Very good morning from the sunny but slightly chilly Helsinki, and welcome to follow the webcast presentation of Relais Group, quarter first results. My name is Arni Ekholm. I'm the CEO of the company, and I'm delighted to have with me today our new CFO, Mr. Thomas Ekström.
Good morning. Who will, together with me, walk you through the Q1 results. Before going forward in this stage, I would also like to express my warm thanks to our previous CFO, Mr. Pekka Raatikainen, for his tremendous efforts and contribution for the company during the last six, seven years. I hope you, Pekka, are following this webcast now. Good. The contents of the presentation, the presentation will take about, let's say, 30 to 40 minutes. We have slightly added the amount of slides on the financial side, where Thomas will make a couple of deep dives in the numbers. In the end, there will be a chance to submit questions.
You can submit the questions while we go along, and then, on your screen, there should be a button, Ask a Question, and then you can submit them. In the end, then we will entertain the questions at the Q&A session. All in all, about maybe 35-40 minutes, so bear with us. In the beginning, I will also, for those of you who haven't heard about Relais before, I guess there are a few of you who haven't followed our presentation before, I would summarize what Relais is all about. For all of you having seen the slides, you might want to grab a cup of coffee and then return in a few minutes.
I will talk about sustainability, also, take a deeper dive on the vehicle aftermarket and what does the technological disruption mean for us as a business environment. Then we will have a look on today's topic, quarter one, the business review, which I will present, then Thomas will, as I said, make a deep dive on the numbers. Then a summary, then the questions at the end. Good. Relais in brief and quarter one, firstly in brief. Firstly, before looking at the numbers, it was a very successful quarter, and it wouldn't have been possible without the hard effort of our 1,000 professionals.
I mean, there's a lot of people doing even very hard physical work, like our mechanics and warehouse workers and everybody also in the offices. You really made a good quarter, and I want to thank you very much for it. I also want to thank our customers. Without you, it would not be possible to run this business. Also I would like to thank our shareholders and business partners for the trust that you are showing to us. EUR 69 million was the net sales during the first quarter, which is a growth of 11%, and we will get back to all these numbers more in detail.
The comparable EBITDA was EUR 11.2 million, which is a growth of 20%, the comparable EBITA during the first quarter reached EUR 7.6 million, which is a growth of 23%. What is Relais all about? We are a consolidator and a smart compounder, I will explain what we mean with smart compounder, with a sector focus on vehicle aftermarket in the Nordic region. It's very important to understand that we see a competitive advantage in that we focus on the sector. We know this sector very well, and it gives us a lot of benefits in our implementation of our strategy. We also serve as a growth platform for the group companies and build them into great businesses. Not only do we acquire companies, we also build them.
It's not just kind of having a big group of different companies, but we work together very, very closely and it's our responsibility, of course, towards the shareholders to develop these companies and their profitability. We look at the whole vehicle life cycle and the value generated and what kind of businesses can we find in the different pockets in the market during the vehicle life cycle. Also here, I will explain more in detail in the market part of the presentation what we mean with this. We have experienced that this is the sector in the market where there's least cyclicality and the biggest potential for earnings growth as opposed to sales of new vehicles or used vehicles. How do we create shareholder value?
We aim to deliver strong earnings growth through a strategy that is based on three reinforcing themes: acquisitions, synergies, and operational excellence. I will also slightly more in detail explain the strategy after a few slides. How does the group look like? This is the current situation after the latest acquisitions. We divide the business into two groups that we also report, technical wholesale and products, and then commercial vehicle repair and maintenance. We are, when we look at the commercial vehicle repair and maintenance, the biggest independent operator in the Nordic market. We have over 30 workshops in Finland and Sweden combined. The wholesale business comprises of import and distribution wholesale of spare parts and equipment.
Also on top of that, we have businesses that are maybe considered more as product companies like Strands and Startax, who have a big amount of their business is own branded, own developed products, namely, vehicle lighting products. That's very important to then also understand. This is a growth strategy, three reinforcing themes: growth by acquisitions, we are a smart compounder, we actively consolidate the aftermarket, and we have a focus and sector focus on the aftermarket. Operational excellence, continuous development of operations to grow earnings and cash flow, and that means in clear text explained, we constantly develop the processes we have, whether it be purchase or, let's say warehouse management and to try to optimize the networking capital levels and the inventory levels.
Also by becoming a bigger group, we can press the global suppliers for better prices, and that's very important to keep the gross profit and gross margin percentages on a good and healthy level. Organic growth, we feel that we have a good possibility to boost organic growth because we have the sector focus, so we operate in the same field and we can cross-sell different products from one country to another and find new distribution opportunities that we haven't had before acquiring these companies. A short recap of the journey that we have experienced from this is from 2013.
2019 was the first big step when we got together with ABR and Huzells and acquired them, then we were listed on the First North, Nasdaq First North list here in Helsinki. You can see we have done 10 acquisitions during the a couple of last years. One big milestone was the main list IPO that we made last December. The latest acquisition is Adita here in Helsinki region. We fairly recently updated our financial target. We aim to accelerate our growth from the previous target, which was EUR 500 million turnover by end of 2026. We changed the target to a profit target, i.e., we aim to reach a pro forma EBITDA of EUR 50 million by the end of 2025.
We feel it's a more relevant target and describes the shareholder value creation potential in this company as opposed to a pure turnover target. We see a lot of good and healthy acquisition target potential companies or opportunities with increasingly attractive valuation levels. I think the valuation levels have come down. They have not plummeted, but they are on a more realistic level and also probably moving forward, they will be as opposed to what they were two or three years ago. During the last also this quarter, the ended quarter and last H2 year, we have experienced strongly improved cash flow from operations as a result of this operational excellence projects that we have had in all our operations.
That also combined with other customary financing tools allow for an accelerated acquisition driven growth plan moving forward. Shortly about sustainability. For us, sustainability means everyday practical actions and meaningful everyday actions, and we take good care of our people, employees, customers, business partners, and the environment. Then on the as a wholesaler and importer for, of course, the cooperation with our suppliers is very important, and we have ESG related criteria for all our major suppliers. Also one thing important to understand is the kind of circular economy aspect in the spare parts. Quite a big part of our spare parts are covered by a refund and recycling system.
The used parts get returned back to us with a refund system, and then they are refurbished in a factory, and then they get a new life, which is sustainable and also kind of using less resources, natural resources. When it comes to the changing landscape of the mobility market, which I will return back to after a couple of slides. As a part of that, we have, of course, we are matching the demand of the market and have increased the parts specifically designed for electric and hybrid electric vehicles and the product range is growing steadily. We already can serve most and of the biggest e-vehicle brands.
An interesting thing is of course the electrification of the commercial vehicles, which is advancing in a different pace than passenger cars. There we already have the competence and capability to maintain and repair electrical commercial vehicles, both in Sweden and Finland. Very exciting projects going on. Good. Looking at the vehicle aftermarket opportunity, it is a very large fragmented market. We did a very thorough research last year of the Swedish market as an example. It's the biggest market in Nordics as well. Accounts for over EUR 17 billion turnover on the aftermarket. That's excluding the vehicle sales. 16,000 companies and 57,000 employees.
If we multiply it with roughly 2.5 to get a Nordic picture, estimation is about EUR 40 billion market, and that's including the so-called OE or the vehicle manufacturers dependent operators in the aftermarket. The independent side, which we sort of operate in, is about 50% of the business in the passenger car side. It is slightly less on the commercial vehicle side. All in all, what does this mean to us as a company and for you as investors and shareholders? There are several interesting acquisition targets in the market, so there's big potential for further consolidation because of the size of the market and the fragmentation of the market. Okay, what does the technology disruption mean for us?
We all know everybody's following the media and seeing the statistics about the conversion from internal combustion engine to electrical vehicles mostly happening on the, on the passenger car side. Of course, there are less moving parts in an EV, but there are still a lot of spare parts. I think this is a kind of a perception thing that many think that there's no need to repair or maintain the EV. That's of course totally false. There's a lot of things that has to be done and will be done also to maintain and repair electrical vehicles. Let's say from a business perspective, the good thing is that the value of these spare parts and components is higher most often than in the, let's say, classical, traditional, internal combustion engine vehicles.
This is kind of opening new business opportunities and also increasing the value of the market. From a circular economy point of view and sustainability point of view, there most likely will be some kind of, let's say, recycling business for the batteries and also repairing of batteries. There will also be powertrain conversion possibilities, especially on the heavy commercial vehicle side, where the fleet like almost 100% consists of fuel using engines. There's a chance to convert them into using hydrogen or fuel cells or even change the engine into a electrical vehicle. Because of the price of the vehicle being so high, it makes economically sense for the fleet owners to consider conversion.
There we are very well positioned with our commercial vehicle repair chains. Change in ownership, there are new fines to finance the vehicles, and this opens also interesting business model opportunities where we can team up with financing companies or insurance companies, and so on and so forth. The autonomous driving technology, digitalization, advanced driver assisting systems, they all need a lot of sensors and cameras. Moving forward, the vehicle these days is more like a computer on wheels. There's a lot of electrical components, and they also need to be exchanged at some stage.
There will be an aftermarket for cameras, there will be an aftermarket for sensors, and we are experts on the electrical parts, so that puts us in a very interesting position. Let's say the development of the commercial vehicles is slightly different or actually quite much different compared to the passenger cars. There we foresee the conversion to electrical taking a lot of longer time than on the passenger cars, and not necessarily being the only game in town because then there are other ways to meet the emission targets, which is like biofuel and synthetic fuels and also hydrogen cells. We are watching this very carefully, the technology, and the let's say, development, what's happening there.
The kind of a relevant part for us is that all of this is going to require investments both for equipment and competence of the people repairing these cars. For us as a fairly big-sized company, this is possible to do. For smaller independent workshops, this is most likely not viable to do. This will drive the consolidation on the independent side as well moving forward in the coming years, which opens then again acquisition possibilities for us. The value and the growth of the market, it's a very stable market. The sales of the new vehicles have stalled in all European countries, meaning that the average age of the vehicle fleets and parks is growing, which then of course also it develops demand for the aftermarket.
90 million vehicles, it is still steadily growing in the Nordic markets. It has defensive characteristics. It's also partly counter-cyclical. It's not as sensitive as the sales of new vehicles. The growing e-commerce is driving the need for the so-called last mile deliveries, which is happening then either with ICE technology or EV technology, light commercial vehicles, especially in the urban areas. That will drive the mileage in that sector of the aftermarket. That creates a growing need for repair and maintenance. Power management, most light commercial vehicles require an additional power management system rather than the start battery to keep the, for instance, refrigeration going on for the food deliveries, and lighting, which is very important for us.
As I briefly touched earlier, the product range extension will happen. I mean, there will be more need for connectivity related parts, sensors, cameras, lighting, and then also specific EV spare parts. Tires, EV is heavier because of the battery, and it eats more tires. Windshields are thinner these days to keep the weight of the vehicle down. There will be very interesting possibilities also for us there. Personal and urban mobility, the two-wheel sector is projected to grow. I'm not saying that we are hugely into the electrical scooters or anything, but let's say there are some interesting pockets in the markets that we are looking at from an acquisition point of view.
Just to sum up the aftermarket, the relevant part, I've shown this before. I mean, this is the hotspot where we are operating. Everything from when the vehicle is imported to where it is demolished in the markets. You have the different vehicle types on the left. There are numerous attractive acquisition targets as well. We are operating in all of these sectors. All right, thanks for following the market review. I think it was important to tell a little bit more than we have done before of the trends and how they affect us.
Going to the today's main topic, the quarter one, Thomas will take you through the numbers more in detail, but I just want to kind of add some color on what has happened. As I said, it's a very strong quarter, 11% sales growth. It would've been considerably higher with constant exchange rates because over half of our business is coming from Scandinavian markets and Swedish crown and Norwegian crown have deteriorated or weakened from last year. This is a very good and solid performance, as I said, from all our group companies. The biggest contributor in this versus last year is the development of the commercial vehicle repair and maintenance business.
I mean, these business units really improved from last year, and there's a very robust and solid demand on that part. Also the Scandinavian business operations in general improved very nicely, leading to also a very good development on the gross profit and hence also EBITDA 11% increase and sorry, 11% EBITDA percentage. Also, as I mentioned before, the net cash flow from operations increased with EUR 11 million. An important topic to understand here is that we have managed to do it without compromising the gross profit of the company. It's not that we kind of sold away obsolete inventory. It's more like there was a lot of commercial activities and then also demand situation was better.
Of course the new processes in purchasing has contributed into this. Let's look deeper into the business areas, technical wholesale and products business area, which is 64%, two-thirds of the business of the company, including also what we call the product companies. I would describe it in a way that the Scandinavian market situation was very stable. Despite now if we don't look at the currency rate effects and look at in local currency terms, the wholesale business was very stable and positive. However, the Finnish market situation still remains soft, mostly coming from the fact that this is second time already when the winter was very mild, and that when a big part of our sales in Finland come from electrical spare parts.
This is kind of 2nd time in row when that market demand wasn't so good as it would've been. It was not in no way, no means a disaster or whatever, but it was a weaker development than in Sweden. Some parts or equipment products, lighting products in Finland were suffering from the lower consumer purchase power and consumer confidence in January and February. That was offset by the development in the other product groups. Working capital, as I stated before, has returned into a normal level. You might ask are we happy with the level it is now? Of course, we are never happy.
I mean, I don't think there's an exact number where it should be, but we are striving to optimize the net working capital, of course, all the time. It's kind of a constant target for us to be optimal without compromising the service level towards our customers. The vehicle lighting business developed favorably. Quarter one is usually not a very big lighting season. I mean, of course, it's still dark, but the biggest season has usually been already in quarter three and quarter four. What is driving this is partly increased distribution in Sweden and also the export success of Strands Group, which is very big part of the growth of the lighting business.
The Strands team, Johan and his team has really managed to gain a great position in the market and create a very strong brand, and that is now giving effect on the equipment business in Europe. The European customers usually use the lighting in trucks to personalize the truck, to customize it. It's not so much of auxiliary lighting. It's not so much to see in darkness. It is more like to be seen in darkness because it's the working place of the truck owner and he or she wants to personalize the truck, and Strands has very appealing products that you can personalize your truck with.
Looking at the acquisitions, we are very happy to welcome the Adita team from Helsinki, the capital area here, and that strengthens our position in this very crucial and vital market here in Finland. We are very happy to have you on board and Adita has a long tradition of electrical spare parts and also certain marine parts. Looking at the organic turnover growth, that was plus 1% and 6% in comparable exchange rates. That is, if I remember correctly, it was about 8% in Scandinavia and then 1% in the Finnish Baltic market.
It's kind of a divided picture as in all in all it's 6%. I mentioned Strands, I want to kind of lift up some facts about Strands and their presence in social media, which I think many of the listeners of this presentation do not know. I mean, they have, in a very short time, managed to increase dramatically the social media reach. Strands, as I think I have presented before, quite rapidly got the Instagram followers up to 50,000-60,000. Now it's 120,000. Why is this important? This is important because the content providers are our customers who share pictures of their trucks and construction engines, machines, which are personalized with good lighting products from Strands. YouTube, the team is very active.
They're producing videos about the new products, that's the main communication platform for the products. 1 million views, that's doubled. Website traffic, where we can channel then into distribution, basically the traffic. I mean, we have some chosen distribution partners, we have 236,000 visitors this year already, that's doubled. All in all, social media reach 10.2 million users. I mean, this is a kind of a market that many do not even know that exists, it's very lucrative, we have, of course, a good potential to grow in new countries as well.
One of the biggest contributors for the growth for the first quarter is the repair and maintenance business area, 22% growth, and now growing to 36% of the business. That is basically a combination of strong customer demand, the operational efficiency measures we did last year, and increased labor sales gross margin. We've been able to increase the prices and optimize them. We have been able to recruit about 30 mechanics. As you will remember, the ones that followed our presentation for one year ago, that we had challenges with the capacity utilization because of COVID and lack of personnel. Also we had a fairly top-heavy structure in the operations.
Now, Jan and his team in Raskone has done a tremendous job, and also Stefan and his team, and Bitte and her team in Sweden. I want to thank you for this great contribution. It's been a rocky ride last year, but now the fruits are there. Whether this positive demand development will continue all year through is impossible to say, but there is what we kind of expect at this type of economical times, when partly there have been delayed deliveries of new vehicles and also the fleet owners are pressed by increasing costs. It is more interesting for them to look at, let's say, economical alternatives or more, let's say, actors having more attractive prices than the classical vehicle manufacturer's own branded chains.
That is kind of giving us the chance to drive the development on this sector that the independent part will most likely take more market shares moving forward. One effect of this is not only organic growth. It's of course Skeppsbron that's joined and Bitte is running that business now, and it's really in tight cooperation. All of these companies are working closely together to benchmark best practices and to learn from each other. The organic growth was 11%, half of the growth comes from organic, and in fixed exchange rates, it would have been 14%. Really a strong development.
Before letting Thomas soon to take over, just a quick look at the product groups in reported terms. Spare parts, coming from the very stable market situation and slightly offset negatively by the Finnish soft, softish market in Q1, -2%. Sweden was then higher than what this number is. Lighting, growing because of Strands, as I said, 21% of the business. Lighting, let's say relative weight of the business in Q1 is lower than it will be in the long run in the full year. It usually is about 25%, where we most likely will see it also after the H2 year. Equipment business is also interesting, and we should not forget that.
It is mostly electrical equipment, installation equipment, for vehicles, for lighting and power management, cables, connectors, very profitable, a steadily growing business with also some of our own brands there. Repair and maintenance, as I already mentioned, 36% of the business. Here you can see the weight of the Scandinavian business growing partly organically, partly with acquired growth. The importance of Sweden and also slightly Denmark and Norway is growing, and that's natural because Sweden is also the biggest market in the Nordic region. Outlook for 2023. As per usual, we are not giving a numeric guidance. We feel that we are well prepared to continue implementing the strategy also during the rest of the year.
This is what we can control. We expect that these operational efficiency measures that we did last year. They will still have an effect during the quarter two, a positive effect, because quarter two last year, we hadn't yet commenced these activities. These activities commenced in quarter three, continued all the way to quarter four in 2022. The effect of these measures is already in a way baked in into quarter three, quarter four. We do not expect the change be that big, solely from this. Also the acquisition acquired company's effect was already visible in quarter three, quarter four. All in all, if the positive market situation continues, we are prepared to follow through our strategy.
What we can't control, of course, is the macroeconomic development in each of these markets. That remains to be seen for the rest of the year. Right. I will let Thomas, who is eagerly already waiting there to have the word. Thank you, Thomas. Please take over.
Yes. Thank you, Arne. Yes, I will go through the financial dimensions and a summary of the key developments in Q1. Then I will try to add on to what Arne said about the net sales and the EBITDA development. As Arne said, net sales improved by 11% in the first quarter. Then there were different key elements of that development. We made two acquisitions last year, Skeppsbron in Sweden and SEC in Denmark. They were acquired after the first quarter of 2022. They will have a kind of add-on effect on the net sales and EBITDA, of course. Then as mentioned, the different capacity development measures, especially in the maintenance and repair business in both Finland and Sweden.
In technical wholesale part was also contributing to the improved net sales. We cannot forget also that in the kind of latest one year or two, we had the inflationary circumstances, which has also kind of pushed up input costs. That has also pushed up the sales prices, which impacts also, of course, net sales. Different elements, but good development in sales and also in EBITDA, 31% improvement. It's a good performance. Also there we have the add-on acquisitions impacting. First and foremost, we had profitability and efficiency improvement measures that were done both in the maintenance businesses, also in the products and technical wholesale businesses.
On the negative side, the weak Swedish krona impacted the translation difference, of course, when we translate krona business's EBITDA to the main currency euro. All in all, the second point of sales is that you can see on the sales chart the time series development that all the cyclicality of especially the product business is that sales is focused on at the end of the year, which you can see both in the development of 21 and 22 that sales is predominantly weighted on the second half of the year. A different perspective on EBITDA development, improvement both on absolute terms and also on comparable terms. Good development there. Net financials. We have also had a negative impact of increased interest rates.
We have both krona-based loans, and we have euro-based loans, and both the STIBOR and Euribor have increased, pushing up the net interest expenses by EUR 0.7 million compared to last quarter in 2022. Also some negative exchange rate differences here. A net difference is EUR 200,000 increase from last year. All in all, net financials increased costs about EUR 1 million. On a net basis, you see that all these factors together, there were a slight improvement in net profit and also in earnings per share. Perhaps one of the biggest improvements, as Arne said, was the measures and improvement measures done in net working capital. You can see that inventories really came down a lot from the quarter in 2022.
That was the biggest contributor to improved net working capital and also cash flow, where we see that the cash flow from operations in the quarter was EUR 11 million compared to EUR 2 million in the quarter, first quarter of 2022. It's really a big, big improvement, which was a continuance of the positive measures done and the effects in Q4 of 2022. Also cash conversion was really high due to these factors. Looking at cash flow as a whole, the biggest change was the cash flow from operations and then, and less because of less activities in investments. There was not a big impact on cash flow from investments in this quarter. Also financing activities, there were not any big new raised loans or repayments or loans.
Also a minor impact from the financing activities on cash flow as a whole. Looking at the balance sheet from different perspectives, there was not any big change here either. All the balance sheet total, equity and the net debt was quite stable. Perhaps notably that due to the strong cash flow, also cash assets have improved. The final perhaps add-on table on net debt, we see that they have come down a bit. We have amortized a bit less than EUR 10 billion from the last quarter last year, we have made acquisitions which then of course has been partly financed with interest-bearing debt. All in all, a minor change here also. These are the final slides in summary, if you have any questions, we'll take them later on.
Yes
... after Arni's continued presentation.
Correct.
Yep.
Thank you very much, Thomas. Then, basically just the last slide of the presentation before letting you loose with the questions. Relais Group as an investment summing up, active sector-focused consolidator, smart compounder with a strong track record of successful acquisitions, the solid cash flow and profitability track record, growing underlying market with defensive characteristics, and I would also add with interesting disruption possibilities and technological possibilities for us, growing lighting business with own brands, and efficient decentralized operating model. As I've explained before, we don't have a very heavy administration, are very flexible and are very flexible on the cost side. That kind of sums up Relais Group as an investment, and now we have the chance to entertain your questions, which Lumi will present from...
Yes. All right, thank you. We have received some interesting questions from our audience. The first four ones come from Joni Sandvall. I will take these one by one. The first one is, "What was the organic growth in Q1? How large of a negative impact FX had on sales in Q1?
Thanks, Joni. The organic growth was 5% all in all for the for the turnover, and then it would've been 8% with constant exchange rates.
All right, thank you. Second one is, "Lighting sales had a positive development in Q1. How large part of other countries' sales is lighting-related?
How large part of other countries'...
Sales is lighting-related.
It is fairly difficult. I'm not quite sure if I get the question. I mean, it is, if Joni is after the export part of the market which is outside Finland and Sweden and looking at home markets, roughly maybe one-fourth of that would be outside the domestic market. It's kind of we don't really specify that in detail, but it is a, let's say, a prominent part but not yet a dominant part.
All right. The next one is, "Regarding M&A, how does the pipeline look, and have you seen any changes on valuation levels? In which segments do you see the most potential targets?
Yeah, the pipeline looks good. We have a very solid long list. We have a interesting short list, i.e., companies and owners that we are talking with. Most of them, the bigger ones, are in sectors where we operate at the moment, without going into details. We have some adjacent sectors that we are currently looking at and also have engaged in discussions and mapped the different niches on the businesses. We are looking also at increasing our competence on, let's say, vehicle software part, which is a kind of a new area for us. Most likely these targets would be in a very either in the segments we are working or very close to them.
All right, thank you. The last one from Joni is, "When do you expect investment levels to pick up in order to meet repair and maintenance requirements of EV-heavy vehicles?
I think it's a gradual development. We do not foresee a kind of a tsunami of investments having to come very quickly because the conversion is happening step by step. We have a good possibility to ramp up gradually those investments. It's not gonna be dramatic. It's more competence, and it's education and then of course some equipment we need to invest. It's a gradual. We can phase it in fairly controlled. It is, of course, gonna have an effect, but it's not a dramatic effect in one year or two years.
Okay, thank you. The next question comes from Petri Gostowski. He wants to know: "Should we expect the repair and maintenance business organic growth to be driven by price increases that were in line with wage inflation, i.e., 3%-4%, and the rest to be a volume? Many companies are saying the Swedish market is weak due to high interest rates and their weak currency. How do you see the Swedish market from your point of view? Any differences between the Scandinavian markets?
Firstly, The repair and maintenance to grow most likely slightly faster than the salary inflation, provided that this demand situation continues solid in both Finland and Sweden, i.e. customers turning to us instead of probably the workshop they have used before. That can boost the growth slightly more than the 3%-4%. We consider actually Sweden as a very strong market. It is resilient market. Despite the high inflation and interest rate development there, the transport business still seems to be very active. I think there are big investments in the construction, not on, let's say, private construction or housing, but more like on mining and some new technologies in northern Sweden, which is driving the need for transport.
We are fairly, let's say, positive about the Swedish. It's not a boom, but it is. It's by far, at the moment at least, doesn't look soft.
All right. Thank you. We still have one final question here from Mika Karppinen. Have you noticed that big fleet owners would be willing to use more independent service shops versus OE service shops in commercial vehicles in this weaker economic environment? Is this visible, for example, in tendering activity by bigger fleet commercial vehicle owners?
Yeah. Thank you, Mika. Yes, it is visible, and we have noticed that. We are increasingly contacted by these kind of fleet operators who are interested in the alternative that we can offer with more attractive prices and still the same quality. Yes, we have experienced that.
All right. These were all the questions. I thank you for sending the questions, and I hand back to the speakers.
Thank you, Lumi, for helping with the questions, and thanks for the audience following the presentation. If you have any questions that were unanswered, you can always send me or Thomas an email. You can find our contact details on our website. Thank you very much for following. Have a continued very nice day.