Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the presentation of Alligo's interim report Q1 2023. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone, and you will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star1 and 1 again. Alternatively, you may submit your questions via the webcast. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Claes Ullenvik. Please go ahead.
Okay everybody. Welcome to Alligo Q1 report. Today's highlight, we think. We love to talk about Alligo. Today's presentation, presenters will be myself and Irene Wisenborn Bellander, our CFO. We normally have one theme per presentation. As you know, we've had logistics, assortment, sustainability, acquisition, and today we will touch upon our customer strategy. Customer, the way we look from a customer perspective. We said last time, if we move to Alligo, in short, we said last time that we had four slides of Alligo, that was to introduce you all to this new creation, Alligo. We said last time that we should have fewer slides, but this time we are down to three slides. Not many fewer slides, but I think one fewer.
We are a leading player in workwear, personal protection, tools and supplies in the Nordic region. SEK 9.2 billion turnover, a little shy of 2,400 employees and a little over 200 stores. With our proud concept brands, Tools, Univern, Swedol and Grolls. If we look at the origin of Alligo, we've got several different questions. As I said, Alligo is a fairly new creation, and in different meetings and different forums, we get questions. What is the background of all this? We have all our concept brands and of course, Alligo is structured with many different components. Just in a timeline to pinpoint a few years. It actually dates back to 1832, Grolls, which Swedol acquired in 2016.
It was actually founded in 1832. supplied the clothes to the engineer Andrée's Polar Expedition. Unfortunately, they all froze to death, but it was not due to our clothes, hopefully. Swedol was founded in 1963, celebrating its sixtieth birthday this year. Tools founded in 1999. Then we can skip a lot of different steps up to 2019 when we formed first the beginning of Alligo in, under the name of Momentum Group with the merger of Momentum Group and Swedol. Then in 2022, when we spun off components and services and focused on what today is Alligo. That is the timeline. It actually dates back to not 2022. It dates back to 1832. We're part of an organization with a solid history.
Turnover-wise, SEK 9.2 billion, as I said. 56% of that in Sweden. Second biggest, Norway, 27%, and then Finland 17%. From a revenue perspective, Sweden, 78% of our EBITA. That was also why we were a bit nervous last year when we did all these changes, that we did all those huge operations in our by far most profitable country, which we came out alive from. Share-owned brands, it's 18%, it's increasing somewhat. You know, we're targeting, not officially, but we said it in different forums. We're targeting some 25% we think is a decent level to be on. Highlights, Q1 in brief. We are fairly happy with the development during Q1. We grew 9.2%.
We had an EBITA increase by close to 21%. We are very happy with the cash flow from SEK -30 to SEK +146. We're also very happy what's happening on the customer side. We talk a lot about increasing the share of small and medium-sized customers and that we do. We also do a lot of things we haven't communicated a lot, that we try to get it, of course, have the best cooperation with the larger customers as well. We actually terminated a few contracts, and we are winning contracts with customers that appreciate our strength. We have a mission that we make businesses work, so we do not want to be a product provider at lowest price point.
We'd like to offer our services, together with of course a product offering to the customers that value that type of cooperation. We have Skarta Atlantic in Finland, we have Sandahls in Sweden, we have several different cases in Norway. We are happy that we are quite successful in winning larger customers, which is more in line with the type of customers we would like to have going forward. Made 1 acquisition this year, the Finnish Kitakone, even if we completed 3 in January, but they were done last year. If we calculate the way we like to calculate, we have done 1 this year so far. We have some catching up to do, we'd like to do acquisitions as you know. Business conditions from 4 different perspectives.
We've seen strong demand in Norway and Finland, but we also have some hesitance in those countries as well. We also see some increased hesitance in Sweden, compared to what we said in Q4. As you know, somewhat slower market is traditionally a chance for us to improve our position. We have a lot to do, and we just came out of a total remake over in the... When we built Alligo. As with that, we have a huge opportunity to take market shares when we increase our operational efficiency. We work with price adjustments. We work with different categories to make them to see that we have the best profitability we can do.
Looking at each and every customer, pushing for getting price increases through because we have some quite high price increases coming in. We constantly work with cost reductions, and so far, we managed to counteract some hesitance in the market by reducing costs. We do it step by step. With a good delivery capacity, stocks are still on a reasonably high level, but we are taking actions to bring them down. From a macro perspective, of course, it's a continued uncertainty. You all probably listen to different companies reporting and industrial sector seems to be running very well, and the construction sector is heading into worse times. It is an uncertain market, but we feel safe and solid in where we are and what we are doing.
What do we do? We have a lot of growth initiatives per country now starting looking outwards instead of inwards, with all our different projects we've been running. Now again, we can come back to the beauty of running business and running sales. We have some growth initiatives in all countries ensure that we get the price increases we have targeted. That's tough work, but we have a well-established process, and we are successful in what we're doing. Cost, cost initiatives that we just came out of the integration project, and we said we are now in operational fine-tuning. As you can understand, different type of activities follows of course, where we need to now fine-tune, see are we manned in the right way in different functions in the organization.
Of course we are not, we have more to do. Stock reductions, we can see external brands coming down. That is easier. That is quicker of course, compared to when we have ordered products from Far East some 6-9 months ago. Even if we reduce purchases from those type of suppliers or plants, it will take some time before we can see that here. It could be a lead time of up to 9 months. Different type of efficiency measures of course. We are fine-tuning the sales organization of how to run internal sales, how to run external sales. We are fine-tuning the organization as we go along. We set customer strategies. As you know, we define the way we define the market is a SEK 53 billion tech business.
We love all type of customers of course, but we are trying to get up the share of small and medium-sized enterprises. We like also to have large industrial customers focus on public sectors. We have eight defined customer segments. Main competitors, there are some bigger ones that are focusing on approximately the same customer segments as we are, and there are some independent local players. One slide showing a little bit of a shift. It's not super dramatic, but the blue circles are customer segments where the relative share has increased. The red ones are customer segments where they, we are on the same level or lower share. As we have communicated, as you know, the industrial side is a little bit bigger share, 1%.
Public sector is a little bit bigger share, and also oil and gas. From a group perspective, it's 1% and it doesn't sound much, but if you take only Norway, of course the percentage is higher. As we've communicated, those segments have gotten a little bit higher relative share, and we like to focus more on construction of course. Even if that market is tough, we see that we would like to have a higher share of construction-related customers especially, and generally, small and medium-sized customers. One interesting, quite information-heavy slide, but let me just take you through it quickly. We can see Sweden store sales 70%. Norway store sales 45%, and Finland store sales 20% of turnover. That picture you probably already have generally, but now put into figures.
If you look by customer, by product category on the second line, you can see Sweden 46%, workwear, the rest tools. Norway 36%, and Finland 32%. On the last row, you can see sale of own brands is 23% in Sweden, 15% in Norway, and 9% in Finland, which gives a quite interesting picture. The higher the share of store sales, the higher the sales of workwear, and the higher the sales of own brands, of course, the higher profitability, hence the initiatives we are running. What do we do to win more of the small and medium-sized customers? We are investing quite heavily in Finland right now. We have 6 ongoing shop projects, relocating some, opening some new ones.
We're establishing a new, call it flagship store, where we will have the headquarter in Helsinki, in Konala. We are refurbishing shops all over the place, and we are running campaigns to targeted customer segments. A little bit way, new way of running sales, which we're trying out in Sweden, which we will copy out to Norway and Finland. We will again come back to what we used to have more of marketing efforts. As I said earlier, we've been very inwards, focused for a while, for obvious reasons while we did this integration. Now we can point our noses outwards again and run more marketing. Key accounts, we've been successful in some in energy environmental sector, which we think is interesting, where especially Sweden has attracted a number of companies.
Those are the ones we think we fit well together with. We seem to have an offering which is interesting for them. We'd like to do more within the environmental tech sector. Everything is based on our service offering. You know, the smart services, we have different ways of running the clothes business with washing and with adjusting clothes and specific and so on and so forth. Just two pictures. One of a new shop in Mikkeli. I think that six projects running in Finland. We'd like to do much more in the shops in Finland.
As we've said before as well, Finland has the lowest starting point in, if you compare with what type of shops we would like to have in our different countries, Finland are the furthest away from that. A picture of a small service cabinet at Skarta Transport. If you look at the Finnish turnover, 30% of our sales comes from those cabinets directly, and 30% of our sales comes from customers who we have small service setups together with. Strategically, it's very important for us to get that type of cooperation with our customers because it ties us tighter together. Financials, over to you, Irene.
Thank you. As Claes mentioned, we continued to benefit from profitable growth despite a weaker market. Revenue increased by 9.2% to SEK 2.3 billion, whereof 3.7% was related to acquisitions and 1.6% was related to 1 more trading day. There was a slight positive currency effect. Organic growth in the quarter reached 3.6%, driven by positive sales development from larger industrial customers in Finland and Norway. The slowdown in Sweden that began in Q4 intensified during first quarter for most customer segments. EBITA increased by 21% to SEK 127 million in the quarter, corresponding to an EBITA margin of 5.6%. The improvement in profit is driven by Norway and Finland and is a result of stable growth, improved margins, and integration synergies.
The increased proportion of own brands also contributes positively, but there is a negative country mix that counteracts. Let's have a closer look at the development in each market. Sales in the Swedish business increased by 6.7% and were positively affected by acquisitions. Organic sales in the quarter were negative, and the slowdown observed in Q4 intensified in Q1, and most customer segments have been affected. The decrease in profit in Sweden was driven by the drop in sales, with also pressure on margins on our own brands in the beginning of the quarter. The positive sales trend in Norway was driven by the good development in the oil and gas segments. Total sales increased by 11.7% in the quarter, and organic sales reached about 9%.
The improvement in profit in Norway is driven by stable growth, improved margins, and integration synergies. The priority going forward is to increase the share of small and mid-sized customers and strengthen sales and assortment management. In Finland, we have a continued positive sales trend among larger industrial customers. Sales increased by 19.7%, and organic sales reached about 9%. The result in Finland was strengthened because of growth and increased margins due to improved sales management. The customer mix remains unfavorable, but activities such as investment in stores are ongoing to attract and increase the share of small and medium-sized customers. Down to cash flow. Cash flow from operating activities in the first quarter amounted to SEK 146 million compared to minus SEK 30 million last year.
The improvement is mainly related to decreased prepayments to our Far East own brand suppliers. The inventory levels continued to increase in Q1, but at a lower pace. In the last 12 months, we have had an inventory build-up of SEK 320 million. Approximately 50% of inventory build-up in the last 12 months is a result of higher purchase prices and unfavorable currency effects. The other 50% is related to increased volumes of our own brands and the ongoing assortment merge. Our focus on product availability and investment in our own brands range has tied up more capital and temporarily reduced cash flow. However, there are several ongoing actions to decrease the stock levels, for example, reducing the product range and reducing the minimum order quantities.
The investing activities are related to M&A activities, and consist of three completed acquisitions during Q1, but also store and central warehouse reductions and IT related investments. The ratio of CapEx to depreciation amounted to a multiple of 1.2 in the quarter and 1.4 on a rolling twelve month basis. Finally, the financing activities are mainly related to the amortization of leasing liabilities. The group's net debt amounted to SEK 1.5 billion at the end of the period, and the unutilized credit facilities amounted to SEK 960 million. The financial net amounted to minus SEK 18 million, excluding IFRS 16, compared to minus SEK 5 million in Q1 last year. The average lending rate in the quarter amounted to 3.7%.
The ratio of net debt to EBITDA amounted to a multiple of 1.8, which is a decrease compared to Q1 last year and well within the financial target range. Our covenants are related to interest coverage and equity asset ratios. These are fulfilled at the end of a period and there is good headroom before reaching the threshold. In summary, our strong financial position means that we can continue to invest in organic growth and take advantage of potentially good M&A opportunities. Sending it over to you, Claes for summary and outlook.
Okay, let's go into Q1. In summary, looking back, we had a decent start of the year, we think. We navigated okay through some turbulent waters sometime. Profitable growth, we improved the cash flow. Where the market is heading, the jury is still out. We've seen some increased hesitant in the Swedish market and tendencies to slow down in Norway and Finland, even if we have really good growth in both those countries in Q1. We managed to do 1 acquisition in Finland, more to follow, hopefully. We have a really good deli-delivery capacity for our own brands, and we know that we have strengthened our competitiveness, especially within the customer segments we are targeting at the best, especially in the environmental tech sector, which we find very interesting.
The outlook for 2023, we feel really comfortable that we are in a good position, financially strong, as Irene just showed. We know what we're doing. We've done it before. We're eager to dig in to 2023, and it's also quite much fun. All of us who are involved in this business, we love sales. It's fun that we finally are at the point where we now can talk more about customers and our offerings and sales. Good availability, as we've said several times already. We're focused on small and medium-sized customers. We are just, as we speak, running these close to famous Swedol and Tools base in our three countries, which we love because then we can really closely connect to our many times smaller customers.
We need to fine-tune the cost structure. We need to do that anyway, but it's also preparing us for a potentially uncertain market. Of course, we'd like to make more acquisitions, as we clearly communicate. After the 9 acquisitions last year, we'd like to be on at least that level for 2023. We feel quite confident. That's all for now. If we hand back to you, dear facilitator, and over to the Q&A session.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, you can press star one and one again. If you would like to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click submit. I will start with questions via the phone lines. Please stand by. The first question is from the line of Emanuel Jansson from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Claes and Irene, thank you for a good presentation. A couple of questions from my side. If we start with the earnings developments, even if we saw the decline in the Swedish market when it comes to profitability, earnings increased impressively, 20% year-over-year in this quarter. Can you say anything on how the developments in regards to profitability have developed throughout the quarters in Sweden, in Norway, and in Finland?
As Irene mentioned, quickly touched upon was that we were a little bit disappointed if we are more detailed in time. In the beginning of the quarter, we had quite high price increases during the autumn. We made this price revision in September, and we have been pushing harder to get the price increases through. In all openness, January was worse than we expected, gross margin-wise across all three countries, but it developed better in February and March. Now we feel leaving the quarter that we are on the level we should be from a contribution margin perspective.
Okay. Yeah. Sounds, thank you. Sounds good. You, and you also, you're mentioning the reduction in profit in Sweden due to unfavorable currency effects. You're also mentioning some cut, cutting, also, you're going to implement. Do you see that this will have a good effect already in Q2, or will it take a longer time to get these implementations to give an effect?
It will come continuously. I mean, The things we have ahead of us, you don't need to be super optimistic to see some nice things happening going forward. Will it happen Q2, Q3, or when will it happen? It's sometimes good when you are put under stress. We have looked over the whole supplier base or factory base in Far East, which have had good effects when we pool volumes to fewer plants and in more, for us, favorable countries. i.e., you can get rid of some customs, if you don't buy from China, you buy from Pakistan, Bangladesh, or elsewhere. There we have a good effect. The dollar has actually come down from its worst level, it's coming down.
Slight strengthening of the SEK over time. It's not good for the industrial companies in Sweden, potentially, but it's good for us. That feels good. That good times ahead with a stronger currency, all the initiatives we're running on improving our purchase prices from plants in Far East, and continuous work with our partner suppliers, because we're in this together, and trying to find a good price point in the market where we all can earn money. From that perspective, we feel comfortable would probably be bullish to say, but it feels okay. From a cost perspective, we have a lot to do, even if we said we are ready with the integration project.
Of course, now we need to look into how we work with our processes and we have, perhaps I'm downgrading our stuff, but we have huge inefficiencies that we need to fine-tune, which is not so strange, but we need to do it.
Yeah. Okay. That's very clear. Thank you. Also in on the Norwegian and Finnish markets, have you experienced slowdown or have you seen it from customers saying that the market is slowing down, or have you self experienced it?
As I said, we showed quite good growth in Q1 in Norway and Finland, so it's a bit strange perhaps. We try to communicate what we have and it was mentioned today early in the television that a bit of a mismatch. Many talk about the uncertainty in the market and all reports coming in better than expected. Some are talking in real terms, some are talking nominal terms, and we are very focused on in real terms and taking inflation out of the equation. Perhaps we are more focusing on what the talks are in the market and we haven't really seen it yet. We try to communicate it what we think in a balanced way.
yeah. Okay, great. How satisfied are you in the development of own brands in this quarter? I assume if you have some trading down in Sweden, where you have larger share of private labels, but also in the Norwegian and Finnish market, you have more of larger customers where it's maybe more difficult to implement the private labels. Are you satisfied with the pace of the development of own brands, or is this lower than you expected it would be from maybe six months ago or so?
Yeah. No, you can always hope, and we always hope that it would have been better/potentially a little bit expected, but it's more or less as we expected. It will take time. What we're doing now with the shops, especially in Finland, will increase that speed. The success journey from Svedala based in 2014 and onwards was that we could change the assortment in the shops. That you do fairly quick. You just train the store persons in selling Gesto shoes instead of other brands, potentially. That goes quickly. What is Slower, as you are mentioning yourself, Mono, is the larger customers where we have promised a certain brand and it takes some time and some discussion before you can change that.
We are persistent in the way we're heading. It's well-received everywhere. I mentioned Skåra earlier as one example. They had one meeting, we presented the Gesto shoes, and then it was decided, we want this. Even with larger customers, it works. The strategy for us was to have enough of own brands at home. When we did journey 2014, we actually talked a lot to our space person saying, "Now you need to push for our own brands." Then we ran out of stock, and that's with that we should not do, hence the high stocks of own brands in Alligo. Yeah, you always want it to be quicker, but we have a steady development in the right direction.
Yeah. Okay, great. Also you showed us, on the slide of the different countries. You showed that in Finland you have a much larger share of direct sales instead of store sales.
Yeah.
over time, you want to have the major part from store sales, or should it remain the larger share from direct sales in that country? Maybe you can give us some flavor of the profitability in those two channels.
No, of course, we'd like to have not as high as possible, but a much higher share because store sales is to the greatest extent equivalent with small and medium-sized customers. That's why the difference in margins. Of course it's much better from a profitability point of view. Then you can apply ABC analysis and say that a huge industry customer is not using our shops, thereby you shouldn't burden them with store sales cost. We do have the store network, and in some cases also industrial customers need to come to our shops. In many contracts, it's the demand that you are existing in that city. You cannot win that contract if you don't have an operation in that city.
We'd like to have a higher share of shop sales. We think we have proven and we are proving that we are good at running shops. It's also very good for both attracting the smaller customers and also to convert to our own brands. Yes, higher share of shops. Yes, please.
Okay, great. Thank you. Maybe last question from my side regarding M&A. You mentioning that you're targeting to do more acquisitions. If we see a slowdown in the market and also in Norway and Finland, will you put the M&A agenda on the side for a while, or how should we view the M&A pipeline and the ramp off maybe of it?
We have no intention to slow down the M&A focus, and we are financially stable. Of course, within reason. If the market is extremely bad and we are getting really unsure, then we perhaps need to revise it. But we are so safe about our own development, and we have, as we said earlier, good pipe of good acquisition candidates. We have no other focus than to pursue that. You mentioned Finland is especially of interest to us, both because of the starting point of the business there is the furthest away from what we think is the illegal structure. Also Finland is an interesting market in relation to price and what you get in profitability in the acquisition targets. Finland is really, really interesting for us.
The only acquisition we've done so far this year has been in Finland. We'd like to do more acquisitions in Finland, please.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. Sorry, last question here. Maybe I always come with this question, and maybe it's a little bit boring, but also interesting. You grew 9% on top line, 3.6% organic. Can you give us some flavor on volumes versus price here? I guess it's more of price here.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Correct. Not boring. We are highlighting that. Let's call it what it is.
Yep.
You can argue that, some companies have inflation in, but can it push it, through? In some way, it's a signal that at least can push it forward. In real terms, it's not much left if you eliminate for inflation, of course.
Okay, great. Thank you, Claes and Irene. I have to say congratulations on a solid report. That's all for me.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from the phones. Please stand by. This is from the line of Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, Claes and Irene. great run-through of the customer offering, customer segments. If you look at the customer segments, where do you see the biggest, say, fear for the moment or the biggest drop-downs and the most reluctant clients, and where do you see the good spots?
A good question. I mean, we had a bit of unluck, what you should say. We have many lovely customer segments, which were suffering early. If you take the transportation sector, which is very interesting for us, agricultural sector, they were all punished by high fuel prices. We saw some turbulence there early 2022. Now we see the industry, of course, just look at all the companies who has reported, is stable and strong. Then you have the construction sector. I think we will come out okay on that for many different reasons. One is that we're focused on small and medium-sized customers, just like my father was when I grew up in the construction sector, and they always tend to find work.
Two, we are, as long as there are some construction going on, tunnels and bridges and so forth, that is more our sector. It's the construction sector we, from a national perspective, we talk about Sweden and all three countries, feel the most sorry for. I am so confident that we can come out okay with that. Also that we've proven that in tougher times when these lovely owners and managing directors of these smaller companies are more cost-effective in the way they run the purchases, we are an attractive alternative to them. We intend to capitalize on potential residents in that market.
If you look at worries for the moment, Sorry. If you look at the worry for the moment, is that more related to manufacturing, repair maintenance if you're looking at the verticals?
Yes. If you take, I mean, a more general worry, I think we're all scratching our heads how strong the reports are coming in. Everybody's been shouting for the wolf for quite a while. I feel they come in quite strong. Will it be a general downturn? I think we've said several times, I don't have any good KPI at the moment, but in the old days, we correlated quite well with GDP. If the activity in the market goes down, of course, we will be affected. If we should pinpoint a specific customer sector, which could be some hesitant, of course, it's the construction sector. On the other hand, we are growing in other sectors.
If I should pinpoint one, it's that one.
If you, if you look at your categories, towards your main clients, has there been any, say, what you could call, they have kept a higher inventory themselves because of the challenges in the overall, say, supply chain? Maybe that's the thing that has gone out of inventory now, so we are back to more of a normal kind of outsourcing environment also for them.
I guess you will hear other reports where they say that about us. That we have reduced our purchases into our stocks and with our consumables, so when your trousers are worn out or you need a new electrical drill, then you buy it. We don't have that much stock at our customers. It goes quite quickly. If their business turns up or down, it will affect us quickly, positive and negative.
Well, that would have been my take on it as well.
Yeah.
Then looking at the country sales mix, a great chart, on all those pies. When you look at the main business driver for the store channel, is that the workwear, or is that a combination of things? Workwear is the money earner in the stores, or how does it work?
It's a good question, and it's both, of course. Where we have had our... We have, we have both categories which are big with us, but we have a big competitive advantage, especially in workwear since our own brands have the highest share there. That has been our success story. You also potentially need it more, and especially with weather changes. I promised myself not to talk too much about the weather, but, I mean, just looking out the window in Tyresö office, when it rained the other day, then it's full on the parking lot. When they are in there buying rain gear, they buy other things within workwear, but also buy whatever they need on the tools and supplies side.
Workwear is at a competitive advantage for us because there's no other player in our part of the value chain who has what we have.
Coming back to ask a little on the pricing as well. I saw you had still a good move on the gross margin in the quarter, even though you said that you lagged behind a little on when getting pricing through. Is that, say, the gross margin benefit you saw in the quarter, is that more related to that Q1 last year was an easy starting point, easy comparison, if you think so?
We as we said, we were, in the beginning of the quarter, just as worried as we communicated in Q4. I think we managed to turn that around during the quarter. Mid-February and March, we've had... You sometimes, Freddy, use the word brutal, and I use the word brutal. Our sales force, key account team and normal salesperson across the company are brutally focused on getting price increases through. We have monitoring profitability closely down per single customer, and that is paying off. This is the type of business where you need to be on top of things, and it's giving effects.
I guess when you now indicate that you're taking lower purchasing volumes to moderate the inventory against the demand you see out there, I guess, we should expect a better cash conversion over the next couple of quarters than we have seen, say, when you have now rejigged the activities during 2022. Is that the proper way of looking at it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good. I like to kind of short snap the answer. Perfect.
I like to talk. It was against my nature to say yes.
Yeah. Finally, also coming to acquisitions. It looks like you're able to do them at very, very attractive multiples, and that we have seen one of your major competitors also wagering into the other verticals in the market. Is that something you could consider as well?
We've said we've plenty to do where we are. We have a good pipeline in all three countries, and we are really picky. We don't do acquisitions just to do the acquisitions. We've said, we promised ourselves not to take on any turnaround cases. We pinpoint profitable companies who have shown the ability to grow in our three countries within the product areas that we are existing right now. We have so much to do there. Not at the moment.
No temptation going into paint or anything like that?
Sorry, going into what?
Paint.
Going into paint.
Paint. Yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. That we looked at some years ago, and that was quite a messy business. We didn't want to have our floors and our nice shops being with spilled with paint. Exactly. That we've dug into a lot from five, six years ago and decided not to move into that. Okay, I know what you're getting at.
Yes. No, thank you very much, and all the best, and good luck out there.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. No further questions on the phones at the moment. Just a reminder, it's star one and one if you do have questions, or you can submit those via the webcast.
We have a number of questions mailed to us. Let's try to read and talk at the same time. Price increases, are you done or is there more to be done? It's a continued process and I don't know if I'm saying too much, but we are 70% through with key account customers, for example, in Sweden. Yes, there are more to be done. Norway and Finland, yeah. The question is if we can counteract with cost if the market turns down, and yes, we can to a certain extent. We have our shops, we have our central warehouses. Historically also there we have proven that we've been good at mitigating variations in volumes with cost.
Of course, nobody can fully mitigate if it goes really, really bad, but there are no signs it should be. Very good. No other real main questions besides the ones we already answered, I think.
There are no further questions on the phone lines either.
Okay. Should I do the closing remarks?
Yeah, if you're ready for closing remarks, please go ahead.
I'll just say thank you to everybody listening in. There are report heavy days, we know, but thank you for paying attention. Just in conclusion, we had a good start of the year. We are now in the process of starting or continuing with the operational efficiency and fine-tuning the company we have built. We are focusing on small and medium-sized customers. We're focusing on own brands, as you know. We also focus on continuing doing acquisitions on this platform that we have now built, not the least through the brutal Monday in May 2022. As I always end, this journey continues. Thank you very much.
Thank you. This does conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.