Good morning and welcome to Lassila & Tikanoja first quarter 2025 earnings release. My name is Eero Hautaniemi. I'm the President and CEO. Together with me today, I have Joni Sorsanen, our CFO. We had a very positive start for 2025. Big improvement in Facility Services profitability. We had strong cash flow, and the preparations for the partial demerger and efficiency program are progressing as planned. In net sales, we had a 5% decrease. In Circular Economy, this was mainly due to the slow economy in general, but especially in the construction sector. In Facility Services, Finland had a mild winter, reduced a lot of snow removal-related work, but also we had planned actions to optimize our customer portfolio, which was reflected in a slight decline of the net sales. First quarter is typically a seasonally very small quarter for us, and this year was no exception.
Nevertheless, we had a solid performance across the board. In circular economy business, we were on par compared to the previous year, and this was despite, as I said, the slow economy and very slow construction volumes in the first quarter this year. In facility services, we had a big improvement. In facility services Finland, this was mainly due to very good performance in property maintenance. Also, cleaning continued its very strong performance. As I said, especially in property maintenance, the systematic and consistent work that we have been doing now for a couple of years is finally showing in the numbers as well. In Sweden, despite the fact that we were still loss-making, the work that we have been doing is also becoming visible in the numbers. Here we have a little bit longer trends and a few observations of these numbers.
In circular economy business, we have had a very stable performance over the past five years, and the profitability, whether we look at the adjusted EBITDA or adjusted EBITDA, has remained stable. I am quite pleased about this when we consider that we have had, during this five-year period, we have had a COVID pandemic, and we have had the period of strong inflation after Russia attacked Ukraine. Overall, a very solid performance in circular economy businesses. We have also added the last 12 months in these graphs. The Q1 numbers are last 12 months numbers, not quarterly numbers, obviously. In facility services businesses, you can see that there was a slump or clearly a period of poor performance in 2022, 2023, and 2024 as well.
The measures that we have been doing, first in Facility Services Finland and more recently in Facility Services Sweden, are becoming visible also in these figures, and the trend is clearly positive and going to the right direction. Also, one point to look into is the fact that the businesses are very different. Capital employed in Circular Economy is around EUR 300 million, as it is about EUR 40 million in Facility Services business. Let's dive into the Circular Economy business first. As I said, a stable performance despite the challenging business environment. We have very rarely seen as low volumes in construction-related business as we have seen in the first quarter of this year. Hopefully, the economy starts to recover in the second half of 2025.
There are some signals that we could see gradually, slowly but gradually improving market conditions later this year, but obviously the uncertainty is on a very high level. Material flows to treatment centers decreased because of the very fact that I just mentioned, and this was very much visible in all of the business lines with the exception of hazardous waste business. It was visible in environmental services, in recycling businesses, but also in environmental construction businesses where the sort of the land masses that we received to our landfills were at a very low level. Luckily, the hazardous waste business is very stable, and there we saw basically no impact to the volumes due to the economy in general.
Also, we have added on this slide the trend line of our return on capital employed, and as you can see, it has developed quite nicely from 13.1 to 14.1 year-on-year, and this is due to the good work that we have done in the business in managing the net working capital. In Facility Services Finland, very strong profitability improvement in a very slow, seasonally very slow first quarter. Our revenue decreased due to the optimization of our contract portfolio, which has been ongoing for a while already, but also the mild winter had an impact on the revenue decline. Demand for digital services remained strong, and there is a lot of interest amongst our customers to our sustainability-related services. Our efficiency measures continued according to the plans and are clearly yielding results.
I have to mention that this mild winter also helped us somewhat in the EBITDA line, but mainly the improvement came from better management of our subcontractors, where we also have done long-term systematic work to improve the overall management of our subcontracted work. Return on capital employed has developed very well. Last year, at the same time, it was 18.6%, and now at the end of the first quarter of 2025, we reached 67.8%. Good performance in Facility Services Finland. In Sweden, there is still work to be done, but the turnaround progressed well in the first quarter, especially the new clients acquired at the end of 2024, but also in the beginning of 2025, and the ongoing profitability improvement actions provide a strong foundation for achieving a turnaround in 2025.
Our measures to simplify our operating models and adjust our cost levels are continuing as planned and will continue all of this year and probably next year as well. In general, now we can see that the trend has turned, and I'm optimistic that we can report improving numbers in 2025. One thing that is behind our solid EBITDA performance in first quarter 2025 is the profitability improvement program that has been ongoing all of 2024, started end of 2023, and intensified at the end of 2024. If we look at the fixed costs and compare end of 2024 to end of 2023, we can see that we were able to reduce our fixed costs by EUR 5 million in one year, and now from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025, we can see a further EUR 1 million improvement.
As I said, we are continuing on this path and are confident that we can yield even more results in the coming quarters. One thing we have to remember, though, we are currently in the rollout phase of our ERP systems in circular economy businesses, and that will add to our costs because we have a lot of extra resources helping us now, especially during the summertime, to make sure that the rollout will be successful. The demerger is progressing well, and we are on time, on schedule, and on plan with our work to execute the partial demerger in the beginning of 2026. This is obviously still subject to the decision of extraordinary shareholders meeting later this year. In sustainability, we also had a very good performance. Especially, I'm happy about the work safety development.
Our TRIFR was 17 this year in the first quarter, and we have continued to be very active in preventive safety measures, and that is clearly visible in these numbers. If you look a little bit sort of further back in 2020 to 2023, you can see that there is a step change in the level of work accidents, and this is, as I said, a result of very good and systematic preventive safety work. Also, our own CO2 emissions decreased significantly. They came down by 23% compared to first quarter 2024, and this also was a result of our very systematic and continuous work to make changes in our fleet, to use more HVO or biodiesel and replace sort of regular diesel.
Our HVO content was more than 40% in the first quarter of 2025, and if you put that into perspective, that we use about 15 million liters of diesel per year, it is a quite significant investment that we have made to reduce our CO2 emissions. We will continue on this path, and we take sustainability very seriously, and it is in the center of our strategy. With this, I'd like to hand over to Joni, and he will take you through the financials and give more flavor to what is behind these improved numbers.
Thank you, Eero, and good morning, everyone. As Eero already mentioned, we had in many ways a positive start for this financial year. Firstly, we were able to generate strong cash flow in a seasonally slow first quarter. We were able to improve our free cash flow by EUR 16 million.
Secondly, we were able to hold on to our solid financial position, and also we can see a clear decrease in net interest-bearing debt amounting to EUR 32 million year-on-year. Also, thanks to both strengthened profitability and cash flow, we can see overall a clear improvement in our key financial indicators. If we start by looking at net working capital, we are relatively satisfied with the performance of the first quarter. We were almost able to hold on to the excellent net working capital at the end of the financial year 2024, so we only tied up capital by EUR 2 million compared to EUR 9 million in the first quarter of 2024. This better net working capital performance is thanks to our Facility Services businesses both in Finland and Sweden, and in terms of balance sheet, we can see a clear decrease in our trade receivables year-on-year.
In terms of capital expenditure, our investments in the first quarter amounted to EUR 4 million compared to EUR 11 million in the first quarter of 2024, and also in the comparison period, we had a small acquisition of PF Industriservice amounting to EUR 2 million. Here, it's good to note that we ourselves expected a slightly higher investment figure for the first quarter, and that's why we have disclosed that approximately EUR 4 million of investments were postponed to further quarters. Also, it's good to note that as we said in financial statements bulletin in 2024, we expect ICT-related investments to decrease in this year. However, as Eero already noted, this ERP system rollout-related costs we recognized in P&L instead of capitalizing them in the balance sheet. Depreciation amortization practically on the same level compared to previous year, almost EUR 14 million.
As we have many times already noted, cash flow generation was particularly positive in the first quarter. We were able to generate EUR 16 million more free cash flow compared to the previous quarter, and EUR 9 million of this improvement came from operating cash flow and EUR 7 million from cash flow from investments. Here we have drawn a rolling 12-month trend graph, and we can see that during the last 12 months, we have generated approximately EUR 57 million of free cash flow through components of EUR 90 million of operating cash flow and minus EUR 33 million of cash flow from investments. If we compare our operating cash flow to our EBITDA, we can see strong cash conversion of 96%, which is a relatively good achievement considering our current level of net finance costs and taxes included in operating cash flow.
As already said, we continue to have a strong financial position at the end of Q1. However, we can see that the metrics slightly decreasing compared to year end 2024. Good to note that we have recognized dividends for financial year 2024 in Q1 numbers, so around EUR 0.50 per share, which means EUR 19 million in absolute terms. Also, our liquidity position strong at the end of first quarter, EUR 36 million compared to EUR 28 million in the comparison period. Also, decrease of EUR 32 million in net interest-bearing debt compared to previous year. Basically, we have no change in our maturity structure of long-term loans. We will be refinancing the bank loan of EUR 40 million during this first half of 2025.
As we have now during the first quarter carefully assessed the financial structure of our demerging entities, our preliminary estimate is that the EUR 75 million bond will be transferred to the demerging entity, in other words, the circular economy entity, if the demerger takes place according to our plan. Looking at our effective interest rate, we can see a decrease year-on-year along with market interest rates, and that is why we expect the net finance costs to improve year-on-year during this financial year. Return on capital, as Eero said, we can see strong improvement, especially in Facility Services Finland year-on-year. Also, the circular economy business is able to improve return on capital year-on-year. If we look at the graph, we can see that the improvement comes both from improvement in capital efficiency as well as operating margin.
Here, it's good to note that the goodwill impairment that we recognized in the last quarter of 2024 is burdening the reported return on capital figures. If we adjust both income statement and balance sheet, we can see also strong improvement in adjusted terms in return on capital for the whole group. Finally, to conclude this section, obviously we are also reporting improving earnings per share, EUR 0.09 compared to EUR -0.02 in the comparison period. Also, in terms of cash flow or free cash flow per share, we can see clear improvement from EUR -0.25 to EUR 0.17 year-on-year. With these words, I will hand over back to Eero, who will continue with the guidance.
Okay, thanks, Joni. Good.
The outlook for 2025 is unchanged, and the net sales in 2025 are estimated to be at the same level as in the previous year, and adjusted operating profit is estimated to be at the same level or better compared to the previous year. With this, we conclude our presentation, and now we are ready for your questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Nikko Ruokangas from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hello, this is Nikko Ruokangas from SEB. Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions, and I'll go one by one. Starting with the strong improvement in Facility Services Finland, you showed.
Do you think that this level of earnings is sustainable? And then on the other hand, do you still see room to improve?
Yes, I do believe that it is sustainable, as I said. As you know, we have worked a long time to turn around the facility services in Finland, and there are a lot of individual actions and improvements that we have managed to come through or get through. Therefore, I have strong confidence that the profitability improvement is on solid ground. To your second question, yes, I believe that there is room for further improvement in Facility Services Finland. Overall, our business performance is in good shape. Our quality of services has improved. It is visible in the most recent Net Promoter Score measurement that we just did, and the customer satisfaction is on a higher level.
Also, the work safety has improved, which tells about the sort of quality of our daily work and the processes. In general, there are many ways through which we have been able to improve the efficiency, and there are still, as I said, certain things that we can improve on. Overall, I'm quite confident on the performance of Facility Services Finland.
I understand. Thanks. You highlighted the big market interest in circular economy in Q1. Was there any change in market environment compared to, for example, Q4 in Q1? Have you seen changes in industrial market activity after the trade war escalation in the beginning of Q2?
Yes. If I compare the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2024, in the beginning of 2024, we still saw sort of certain construction projects that had not been finalized at that time.
Now, as the sort of new projects have not started, I think we are at the bottom of the curve in the construction sector in general. This is not a surprise that this is the situation as we speak. Regarding the other part of your question, there have been certain positive signs, not very big yet, but certain positive things that we can see in some prices of the recycled materials. I'd say that there are slight positive signals, but it is too early to say whether that is a trend or whether this will sort of change. As all of you know, the uncertainty in the market is on a high level at this point. I'd say that it's not all dark right now, that there are some positive signals as well, but time will tell if that is sustainable.
Yes, I understand.
Let's hope that the positive signals will materialize. If you compare on a year-on-year basis, did you have impacts from the municipalization now in Q1 compared to Q1 last year?
Yeah, there were still 2024, and it will continue 2025, 2026, and 2027 at least. There will be new municipalities that will be going through this wave of municipalization, and that is obviously behind our profitability and profitability improvement and efficiency measures. As we were hopefully able to present here today, our measures have been efficient, and we are able to compensate for that change that is still ongoing in the market. There was some impact of that in Q1. Last year, the municipalization was less strong than in 2023, but it will continue, as I said, this year, next year, and the year after. That is why we are doing these actions.
I think they will be sufficient, and we will be able to offset the impact of the municipalization.
Yes, I understand. The last question from me regarding the ERP, you already slightly touched upon. As you mentioned, this will add extra costs on P&L to you. Where these extra costs, either on operating costs or depreciations, were they visible now in Q1, or do you expect more of them to materialize after Q1?
They were visible in Q1 already. There will be perhaps slightly more in Q2 and Q3, as we have a lot of seasonal workers to help us to get through this rollout. It is a huge effort. Things are going well, and there are sort of normal things that one would expect in rollout of this magnitude. Still, it is a huge effort, and therefore we will be seeing extra costs.
Hopefully, we are able to compensate for that with the other actions that we have done in reducing our fixed costs and increasing our efficiency.
Yes, I understand. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Nikko.
There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thank you. Are there any questions online?
No, there are no questions online either.
Okay, there were no questions online. I thank you very much for listening in and wish you a very good continuation of the day. Thanks very much. Bye-bye. Thank you.