

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah, yeah. That's a good question. I think short-term here, as we said, maybe to emphasize that, I think short-term, we have to increase OPEX and maybe CAPEX as well. It will be CAPEX will be mainly through financial leases. It will not hurt our EBITDA margin. That's important as well. OPEX and CAPEX will increase. We communicated that in a separate press release here. I think it was about two weeks ago that we are planning more equipment investments in our companies. I think short-term now, we have to really expand a lot. All of our subsidiaries are planning hirings. That, of course, it might mean that short-term, the costs will be higher, but the reward will come. I think we really showed that last year, especially in the fourth quarter here, that we can be very profitable.

Short-term, to be able to gear up to that SEK 2.5 billion, it might mean that we have to take some costs in the short-term, but the rewards will come. This target is 2028, and it might mean we will meet that target at that point, SEK 2.5 billion and 15% EBITDA. It might mean in the short-term that we have to take some extra costs now and focus on the long-term profit margins. We are looking into a lot of machine investments. We are looking into hiring a lot of people to drive sales, to equip them with new machines and everything. I hopefully that answers some of your questions.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Yeah. Maybe just to follow up because it's also related. Does that mean then that operating cash flow will suffice to fund this OPEX and CAPEX growth? Or will you also need funds for that in terms of debt or the recent capital increase that you've done? Is it the capital increase that you've done and also the debt you plan to take on maybe in the future? Is that all for M&A? The investments in the own companies in terms of OPEX and CAPEX are funded by operating cash flow?

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah. We have a very good operating cash flow in a majority of our subsidiaries. That will support part of this journey with cost increases. Of course, it depends on when we find people. Do we find, can we hire 10 people today, or will it be one person every month? Of course, if we can hire 10 people today, we will do that to be able to meet increased demand. Of course, short-term, that will mean it's like the higher costs.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Okay. Cool.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

We need to stay focused now on the 2028 target.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Yeah, for sure. Maybe one more question is also regarding your M&A pipeline. If I take your historic multiples, roughly six times EBITDA, you have like SEK 360 million to spend for this pipeline, but you only raised SEK 150 million now. The rest, roughly, it's basic math, needs to be financed by debt. Is that a fair assumption?

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah, it can be financed from debt or shares. As I mentioned there, we see a lot of interest in accepting shares in Astor as a payment. We think that's a good way going forward now when we have a good momentum.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Maybe a question in reverse. The SEK 150 million you raised is not enough to buy the whole pipeline, right?

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

No, no, exactly. No, no, no. No, it's not. We are looking into if we have a lot of discussions if we should make a bond or a corporate bond or if we should continue on our great relationship with our financier in Swedbank. I think they are very supportive. We have a lot of discussions about that here in the short term.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Perfect. That really answers my question. We have one more in the chat, and I think then we're almost done. It's from Johannes Eydman. Do you know, will you be part of the new defense funds coming up from DNB? I don't think you can answer that, but maybe you might add a little more color.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for your question. Yeah. I hope we are. I do not know how much you are aware of this, but of course, as a shareholder, but if you are in finance, you are aware of this. A lot of the investors that came into this round, we came up on their radar when we came above SEK 1 billion in market cap. They usually do not look below SEK 1 billion. It is also, of course, a positive that there is a lot of turnover in the share. That is also something they are looking into. I think we are taking a lot of these parameters that they are looking at. Hopefully, we will see more funds looking into Astor or a positive funds flow here going forward.

The snowball effect there, as we buy more companies, of course, we will become even more attractive for these institutional investors to look into Astor because we will become a more stable business, and that is something they want to invest in.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Yeah. Okay. For me, that makes sense. I hope for you as well. And then we have no more questions. Let me go check whether we did not forget everything. Okay. Good. I think then we're finished. Thank you so much, Victor, for your presentation. I think it's an interesting journey you're on, and I'd love to be part of that going forward. If you have any questions regarding Astor, you can reach out directly to Victor, probably also to Louise, but we are also available for your questions. If you want to have a deeper look into Astor and talk to an analyst, we are free to do so. Please reach out to Astor, to the Astor Group. I think I will hand over with some closing remarks to Victor, and thank you all for participating today, and see you next time.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Yes. Yes. Thank you, Henry. Thank you, everyone, for listening in. Hopefully, we'll have new calls here going forward that we can meet and discuss the journey of Astor here. Thank you very much.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Thank you. Bye-bye. Have a good day.

Wictor Billström
CFO, Scandinavian Astor Group

Same.

Henry Wendisch
Equity Research Analyst, NuWays

Okay.

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