Good morning from the cloudy and gray Helsinki. Welcome to join the online presentation, webcast presentation of Relais Group Quarter Three results. Even if the weather is gray, the result is very sunny. I'm very delighted to be able to present the results together with Thomas Ekström. My name is Arni Ekholm, I'm the Group CEO, and Thomas is the Group CFO.
Good morning.
Welcome, everybody. Today, as per usual, a short review of what Relais is all about. I guess there's always a few people who haven't followed this presentation before, so I'm happy to give you a little bit more detail of what we do and what our business model is as a competent compounder, what does it really mean. Going through the quarter three results, Thomas will explain the details on the financial review side. There's quite a lot of additional information there as well. A few interesting points on the events after the review period. A summary at the end, Relais Group as an investment. For those of you who have followed this before and are following this online, you have the chance to submit questions by this Ask a Question button on your screen.
We are, of course, very happy to entertain the questions at the end of the presentation. Please be active again and make a lot of tough questions and challenge us. Good. Looking from the helicopter perspective, what is the business model of Relais Group? What is compounding all about? What is our market? We are operating in the North European market. We have already taken a step towards the Central European commercial vehicle aftermarket, but the main market for us is the Nordic market. We call it enhancing the vehicle lifecycle, let's say the life of the vehicle, the lifecycle from the birth of the vehicle to the end of the vehicle. We focus on the part which starts when the vehicle is imported or sold into a specific market. You customize a lorry or truck with superstructures. You add some lights in it or other equipment.
You repair and you maintain to keep the lifecycle effective. From an environmental point of view, it is much wiser to repair and maintain existing car park than all the time produce new vehicles consuming raw material. From that perspective, also this lifecycle approach is sustainable business. What is driving the market in the Nordic? If we only take the Nordic perspective, roughly 90 million vehicles. It's also important to notice that we are predominantly focusing on commercial vehicles. We are not dependent on the technological changes on the passenger car side. I would say maybe 90% of our business is coming from commercial vehicles these days after the recent acquisitions. They are very stable and growing markets. The amount of vehicles is growing every year. The complexity of the spare parts and components are driving value. I mean, the components are getting more expensive.
All the time, there's more technology and electricity in the components. Electrification is not advancing very rapidly on the commercial vehicle side. I think there are other alternative power sources that are also interesting, like gas and hydrogen that we are having an eye on. No matter what the powertrain is, we can repair and fix and sell equipment to the vehicles. For us, each vehicle is a revenue platform. We buy a lot of companies, we develop the companies, we use the cash flow of the new companies to then finance again the acquisition of new companies. Hence, we add value to you as shareholders. That's the business model of a competent compounder. Also very important, what do we mean with competent in this perspective? We are focused on this sector. We know this sector very well. We know the companies, we know the entrepreneurs.
That gives us a better chance to make good acquisitions because we know this business very well. The estimated value is about EUR 20 billion in the Nordics. If we, let's say, look at the whole European market, then it becomes rapidly much bigger. We are not running out of runway on the market size anytime soon. How does Relais Group look like these days after the recent acquisitions, which I will explain a bit later? You can divide our business into two larger parts, the first being Technical Wholesale and Products, 62% for the first nine months, and commercial vehicle repair and maintenance, which is 38% during the first nine months. Also bear in mind that since we have done a lot of big acquisitions during June and July, these numbers are not yet reflected in this division of businesses.
Moving forward, the weight of the commercial vehicle repair and maintenance will grow. I think that's also important to understand that these businesses have inherently different types of profitability levels, meaning that the repair and maintenance has typically a lower EBITDA percentage than the Technical Wholesale and Products division. From the other hand, the return on capital employed and return on operating networking capital is very lucrative also on the commercial vehicle repair and maintenance business because it does not tie that much capital. You need to be, let's say, we come to the figures later when Thomas presents. It's also important to understand the dynamism between these business groups.
Looking at the Technical Wholesale and Products, you can see that as two different businesses as well, which are interconnected, which is the spare parts business where we have recently increased the weight of the commercial vehicle, the heavy vehicle spare parts by the acquisition of LVD in Norway. Actually, it's only ABR in Sweden that is focusing mostly on passenger cars, also although on light commercial vehicles. Almost all the other companies are predominantly commercial vehicle related. Lighting equipment, there we have some very interesting brands. We have Strands, we have lighting brands like Optibeam under the Lumise brand, and also now with Matro Group, which we have actually now changed the name to Nedking Europe. Nedking Europe is a new name for Matro Group.
We have three companies in the Benelux, and Nedking is a very potential brand that we intend to roll out to Europe and to the Nordic countries. The share of the owned brands is very high in the company already at the moment. I would say it's over 20% at the moment, and we want to see it growing also on the spare parts side. The equipment and lighting side is predominantly owned brands. That is very important from a profitability point of view. Relais 's growth story, if we go way back to 2010, you see some development already from there. The real momentum starts in 2019 when we go together with a couple of Swedish companies and then take the company to the stock market.
I would hate to use the phrase rest is history, but I mean, it's truly an outstanding growth during the last five years, over 20 acquisitions and pro forma. This is unofficial pro forma, by the way, so it's the illustrative pro forma, ending up in over EUR 400 million if we combine all the acquisitions, the full year effect. We have acquired about EUR 11 million EBITDA, local GAAP measured, on top of what we had last year. It's all in all very close to the EUR 50 million target that we have set for ourselves. The year has not ended yet, but still. All in all, I'm very happy to see this growth and of course hope to see that continue also during the next five year strategy period.
Before going and having a crack on the quarterly results, let's still recap what do we have as elements in the growth story? How do we intend to grow as a competent compounder? I mean, we are already a very profitable and scalable platform within this sector in the North and part of the Central European market. What we can do is to combine the organic growth with operational excellence and then acquisitions. I think the organic growth at the end of the day is a very important measurement of our ability to develop the companies we have acquired. That's the part of a compounder that is very important, that you also develop the companies that you have acquired. It's not only acquired growth. You need to be able to grow faster than the market.
I think we have now been able to prove that during the last five years and also specifically now during the last quarter by growing faster than the market. The market has been fairly lackluster these first nine months. No real value growth in the market, but we have been able to grow 4% in quarter three, which is really good. I won't go through all the details. The devil is in the details also in the wholesale and repair and maintenance, but you need to get the details right from pricing to looking at diversifying your customer base and also looking at how to run your businesses. If we are looking at the operational excellence, we have a very detailed playbook on when we buy repair and maintenance workshops, kind of a hundred point checklist of what to fix.
Even if the companies usually are in good shape, we always find some synergy benefits. For us, synergy is not a bad word. I think it's not the driving force of the acquisitions, but we always find different types of synergies in the way we operate, whether it would be procurement efficiencies or just the way you run a workshop efficiently or you make the money work harder for us in the working capital optimization part. Acquisition side, we can do bolt-ons. We do bolt-ons. I will explain later what we mean with bolt-ons, just adding to the current platforms, new companies, and that is a self, in a way, feeding machine. We use the local organizations to drive those, which is very good. We have a large M&A group now doing these acquisitions. We can also look at new vehicle types.
The defense sector is very important and interesting for us as well, as any company these days. We are looking at that. We can also acquire new growth platforms and make real transformational deals in the future. Right. Let's have a look at quarter three, a record strong quarter. What do I mean with record strong quarter? The net sales for the first time ever was over EUR 100 million, and the comparable EBITDA was also the highest in the history of Relais Group. We are really starting to see the effect of the acquisitions we have made during this year. Just recapping a few numbers, which Thomas will go more deep in his presentation, a whopping + 35% growth, out of which 4% was organic. Also, the comparable earnings per share has grown fairly nicely.
I think the important thing when looking at the metrics relating to balance sheet is what Thomas will also explain, that once we have done so big, almost transformational deals this year, we see the full effect of the balance sheet in the books, but we only see a couple of months of the result in the books. This will change over time, of course, when you start to get the 12 months effect of the results as well. Do not get carried away by the metrics on the balance sheet because that will change over time. Historical quarter, transformational deals. I will not go through all the details, just want to highlight what we did and recap what we did.
June, Team Verksted and Lastvagnsdelar are really, really strong companies in Norway, really kind of cementing our position as the biggest operator of independent commercial vehicle repair shops in the Nordic market. Fantastic teams, well-run companies. Really happy to have them. Matro Group, nowadays called Nedking Europe, opening the business for truck accessories in Europe. Fantastic business as well that many people are not even aware of how much equipment you can actually have in the trucks to personalize the trucks. Autodelar are a smaller acquisition in Sweden, enhancing the position of our group company, ABR, in a certain region. Last but not least, just after the quarter was closed, we acquired two very high-quality commercial vehicle workshops in Eastern Finland, also having a very important business with the defense sector, which is very interesting and highly interesting also brands that we have the license to serve there.
As a result, as I said, over EUR 400 million pro forma net sales and almost 1,700 professionals in eight different countries. The acquisitions, 64% growth of the segment. We do have two segments. I do not want to confuse you, but we have two segments and then a few business areas. The two segments grew very, let's say, strongly. The Scandinavian segment grew very strongly, 64%, out of which was 5% and also comparable exchange rates. We are not taking any credit for the improved Swedish krona. 64% is basically because most of the companies we bought fall under the Scandinavian segment. Even the Central European business falls under the Scandinavian segment in our books currently. The 2% in the Finnish and Baltic segment is actually above the estimated market growth. We estimate the market to have been at the best flat or even a small minus.
That actually goes for Sweden as well. We are not growing in line with the market in Sweden and Scandinavia. We are growing faster than the market. Technical Wholesale and Products, 21% growth, organically 7%. We bought Lastvagnsdelar in Norway, which is a very good contributor into this growth, but also the organic business developed very nicely in Sweden and Norway, especially the workshop equipment sales in Norway were very nice and very good. What is encouraging, I think I already indicated this in the quarter two presentation, is that it looks like the lighting business has started, the pre-sale started well, and we can really see the result that the vehicle lighting sales have started very well during the quarter three. Especially, Strands is standing out again as an export company, but our Finnish and Swedish and now even Norwegian online business has developed very well.
It's really nice to see that Lumise is reaching kind of record sales during this quarter. The other business area, commercial vehicle repair and maintenance, you saw the number, 62% is really, really strong, but it's coming from Team Verksted, a really strong contributor. The rest actually is showing a - 3%, which is partly related to the very strong comparison period last year. Last year, quarter three was a very strong growth, double-digit growth on repair and maintenance. This was kind of stabilizing. The trailer market in Sweden was softish and partly Finland as well. We expect this to come back on track, whether speed up or stabilize during the quarter four. We have no reason to believe that the market would be kind of going down. It's more like stabilizing in the quarter four.
What we have done to boost organic growth as well, we've done a lot of changes in Sweden for our current STS chain, which we have rebranded as Team Verksted. We see some synergy also from a branding position point of view where we now have in Norway Team Verksted and in Sweden Team Verksted. Also, opening two new workshops in Sweden. Kind of stay tuned, the story will continue next year. Now wrapping up the commercial vehicle and repair workshop business, we are, as I said, the biggest operator of independent, I mean, vehicle manufacturer-independent commercial vehicle workshops across Finland, Norway, and Sweden. All in Denmark is missing from the Nordic point of view, but let's see about that later. Growth strategy, how do we intend to grow? I already touched that a little bit in the kind of a compounder pyramid that I showed.
It's the combination of acquisitions, organic growth, and functional excellence. As a compounder, it's all about allocating capital, making wise decisions of where to invest, and then make the money work harder for us and the shareholders. As part of that, having sustainable financing solutions is, of course, important. You saw when we bought Team Verksted, we took a bridge loan of almost EUR 40 million, and then to refinance that, we launched a hybrid bond solution that Thomas will then explain later, which was a really strong success in the market. It was oversubscribed by 3 x and very wide support from the investors. A lot of new investors that we haven't seen before, very established investors from all across Europe and Nordics were participating in this. That really supports our growth for the future. It was a very good experience.
I have a few slides after Thomas, so I will now give over to Thomas, please.
Thank you, Arni. Yes, it was an eventful quarter, both from a financing side and also from a financial performance perspective. I tried to keep it short, and there's a lot of slides. I won't go through all of them, but they are all included for you to read if you want. Looking at the performance of net sales and EBITDA, these are the reported numbers. Arni already explained about the comparable numbers. Looking at the reported EBITDA, that decreased by 3%. Here is a key takeaway that there was included a kind of short-term temporary inventory step-up booking of EUR 2 million that then took that performance number down from comparable from EUR 10.9 million. I will go through that soon in the next slide. This is the key takeaway, basically that this is a record high operative performance of EBITDA during the past three to four years.
As Arni said, there was a positive impact from the strengthening of the krona. We have taken a lot of negative impact in the previous years and the previous quarters, but now we had a positive impact of that. The items affecting comparability, as I mentioned, they are in a quarter about EUR 2.1 million and then cumulatively EUR 2.7 million. As we have explained in our accounting principles, the normal ones are the transaction costs in a company like ours from the acquisitions. There were EUR 300,000 in the quarter and EUR 600,000 cumulatively. The big one here is that when we have acquired the Matro Group companies and Team Verksted Holding companies, they have sizable inventories. We have to do a step-up of those inventories or allocate the acquisition price part of that to the inventories. We depreciate that over a three to four months period.
Here the step-up amortization is the three months amortization of that step-up of inventories. That has now ended. There will be no impact of this in the coming quarters. This was a temporary impact. That's why it's here included in the items affecting comparability. Right. Going in to see more metrics of performance, gross profit and gross margin. As in EBITDA, there was a big impact of acquisitions increasing the gross profit. Again, a key takeaway here is that the gross margin has also increased. This is due to the increased weight of the repair and maintenance business, which has a higher gross margin. To highlight again that here in this gross margin also, the inventory step-up, as I just mentioned, they are booked in change in inventory. They also burden this number. This is even better to gross margin than you see here on the screen.
Operating expenses were stable comparably. As we have added increased weight of the repair and maintenance business due to acquisitions, we have a higher gross margin, but then again we have also a higher operating expense percentage also. A lot of non-organic impacts on these metrics. Organically, still stable development. Going over to the balance sheet, looking at networking capital, here is the big impact from the acquired companies. Networking capital increased about EUR 17 million due to the acquisitions now in June and July. Otherwise, you can see that also inventory turnover is a bit down. Here again, it's key to remember what Arni said, that the balance sheet figures in these metrics are fully included, but the turnover sales side only has three to four months of sales included. They will even out. Organically speaking, there was a bit of a slowdown in networking capital turnover and inventory turnover.
I want to emphasize that in the cumulative numbers, [HVC] was also burdened by there's no dividend payable in the current year's numbers. That also impacts partly negatively on these figures. Going over to the cash flow side, this was a record cash flow from operations, you see from the chart. Also good that we have had an increasing impact from the change in networking capital now in the previous quarters. This now turned to a positive development now in Q3. You see that there's a lower increase in networking capital in Q3 compared to last year. We are basically slowly narrowing down the negative gap in networking capital compared to last year. Here networking capital is impacted by also increased leases. We have also a negative exchange rate difference in the cumulative numbers that we already commented on in Q2. All in all, a good stable performance here.
Cash flow summary, all the key components of the cash flow statement I mentioned about the cash flow from operations. As I said, we have invested a lot in new businesses during the past three to four months. That means that we have EUR 37 million of cash flow from investing activities. Here is the acquisition of the shares in Nedking Europe. That is the holding company of the Matro Group companies. Then the acquisition of the shares in Team Verksted Holding. Here, of course, is missing the repayment of the Team Verksted Holding existing debt, which is then shown in the cash flow from financing activities. I won't go through the cash flow from financing activities, but the total impact of all the activities here is EUR 57 million positive. That, of course, comes from we raised funds in March for the Matro acquisition. That was EUR 17 million.
We raised and repaid the bridge loan facility that was taken for the Team Verksted acquisition. The key takeaway here is that we then emitted a hybrid bond of EUR 50 million in September. Those are the big kind of changes here in the cash flow from financing activities that is worth mentioning here. I won't go through these finance agreements. If you want to look at the details more, they are included here. The thing that I want to raise here is that in connection with the Matro acquisition, there was left a minority shareholding in the company, meaning that according to IFRS, and we have a synthetic forward option, there's a shareholder agreement connecting to this acquisition. Here there is a put and call option for the buyer, for Relais and the seller to close and for us to acquire that 30%.
According to IFRS, this means that we have a synthetic forward option, meaning that we have in the balance sheet in interest-bearing liabilities. One component of this is a EUR 6 million liability. We book an interest on that also in net financial items. As then in the shareholders' agreement, there are certain details causing that part of this option valuation has to be booked as a cost in the employee expenses. That's why we also now, from this time forward, over a five-year period, we will have an approximately EUR 1.2 million non-cash IFRS-based cost every year for the next five years. This is the key takeaway from and why I want to mention this synthetic forward option. The hybrid bond, I mentioned that that is now a EUR 50 million amount included in total equity. This is then, of course, an equity item.
There's no maturity date of that, but key to emphasize that if we pay out dividends in the future, then also there is a liability to pay interest on the hybrid. You have more details on this on the web page also. Here are the details on the new loans raised and repaid. I won't go through them, but you can read them if you like. Here is then finally the overall closing financial position and interest-bearing net debt at the end of September. You see that we have added loans from financial institutions on a net basis, about EUR 35 million- EUR 130 million. We have added a lot of lease liabilities, meaning workshops in strategic locations from Team Verksted Holding. There is an increase of about EUR 40 million on that. All in all, our gross debt is EUR 238 million against EUR 156 million last year in September.
Our cash position was strong at the end of the quarter. It is key to note that EUR 14 million out of that EUR 38 million was reserved for the Wetteri workshop acquisitions that was then materialized in the beginning of October. At the bottom here, you see that we still have undrawn uncommitted facilities of EUR 6 million to use for future acquisitions. Also, when deducting the Wetteri funds, we have good liquidity to carry out selected acquisitions in the near term.
Thomas, can I add?
Sure.
Yeah, I think it's also, as you, Thomas, said, this is once you buy big companies, of course you get the whole balance sheet, you also get the debt, but you don't get the full 12 months EBITDA. That's what you're actually stating here. Also, bear in mind that this as well will stabilize as we get the results of these acquisitions.
Yes, yeah. Yeah, that impacts the leverage number especially here. It kind of underestimates the real situation because it lacks the 12-month impact of the EBITDA. Going over to the P&L and looking at the net financials, the key takeaways are that we have lower interest expenses in the quarter despite having significantly higher interest-bearing debt. That has to do with the lower EURIBOR and STIBOR rates on our loans. Of course, here is shown the increase in interest on lease liabilities due to the increased lease liabilities. We had a positive exchange rate gain now in the quarter relating to our krona-based loans, external loans, and internal loan receivables. You can read more on that in the report. To summarize the balance sheet and financial position, the key ratios, the total assets have increased to almost EUR 500 million. Total equity including the hybrid bond is EUR 178 million.
As I said, the interest-bearing net debt is EUR 200 million, an increase of about EUR 50 million. Net gearing here also coming down due to the hybrid bond. Equity ratio also including the hybrid bond is 36.5%. As I said, we have about EUR 40 million in cash assets. The final slide for me, the return components. One key metric we use to look at is return on net working capital, and that is a bit lower than last year. Here again, we have the impact that we have the full impact of net working capital in the balance sheet, but only three to four months return component on that. This will mathematically increase in the coming quarters. The same goes for return on capital employed, which is still fairly stable, and also return on equity. Here, the hybrid bond added to equity also impacts this metric.
All in all, good numbers and a lot of changes from a financial perspective.
Thank you. Thank you, Thomas. We wanted to take some more time to explain the dynamism and the changes during this transformational quarter. I think it's very important and valuable information. This year, we've seen before many times that's the official financial target that we have, the EUR 50 million by the end of this year, a comparable EBITDA run rate. The year has not ended yet, so let's see where we land. I'm very, very close at least at the moment looking at the acquisitions we have done. We are in the process of reviewing the existing financial targets, obviously, as the strategy period is coming to an end. The next period starts in 2026. We will come back to new financial targets in due course. Events after the review period, a lot of interesting things have happened after the quarter ended.
As I already mentioned, we acquired two very high-quality workshops from Wetteri Auto in Eastern Finland. I'm really happy to have those two workshops joining us, very strong local presence, and also giving us a couple of new brands in our portfolio to have an official license for. There is no need to go through the hybrid bond anymore, but it's of course a listed bond as well, trading as of 7th October . As of this morning, the decision was made to pay out or distribute the additional dividend of EUR 0.20 per share. You will remember that was the authorization that the Annual General Meeting gave to the board in April to decide on its sole discretion. Now the decision has been made to pay that out, and it will then happen, if I remember correctly, next week is the date. Very exciting, very positive news.
As we have announced in June, I'm now going to retire from the CEO position next spring and focus more on the board and advisory type of positions in the future. I'm really happy to, unless you haven't already seen the announcement, I'm really happy anyhow to welcome Christian to join the team. He would then take over the CEO position at the latest on 19th January next year. He has a very strong track record from Ratos AB in Sweden, running decentralized organizations where he ran the business area called Construction & Services. He's done a lot of M&A, many transactions during his previous 10 years, and also has a touching point to the vehicle aftermarket and automotive business through Toyota and also McKinsey & Company. 45 years old, Swedish Master of Science from Linköping University.
I'm really happy to have you, Christian, on board and welcome you tomorrow as well when we are meeting in Finland. This is great news, and I'm really looking forward that Christian will be a good captain for this wonderful ship called Relais. Right, before going to the questions, a couple of slides. What is Relais Group as an investment? Of course, it's a fantastic investment opportunity for everybody. I mean, we are a competent compounder. We have the sector focus. It's very clear of the commercial vehicle aftermarket. We have done a lot of successful M&As in a fragmented industry, and we have still a lot of significant acquisition opportunities. The market is large. It's resilient. It's less sensitive for cyclicality. It's also a defensive market and is structurally growing. We are already a very interesting scalable platform in North Europe and Central Europe.
I mean, with this market cap and turnover that we have, I'm already now seeing a lot of interest from investors all around basically the globe. We are above the radar level clearly as a competent compounder. Strong, consistent growth during a long period and also good organic revenue growth, which is very important for this type of compounding business that we are running. The decentralized model, we give a lot of power to the companies that we acquire. There's a big entrepreneurial culture and values that we enhance in those companies. Looking back from 2019 when we were kind of introduced to the stock market, I've shown this before, had you invested one euro then, it would be now worth the total shareholder return would be 143%.
Also bear in mind that we have distributed, we returned EUR 35 million to the shareholders, either in dividends or share repurchases, mostly in dividends. Beating the Helsinki OMX index with 2.3 x. I think personally, I'm really happy to see that the amount of the number of shareholders has grown with over 1,000 shareholders from last year's September to this year's September. That is really, really encouraging. We've done a lot of work on the IR side, and I'm really happy to see that many people have found, not only in Finland, but also in Sweden, have found Relais as an interesting investment target. Before then handing over to the questions, I want to, of course, thank our 1,700 employees, our professionals, and also want to thank our shareholders, most of you are also most likely listening to this, for the support and also the board and other stakeholders.
This is most likely the last quarterly presentation that I will do as CEO. I also want to thank all of you who have followed these presentations during the last five years. I missed, I had one more outlook. That's very important. That's basically the same I presented in quarter three. No really big changes. We feel, and we know we are in good shape and well positioned to continue the successful implementation of our strategy. We are seeing some cautious positive signs in the market. I don't want to sound overly positive. The market is still a question mark, especially on the spare parts side, but the equipment and lighting business seems to be floating well. Pipeline is good. We have good targets in the pipeline. I'm not at all worried that we would not be able to continue the acquisitions also in the future.
That is the last page of the presentation. Now over to the questions, which I think Irina will facilitate. Let's go.
Yes, Christian wants to know, you know that the vehicle lighting season has started very well for Strands. Should we expect this to continue and strong Q4 figures?
Thank you, Christian, for the question. The signals we are getting and the results we are seeing are still positive. I'm not giving any kind of pre-look into quarter four, but let's say the market looks to be strong on the lighting.
Christian wants also to know, you started rebranding STS workshops to Team Verksted this quarter. Can you elaborate on the strategic reasoning for this move? Is the Team Verksted brand significantly stronger than STS brand?
Yeah, there were a few reasons. If we go back to what does STS stand for, Sydhamnen's Trailer Service, we wanted to take a step out of a very, let's say, STS was a very kind of regional brand, and also the name gives it away, Trailer Service. We are not only about trailer service, we are also about truck repair. Since we had already Team Verkstad, we bought in Sweden a year ago, and then Team Verksted in Norway, we wanted to combine all of these three under the same umbrella, which we feel is very strong. Team Verkstad is a very general name, but still a specific name. Team Verkstad was chosen to be the new name as a rebirth of STS. Also bear in mind that we are doing bolt-on acquisitions of workshops that have not been branded STS.
In that case, we wanted to also create a new platform in Sweden and are focusing on now making that a household name in the Swedish market.
Okay, thank you. Samu wants to know, now when you have strengthened the capital structure with the recent hybrid transactions, what is the main motivation behind the additional dividend payment announced today? How does that relate to financing your further growth ambitions?
Thank you, Samu, for the question. It is of course always in a limited world where you don't have unlimited access to capital, you have to make some choices. I think there is, I won't kind of dwell into what is the kind of argumentation or reasoning for the dividend payment. It was something that was given as a mandate for the board to decide upon, and the board has decided to pay it. It has no major effect on our ability to finance the acquisitions in the future. Of course, it is money that we have chosen to give to the shareholders instead of buying new companies. It would be an endless discussion because there are two different schools always in dividends. I won't go into that discussion.
Okay, thank you. Will asks, you mentioned in the report that the EBITDA margin in the commercial vehicle repair and maintenance business is on average lower than in the Technical Wholesale and Product segment. Do you nevertheless see potential for improvement in this area, particularly in newly acquired businesses through efficiency measures, synergies, and pricing? How significant could such an improvement be?
Yeah, thank you for the good question, Samu. Yes, absolutely, we see a potential. We not only see potential, we also have a track record of being able to do that. Inherently, just to give you a ballpark number, inherently a typical EBITDA percentage could be like 5% for a workshop or workshop chain. For one single workshop, it actually can be higher, but then you start to have administrative costs and stuff. We usually see that the max potential for a workshop chain would be somewhere like 10%. I mean, there are also higher examples. We have been able to improve it by a lot of small things. We have this playbook that we call the kind of workshop excellence. We have been able to take the profitability up from 5%- 10%.
When we bought Team Verksted, which was part of your question, we already upfront identified synergy potential, which is coming from the efficiency, about NOK 30 million. That's very substantial. It's not coming during the first year, but it's steps that we take to get the, let's say, the networking capital work harder and also to get the capacity utilization, which is alpha and omega for running an efficient workshop. Yes, we know how to run the workshop and we see a good potential to increase it.
Thank you. Will also asks, following the new financing arrangements, do you see that you would once again have the capacity to carry out acquisitions of a similar size to those in Norway?
Thank you, Will, also for this question. I would say, of course, if you look at the balance sheet, currently taking on a similar size of chunk, like EUR 40 million, would not be advisable or possible without really increasing the leverage to levels that we don't feel comfortable with. That would then require some other types of equity enhancement should that become actual. I would not like to speculate on that. We keep the eyes open and I think we can still tap into capital in the market and most likely it would be hard equity. Again, I don't want to speculate, but we keep our eyes open and would not like to walk away from deals if they are really, really, really important to us. This is always the decision for the management and the board to make in the future.
Thank you. Pia asks, can you please explain the logic behind paying the extra dividend of EUR 0.20 per share, given that you have strengthened the balance sheet with the hybrid bond? Why not leave more firepower for future M&A?
Thank you, Pia, for the question. I just relate to the answer I already gave in the first. It's a decision that has been made.
There are a couple of questions from Joni. Working capital was up to EUR 105 million and you mentioned slowdown in inventory turnover. How much above targeted level you currently are?
I think the inventory question is more a temporary one. You have to also differ the question into two parts. The first part being the acquired companies that we, of course, also inspect and see what the inventory level is. It's part of our playbook as well that we give a target for the companies of where the net working capital should be, and inventory is, of course, a big driver of net working capital. It's not the only one, but it's a big driver. For the existing companies, there are partly products still relating to the warm winter, but the effect of that will, of course, vanish. Every year we have to ramp up the inventory for the seasonal lighting business, and that is seeming to go very well. I'm not overly worried. I think there's a few million that we can squeeze out from the inventory.
I don't want to give any exact number, but we are, of course, focusing on that. It's not a huge problem, but we, of course, want to release cash from the inventory and the working capital.
Okay, thank you. You are speaking about cautious positive signs in the market. In addition to lighting, has there been pickup in demand?
I think we are seeing a slight pickup on the workshop business. Still early days, not so much maybe on the trailer side. Equipment and lighting, lighting really positive, equipment is quite much relating to how cold the weather will be. On spare parts, Sweden still flattish or minus. Finland, we saw, I'm talking about market statistics now, Finland, we saw a slight uptick in September on spare parts, really not knowing where it comes from basically on the market, whether it's just a bad comparison period last year. I mean, cautiously positive signs, yeah, but it's not a boom or anything.
Okay. Have you found more possible synergies in terms of cost or cross-selling? How has best practice sharing progressed, and when could these be visible in P&L?
I think they are already visible in the P&L. Of course, we don't specifically report the synergies. From a cross-selling perspective, I think the untapped potential, the biggest ones are cross-sales of commercial vehicle spare part products from Sweden to Norway because we have a wholesale operation in Sweden, which has a very large scale of products. Also, the rollout of lighting products through the workshops and through the Nedking Europe operation in Europe. Best practices we are sharing every day. Ultimately, the real measurement is going to be when we are seeing the development of Team Verksted and the way we are getting the synergy benefits out from there. It's a kind of a mixed message. I mean, it's impossible to say exactly what benefit is coming from where, but we are already seeing them and expect them to be visible during the next years, of course.
It's a never-ending process.
Okay. There are a few questions from Mohammed. There is the search of a new CEO advancing, but I think that's answered.
Yes.
Are you seeing more competition from MEKO that started to invest more in its commercial division?
Thank you, Mohammed, for the questions. The first one is already answered. We see that our dear friend MEKO has activated on the heavy commercial side, but let's see, we have not yet encountered that in real life. Of course, I think the game is a bit like in the passenger car side. The OE players, the vehicle manufacturers, used to control the market decades ago, and now it's roughly 50/50 independent and OE. I think on the commercial vehicle side, there's still room for the independent side to grow. This is a free market and we welcome competition and wish them well.
What EBITDA margin should we accept in the whole year, and how does it evolve in the midterm?
We will not give any forward statements on the EBITDA.
Is the objective to reach EUR 50 million EBITDA performance seems always possible?
As I stated, we have already acquired local GAAP-wise about EUR 11 million. Let's see where this year ends. I mean, the ultimate measurement will be done when we publish the quarter four, and we are not giving any information about that in advance.
One more from Mohammed. Why did you choose a perpetual bond as the way of financing?
I would maybe say why not? I think it's a very, and I don't want to sound impertinent, so don't take it that way, but I mean, it's a fairly usual instrument in the Finnish financing market. It's not so maybe usual in other markets, but a hybrid bond perpetual is very, let's say, I wouldn't maybe call it typical, but it's an instrument that we felt was the right one and not to have a convertible or hard equity having a diluting effect. For us, after the analysis, we felt that this was a good instrument and also I think we got it in very favorable conditions.
Okay. Question from Mika. What was the organic sales growth in the lighting business in Q3?
We do not report the growth on the product group level, but the total organic growth was 4%. We do not report that.
Okay. Thank you. One last question from Petri. Consumer sentiment has remained weak, but you mentioned your online sales reaching all-time high figures. Are there any changes in your business, possibly offering or operation, which could explain the development?
Strictly speaking, I didn't say all-time high. I said record. I mean, record for the time that we have had that online business. I guess it has been higher before in the heydays of the e-commerce. I think there are many things that we and the team, Lumise team, have done right. I mean, the product offering, the price points, using marketing. In a way, it's a positive surprise for us as well because if you read the media, consumer confidence is, the media is bashing all the time. Nobody's buying anything, but we don't see it really that way. I think it could be also the right price points that is the case. A lot of good stuff has been done on the online business. I think that is reflected in those numbers. Hard to make any bigger statement of the consumer sentiment.
Thank you. That was all. Questions?
Thank you very much. A lot of good questions. There's a lot of stuff in the report. Please take your time and read it. I just wish you a very good end of the year. Thank you, Thomas, as well.
Thank you.