Good afternoon, and welcome to this Q3 presentation for Borgestad ASA. With us today, we have the Chairman Glen Ole Rødland and CEO Pål Feen Larsen. Please use the Q&A function if you have any questions, and we will go through them at the end. And with that, I'll give the word to you, Pål.
Thank you very much, Joakim. It's a pleasure to report third quarter for Borgestad. Borgestad continues the positive trend that we have had last year. We report profit before tax in Q3 2024 at NOK 44.1 million, and year-to-date NOK 72.5 million, and if you compare that to the past years of Borgestad, it's a tremendous change and improvement, and what's special with these figures is that it's all from operational performance. We have no one-offs or no sales of assets, so it's only better underlying performance, operational performance from both segments, but in general, mostly it's from the refractory business, and if we will look into details later, but just to give some highlights, the refractory business is reporting a Q3 at 13.4% EBIT margin, a record high, and year-to-date, we have an increase of 5.7% EBIT margin for the refractory business.
Yes, Borgestad is an investment company. We have two quite different businesses. We have real estate, which is quite capital-intensive. We have one shopping center in Poland, for those of you that don't know us, centrally in a town called Bytom. This was built in 2010 and has been owned and run by us or by Borgestad since it was opened in about 2010. The operation of the company, of the real estate, is quite stable from quarter to quarter, year to year. And we have now, after we refinanced last year, we have a moderate to low debt of below 50% of net asset value. If you look on the other refractory business, it's more capital-light, have relatively low debt, but have high operational gearing, which we will get back to. And right now, the gearing is very advantageous for us. We have a good operation in the company.
The refractory business is, while Agora is a single asset in Poland in a medium-sized town, our refractory business is small in the world or in the global market, but it's by far the largest operator in the Nordics, with about 40% market share in the Nordics, in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. So what does it mean to be an industrial investment company? It means that we are at the moment, or we inherited, or, Pål, has been there for longer, but when I joined the board, these two, the refractory business and the real estate business, was there. So the focus now is to develop these two businesses. We would like ultimately to monetize, first, most likely the real estate, but over time also the refractory business we will monetize.
To be an investment company, you're quite used to that they have maybe between 15% and 20%, 25%, 30% discount. We are trying to avoid that by saying and promising to our stakeholders that when we sell something, being our shopping center and/or the refractory business, the intention is to pay it out as dividend and then raise new money if or when we do new investments. So what are the key tools? It's a team, a good team. We just hired a new M&A responsible person in Borgestad, Mr. Bendik Persch Andersen. We have a board with a lot of investment background, M&A and operational background, effective use of capital. In 2023, we took out NOK 140 million of excess capital from the balance sheet of Höganäs Borgestad. And it's also about we are continuing to see if we can improve the capital efficiency even further.
And it's also to have the right balance between debt and equity. And measure everything and develop KPIs. It's very logical, very obvious that that should be done, but not all the companies are good enough to run by using KPIs and continuous improvements. And of course, M&A for all industrial investment companies or investment companies in general is a buy and build. And then finally, when the time is right and we think we have done what we can add to the business, it's a transaction or an exit. So that's the philosophy of Borgestad.
Let's go into details and start with Agora. The trend for Agora is slightly positive in the quarter, as Glenn says. And what we have guided before is that it will be stable from quarter to quarter. But this quarter, it's a bit better. We foresee that it will still be relatively stable going forward. But we have an increase in EBITDA with NOK 2.3 million in the quarter and a margin increase from 49% in third quarter 2023 until up to 53% EBITDA margin now in third quarter 2024. Of course, we have announced earlier that we have a cost-cutting program of slightly above EUR 100,000 to be implemented. We can see part of that in third quarter, not much. We will see a bit more in fourth quarter, but the full effect will be from 1st of January 2025.
As Glenn said, we have a good and stable debt level, sustainable below 50% loan to- value, and it's important to inform that, of course, this financing is due end of 2028, so still over four years until due date. We see signs that the transaction market is slowly starting to develop in Poland. We already have reviewed one prime transaction that has been announced. The largest shopping center owner in Poland acquired a prime center in September at a transaction yield of 6.7%. The information and rumors from the market is that a new prime center is put on the market and will soon be informed closing, so of course, we also review that the interest rates in euro is decreasing. That should be positive for the transaction market in general for real estate and shopping centers.
But we, and as Glenn said, we ultimately want to exit Agora, but we still believe it's a bit too early. It's important to remember that Agora Bytom is a prime. Agora has a prime location in Bytom, but Bytom is not a prime city in Poland. It's a secondary city. So we believe that we will be not in the first wave of transactions going live. If you look at the more details, we have a WAULT of 3.3, still good when comparing normal contract lengths of five years. We have a good and stable contract duration. We are finalized with all renewals or prolongations for 2024. In 2025, we have 18% for renewal. One top 10 tenant is due in fourth quarter.
And it wouldn't surprise me if we, before year-end, have prolonged that top 10 tenant and that the risk will be even lower when we enter into 2025. And it's also very important to remember for those who have followed Borgestad and Agora Bytom for a while, the track record of renewals and prolongations is quite good. And it has never been a challenge or a high risk related to renewals for Agora. Yeah, as long as Borgestad is owner of Agora Bytom, of course, we will try to develop it further, both in terms of attractiveness and increasing rent and EBITDA. For those who know Agora good, we have a center and a parking house. They're separate buildings. And we are looking into now to try to utilize the parking house even better than we have been able to do in the past.
The parking house is five, six floors, and we have part of that area is not utilized good enough in terms of revenue. So we are looking into converting part of the parking house to a retail area. It's an ongoing project, and the prospect looks good. But if it's going to materialize, we will come back with more details later with these possibilities.
Yes, looking at the refractory business, Höganäs Borgestad, we see that our revenue is relatively flat. And I will go back to why it's flat. It's on purpose, so to speak, while our bottom line is continuing to improve. Our EBIT is up 60% from third quarter last year. It's important to remind everybody and those of you that don't know the company that well that this activity is quite seasonal, and third quarter is normally the best quarter for our business when some of our clients have summer holiday or have a maintenance stop during July, August. So it's very busy for us, and it's the high season. So please don't multiply NOK 45.5 million by four. So if you look on the order backlog, it's around NOK 100 million. And for this time of the year, beginning of fourth quarter, that's a quite normal level.
It indicates that the Nordic market is, compared to other European markets, still quite strong for our clients, which are cyclical steel, cement, ferroalloys, aluminum, and other industries that need high temperature like petrochemicals. That's a good sign. As you all know, we negotiated the sale- lease back for our property in Bjuv. That was challenged by some of the local activists, if I might call it that, that were challenging this. It's now in the court, but we expect that this will be cleared within not too long. In order to make sure we still have the runway to complete this and also have to go back to the, what should I say, the parliament in Bjuv or the kommunestyre, as they say, we have changed the long stop date to end of 2025. It was end of 2024.
Yes, if we go to the next slide. So you see our markets here to the left have been going down gradually, and it stopped. We are still the biggest player in this market, according to our observations and all figures. We are controlling around 40%. That's of Norway, Sweden, and Finland in this market. But if you look to the right, it's the revenue. Those are the light blue. And then you have the EBIT, the line, and rolling 12 months. As you can see, our revenue is quite flat lately, but our EBIT is going up, and that's very deliberate. We analyzed the company last year and saw that we had a lot of loss-making business, including this cremation business, which was, but there were a lot of other clients, clients that were consistently not profitable, and also contracts that were not profitable.
Just by, what shall I say, throwing out every kind of business that is not profitable, a lot of the improvement you see here is just for being more picky. And that's why our revenue is flat and not growing. We think the market, so we might lose a little bit of market share in 2024 when we update these figures, but that's for a very good reason. We are now on a trajectory where I think we can take market share again. Why has this come about, this improvement? We have changed management. I mentioned that last time as well. CEO, CFO was changed. And now all the leaders in all companies, all five daughter companies are relatively new with a maximum tenure of two years in the new position. And there was a very strong focus on profitability, and that drives everything and professionalization in all aspects.
So I think that's the background for the improvement we see here. This is very generic, but it's what most buy and build companies are doing from private equity to private office for that matter, industrial investors as well. You take your base and you work on that to improve and get the most out of your base, capital efficiency, improve your management, improve your processes to enhance return on your assets. That's what we have been doing. But we are also slowly looking at what can we do in addition, complementary, taking market share in some of the markets where we are not that strong. 40% is all over the Nordics, but there is a variance between Finland, Norway, and Sweden. And we have Denmark and we have Iceland as well that could be falling on this.
Ultimately, after we have done that, we are not going to own anything to eternity. Quite the contrary, we are looking for maximizing value and exit or emerge or something that monetizes our ownership.
Looking into the financials, you have the overview of the quarter and last 12 months. And if we look at EBITDA for the quarter, it's NOK 63.3 compared to NOK 83 last quarter. But this is the official figures. This is not adjusted. So last year's quarter is included with the extraordinary gain of NOK 46.4 million in those NOK 83. So as said in the beginning of the presentation, the operational, the performance is tremendously better. And it's underlying better operational performance that is driving the increased profitability. If we look at the balance sheet and look forward, we expect fourth quarter to decrease inventory. We also expect that receivables is at the peak end of September and that it's converted to cash quite heavily in fourth quarter, meaning that cash should increase and that revolving credit facilities should also go to zero at the end of the year.
If you look at the secured debt long term, this is more or less only Agora Bytom debt, and if you look at the secured debt short term, it's more or less only Agora refractory part, which is reclassified due to the sale -ease back transaction that is expected to be completed within some months. If we also look at the non-current assets classified as held for sale, we have two items, the sale- lease back transaction in Bjuv and Gunnar Knudsens vei, the old head office. This transaction was completed in the beginning of October and will be booked as an income gain in fourth quarter and will be out of the balance sheet. If you look at the cash flow, we have a good cash flow from operating activities, but the balance sheet changes are not that good compared to last year.
This is what Glenn said that we will work further on with working capital. We have a goal to decrease it further and to increase cash flow from operating activities going forward even more than what has been in 2024. But we expect that cash flow from operating activities will increase heavily in fourth quarter. We have also a good cash position at the end of the quarter. If we sum up this quarter, it's really good operational improvements for Borgestad as a whole group, both refractory, especially refractory, but also better performance in Agora Bytom. Strong cash position and materially lower debt than 12 months ago. This looks really promising going forward, and we expect to continue to increase values going forward.
Okay, so outlook for Höganäs Borgestad. We have had a very good 2024. Even with some setback in the fourth quarter, which is a slow quarter, it's going to be a very good year for us. We are going to continue to try to improve the company, be aware of low hanging fruits easy to take down. We have to climb a little bit higher up in the tree now. We see that the best in our industry are between 12%-15%, and we have even seen competitors up to 18% EBIT margin. We are not satisfied. We are going to aim higher, but I think we have to caution everybody that the first year was very steep, and then it will be more gradually. It remains to be seen. Of course, we haven't had the help from the market this year.
If we get some help from the market, it's a cyclical market and an improving market. This could grow faster, but that's more. I'm more concerned about the underlying quality of the business than the cyclical element, so I think the underlying improvement will be, we will continue, but it's harder to get the next achievements, so then Agora Bytom, I think as Pål
alluded to, very stable operation. We are trying to improve, trying to cut costs, looking for alternative, what should I say, development so we can increase the yield from the property. But hopefully that what will, in addition to we can do internally, we also have hopes for that the interest rates will at least stop going up, and now they have started going down. Let's hope it continues.
And that will indirectly help with the last, that is the transaction market, which we are following very closely and hope that there should be a window within not too long also for Agora Bytom. So with that, I conclude and open for questions.
Yes, thank you. So we can start. We have a question related to Agora Bytom. You say that you see the first signs of a positive transaction market, and it's split into this question. It's one, can you say anything more about your strategy going forward in terms of liquidity events for Agora Bytom? And number two, do you have any thoughts regarding the valuation of the property? You had some breakdowns in 2023 and early 2024, and now with the positive development both in the transaction market and interest rates, do you have any?
If we start with the M&A, I would say that we are following closely, as Glenn says. But as soon as we review that the market is there for centers like Agora Bytom, we will try to execute on that. It's hard to say any timeline, but we're following it. In relation to the write-downs a year ago, of course, that was heavily affected by interest rate increase. Now we see a decrease. So I don't expect any write-downs further at the moment. We have stable operations and estimated interest rates lower, then that should be positive for the value at the end of the day.
Thank you. One additional question here. You have touched upon the sale- lease back transaction, but can you say anything about potential dividend policy, I guess, post such?
Yeah, we have had some initial discussions in the board, but I think we should come back more concretely in fourth quarter about this. But it's quite obvious, to put it like that, that the balance sheet was strengthened in 2023, and then the cash flow has improved significantly both in 2023. Most of that came out of the balance sheet, not from operation. So this year we also have got firing on the third cylinder, first balance sheet improvement, then capital efficiency, and now we see that operation is going better and better. So I think there's a good likelihood that we will see the first dividend paid out in 2024, not first, but in modern times from Borgestad over the last few years.
Or paid out in 2025?
Paid out in 2025, yeah, based on 2024 performance.
Okay, very good. Last question. So you have had a very positive development in the EBIT margin on the refractory, and then you have the new EBIT target of 10% midterm. Can you say anything about long-term target?
I said that the best in the industry, why shouldn't we be the best? Among the best, at least. We have a, what should I say, a good position in, call it in the geographical market, very close to our clients, with a strong market position of 40% plus, I hope, over some time, and we are looking on some small add-ons maybe, so the target should be 10 to 15, so call it midterm 10%, and then we should aim up. I hope we can get to 13%-15%. But as I said, the first percent were very easy, and now we get a little bit more sweaty for each percent we have to, so that's how business is.
Yeah, that's how it is.
Okay, very much. Thank you very much. We are done with the questions. Thank you so much for your time. Goodbye.
Thank you.