Good morning, welcome to Luotea's Q1 2026 results webcast. Thank you for joining us today. In this session, we will walk you through our first quarter performance and key financials and take a look at the Luotea strategic direction going forward. The presentation will be delivered by me together with our CFO, Mika Stirkkinen. Throughout the presentation you can submit questions in the comment field, and we will address them in a Q&A session at the end of the webcast. I will start with some highlights from the first quarter. The big news from the first quarter is, of course, that our partial demerger was executed successfully as planned, and Luotea has now operated as a separate company since the beginning of the year.
In Q1, our group net sales decreased by 0.6% from the first quarter of the last year. This was largely caused by challenges in Finland, which I will cover into more detail later. Our adjusted EBITDA was EUR 0.3 million, down from EUR 0.5 million in the corresponding quarter last year. The adjusted EBIT was EUR 0.0 million, also down slightly from last year. This year we expect reported group costs to normalize and group costs to decrease. On other positive note, our reported customer satisfaction continued to improve. Our NPS score is 18, which was up from 11. It's now higher than the industry average. Similarly, our employer satisfaction continued to improve. Our eNPS score increased from 21 to 24, is at the historical level.
As for our guidance, in 2026, our adjusted EBITDA is expected to be better or materially better than the adjusted EBITDA EUR 7 million in 2025. After the first quarter was over, we also received very good news from a legal case we had in Sweden against Micasa. On April 10th, the court in Solna ruled in our favor and ordered Micasa to pay Luotea approximately EUR 4 million in total. Luotea will not recognize the gain from the favorable judgment in its income statement until the judgment is final and there is a sufficient certainty in the collection of the receivable. Micasa has decided to appeal the decision. They have placed the funds in escrow. On this slide, we see Luotea's net sales and our adjusted EBITDA since the beginning of last year.
In the first quarter of 2026, our net sales were EUR 86 million, down 0.6% from the corresponding quarter in 2025. If you wonder about the larger drop in sales from Q4 to 2025, that is a question of normal seasonality. The last quarter of the year is always busier than the first year. As I mentioned earlier, the decrease from the last year first quarter was mainly caused by challenges in Finland. More on that in the next slide. Here we see the development in sales and adjusted EBITDA from our operations in Finland. The sales were EUR 54.9 million in the first quarter, down by EUR 3.4 million from the corresponding quarter in 2025.
The adjusted EBITDA also decreased by EUR 1.1 million from the first quarter of 2025 and was now EUR 1.1 million. The decrease in sales in Finland was partly due to our intensified price competition and low additional sales volumes. Many companies have ongoing cost-saving measures which affect our add-on sales and but we are not engaging in margin undercutting in our contract sales. In the project businesses of technical services, there was a major project in the comparison period that was completed last year. In addition, the highly competitive project market environment led to a decline in revenue compared with the comparison period. All of this led to a quite sizable drop in profitability in the project businesses.
It's however important to note that our customer satisfaction is higher than ever, which means that we expect the sales in Finland to improve as our clients' outlook improves. We also see several other opportunities for a positive contract sales growth in Finland. Our new contract intake has been very positive both in the last quarter of 2025 and in this quarter. For example, we got the agreement with Saarioinen in Sahalahti, and it strengthens our market share in food hygiene cleaning quite heavily. Another opportunity lies in the Public Procurement Act, which is Hankintalaki in Finnish, which is expected to open a large number of public and municipal contracts for competitive bidding. This is likely to favor large players like Luotea as we can offer comprehensive and cost-effective services.
We also expect further opportunities to emerge in the public sector, particularly within the wellbeing services counties, which is hyvinvointialueet in Finnish. As the Finnish healthcare system faces increasing financial pressure, these counties are likely to turn more to private service providers to achieve cost savings. This development is also expected to favor companies like Luotea. We believe also that our data-driven services provide a strong competitive advantage and enable us to consistently outperform market growth. In Sweden, which comprise roughly a third of our businesses, is very different from that in Finland. In Sweden, we managed to grow our sales quite significantly thanks to a number of new contracts. The contracts we won was actually those contracts which were in our strategic plans and were in such a segments we want to have customers.
Our sales were up by EUR 2.9 million from the first quarter of last year, and we are now EUR 31.2 million. I mentioned earlier the seasonality of our businesses. As you can see, that had big effect in Sweden, as you can see from the very strong sales in Q4 of 2025. At the same time, the turnaround in Sweden is ongoing. The Swedish operations still registered a loss of EUR 0.4 million in adjusted EBITDA, but as you can see, we are on the way of correcting this as the loss was EUR 0.7 million, smaller than in the first quarter of 2025. I say again, the loss was EUR 0.7 million, smaller than in the first quarter of 2025.
We have managed to be very successful in turning our operations in Finland around and making them profitable in the last few years. We are executing the same playbook in Sweden, and I'm confident that we will just be as successful there. As you can see, we are on the right track. Another positive sign is that the customer satisfaction is up in Sweden, that has already led to a higher add-on sales. We also have renewed the major contract with Jernhusen, which is larger than previously. Our renewed contract with Fambo, Familjebostäder, which came into effect in Q1, also expands our cooperation. Those were the key figures from Q1, Mika will continue with the financials in more detail shortly. Before that, it's important to understand not just what our goals are, but also how we plan to achieve them.
Let's take a look at our strategy. This image summarizes Luotea's strategy. I will start explaining the strategy image from its foundation, our mission and our values. We are in a business of trust. Our mission is to create value for people, companies, and society, value that goes beyond the surface. This means supporting our customer businesses by making their everyday operations smoother. It also means earning the trust of all our stakeholders, our personnel, our clients, our partners, and of course, our investors. All this is guided by our values, brave, feet on the ground, and cooperation. We are a very Nordic company. These essentially Nordic values define how we work together, but with our customers and with each other every day. On the next level of the house are our success factors.
We provide the full service offering that makes facility maintenance smooth and cost efficient. Our data-driven services provide the real-time insights and help allocate resources precisely where they are needed. Our expertise in sustainability is reflected in our commitment to biodiversity and energy efficient solutions. In addition, our Smartti services enable intelligent and climate-smart energy management in buildings. When I move up to the next floor, our four strategic focus areas come into view. Succeeding in these areas enables our future success. I will go through the focus areas in more details later. At the top of the house is our vision, to navigate the way toward a smarter tomorrow. This is the direct direction in which we want to take Luotea. In the clouds, you can see major societal shifts that affect our businesses.
These large-scale megatrends, such as climate change, growing repair depth, and urbanization, increase the need for predictive maintenance, energy efficiency, and intelligent facility management. Our services are designed to address these needs. To conclude, Luotea is a next generation facility services company that navigates the way toward a smarter tomorrow. To deliver satisfied customers, we must first ensure our personnel are safe, happy, and motivated. Of course, it's important to have the right strategy, and I really believe that we do have it. It's of course just as important that the strategy is executed well. Here are the most important strategic focus areas we will concentrate on in 2026. Everything starts with the first focus area, our services.
We plan to drive growth in our core businesses areas through high quality, sustainability, sustainable services that create real value for our customers. We aim to achieve market leadership in selected business segments. Our success of course depends on customer satisfaction. We plan to deliver the best customer experience in the industry. We are already on the right track as we can see from our improved NPS scores, both in Finland and in Sweden. The key profitability is not just sales, but also efficiency, our second focus area. This is really important. As mentioned, as mentioned, we plan to turn around our businesses in Sweden by executing our playbook, which proved highly successful in Finland. The goal is to ensure operational efficiency through effective management and cost control.
The third focus area is our goal to be best place to work in the industry. We want our people to be safe, happy and motivated because that is the only way to ensure that our customers are happy too. As I mentioned, we are already on the right track on both counts as both our employee satisfaction and our customer satisfaction figures have improved significantly. We still have the work to do. Luotea as a company is only few months old. Four months actually. We have to continue building our own Luotea culture and embedding our values, brave, feet on the ground and cooperation. We have to continue leading and developing our personal skills and capabilities. We will also continue building the Luotea employer brand to ensure that we attract the best people. The fourth focus area is digital services and AI.
We encourage our office workers to use AI to support their everyday work and improve efficiency. Even more important is that we use data and AI in our maintenance and our cleaning services as a standard way of working. By developing new AI-driven services like Smartti, that way data and AI are not just there to make us more efficient, they also save money and create value for our customers. These four focus areas form a coherent framework. They guide our decisions and support our ambitions to operate more efficiently, grow in a disciplined way, and continue leading the development of modern facility services. To illustrate our strategy in practice, I would like to highlight a couple of customer stories.
Let's start with Scandic Hotels, which is a strong example of our spearhead services, create a unique entry point, and allow us to deepen customer relationships over the time. Scandic initially started using our energy management services and Smartti, our energy optimization solutions in particular. Smartti uses data and AI to analyze and optimize energy consumption across Scandic properties. Helps it control costs and at the same time improve indoor conditions. The results have been very positive, and as a result, we have expanded our collaboration to also include facility maintenance and technical services. For Scandic, the partnership supports their goal to offer a responsible and highly quality guest experience. For Luotea, it enables scale benefits and operational efficiency improvements in our Finnish businesses. This agreement shows how our capabilities in digital operations and energy management differentiate us in the Nordic market.
It deepens our collaboration with the major hospitality player, strengthens our technology-driven service offering, and supports our long-term growth in integrated facility services. In summary, the Scandic partnership is a strong example of how we combine technology and Smartti to deliver more sustainable, efficient, and highly quality operations. To another example. Jernhusen is another long-standing customer which also now uses a considerably wider range of our services than before. Jernhusen is Sweden's state-owned real estate company for railway infrastructure properties, our new partnership is the largest procurement contract in its history. With the new contract, we have completely rethought our partnerships, it's now more strategic and wide-ranging than before. The contract includes requirements for circularity, reuse, SBTi-aligned targets, and full climate reporting.
From a business perspective, the new contract with Jernhusen is a major step forward for our operations in Sweden. It improves scale, strengthens efficiency. Supports margin development as we harmonize processes. In short, this partnership proves that our strategy works, it deepens our presence in key market, and it creates a strong platform for long-term profitable growth. I hope these customer cases give you a clearer idea about our strategy and how we plan to execute it. Now, onto our financials and guidance. I will hand over to our CFO, Mika Stirkkinen.
Thank you, Antti. I will talk about especially cash flow and balance sheet and our guidance. First, a chart on the cash flow proxy, i.e., EBITDA. Our group-adjusted EBITDA on a quarterly basis increased by 5% year-on-year. That was driven by the strong performance in the Swedish operations. On the left-hand side, you can see the last 12-month development of group-adjusted EBITDA. That has increased from EUR 14.2 million to EUR 17.5 million in Q1 this year. Here, the actual cash flow chart from Q1 this year. As you can see, our cash before the net cash generated, before the net, networking capital change was EUR 2.3 million. Net working capital change was positive by EUR 3.5 million, the finance net and income taxes paid was negative by EUR 2.1 million.
That was due to the income taxes paid, which won't continue as large during the remaining quarters of the year. In total, the net cash flow from operating activities after investments was EUR 3.6 million. We paid some IFRS 16 lease liabilities back to our lessors by EUR 1.8 million, and that all in all, our cash increased by EUR 1.8 million. As you can see, the cash changed from EUR 15.7 million at the end of last year to EUR 17.5 million end of the quarter. Our capital structure is extremely strong. As said in the previous slide, the cash stands at EUR 17.5 million. We have a single bank loan in the books of EUR 5 million, when those in total are EUR 12.5 million before the IFRS 16 liabilities.
When you deduct those, we end up in a net debt, including IFRS 16 liabilities, of EUR - 6.3 million. When you look at the key ratio of net debt to adjusted EBITDA, we stand at 0.6. On top of the other liabilities, we have a fully unused revolving credit facility of EUR 10 million. Here are our financial targets. As a reminder, in mid-term, we plan to grow between 4%-5%. Our adjusted EBITDA margin target is 5%. Our cash conversion target is over 90%, and our dividend payout policy is to pay at least 50% of the net profit as dividends. To guidance.
Guidance stays unchanged. The guidance reads, "In 2026, adjusted EBITDA is expected to be better or materially better than the adjusted EBITDA of 2025." That stood at EUR 7 million then. Now we are ready to questions.
Hello, my name is Antti Isokangas. I'm the Interim Communications Director, and I'm here to present the questions you have sent to us, to my namesake, Antti, and to Mika. We have all of seven questions, and all of them from Waltteri Rossi at Danske Bank, who has been very active this morning. Let's start with the oldest and move on to the first newer ones. First one is, "What impact does increasing fuel costs have on your business?
In Q1 it actually didn't have effect at all, almost at all. In the total year it will have some effect to our businesses, but we will cover that with price increases to our customers.
Yeah. One can say that compared to some other businesses and some other sectors, the impact is quite insignificant.
Okay. Waltteri also is a bit puzzled on why Finland seems to be so weak while Q1 GDP figures were quite strong.
Yeah
with this.
The economic activity or activity within our customers is at a quite low level still. That means that we cannot get add-on sales to them. I think that's the main reason why our Q1 was weak. We have several other explanations to that. In the GDP way of when Waltteri might say that the GDP is growing but we cannot grow, it's partly caused by our inability to sell add-on sales. As I said earlier, we have won quite a lot of good contracts in the Q1, which will have a effect later on this year, for example, Saarioinen, which will start in the beginning of June this year, which is quite a big contract for us.
Okay. One more from Waltteri. There was a big project in Q1 in Finland's comparable figures. How big was that project?
Unfortunately, we can't disclose that. It wasn't small. Let's put it this way.
Okay. Another one. Would you say the price competition has increased compared to the year ago in Finland, and if so, what is driving this trend?
Price competition, especially in cleaning, has tightened in Finland. What I think the main driver behind the development is because cleaning companies cannot sell so much, for example, add-on sales. They need to grow some other way. I think that's the main reason behind the price competition. As I said, we will not do under-margin contract sales in Finland.
Okay. another one from Waltteri Rossi. What was the Micasa case about? We have released a press statement on this.
Yeah. It was dispute about invoicing works in customer, and we had dispute did we have right to invoice for something. We disagreed of that, what was invoiceable in contract and what was not.
There are more details in the press release from April 10th.
Yes
remember correctly.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Okay. turnaround in Sweden developed favorably during Q1. What is left to be done to get the business profitable?
It's all about managing the weekly level, the weekly level management system. We run the management system and drive our KPIs to the right direction. What are the main actions in our turnaround in Sweden is the moving subcontracting to our own personnel. We are proceeding quite well on that, but we must continue with that. Also, the other thing is to have more add-on sales invoicing per FTE per day. We are proceeding with that also. Two main things. Of course, we have some procurement-related measures in Sweden and some contract negotiations and possible terminations also.
I think the running and managing our KPIs in moving subcontracting to our own personnel and having more add-on sales per employee per day is the most important action points.
Okay. You expect Finland to also grow the rest of 2026. What will change in the market environment to enable this?
I don't know if the market environment changes so much. We know what we have won in the beginning of the year, what kind of contracts. We also know what our safe funnel is and what our hit rate has been. That are the reasons behind our positive thinking about our growth in Finland this year.
You also mentioned the changes in regulation.
Yeah. Yes.
legal affairs.
Of course
regarding that.
Procurement Act will help us, problems in wellbeing services counties will help us also.
Since we started, there's been another question from Raymond. You highlight improvements in service quality, customer satisfaction, and employee-related metrics such as eNPS. That sounds promising, but shareholders are still waiting for the part where good vibes become good margins. What is the expected timeline for the softer indicators to translate into measurable revenue growth, EBITDA improvements, and shareholder returns?
In Sweden, we have that visible. Our NPS and eNPS grew, and hence the customer satisfaction grew, and then the add-on sales grew. It's those are all tied together, but naturally these things take time, and what Antti explained, especially in Finland, the market situation has been quite tight, and it requires success in winning the new contracts, as we have seen now the latter part of the quarter and then the after the quarter ended.
Okay. That's all the questions we have today.
Okay. Thank you for your questions and for taking the time to join today's webcast. We appreciate your interest in Luotea and your continued engagement with us. Our next webcast will take place in August 2026 when we will review the second quarter. We look forward to updating you then. Thank you all, and have a good day. Thank you very much.