Good morning again, everyone, and welcome to Norconsult's first Capital Markets Day. My name is Egil Hogna. I'm the CEO of the company, and I will share today's presentation with a number of my colleagues in the management team. It's our first Capital Markets Day because it is now more or less exactly two years ago since this picture was taken, and we had our launch at the Oslo Stock Exchange. However, Norconsult is a company with almost 100 years of tradition and a solid and well-developed business model. Today, we will go more in detail on how we run our business, how the market looks, and how we plan to develop going forward. Every day we improve, every day life. That is our purpose, and that says, and I think the film says something about our role in society.
Welcome also to our office in Oslo, which is the office here at Telegrafen, where we have a Nordic Office of Architecture and selected other departments of Norconsult's activity. Today, we will have presentations from 10:00 A.M. until 12:00 P.M. Then we will have a lunch just outside the auditorium for about half an hour. After that, we will have a guided office tour in the offices, so Nordic Office of Architecture on the third and fourth floor of this building. We will have a presentation of a very important project for Nordic with a new government headquarters. We will end talking about our M&A strategy, financial targets, and some concluding remarks. We expect to finish the day latest at 2:00 P.M. I will kick off this presentation. Christian Aasland, who is both our Head of Investor Relations and our Head of Business Development, will talk about the market.
Bård Hernes will talk about the Norwegian Head Office. Vegard Jacobsen will talk about the regions. Our CFO in Sweden, Fredrik Holmberg, will talk about the Swedish market. Our EVP for Sweden, Farah Al-Ayesh, wanted to be here, but unfortunately, she recently lost her father and she was not able to join us today. Thank you to Fredrik for stepping in on short notice. I know Fredrik will give a good overview of the business. Håkon Bergsjø will talk about renewable energy before we have our lunch. This page, I think many of you know, is one which we update every quarter, talking about how we grow, but also showing you the consistency of our business. We have a consistent business model.
I would like to spend my opening session going through our business model and then present what has happened during the last two years from our IPO until today. Norconsult has a presence in all of the main technical disciplines associated with the building and construction market. We are in architecture doing the design. We are in engineering doing the planning. We are in project management and digital solutions. After today's acquisition, we are even more present in project management than we were before. For those of you who are curious, the latest acquisition of Metier Group is not included in this presentation because we did not know for sure until very late before this presentation that that acquisition would actually be realized at this point in time. We also cover the entire project life cycle of a building project. We cover the planning.
We cover design and engineering, which is probably where we have the main part of our activity. We then support project execution. We have, for example, managers overseeing the building of a construction, even though we are not the ones physically doing the building ourselves. That is the construction companies. We follow up operations and maintenance. We take part in all of the phases of a building project, supporting that also with technology and digital solutions, making the building process as smooth and as productive as possible for all of the participants in the process. A key differentiator between the various companies in the design and engineering space is to what extent they are truly local. For Norconsult, a differentiator is that we believe strongly in local presence. This means that we have a large number of offices.
We believe that both local knowledge, local footprint, and local relationships are key in order to be able to realize construction projects in the best possible way. Because of that, we have in total approximately 140 offices spread across the Nordic region. Not all of them are large, but for us, it is important that the people who actually design building projects, that they live in the local community. We also realize that for many of our projects, actually most of the projects, you need expertise, which you cannot always find at the local office. Because of that, roughly 70% of our projects above the smallest size use competence from several offices and several departments so that you truly have the cross-disciplinary expertise, which is necessary in order to deliver what the customers need.
A Norconsult customer shall always know that, yes, we have the local knowledge and the local touch, but we also have the expertise from the entire network at the customer's disposal. Our business model has been developed during almost a century. We have chosen to have many customers to make sure we do not have too much dependence on any single or small group of customers. We have about 15,000 customers and 35,000 projects every year. That means that many of our projects are quite small. What 80% of them have in common is that they have time and material-based contracts, meaning that we work by the hour, that we adapt to how complexity develops during the time of a project. It is only 20% of our projects which are fixed price.
Those are projects where the scope is tightly defined, where the delivery is very clearly defined with the customers. We are happy to deliver on a fixed price. We have some variations in between, for example, those called integrated project deliveries, where there are bonus and malus systems, where also our compensation is linked to the end result of the project. That is something which we are happy to do. We also believe that the contract structure which we have in the Nordic region serves all participants in the value chain well because you do not have winners and losers, which you sometimes have in the more continental contract tradition. Our multi-year contracts are also index regulated.
That means that our cost components typically are linked to the average salary level of our industry, which means that there is a guarantee both ways that our pricing also makes sense. We have a philosophy. We say that we shall make a decent profit decently. We've also said that 10% margin is what we think is reasonable over time. It is something which we have delivered historically, but that is also something which our customers can depend on, that our pricing is reasonable. When it comes to utilization, we focus on business areas. We focus on the utilization of the entire organization rather than focusing on the profitability of individual projects, which we know that some of our competitors focus more on. We believe what is important is that everyone has an appropriate job and that they are able to charge a decent price to the customers.
This is our strategy house. We try to communicate and illustrate our strategy on one single page. It's a strategy which aims to fulfill our purpose of everyday improving everyday life. We have a vision of a Nordic top three position, and we have five strategic goals. You will notice that it is a people-focused strategy because we start with a focus on the people working in Norconsult, because we think that it is impossible to have a good business unless we are able to attract, develop, and retain the best people. I'll revert to and spend quite some time on how we achieve that important goal, because without that, we don't think we can succeed in building a client-oriented culture, which is our second goal. We also don't think that without the right people, we can create value for our shareholders based on strong employee ownership.
I will revert to the employee ownership because we believe that aligning incentives is something which is key. Because of that, we encourage all of our employees to own our share, to own a part of the company, both because it is motivating to know that you own your own workplace at the same time as having a significant employee ownership aligns interests also with external investors. Being a listed company with strong employee share programs, we think is the ideal combination, because then we are able to get capital from the external market, from the equity markets when that is relevant, at the same time as we have the strong employee ownership aligning interests. To us, that is a best of both situations. Sustainability is something which is very important to us.
Our largest customer event is the annual Sustainability Week, where we last year or this year, we had more than 50 different events and webinars across our Scandinavian countries, talking about how we develop sustainability for our customers in the projects we have. Norconsult has a large handprint when it comes to our impact on sustainability in construction projects. That responsibility is something which we take very seriously. It is also reflected in our purpose. Every day we improve everyday life. We also use digital technologies to make sure we have the best possible productivity, deliver projects with creativity, particularly important for our architects, and at the right quality. I will talk more about the importance of artificial intelligence later, where there are also important pitfalls which we do not want to fall in.
Below the five goals, we have a number of KPIs which are not shown here, so indicators we measure. We have the foundation, our values, which we call LIV, with the leadership principles, the personal values, and the ethics rule. Everything we do shall be able to stand public scrutiny. We have our customer approach, how we work with customers with four main principles: understanding the client, making sure they understand us as well, building the team, taking charge, and creating flow. On top of that, we have our management system, our quality system called Norconsult. That is a system for risk management and making sure we follow procedures and do things right with the proper control in every single project. If we do this right, we believe that we will continue to be able to make a decent profit decently.
That is, in a way, our business model in a nutshell. Then I'd like to talk a little bit more about what has happened during the last two years, which have been a period where we have continued our journey of profitable growth. When we went public two years ago, we were number one in Norway. We were number five in the Nordics. Today, we are number four. During this two-year period, we have grown and overtaken one of our competitors, which we believe testifies to the strength of our business model. As you have heard, we have a target to become number three. We have a little bit of a step still, but based on the combination of organic growth and acquisitions we've seen this year, we believe that is a very realistic target. We still have plenty of room to grow.
We are number 12 in the European marketplace, and we think that there are a number of opportunities also outside of the Nordic region. For the time being, our focus is the Nordic region, including Poland. This slide is, I think, one of the favorites amongst our investors. If we look back to when we went public, the last three columns were not present because those three columns are 2023, 2024, and the last 12 months. As you can see, we have continued a very similar journey when it comes to both growth and consistent profitability. Needless to say, our objective is to continue to do that also in the future. We sometimes get the question, what is your ambition when it comes to growth? As you can see, we've had an average annual growth of 10% over the last decade.
How much will we grow going forward? We have said that we do not think we can predict the market, but we have said that our goal is to grow a little bit more than the market and the competition. When we look at how this has been over the last four years, we see the dark green column, which is our annual organic growth, and then we have our publicly listed peers in the gray column. As you can see, the total growth has varied over the years, but every year we have grown at the same level or higher than the competition during this period. This is our goal also going forward. Sometimes the market is growing fast, sometimes it is growing slow.
As you can see, over the last 12 months, it has indeed grown less than what it has done over the last few years. We are pleased with our performance because we have grown more. You have, of course, noticed that we made two significant acquisitions over the last half year, but our aim is still to have roughly two-thirds organic growth and one-third M&A. For this year, it will probably be a bit less or a bit more M&A. When we look at the average over the last three years, it is still very much similar to this two-thirds, one-third ratio, which we still aim to pursue in the future. In Norway, we are the market leader.
Being the market leader, you are in many ways in a privileged position because you tend to have the competence which allows you to be in pole position for winning the most prestigious projects. That, again, helps you attract the best talents, which builds reputation and know-how, and that, again, further strengthens your position. We are benefiting from this in Norway. However, I will revert to how we are able to grow even more outside of Norway. As you can see, in Sweden and Denmark, we've had an average annual growth over the last four-year period of 16% and 14%, significantly above the growth which we have seen in Norway. We do this because we have a slightly different approach in those markets, and I will revert to some of our secrets a little bit later.
First, I'd like to talk a little bit about how the role of consulting engineers has expanded over the last few years. Because as a lot of people talk about, there is a difficult period for the construction industry as a whole. There are construction companies going bankrupt. There are also some consulting engineers. The total growth for the construction industry has been affected by a poor market, especially for private buildings. For consulting engineers, the market has expanded. This is linked to the fact that when you build and construct something, be it a building or infrastructure, when you build that in an urban or established environment, it is more complex. There are more things which need to be taken into consideration.
When there are cables in the ground or a subway or a water pipe, you cannot just bring in the excavator and take away everything and put in something new. You need to take all of this into consideration. That requires consulting engineers to do proper planning. Furthermore, there are many increased requirements for building projects today. Society and we have expectations today about user safety and worker safety that are more stringent than in the past, but also climate and nature, social sustainability, quality and aesthetics, taking care of cultural heritage, indigenous people's rights, and so on. I could make this list a lot longer. This complexity also requires more work from consulting engineers. Finally, we have digital technologies. Digital technologies give us the opportunity to be much better prepared when we are at the construction site.
In the past, the construction companies solved a lot of problems relating to inaccurate drawings, for example, when they were at the construction site. Today, the risk of mistakes is much lower because we have digital technologies allowing a much higher quality when we are at the construction site. The fact that digital design and engineering is only 4%-12% of the typical construction cost, while it impacts 100% of the cost and quality, means that investing more in the early phase is actually good for the total project. New digital technologies like artificial intelligence actually increase the potential impact of this phase because you can do an even better job before the physical construction starts. When it comes to artificial intelligence, there are generally two philosophies. One philosophy is that artificial intelligence is going to replace the expert.
Because when artificial intelligence gets data, it is so clever in computing that you can replace the expert, and you can sort of press a button, and then you get something which is good enough to start building from it. That is one perspective. The other perspective is that artificial intelligence will be a good tool for the expert, which will augment the experts to become even better. This perspective centers on the importance of domain knowledge in order to know if artificial intelligence actually is creating a good result or hallucinating. It is also based on data sets. Because if you have poor data as the basis for artificial intelligence, you get a poor result, garbage in, garbage out.
Domain knowledge and correct and appropriate data, which truly takes into account the regulatory expectations and society's expectation, are key in order to get the quality in a project which is necessary to get both permits and a satisfactory end result. Based on our experience, artificial intelligence is really good at augmenting the expert, but it is not something which replaces the expert. Just show you two quick examples of innovative projects where we have taken important steps when it comes to digitalization. The water treatment plant in Katås or Asker, just outside of Oslo, and the Drammen-Kobbervikdalen expansion are both examples of projects where we have seen the development of new digital tools and where we've taken large steps in order to improve the productivity and quality of these projects.
During our quarterly presentation, I mentioned that Drammen-Kobbervikdalen was a very complex project where there was a new station being built while trains essentially were running during the construction period. This kind of complexity would be impossible to handle without the strong use of digital tools. Bane NOR, our customer, has told us that this is the first mega project which is 100% digital. As I mentioned earlier, it was completed on time, on quality, and at cost. That is something which is possible because of the digital tools which are available today and which we have perfected as part of Norconsult's activity. A few comments about our management team in Norconsult. I'm very proud of my colleagues, very happy with my team. The corporate management team has an average tenure in Norconsult of 10 years. As such, I'm one of the younger ones with five.
What we also have in common is that the experience we have from outside is also an experience very relevant for the work which we do. We have a mix of four women, six men. We have four different nationalities, and we have broad backgrounds in combination with long experience, which I think makes us in a position to handle the complexity associated with our business and also how we are going to develop it in the future. Norconsult is a people business. I mentioned that as the market leader, we have a number of advantages in Norway. However, outside of Norway, we have advantages from other aspects of our business model. If you look at our position in Sweden and Denmark, for example, we are the dynamic challenger with a decentralized structure, with a reputation for being much less bureaucratic than the established players in those markets.
We move faster. We are able to make decisions quicker than what is the case with the established market leaders in those markets. We see that talents are seeking to become part of the Norconsult family in order to be able to be in a company which is dynamic, which is developing fast. As such, we are very happy with our ability to attract people and retain people also outside of Norway. A key part of that attraction, we think, is having a listed share in combination with very attractive share programs that are open to all employees, including the most junior, because we want everyone to be an owner in the company. If you look at a number of our competitors, which are either foundation-owned or they are foreign-owned, this is something which is a key differentiator.
We also spend a lot of time and effort to educate our engineers and architects. Of course, the most important part of the learning is on the job, but we also have flexible career paths allowing people to work as an expert, work as a project leader, move back to being an expert, or move into the line, and throughout the career have a number of these options and alternatives. That includes also moving from Norconsult to one of our other branded activities like Technogarden and BACK and so on. Norconsult is today a sufficiently large company to give our people a very good opportunity at developing their career in the long run. As a consequence of this, we score very well on our annual employee survey 13064037714.
I mentioned earlier that we had 89% participation in it, and we score 4 out of 5 or 80% on engagement and how well people are doing. We have seen sick leave going down over the last years, and we expect it to continue to drop based on a very successful program we are running. We also see an employee churn or turnover, which is lower than the average in our industry, and it's currently at approximately 10%. Lower than that in Norway, a little bit higher outside, but still what we consider to be an attractive level. Finally, in this section, I'd just like to finish with some of our key numbers. We have strong financials. We have shown over the last years that we continue to have a significant growth.
We have maintained a good profitability so that we have a significant growth in the EBITDA as well. We continue to have healthy growth in the number of employees. As I mentioned, we score very well in terms of employee engagement and satisfaction. With that, I would like to give the word to Christian Salbu Aasland, who will talk more about the market. Thank you.
Thank you. Hello, everybody. My name is Christian Salbu Aasland. I'm the Head of Investor Relations and Business Intelligence in Norconsult. I've been working in the company for almost 10 years now, working in the operations and business development side before taking on this role. Before I start, I would like to emphasize that my presentation today is of the Nordic buildings and construction market in general, based on trends and prognosis from external sources such as Prognosesenteret.
As you may know, Norconsult does not provide guiding or forward-looking statements. As such, I will not make any comments or references to future Norconsult revenue or other financial effects. I refer you all to Egil and Dag's presentation this morning in our quarterly report on information on Norconsult's current market view and WLSS business outlook. In this presentation, I will focus on our core market, which is the market for architectural and engineering services, which is a smaller subsegment of the much larger building and construction market in the Nordics. I will be focusing on Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. During the next 15 minutes, I will argue that the Nordic building and construction market is a large, attractive market with strong fundamentals supporting long-term growth. We, as a society, will continue to build houses and hospitals.
We're going to need power plants, and we're going to need roads and rail. I will provide facts that support that we are indeed in a large and diversified end market. As projects become larger and increasingly more complex, the workload that goes to architects and engineers increases. This market is both robust, and it has proven its resilience even during economic turmoil. As architects and engineers, we plan and develop the critical infrastructure that societies rely and depend on. We will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Looking at our market, we will use market data provided by Prognosesenteret/Euroconstruct. As you may know, Prognosesenteret provides Euroconstruct with data on the Nordics. This market is divided in two segments based on the nature of its projects: the building segment and the construction or civil engineering segment.
Buildings may be further subdivided into residentials, houses, apartment buildings, and non-residential and commercial buildings, both public and private. Construction is normally divided into transportation infrastructure, water and waterworks, power and power utilities, and other civil engineering facilities such as industrial projects. In 2024, as in previous years, the market in the Nordics was roughly two-thirds buildings and one-third construction. This split is not necessarily the relevant market split for professional services such as ours. The market data from Euroconstruct include cost elements such as steel and concrete, carpenters, and plumbers. A large proportion of construction projects' costs are related to such brick-and-mortar elements. What we are really looking for is these projects' need for the type of services that we provide: planning, engineering, project management tasks. The need for such services varies a lot from project to project.
My personal yardstick is that our share of our project's production cost varies from 4-12%, depending on the size, the nature, and the complexity of the project. As I tried to illustrate on your figure on the right-hand side, for technically simple projects, small houses, simple apartment buildings, the work of architects and engineers is somewhat limited. As projects grow in size and complexity, the need for the kind of services that we in Norconsult provide increases accordingly. The total market is two-thirds building, one-third construction. If you look into our numbers and look at our portfolio, we have one-third buildings and two-thirds construction that we report on as infrastructure and industry and energy.
While the Nordic market for building and construction has grown at a rate of about 2% annually over the last decade, the combined growth of the six large Nordic multidisciplinary consultancies has been four times higher. As Egil just told you this morning, our growth is even higher than that. Accordingly, market data from Euroconstruct is only one of several inputs you need to assess to forecast future growth for technical consultancies. Rising regulatory requirements, technical codes, the necessary mandatory studies, greater procedural formalism are part of this explanation. Increased specialization, both broadly and within engineering disciplines, is also part of the picture. Work one generalist would do 20 years ago is now typically done by a number of subject matter specialists. Combined, these dynamics underpin the market consolidation. Acquisition of smaller firms is a major contributor to this graph.
It has become more of an advantage to operate as a large platform with both substantial capacity, width, and depth of expertise. Another key feature to notice is market resilience through economic turmoil. Part of this explanation is that we operate in the largest land-based industry, and it can be steered by public demand, e.g., we operate in a market well-suited for public countercyclical policy. This also is reflected in the long-term nature and inertia of our industry. Many large projects span multiple years, which provide larger firms like ours with stability through macroeconomic weakness. This chart also indicates that the yardstick I talked about on the previous slide, the share of our project workload that goes to architects and engineers, has increased since 2014, as projects have also grown in size and complexity.
Looking at the market numbers, this time through the lens of Pronosysenteret, the last year's headwind is evident with a drop in building and construction investment of more than 10% over the last three years. The impact can be keenly felt in the building segment, upper right corner, with a drop of 20% in investments across the Nordics. For the construction market, down right corner, the situation has been predictably less volatile. Given its countercyclical nature and strong share of public funding, these markets have actually grown during the cycle. Moving forward, Pronosysenteret expects that the tide has finally turned and that the market will gradually recover over the next two to three years. Construction is expected to continue its stable development, while buildings are expected to have a steeper rebound, but not necessarily back to the levels we saw in 2021 or 2022.
If we look at the numbers down on the national level, Sweden has experienced by far the largest decline, but this did follow nearly a decade of very strong growth. Sweden is set for a rebound, and we will come back to that when we present our Norconsult Swedish section. Denmark has a very high residential to non-residential ratio in its building market, and this in combination with a monetary policy set to achieve exchange rate stability to the euro. This makes Denmark a bit more sensitive to private residential investments than Norway and Sweden. After a period of optimism, the near-term forecasts are a bit more mixed, I would say, leaning towards soft for Denmark. While investments in non-residential and construction are expected to continue stable, the Danish economy's dependency on export-related industries such as Novo Nordisk makes it more exposed to the international market uncertainties.
In Norway, the expectation is that the tide has turned, and Pronosysenteret expects that we will see a gradual rebound going forward. Beyond the midterm forecasts we've just discussed, there are four fundamentals I'd like to highlight. These fuel the long-term growth trends in the buildings and construction market. Firstly, demographics. The key driver for demand in our business is people. Population growth in itself is one dimension. Perhaps more importantly, urbanization, the movement or flux of people across geographies, drives demand. As long as humans strive to increase their quality of life, bigger and nicer homes, shorter and effective communes, urban centers will evolve and grow. Urbanization is not just about more people living in urban areas. It involves changing lifestyles and rising expectations for sustainability, connectivity, and smarter living.
As population centers expand and quality of life expectations grow, demand increases, not just for new buildings, but for renovating, upgrading, and smarter use of what we already have. Secondly, public investments. Further investments in public infrastructure, everything we need to keep society running smoothly, will continue to follow demographics. As more people move into urban areas, growing cities require complex networks of technical infrastructure to expand, as well as the transportation networks necessary to bind areas of economic activity together. This is, in itself, a monumental task, especially when you also consider the rehabilitation backlog in public infrastructure that has developed across the Nordics during the last decades. If that was not enough, more focus will be diverted to a more uncertain political situation with increased spending in defense and security.
Governmental investments anchor long-term growth, especially as society faces new challenges. Climate adaptation, technological shifts, and geopolitical tensions all drive investments in resilience and in critical infrastructure. Thirdly, private investments. Private investments constitute a large part of the building and construction investments. One part is the direct investments in homes, properties, and non-residential buildings to capitalize on rising property prices and the general economic activity. A second part is the building and infrastructure need following capital investments in industry and in other businesses. If you're building a data center, a weapons factory, an aquaculture facility, or even an electric car dealership, a large share of your investment goes into the necessary buildings and infrastructure. Once operational, those facilities need maintenance, repairs, and upgrades. Finally, regulatory dynamics. The continuous development of rules, regulation, and technological shifts that reshape our industry.
Before this summer, Lund Technical University in Sweden published a paper looking into why material use—and please read costs—in fairly simple and standardized road and rail bridges has grown substantially over the last 50 years. Case studies show that many different factors contribute to this. One insight is that the developments in design codes and engineering practices following more advanced design tools have had a significant effect. One example is the effect of regulatory inflation. The number of pages in the Swedish bridge design code grew from about 150 pages in 1970 to approximately 5,600 pages by 2012. Another insight is that with the advancement of computer-aided designs, we are building more complex structures to comply with more complex codes. This compared to simpler and easier designs in the 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps sometimes simple is good enough.
Just as rules and technology may be a great benefactor to society when applied cautiously, the best of intentions may also add layer upon layer of formalism, increasing scope, increasing requirements, and thus adding complexity and costs to capital projects. The four fundamentals I just described—demographics, public infrastructure, private investments, and regulatory dynamics—interact to provide a resilient driver for long-term growth. Medium-term forecasters indicate that the tide has turned, and they predict a gradual recovery in the buildings market while construction, with its multi-year contracts, countercyclical tendencies, and strong dependence on public spending, is expected to continue its stable growth. Throughout this presentation, I hope I have made a good argument that the market is indeed large, diversified, and attractive. It has demonstrated its resilience and robustness, especially the construction segment.
That the large multidisciplinary consultancies such as Norconsult have outgrown the market, and that the fundamentals for growth, the need for homes, hospitals, and power stations, remain. Despite economic cycles, the underlying demand for investments in building and infrastructure is robust. These are durable forces shaping our society's future well beyond the forecast horizon. Thank you for your time.
Hello everyone. My name is Bård Hernes. I'm EVP for Head Office in Norway. I'd like to present for you today an overview of our business area, Head Office. I've been in Norconsult for almost 40 years and joined the company straight after I finished my education at the university in Trondheim as a structural engineer. I have held different positions in the company since then and for the 10 last years as EVP for Head Office and Norconsult Digital.
At the picture on my front page, you see the new NRK Head Office. That's a great win for the Norconsult Group and our architects and engineers. First, our Nordic Office of Architecture and Partners won the design competition for the new building, as you see here. Later this summer, Norconsult, together with Hent, won the contract for engineering and construction. This will be a very exciting project for us the coming years, working close together with NRK and Hent. Head Office is located in Sandvika outside Oslo, but we have been present in several offices across the Oslo region. We have a large city office here in Telegrafen, where we are sitting now, with more than 400 employees sitting on the floors ahead of us. Altogether, we are currently 900 employees after the acquisition of Aas-Jakobsen Group in August this year.
We are organized in eight business units. We are leading expertise within all disciplines who work close together in our complex projects. The units are, as you see to the right, Building and Construction, Technology and Industry, Geoenvironment and Risk Management, Water, Transportation, Community and Urban Planning, and our two subsidiaries, Nordic Office of Architecture and lately Aas-Jakobsen Group. At the upper right, you can see our stable organic growth over the last years from NOK 2 billion revenue in 2021 up to NOK 3 billion revenue in the last 12 months, with a stable margin at 12%. We execute many large multidisciplinary projects, both in the Oslo region and across Norway, and sometimes also outside Norway, especially tunnels, airports, and large infrastructure projects. We are a leading expertise within infrastructure as railways, roads, tunnels, bridges, airports, and so on.
We work close together with other business segments in the group, sharing competence and capacity. About half of the revenue comes from large multidisciplinary projects, mainly infrastructure, but also buildings and industry. That means that more than half of the revenue comes directly from public customers. In addition, several of our private assignments also are funded by public budgets. At the right, we have listed out some of our largest public and private customers. As you see, we are working closer together with state-owned companies as Bane NOR, Statens Vegvesen, Nye Veier, Avinor, Statsbygg, Oslo Kommune, and others. On the private side, we work close together with all national contractors as Skanska, Veidekke, AF Gruppen, Implenia, Abel, and others. This is a project many of you who live in Oslo will recognize.
Not only for traffic jams and travel delays and problems, this is also a huge, huge construction site. More than 400 of our engineers are working on these projects for the moment. E18 corridor is an example of our large and complex infrastructure project and one of our largest assignments for the moment. It is also one of the largest infrastructure projects in Norway for the moment. The projects consist of a 70 km new and upgraded highway west of Oslo from Lysaker to Asker, and are divided into three stages. The first stage from Lysaker to Ramsøysletta is under construction, as you experience. The next stage is from Ramsøysletta to Nesbru with a tunnel under Sandvika. This last stage is to Asker. On the first stage, we work as a design and engineering partner together with the contractor Skanska.
On the next stage, we work together with Statens Vegvesen with planning and regulation for the next stage. Both Norconsult and Aas-Jakobsen have contributed as a technical advisor to Statens Vegvesen for the whole projects. The total cost for E18 korridoren is estimated to be NOK 60 billion, and the investment for the first stage under construction is estimated to be NOK 23 billion. Further to Aas-Jakobsen Group. In early August, we completed the acquisition of Aas-Jakobsen Group, and 226 new employees became a part of Norconsult. The onboarding process is on track, and the two companies already work together case by case. We plan to implement a new merged organization by next summer and transfer the business and the employees to Norconsult.
As expected, we already see that the two companies share the same value and culture, and both are committed to deliver high-quality services to our customers. We are really looking forward to joining our forces next year. Aas-Jakobsen employees participated in our share program in October, and we are happy to announce that 84% of the employees chose to invest in Norconsult shares. As you see to the right, picture to the right, we know each other well from cooperating as partners in large complex projects, starting with the new Oslo Airport at Gardermoen, and lately the Regjeringskvartalet, the new subway station at Majorstua, and Light Rail in Bergen. We are now working together on several new business opportunities coming forward. We experience that innovation scales best in large long-term projects.
Multi-year complex infrastructure projects are a very good environment for developing new skills, new methods, and new technology. We experience that innovation scales best in projects where there are time and budgets for development and improvements. These types of projects are usually long-term with large potential, and each project can benefit from its own investments in innovation. We usually think about innovation as new technology, but it's also important for developing skills of people, developing new processes, our workflows, and so on. It is three areas where innovation can be done. In Norconsult, we can benefit from this innovation in these three areas. We can use this project to share experience and distribute new knowledge to our people across our organization in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. We can optimize and improve our design process and new cost-effective solutions and data-driven decisions.
Finally, we can explore, develop, and scale up new technology and convert innovation into our new standards. Both new technology we develop ourselves and new technology we adapt together with other suppliers. One good example is the new Sotra Bridge. This is a 900-meter-long suspension bridge under construction outside Bergen. The design is fully model-based, which means that we have developed a complete digital twin for the whole construction with thousands and thousands of details in a single cloud-based model. The digital twin enables faster decisions, better and easier communication, and improved cost control. We have already reduced design errors by 76% and are saving more than 300 man-hours per month in smarter workflows. Sotra Bridge won an Autodesk Award in 2024 for the most innovative use of the Autodesk platform. This is a global award, and Norconsult has been awarded five times.
We are the only company in the world with more than three awards. We think Norconsult is recognized as a leading company when it comes to digitalization. One other example is of a cooperation with the company Infraspace. Infraspace is a new startup located in Asker, also at Oslo. They have developed an AI-driven platform for optimizing early phase planning of infrastructure projects. Norconsult has integrated this platform into our design process for early phase planning, and we can explore thousands of route alternatives in minutes where we can optimize our design and make better decisions. We experience that we can reduce time spent on different analyses from days to minutes, and we have already used the new technology in several projects with success. Our cooperation with Infraspace is an example of how we can adapt new technology from startups into our own workflow.
Last year, Norconsult became a partner with a Norwegian incubator company, Startup Lab, where we can get first-hand information and contact with promising startups and scale-ups. Finally, let me introduce Nora, our own AI agent. It is a she. Nora is an example of how we can develop our own technology by using our leading AI expertise in Norconsult Digital. Our software engineers have developed Nora based on Microsoft Azure Platform as a large language model who can understand and generate human-like text. Nora runs within Norconsult's data platform with access to data from all our previous and new projects and internal documents and nothing else. She can only access our own data, nothing else, nothing outside our own platform. In this way, we have better control and get better and higher quality results.
Today, Nora is adapted into our workflow and is easy to use across the company. Nora is specially trained for the optimizing of our tendering process. She can analyze all tender documents, compare with earlier tenders and versions, and list out all requirements from the tender documents. She can even advise on how we can best meet these requirements in our tender. In this way, we can reduce time spent on tendering and get better quality and better results, hopefully also more wins. These were three good examples illustrating how we can utilize new technology to improve and streamline our own workflow, making more value for us and our customers. This concludes my presentation on Norconsult Head Office, the heart of Norconsult, as we call it.
We have a strong position in the infrastructure market, and we are even stronger after the acquisition of the Aas-Jakobsen Group. We are a catalyst for innovation and digitalization in our state-of-the-art projects. Finally, our experience and capacity and new technology will reinforce the position for the rest of the group. Thank you for your attention.
We will soon have a few more sessions, three more presentations before we have a lunch break. We have a Q&A now, which will give you an opportunity to ask some questions to Christian Salbu Aasland and myself. Yes, Simen, and please wait for the microphone for the recording of our session.
Thank you. You bring up AI in this session, so naturally something we debate a lot with investors as well. Both of your scenarios, which you presented, have one common element, and that's reduced time. Calculation goes from days to minutes, and you charge by the hour on the number of hours worked. How do you see that contrast, and how does that impact your industry going forward? What steps are you taking in this process with AI? Yeah, you say you adapt it, but how does that play out overall for the organization, as you can see?
Yeah, I think that is something which all three of us could reply to. I'm often the one replying, and I think today we should give some other people the opportunity to talk with you. Bård or Christian, who would like to?
We experience that AI can be very effective for our processes, but only in short periods. We can do some of the activities very fast, but that enables us to utilize and optimize the rest of the project better. We can do more in shorter time, but we can also do a better job. So far, we have seen improvement on different parts, but not for the whole projects.
In terms of getting paid, because you bill by the hour?
We have budgets, and when we reduce time on one part of the project, we can use more time on other parts to give better quality and optimized projects to the customer.
You do not see this turning out to be lower revenues in the end?
May I add? From my perspective, technology, and it is called AR, called technology, has kind of three impacts on our business. The first impact is that you need more work to be done. If you're going to comply with 5,600 pages of bridge regulation code, if you're going to optimize a bridge to reduce your climate footprint, to reduce the CO2 used material, you need to do more work. If you're starting to use automated excavators in the building space to make the building process a lot more efficient, the data you need to have delivered from your architects and engineers need to be a lot more detailed and a lot more specified. One part is that technology, both in our part of the value chain and the rest of the value chain, increases the need for precise and detailed data. That kind of adds into your work. The second part is that a lot of the manual processes that we did, my generalist 20 years ago, that's continuously improved and automated. I mean, I've been an engineer for 20 years.
I've been programming my whole life. I never draw anything on a piece of paper. That is a continuous process. AI is going to add to that continuous process that kind of makes what we delivered yesterday more efficient. That also means that when we start to look at the possibility of optimizing our designs, that also adds a bit. The third part is that if you look at all the hours spent internally in Norconsult to run our business, that is also an area like Nora where we can in reality reduce our internal time. From my perspective, you have something that adds work, and you have some technology that reduces work. What the net effect is going to be over time, that is yet to be determined.
Have you seen any changes in payment schemes already from this kind of adaptation of AI, from hours to fixed price on projects, etc.?
Not really. Not really. No, I think I can say so. The change is more in the contract types rather than driven by the AI. As Christian said, AI enables us to do better quality projects and deliver better results for our customers within the same budget.
Just one more thing. The Sotra Bridge that Bård just showed, without heavily used AI, we would never be able to design that bridge. Simply impossible.
Okay. Yeah. We'll continue the discussion. Yeah. Thanks.
Can I just ask one follow-up question on AI? Because you had a Copilot logo, etc., etc., and it's not for free. I'm just wondering how you think about that in terms of how many people should have these resources and how much cost that has driven as well this year.
We have a clear policy on that. Everyone who needs Copilot will get Copilot. If they don't use it, they lose it. That means that we have a dynamic allocation of Copilot. Some people use it and benefit from it frequently, and then we have a license on that. If we register that there is no use, then it's taken away. That is how we manage cost relating to Copilot. You are right. It is an expensive tool. Yeah, we see that some people have very good use of it. One more question, if I may. You mentioned that you will integrate Aas-Jakobsen Group fully from next summer.
Have you made some further thoughts about whether you keep the Aas-Jakobsen name? Do you fully integrate it? How's your thinking about that?
That's what we are planning for the moment. There are no final decisions. The Aas-Jakobsen name is a very strong brand within some of the part of their business. I think we are going to keep it for a period. For instance, within bridges.
Yes. Hi, Jespers Stugemo with Handelsbanken. Just a follow-up on Nora here. Is this mainly related to internal initiatives that you use in-house, or do you see that you will put some more investments in this and sell it also into projects?
For the moment, we are using Nora internal because then we can use it on internal documents and previous projects. Nora is trained for the tendering process mainly and is very successful on that process for the moment.
All right. Thank you. Okay.
Sorry, a follow-up on me also on that team. With Copilot and Nora, you can use Copilot to do internal sourcing as well. How do you see the balance of having both? Do you need it?
The main difference is Copilot is working on the whole internet and Nora only on internal platform. I think we need both.
Okay. A question on the employee churn that you showed on 2024. Have you seen any development year to date and how that number has turned out?
It is slightly improving.
Thank you.
One question if I may, Bengt Jonassen ABG. Maybe a bit on the side, but talking about that public sector is 50% of revenue and private is 50%. But indirectly, if you include the private sector's, let's say, funding from public sector, what is the number then?
We say it's roughly two-thirds. Public is roughly two-thirds if you include that. Some of our private customers are also working for the public.
Okay. There will be more opportunities to ask questions later, but we will continue. We will not have a break now, but we will.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have been enjoying our presentations this far. My name is Vegard Jacobsen. I've had the position as EVP for Norway Regions for the last four years now. I've been with Norconsult for 22 years. Just like Bård, I started as a structural engineer at the head office. I've also been working in the Hamar office.
Behind me here, you can see Stavern Elementary School that we successfully designed and built together with Bakke Vestfold and Larvik Municipality. The school has become very popular and is widely used by the local community also outside school hours. It has also become a school that many visit to find inspiration when planning new schools. Norway Regions is our strong local presence. We are close to our clients, and we are close to our clients' projects. We take actively part in the local business networks, and we are a living part of our local communities. We are your local partner. We leverage group-wide expertise and capacity to ensure that we are competitive in our local bids and that we are able to offer our clients something more than they get from local competitors. We offer interesting jobs to talented people wherever they want to live.
This is important for our ability to recruit and grow. In Norconsult, it is possible to live on a farm on the West Coast and still take part in projects like the E18 West Corridor that Bård just presented. The next day, you can actually be designing a school or a playground that your own children will enjoy when it is completed. On the upper right, we can see stable growth, which is mostly organic driven for us. We can also see quite stable margins. However, we can observe a drop in 2024, mainly related to a weakened local buildings market, and I shall return to that later. Norway Regions is currently 1,800 people organized in five regions and 23 offices, as we can see on the right corner. The business segment is divided into five geographical regions with large branch offices in Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Hamar, and Bodø.
Many of our branch offices have multiple locations, making us present in more than 70 different locations in Norway. You can see the size of the different regions by means of the share of net revenue or FTEs on the map. Norway Regions is highly dependent on the buildings market. Nearly half of our revenue on the left side is within buildings and architecture. This market has been challenging for some time now, mainly due to a significant drop in investments driven by building costs and sentiment, I would say. As a consequence, our share of revenue within building and architecture went down from last year, while the percentage in infrastructure and energy and industry went up. The share of private and public investments is almost 50-50, but we have seen a slight movement the last year from private to public sector following the market development.
On the right-hand side, we can see some of our largest public and private clients, such as Bane NOR, Statens Vegvesen, Bergen Kommune, as well as Norsem, Vakker, and Hent, to mention a few. Here you can see a very early conceptual model of Dørlig Care and Nursing Home in Nittedal Municipality. This is one of many good examples of the work we do in Norway Regions and how we contribute to improving everyday life. The ambition here is to design and build a care and nursing home that actually attracts people and especially volunteers from outside, from the voluntary sector. With innovative design of common areas and physical exterior, we intend to bring the town square to the center since the patients are unable to visit the square.
This will enable more people to contribute to care through meaningful volunteer activities and also ensure attractive workplaces at the nursery. That is crucial for this sector, actually. Together with Nordic Office of Architecture, we are providing all professional design services for this project, such as conceptual design, zoning plan, and preliminary design. We also provide geotechnical surveys, and Nittedal Municipality has options to extend the project to include detailed design and follow-on engineering during the construction phase. With an aging population in Norway, health and care facilities like Dørlig is an area where we expect further growth. I will now say a few words about how we have managed the drop in the private buildings market. Following a strong first half of 2023, our billing ratio dropped during the second half of 2023, and it remained low in 2024.
The root cause was that a large share of revenue from the private buildings and architecture market was hit hard by reduced local building activities. This led to our capacity in parts of our organization. To cope with this situation, it was necessary to do organizational adjustments to improve our billing ratio. Measures such as scaling down recruitment, some temporary layoffs, and some early retirements were taken. We also took proactive measures to increase sales, trim rates, and to improve our operations, as well as reducing costs. The result is a headcount today similar to Q3 last year, but an organic growth in Q3 of 9% year on year, driven by increased billing ratio and increased billing rates. On the rolling 12-month average billing ratio to the right, we are now starting to see results of our efforts.
Another measure we took and one strength of the Norconsult culture and model is our ability to move resources across market segments. This is really important for us to utilize our total capacity. One example of how we moved personnel to new market segments is illustrated here on the left. We can see how the share of revenue in industry and energy has increased from 16% in 2019 to 21% five years later. There are three important elements of the Norconsult culture that make this possible. Firstly, there is willingness on an individual level to accept new challenges. Secondly, we have a strong middle management network with the ability to mobilize people and projects across the organization. Third, we have standardized and digital work processes reducing hurdles.
For instance, it's quite easy for a structural engineer to switch between a building project and an industrial project as the design tools and the building materials are more or less the same. Digital working methods allow us to move capacity between projects regardless of where the engineer actually sits. Altogether, this ability to move resources makes us a flexible and resilient organization. The investments within the defense sector have grown and are expected to continue growing across the Nordics following NATO expansion. Norconsult has been awarded several frame agreements, both with Danish and Norwegian defense agencies. There are many different clients within this segment. You have the national defense agencies. You have the NATO defense agencies. You have the defense industry. Very important, we have the investments in defense-related infrastructure as part of the total defense concept.
Consequently, you will find defense-related investments in budgets outside the defense departments. We expect to see a large proportion of defense projects regulated under framework contracts. Such agreements have defined terms and conditions, while call-offs are defining scope of work for the individual projects. There are both single vendor and multi-vendor frame agreements. For multi-vendor agreements, call-offs are awarded according to rank or a planned rotation, or mini-competitions can be held. That's typically when the threshold for the call-off is exceeded, contracts above a certain level. We do not include framework agreements in our order backlog, but we do include signed call-offs. The military geographical presence, as you can see on the right-hand side, is well matched with our distributed office locations. The same goes for the term the total defense concept, which includes investments in ports, rail, roads, airports, increased requirements to buildings regarding security, strengthening of bridges, etc.
Given that we are well positioned for such projects and that we have resources near many of the building sites, we regard this as a priority for Norway Regions. Forsvarsbygg, the Norwegian Defense Estate Agency, has this year become one of Norconsult's top 10 clients in Norway and a key client for Norway Regions. On the left-hand side, you can see how the number of ongoing projects has increased from less than 50 to more than 100 over the last three years. Most of these projects are call-offs from framework agreements. To wrap up my section, we are convinced that our dispersed local presence gives Norconsult a strong competitive advantage. We are part of the local business networks where most of our clients also take part. As such, we are often regarded as a preferred local partner.
For smaller projects, in particular, but even a very large project often starts off as a small project, like a concept study for an industrial partner. We also seek to involve and utilize the entire company's capacity and expertise to win and execute large and complex projects. Our local office often plays the role as the door opener for Norconsult, and that's a very important responsibility for Norway Regions to open the door and ensure that Norconsult achieves a relevant market share. At last, our strong local presence allows us to recruit and retain talented people where they would like to live their lives, and at the same time, they can take part in exciting Norconsult projects almost everywhere. It's all about people. Thank you for the attention.
Thank you, Vegard, for a great presentation. Also, thank you for highlighting the importance of local presence. That's also important in Sweden. Good day, everyone. My name is Fredrik Holmberg. I'm the CFO of Sweden. I'm here today to present Sweden. I will be doing this since our CEO in Sweden, Farah Al-Ayesh, is away due to a loss of a close relative. I joined Norconsult roughly one year ago. Before that, I was the CFO of Hector Rail, a railway company in Sweden. And I have a background as an engineer as well as finance. Behind me here, we have a picture of Täby simhall in Sweden. This is one of the projects in Sweden that we have done. And it's a modern swimming facility that perfectly shows our capability in Sweden. Despite the challenging market in architecture, we have found our own niche within the architecture, and it's the public swimming pools.
This is one example of how Sweden has been handling the tougher market situations to keep up the volumes and still growing. These projects also include several of our expertise areas, such as architectural, acoustics, and also landscape design. Sweden is actually the largest business unit outside of Norway, and we represent 18% of the total group. We have been focusing on growth the last years. Now we are in the eighth place in the market in Sweden, and we offer a full multidisciplinary service offering across market areas and disciplines. We are organized into three market areas, as you see here: water infrastructure and transportation, energy and industry, and also architecture and environment and building. They all cover roughly one third of the revenue in Sweden.
We have successfully strengthened our position in the energy and industry market the last years, and that's the two fastest growing areas in Sweden. We also have a big foundation in infrastructure and architecture. We are roughly 1,600 employees in Sweden right now, and we are spread across 40 locations, all the way from Kiruna in the northern part of Sweden down to Malmö in the southern part of Sweden. The several locations enable us to both be really close to our clients, but also the projects. This is key, as Vegard was into. We are also part of the local business network, and that's very important. Norconsult Sweden holds a strong position in the infrastructure market, and it's also a significant player in the energy and industry. As you can see, our exposure to the Swedish construction market is more than two thirds.
This contributes to the fact that we have a larger proportion of revenue from public clients than the group has combined. Here on the right, you see some of our important customers, both in the public and also the private sector. Our main focus lies in the construction market, as I said. One of the biggest railway projects in Sweden is actually Mälarbanan. Mälarbanan is an important part of the railway network to increase the capacity to Stockholm, both for long-distance trains and also regional trains. This is a great example of how Norconsult Sweden, with our full portfolio of disciplines and services, can handle large, complex infrastructure projects. We have been working on this project since 2018, and it is still ongoing and will be for a few years.
We are included in all the different phases, all from feasibility study, pre-design, production and construction documents, and also client support during the construction. The project team is spread across the whole Sweden. We are roughly 100 consultants in these projects. This is a really nice project. Let's go into the market. As Christian presented before today, Sweden has experienced the largest drop among the Nordic countries. As you can see, it is 16% the last three years. While the construction market has demonstrated resilience, 2%, you can see that the building sector has been hit hard, and especially the recent buildings. This comes from the high interest rates, high mortgage costs, as well as the commercial property fines that also have increased.
All this led to reduced demand in the housing construction market, and they have reached a 30-year low with falling house prices and major write-downs by the property companies. This downturn has affected the sentiment across the entire building as well as the construction industry. Looking ahead, Prognoscentret has now predicted that the tide has turned, and the Swedish market is set for a rebound. If we look on the building market, they will gradually come back from the crisis low time. If you look on the infrastructure, they are expected to enter a strong expansion phase driven by the public infrastructure investments. Two concrete examples of that can be found in the investment plan of two of our biggest customers, Trafikverket and Svenska Kraftnät. On the left, we have Trafikverket. They handle the public roads and rail administration in Sweden.
They have proposed a national transfer plan for 2026 to 2037, summing up to SEK 1,171 billion. That is SEK 200 billion more than the previous plan. By looking on new projects, including rail and road, they are expected to increase by 20%. On the right here, we can see that energy is no exception. Svenska Kraftnät, who is a Swedish government agency responsible for the national grid, announced their investment plan, and it is from 2026 to 2028, and it is SEK 57 billion, twice of today's level. By looking on 2026 to 2030, you can see the figure reaches roughly SEK 116 billion. Sweden has been focusing on organic growth, as we have told you before. Despite the market headwind, Norconsult Sweden has a strong track record of organic growth. During the past three years, we have delivered 12% in CAGR.
By looking on the numbers from 2021 to 2024, we have a 50% increase in revenue. Sweden is the largest building and construction market in the Nordics, and this is a market that we really believe in. Our vision here is clear: to continue focus on organic growth and gaining market shares and strengthen our position to continue our journey to be a top five player. Until now, we have done it by expanding our service offering, local presence, and also to deliver large, complex projects, just like Mälarbanan I showed you before. We have also invested, and this is key, in our people throughout culture. This fosters a culture-driven, long-term lasting, and also organic growth. If the employees are not happy, we will not be able to have the growth going forward or the profitability.
One measure to do that is to see the employee turnover or churn, as you said before. In Sweden, the employee turnover is really low, and this is a key to enabling the stable growth going forward. It also shows that we are on the right track. A strong growth can be challenging for the profitability, and this is a balancing act. Sweden has been handling this very well. As you can see from 2021 to 2024, it is a stable, slight upward trend. You can also see in 2025, it has been challenging. This is mainly because of the market. Please note in the chart, we have been adjusted to show the performance without costs related to the investment in Sigma Civil, but also the senior recruitments. The senior recruitments were second of the half of 2023 and Sigma Civil in 2025.
The senior recruitments were a good investment, and we can now see that they deliver good performance. Sigma Civil acquisition is a turnaround case, and we got it for the right price or cheap, as Torg told us. I'm confident that this will be a good investment for Norconsult. The main effects that we have done to improve the margins are actually to grow in attractive niches, like the swimming pools I told you before. We also recruit or hire senior recruitments, but also build expertise in-house. This is a key tool to have the knowledge in-house to really rely on and increase our position in high-value areas. We also need to balance our growth to see where are the best margins and also the biggest potential for margin. This is something that we do actively all the time. We also improve our efficiencies.
We have done a lot of efficiencies and are now in a better position to focus on profitable growth. On top of the solid organic growth we have delivered, Norconsult Sweden has also strengthened its position throughout targeted acquisitions. Mid-December 2024, we announced the acquisition of Sigma Civil, and this is a smart fit for our growth strategy and commitment to the local presence. Sigma Civil brings a deep expertise in several areas to strengthen our multidisciplinary capacity to deliver complex projects. Some of the examples we have here: we have Stockholm XRG BICS, that's a carbon capture and storage. We have a framework agreement with Trafikverket Uppsala, Brunflobacken outer area, and the road of E22. As of now, the integration of Sigma Civil is progressing according to plan. All the former Sigma Civil employees are now fully integrated into Norconsult Sweden.
We can also see a lot of positive signals, for example, the billing ratio. We can also see some of the cost synergies according to the business case starting now to materialize. As Torg mentioned early this morning in the Q3 report, we reported a negative EBITDA of NOK 3 million, but in September, they actually delivered a positive result. This is a clear sign that we are moving in the right direction. To sum up my presentation, I would like to highlight Sweden is Norconsult's largest market outside of Norway, and a lot of potential, and it is an important market for Norconsult and a market that we believe in. Norconsult Sweden is now a full-service multidisciplinary consultancy firm with a local presence across the whole country.
We have demonstrated a solid track record of organic growth, and we are now in the eighth place in the market, but we are positioned for further profitable growth. Our long-term goal is to be the top five player in Sweden. That is what I would like to present. Thank you very much for your attention.
Yes, hi everyone. I'm Håkon Bergsodden. Since February 1 this year, I've had the pleasure of serving as Head of the business segment renewable energy here at Norconsult. I'm really born and bred in Norconsult. I've been here for 15 years. I started out as a hydropower engineer and worked through the hydropower and transmission division. Today, I'm going to walk you through our business segment, tell you a bit about who we are, what we do, and how we are positioning ourselves for the future.
We have a clear number one position in engineering and advisory services in the Norwegian energy market. That's a position that we have built and strengthened through 100 years. We started out with hydropower, but over time, we have developed a broad range of services across the entire sector. Today, we are also a significant player in wind power, both onshore and offshore, in solar power, in power transmission, and green industry. Our ambition is to continue to have the clear number one position in the Norwegian market. It is to strengthen our position in the Nordic market and continue to work on international projects where our expertise adds value. We have structured the organization for profitable growth. As of the third quarter in 2025, we're now 500 employees in our business segment.
Over time, as you can see, we have delivered strong results with steady high growth in a growing market and with consistent margins. During the spring of this year, we have restructured and renewed our organization. The reason for this is simple. We want to make sure that we have a setup that makes it possible for us to continue our organic growth, but also, and at the same time, strengthening and developing our key asset, which is our employees. Our business segment primarily focuses on renewable energy, but it's important to also show that we use expertise and competence from the rest of the organization, from the other business segments, such as headquarters and regions. Within renewable energy, we serve two main client segments: the power producers and the grid operators. It's a quite demanding and transparent market.
To be able to have long-term success, you need to have consistent high quality in the delivery. We enjoy a strong reputation and a trusted brand among these clients. In addition to the grid companies and power producers, we also work closely with contractors who build infrastructures mainly for the grid operators and also large power consumers such as industrial clients. This gives us a solid foundation and a broad client base across the renewable energy landscape. What's also important is that we have deep domain knowledge and insight into the core processes of these quite technical, complex projects. That makes us able to deliver real, measurable added value to our clients. With this, we play a key role in the green transition, helping to increase capacity in production, in transmission, and also consumption of electric power.
Our expertise is not limited to power production and energy transport. We can all see that the green transition is taking longer than we hoped for and longer than we expected. The result of this is that we are facing now the consequences of climate change. Even here, we are well positioned to contribute. Building on our hydropower and water resource expertise, combined with climate expertise, hydrology, and river engineering, we are able to support clients who need to identify vulnerabilities and implement mitigating measures. Let me give you an example. Here you can see the picture of Dam Braskreddfoss. I guess many of you saw this live on national TV a couple of years ago. At Dam Braskreddfoss, when Norway was hit by the storm Hans, water levels rose so fast that the gates in the dam became inaccessible. Eventually, the dam overtopped and failed.
Our experts were involved advising the client throughout the day as the situation developed. Afterwards, we have supported Hafslund with rebuilding, designing the new dam and the new power line downstream for Elvia. This is a good example because it illustrates three things. It shows how climate change already affects our infrastructure. It shows how our expertise adds value during a crisis. It shows that we are able to support both the power production company and the grid operator in reestablishing critical infrastructure afterwards. This picture is also from Glomma, a bit further down with a bit more water as well. One of the pictures is from the 1920s. The second picture is from 2018. I guess you can see which is which. This is from one side of the river to the other side of the river.
This is Norwegian hydropower history, Norwegian industrial history over 100 years. It is also Norconsult history for 100 years. Our founder, Mr. Berdahl, had his first assignment here in the 1920s doing site supervision. During the first 20 years, the 10 small first units were built. In the start of the 1970s, the 11th unit was built with the same capacity as the 10 first. In 2018, we supported Hafslund in designing the 12th unit. This became a milestone project for us. It was the first hydropower project in the world executed entirely in BIM without 2D drawings used at all. It was an important effort. We won several awards. It has been a successful project. I think for Norconsult, the greatest value is how we have applied the tools and the methods that we developed here afterwards.
We have used those tools and methods in several hydropower projects. One example is Dam Sogna in 2020, which was the first really large-scale dam project with a completely paperless design. Now we are going into a period where we see more hydropower projects being built again. One example is the Fjellhaugen Hydropower Plant, which Egil mentioned earlier today. Here we are taking it one step further. The project will be built on a data-driven setup, allowing us to use AI tools for things like optimization, predictive insights, continuous improvement throughout the project. This really shows how we are combining our deep domain knowledge in hydropower with our digital expertise to deliver added value to our clients and the projects we are involved in. We also use our hydropower expertise abroad. We have worked in the Nordics, in Europe, and in other parts of the world.
One example is the Krøken project where we support Drax. This is in Scotland with upgrading a 440 megawatt pump storage plant. Pump storage is probably becoming more important in the Norwegian market and also in other countries where we are present. The reason for this is we have more variable power coming into our system, like wind and solar. Therefore, it's important for us to continue to build our competence and use our hydropower expertise in these kinds of projects as well. If we go 10 years back and we try to find out how would this decade look like. From renewable energy, we were quite convinced that the 2020s would be about keeping old machinery running at a low cost and that we would continue to develop the grid at the same steady pace as before. Since then, a lot has happened.
We had an increasing focus on the green transition. We've had an energy crisis, and eventually, we've had a geopolitical crisis. All of this leads to increased investment, both in power production and in the grid. In fact, we need to go back to the 1980s to find a similar level of activity as we see now. There will be an increasing need for more power in the Nordic power system. We have a strong starting point with a very high share of renewable energy. We have the hydropower, which gives us flexibility. It can deliver when we need it the most on cold winter days or when everyone comes home from work and plugs in their electric car. Most of the hydropower locations are already being utilized. However, there is a large need to upgrade the existing equipment, much of it is built 40 to 60 years ago.
In addition to that, there is a significant opportunity to increase output by optimizing existing plants. You will use the same water. You will not necessarily get more production in the end, but you will increase the capacity to be able to deliver when demand is high. To meet the total need for energy, I'm convinced that solar and wind must play a role. With this, changing consumption patterns, increased production, higher peak loads, there is a strong need for major grid investments as well. Often we see today that limitations in the transmission grid are the bottleneck for further development of both production, but also new consumption. We're confident that we will see significant investments across the Nordics and in Europe to handle the changes given by the green transition.
To summarize, we believe that we have a strong position to take part in the investments that are now being made in the Nordics. We have an outstanding position in hydropower and deep knowledge about the Nordic power system. We will continue to use the expertise and experience we have established in the Nordic market to use that abroad. We believe that we have a solid foundation and a structured organization for continued growth. Thank you.
Thank you, Håkon. We will have a Q&A session before we have lunch. We have all of the three latest presenters and are ready for your questions. Martine?
Infrån Nordea. This is a question both related to the Energy Division and Sweden. In which areas would you like to either strengthen your presence or go into new areas? Or turn the question around, what do you think you lack the most to be competitive?
I think we're, in general, well positioned. If you look at the Nordic market, for sure there will be investments in grid transmission and grid in general. There we have a cooperation across the countries with Norway and Sweden. We also have resources in Poland and Iceland working in the Nordic market. That is a focus area to have the capacity to deliver to the grid operators. Yeah.
Maybe on Sweden as well.
I agree. We have Svenska Kraftnät. That's a big customer for us and also a growing customer as well. That's one focus. We will also focus on other parts of the energy and also the industry market in Sweden.
To the Energy Division here. The new resource tax in Norway on water production, does that impact the market at all? How do you see that?
Not too, because then you're talking about the tax for small-scale hydro, which is not a very large part of our portfolio at the moment. So we're mostly working on large-scale schemes now.
Yeah. Thanks for clearing up.
Hi. Sindre Soerbye from Arctic Asset Management. If you look at, let's say, market developments within your space over the last couple of years, at least from the outside, it appears that nuclear is, let's say, come much more to the foreground. Data centers, which are more, let's say, on the edge of this, has definitely come to the foreground. There is, let's say, more transitional technologies, especially hydrogen and offshore wind, and in particular, floating offshore wind has, let's say, the outlook looks weaker, at least in the medium-term perspective. How does that affect your planning?
I think I can comment on that as well. In general, the Nordic power system is one system. It's linked together, and it's a very strong system because you have, as you mentioned, we have nuclear power that works as a base load in Sweden and Finland. We have also, to some degree, wind onshore as well. We have the hydropower to add flexibility to this. We have a lot of assets already that need to be refurbished, upgraded, and there will be activity there. We need to invest in the grid as well, both in Norway and Sweden, connecting north to south. I don't think we will see major changes in the direction that we have, neither in Sweden or Norway, as we see it now.
You haven't really changed your, and I'm talking about the whole Norconsult, to go, let's say, more into nuclear energy in Sweden, for instance, and maybe to reschedule a few of the engineers working with, for instance, hydrogen into more, let's say, power grid or something?
That's not the case in Sweden. The nuclear part is mainly coming from the political decisions in Sweden. That one is changing all the time. It is a bit tricky to really have a stable growth on the nuclear then because we don't really know if it's going to happen. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen quite far in the future as well. We are, as is in Norway, working with wind and hydropower plants.
Yes. Bengt Jonassen, ABG, two questions to Sweden. We learned that Forsvarsbygg has become the tenth largest client in region Norway. How is that development in Sweden? Are there any similarities there? The second question would be on the larger infrastructure projects. We have seen that two construction names in Sweden have been canceled. Existing projects. Do you see that as a risk for you?
Forsvarsbygg, it's a growing market in Sweden as well. We're trying to develop that as well. Regarding the bigger infrastructure projects in Sweden that have been stopped, I think it's mainly related to that there have been some investigations and they have found some faults with other parts. Of course, momentarily, this will affect our profitability, but not in the long run. We have close contracts to them, and it will continue as that. We're still in the projects, but there are different parts that we work with.
Welcome back, everyone. We are now ready for the second part of our Capital Markets Day, where Lead Architect in Nordic Office of Architecture, Fredrik Haukland, will tell us more about one of the really exciting projects we're working on, the new government headquarters in Oslo. Please.
Thank you. Yeah, my name is Fredrik Haukland. I'm an Associate Partner and Lead Architect here at Nordic Office of Architecture. I've been working here for 15 years and with this project, the new government headquarters, for the past eight years. Here at Nordic, we do a variety of different building typologies and plans, from airports, hospitals, healthcare, to the new National Police Emergency Center, Bodø Stadium, the Arctic Arena, and the new media house for NRK, which we won this year. Today, I'm going to present the new governmental headquarter.
Nordic's goal is to create outstanding architecture that contributes to a sustainable and vibrant society. This means that everything we do should be beautiful and durable and based on a holistic approach to architecture. We are founded on collaboration, inspired by nature, striving for simplicity, and enhanced by diversity. Nordic is a world-renowned standalone architectural office with about 400 employees seated in Norway, Iceland, and Denmark. We are owned by Norconsult. We have been working on the governmental headquarters since the regulation and won the competition in 2017 with our concept ADAPT. Competing was seven teams, 59 firms, of which 20 architectural firms. Nordic is a lead architect in Team Urbis, which includes Åse Jakobsen among others, which now also is owned by Norconsult. With our concept, these three front buildings at Johan Dygårdsholts plass represent a historical continuity in the development of Norwegian democracy.
To the right, you have the G-block. That is Norway's first governmental building. It is from 1906 and represents the union dissolution. That is where the finance department is seated today. In the middle, we have the second front building, the high rise from 1958. It is built in natural concrete with integrated beautiful art, and it is lifted above the square. Yeah, and we removed two floors on the high rise from the 1990s, transforming it back to its original 1958 shape. The third front building is the A-block, which is from 2025, this year. It will represent our time. It is placed in the landscape between the square and the park. It has got an iconic shape that is lifting the cold winds from the north and letting sunshine into the park.
The base is activated with the main entrance towards Johan Dygårdsholts plass and the café towards the park. The facades are light and transparent of Norwegian GRC, glass fiber reinforced concrete with Norwegian Lucite. Behind these three front buildings, we have Grubbergata and the B, C, D, and E-blocks, which forms a backdrop. These are given different colors from Norwegian natural stone from different districts in Norway brought to the site. Here we see the D-block with Iddefjord granite. To the right, we see the C-block, which is going to be pink of Røyking granite. The governmental headquarters will have a long lifespan. The architecture design must be timeless, and materials, building technologies, and technical solutions must be chosen with care. It will be varig, verdig, vakkert, og vennlig, which means functional and durable for generations, worthy, a physical manifestation of Norwegian democracy.
Beautiful, it should create joy and pride. Friendly, it will invite people to stay and be attractive. We started building in 2021, and building phase one is now finishing this year. Building phase two has started and will be finished in 2028. Building phase three is now suggested to start in the national budget. Hopefully, it will be finished in 2031. It will be 162,000 sq m approximately. The first building phase will be approximately 101,000 sq m. The new governmental headquarters will be a dignified physical manifestation of Norwegian democracy. It will provide good and easily accessible urban spaces that will invite people to stay and be active. It will be good workplaces that will invite interaction in the ministry community. It will be architecture that will remain as some of the best from our era.
We are not only restoring the damages after 22nd of July 2011 from the terrorist attack. We are not only gathering all the departments into one safe unit. We are making a decision-making machine with a common interaction zone in the plinth of all seven buildings. We are reshaping the city center for better access in the east-west direction through streets, squares, and a new park. Here we see an illustration of the second floor, and you can see how all the buildings are connected with bridges and a continuous timber environment, starting here at the pyramid hall. This is how it will look when the park is finished in a couple of years. We were asked to and wanted to use wood as a central material, but we could not use it in the structure because of safety.
We could not use it in the facades because of durability. So we made Nordic birch a central part of the interior, which also affects the exterior. Here you see the top of a 700 sq m integrated art piece in the 50 m high pyramid hall by the Sámi artist Outi Pieski. It is called Aka, which means grandmother or mother earth. I got this picture a couple of weeks ago from Lisa Granli, the lead entrepreneur in Hent, with the text Speechless. I think it somehow shows what Jens Stoltenberg asked for: more openness, more democracy.
My name is Dag Fladby. I'm the CFO in Norconsult. I've been here for nearly four years. Today I will talk about M&A strategy going forward and also our financial target. First, I would like to start with, yeah, I will say my favorite picture. This is our financials going back from 2014 up till year to date this quarter, with a 10% yearly growth and at the same time stable, healthy margins. After the IPO, we have continued the same way: solid growth and stable margins. The last three years, we have had around 8% organic growth in average. As Egil presented earlier today, that is also above our peers. Approximately one third of our growth is from acquisitions, meaning that acquisition is part of our daily business. Since 2014, we have acquired approximately 80 companies, mainly smaller bolt-ons with 20-40 employees. When we entered the IPO, we said that we had an ambition to be a top three player. Our strategy is to combine the organic growth and also do more acquisitions going forward to reach that goal.
When we got listed, we also stated that we most likely will do larger transactions as we are becoming a larger company, but also as we have other funds available as a listed company. The last two years, we have done slightly fewer transactions, as you see from this picture, but they have been larger. We have selected three acquisitions here. First of all, on the top there, Aas-Jakobsen Group, which we have heard quite much about today, which has been our largest transaction so far. Very important strategic transaction, bringing us to the top leader of infrastructure in Norway. Secondly, we have LB Consult, which is another acquisition of 50 employees in Aarhus, Denmark. Aarhus is the second largest city in Denmark. They had really good knowledge in buildings and property, but they also had a good position within healthcare and hospitals.
That also made us to have a lever against continued growth in southern Denmark. Finally, we have Sigma Civil, which Fredrik talked about earlier today, a turnaround case which we acquired early this year, which strengthened our position in four main cities in Sweden within infrastructure and also project management. This morning, as Egil presented earlier, we also acquired Metier, a larger transaction for us. With an ambition to be a top three player in the Nordics, we will continue to do M&A. We will have more focus outside Norway than we have had so far, strengthening these markets. We will use different strategies, as shown to the right here. Typically in Norway, where we are a market leader, we will go up left with smaller bolt-ons, niche-ons, to add competence or capacity if needed.
While in the other markets, we will do a combination of NIS players, smaller bolt-ons, and generalists. When we target companies, we have three very important rules which we need to tick off before we complete that transaction. First of all, it must be a strategic match. Secondly, the price must be right. The deal must be accretive to our shareholders. Finally, there must be a culture match. The last one is very important because we acquire people and knowledge. If the people do not thrive in our culture, they will leave, and the investment will not be successful. A few words on the strategy going forward on each of the countries we are within. In Norway, as I mentioned, we will mainly focus on smaller bolt-ons, adding competencies and capacity. In Sweden, we will grow in the geographical large cities.
We will seek to expand our infrastructure, energy, and also industry presence. In Denmark, our target is to enhance our geographical reach and also to diversify our portfolio. What does that mean? That means that we will seek to go into infrastructure, industry, and also energy. We have Finland. Entering a market for the first time, we need to buy a platform which is solid and prepared for future growth. We have good insights of the Finnish market and also the players in the market. The market in Finland has been really challenging the last two, three years. That has also been the case for the financials of most of these companies. However, the price expectations have not been adjusted accordingly. We will be patient in order to find the right candidate for Finland.
Finally, I would also like to add the top right square here where we have opened up to bolt-ons outside Nordics if that complements our pan-Nordic offering. That is typically within renewable energy. A few words on our cash flow and cash conversion. When we entered the IPO, we presented a very strong cash conversion, and that has also been the case after that. On average, the last four years, we have had above 90% cash conversion. To have a strong cash flow is really important for us. That supports our investments in companies, and that supports also dividend distribution. Strong cash flow also provides and gives us more flexibility and opportunities. Therefore, we have had and will continue to have very strong focus on cash flow from operation to improve that every day.
We entered the IPO with an extremely strong balance sheet with no interest-bearing debt except for the IFRS leasing. Our clear goal was to step by step start to utilize the balance sheet more. Now in Q3, for the first time, we have taken on external debt to finance the acquisition of Aas-Jakobsen Group, meaning that our net debt position, as you saw this morning, was NOK -85 million, and we have a leverage of 0.09. With the Metier Group acquisition, the leverage is around 0.5, excluding the IFRS 16. However, this also highlights that we have plenty of room for taking on more debt if we like to do more accretive transactions. We are investing in companies. We are also investing in IT structure software, as you have seen through the day with several examples of what we develop and how we use it.
We also need to invest in our ERP solutions. The ERP providers are moving their systems to cloud-based systems. In order to have an efficient and future-oriented system, we also need to upgrade our ERP system in Norway. Right now, we are in the planning phase of the scoping, detailed evaluation, risk planning, and also detailed planning for efficiency gains. Master data is also part of the work to structure that even better so that we can utilize AI more efficiently going forward. A lot of our key people are now involved in this project, and we expect to take a decision on the ERP system at the end of this quarter. The planned go-live, which will be a gradually risk-based rollout, is quarter four next year.
The investment for this will be booked as a direct cost according to the IFRS rules for cloud-based systems. However, we will report that as an alternative performance measure, not affecting the adjusted EBITDA, as we see this as a long-term investment. Finally, from my side, the financial targets. I guess you have seen it in the stock release this morning. The financial targets going forward remain unchanged, except for an adjustment on the leverage target to exclude the IFRS 16 commitments, which is in line with all our listed peers, meaning that our financial targets going forward will be a growth slightly above the market. We think that that will be a combination of approximately two-thirds organic growth, approximately one-third M&As. In terms of financial targets, adjusted EBITDA margin is 10% over the cycle.
Leverage ratio is less than 2, excluding the IFRS commitments. Dividend distribution is more than 50% of net income. With that, I leave the word to you, Egil, to sum it all up.
Thank you, Dag. I would like to make some concluding remarks before we have a final Q&A session. Yeah, the road ahead, this is how it looks like. In my conclusion, I would like to also take a little step back in history, back to the day when I decided to join Norconsult five years ago. Because when you decide to join an employer, it's a big decision. It's a little bit like making an investment. You would like to make a proper due diligence. Is this a good place to be? Is this a good place to work?
During my due diligence of Norconsult, I came across a list which looked very much like this, which I think is very much relevant also for today's investors. Because what I found in Norconsult is a very strong core of design and engineering competence, which is utilized not in one narrow single market, but across numerous and resilient end markets, so that we do not have a particular exposure to a single market, which can be volatile on its own. We operate in a market where there is growth supported by urbanization, increased quality demands, sustainability and climate adaptation, and digital tools. All of these factors mean that we have seen over the last few years that the market for consulting engineers and architects has grown more than the average of the construction industry. These trends will continue.
Norconsult also has a fantastic position as the clear market leader in Norway. From that base, we are growing in the Nordics, where we are a challenger driving consolidation, but based on the fundamental knowledge which we have developed throughout almost 100 years. We are an attractive employer. We are able to attract really good graduates coming out of university. Experienced people would like to join us because they see that this is a company where there is a lot of competence, where they can, if they want to, live outside of Oslo and the large urban centers because we have offices around the countries where we operate. We are part of the local community. When you work on a Norconsult project, you know that you are also working on improving the community, the society where you and your family are living.
We have a competitive edge from having a full-service offering, combining this expertise of the entire network with the local foothold. We have an attractive and robust economic model. I talked about that previously during the first half of the day, where roughly 80% of our business is time and material-based, where we have index adjustments when we have multi-year contracts so that we have a fair certainty that reasonable cost inflation is also compensated in our pricing. Finally, both five years ago and now, we have a very long track record with strong growth, stable margins, and a solid cash conversion, which makes it possible for us to continue to develop the company in a good way also for future generations. Talking about future generations, a very important part of the culture and strategy of Norconsult has for many decades been strong employee ownership.
We promote ownership amongst all of our employees, also the most junior. There is no time limit before you can participate in our share programs because we want to make sure that we have perfectly aligned interests between employees and shareholders. By doing that, we like to believe that we adhere to one of the old principles of Norconsult, which is what we in Norwegian call Odel's Gårdsprinsippet, which means that it is our job to leave the company in even better shape for the next generation. That is an important part of the culture, and that is something we will continue to work on to make sure it's a very important part of the culture also in the future because we have been around for approximately a century, and we plan to be around for the next century as well. Thank you.
With that, I would like to invite both Dag and Fredrik to come to the podium for questions. If you have questions also to any of the other presenters, feel free to do that because this will be the final Q&A session today. If you raise your hand, we have a microphone which we will pass down. Where is the microphone? Yeah. Will you just pass it down? I think it.
I'll go first. Okay. Sorry. Martine from Nordea. I was thinking a little bit about your EBITDA margin target. Maybe you can give a little bit more color on how you think that will evolve going forward, both in the short, but also going a little bit more like the long-term picture. Because if you add up with your recent acquisitions and also include the Metier now, you are very comfortable to reach it. Do you think you could be a bit more ambitious looking a little bit longer forward?
We have actually had quite a long discussion around that because you are right that when you look at the profitability in particular of the Aas-Jakobsen Group, they have shown a margin above what the average on Norconsult has shown previously. Then, as we talked about before, it is comparable to some of the departments we have, which are similar to the Aas-Jakobsen Group's activities. We are part of a big average, right? If you look at our newest acquisition, Metier, they have a profitability which is slightly above the average of Norconsult. At the same time, if you look at Sigma Civil, there we acquired a loss-making company. We have one example where our aim is to significantly lift the profitability.
We have two others which we are hoping and working hard to extract synergies so that we will be able to continue to grow that business very profitably going forward. We have so far shown that over time we have actually been able to deliver according to the goals which we have presented. When you look at our competition, not all of the competition have been able to deliver according to their goals. We did discuss if we should lift the target a little bit and so on. If you lift the target a little bit, it is sort of what value does it create? We believe in meeting our goals. Depending a bit on what our future acquisitions are, we may change the target. We might lift it if future acquisitions are like maybe in particular Aas-Jakobsen.
For the time being, we are focusing on the integration. We are focusing on delivering according to what we have said. Then we will take it from there, essentially. For the time being, we are maintaining our target. I think you are right that we might be a little bit more comfortable now than what we were before those acquisitions.
If I may add, part of, you can say, the long-term strategy is also to grow more outside Norway. In Norway, we are a market leader. That gives us also a better position for higher margin. In the other margins right now, since we are quite small, we have lower margins.
The M&A focus is to, you can say, target is to increase more M&A or outside Norway in order to strengthen the position and gradually then improve the margin as well as we are becoming bigger.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Simon from DNB Carnegie here. One question comes to mind in terms of the M&A. When you listed a company, you said you wanted to use the tool. Obviously, that's the share in M&A as well. You have been quite cautious on using the share in M&A. It's just one deal, if I recall correctly. How do you think about that going forward as you no longer are in a cash position as well?
I think for the Aas-Jakobsen, it was important for us to use the share to have also the shareholders, which this was an employee-owned company as shareholders at our place. I think how we will use the share going forward depends on the target and also on our leverage. We could easily take on more leverage instead of printing more shares. It will be a combination.
Also, moving from cash position to also having a bit of debt, but not necessarily too much, you still repeat the dividend ratio of 50%. Historically, been way above that. How should we look in that context on M&A versus dividend over the time versus your own history, but now repeating 50%?
I think historically, we have paid the last years above 60%. That depends exactly what it will end up with for next year. It's up to the board to decide. It's also depending on what kind of place we are in terms of acquisitions and so on. We generate very strong cash flow. We have in our mind capacity to pay more than 50% and do M&As.
I was just thinking about the competitive environment and that some of your competitors are talking about a little bit more pressure on margins and the pricing there. I thought I was going to maybe more flip the questions. If you then look at your tendering profile, what percentage of tenders do you walk away from now compared to, for example, one year ago just to see how the competitive dynamic is on the pricing? If you understand my question.
Let me try to repeat the question to check if I understand it. You ask if there are many tenders we do not participate in because of the price, for example. Most tenders are organized in the way that we are essentially giving a price. In the competition, the investor who wants to build something, they say, "We have this assignment, this project. What is your plan to attack it? Who are the people you'd like to put on it? And what is the hourly rate you are offering for different categories of people?" We are sort of giving the price. That means that as long as it's a project where we see we have the right competence, then we participate in the tender and we give the price which we think is an appropriate price. We are essentially pricing as normal.
Change it more than lose it or get it then?
I mean, we have increased our order book this year, which we are happy with. We think we have a good rate of project acquisition into our order book. We think we have, let's say, hit it correctly when it comes to the pricing. It is not only the pricing, it is the competence and the people.
Also, just to follow up on that, it is an increase, but that is also adjusted for Aas-Jakobsen? Or is that including Aas-Jakobsen in the order book? If you understand, is it a growth quarter on quarter?
Yeah, quarter on quarter is quarter. If you compare it with quarter two, it is nearly the same. If you compare it with the start of the year, it is an increase.
Great. Thank you.
More questions? I think this is the final opportunity for questions today. Yes, Magnus?
You say that you will report investments in the ERP system outside Adjusted EBITDA. I guess we don't get a figure from you, but can you say what is your minimum threshold for bothering to adjust out costs that you think are non-recurring?
Is that a trick question?
It's a tricky question. I will say in the old school, you reported investment as CapEx and depreciated. And then you had a more run rate on the cost for many, many years. But since these rules are so specific, since it's a cloud-based system that you need to take everything at once on the cost side, it does not really tell the right picture of the operation. That's why we adjust it out. Thank you. ERP systems are expensive, but it's not something which fundamentally changes the profitability of the company. That's how it is. Sometimes they need to be renewed.
Any other questions? No more trick questions? We would like to thank all of you for coming here today. For those of you watching the recording, thank you for watching. We wish everyone a safe return back home. Thank you. Thank you very much.