Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Alligo interim report Q2 2023 webcast. 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 one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Alternatively, you may submit your question via the webcast. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, CEO Clein Ullenvik, please go ahead.
Okay, everybody, welcome to Alligo Q2 report 2023. We are super happy to spend some time with you, updating you on what we have been doing since last we spoke, and to present what we think is a pretty solid report. By we, I mean, Irene Wisenborn Bellander, our CFO, and myself, Clein Ullenvik, the CEO. As you know, we have different themes at these presentations. We have done logistics, we have done assortment, sustainability, acquisitions, customer strategy, and today we will do a section on our own brands, which we are happy to share with you. As you also know, we focus on the highlights. We are not trying to go through the report in its entirety. We focus on some highlights.
Before that, just a quick flyover, Alligo, a Nordic player within workwear and tools and supplies in the Nordics. Some 200+ stores, SEK 9.5 billion turnover, now rolling SEK 12 billion, 2,400 employees. As you know, all our brands, our concept brands, TOOLS, Univern, Swedol, Grolls, and you also know that we are slowly moving to having one brand per country is the end game for us. The timeline we went through last time, we have no intention of doing that again in detail, just to highlight a few years at the beginning for this presentation. One is in 1963, when Swedol was founded, we are celebrating 60th birthday of Swedol this year. Another, the very first point on this timeline is 1832.
I'll come back to that, but it's also, a brand. It was when Grolls was founded, but it's also a brand, within clothing, within wear. Alligo at a glance. We know that we are Sweden-dependent, the biggest country in turnover-wise and even bigger, result-wise, and share our own brands, approximately 18%. We'll go back to that a little bit more in detail. Our customer segments, the eight months we have talked about before, approximately SEK 53 billion turnover, estimated value. We focus on small and medium-sized customers, but we're happy to serve all customers, of course, even if they are a bit bigger.
What we say to this slide is I see sometimes how Alligo is being described, and sometimes we are being listed as the industrial supplier. Of course, we have our biggest segment is industrial manufacturing, which is 30% of the company, but we also have 70% other customer segments. What we're trying to build is a company which is pretty resilient to different business cycles. Even if we're having tough times in transportation and storage due to fuel prices, we have challenges in agriculture and forestry due to interest rates and construction sector. We don't even need to mention what's happening.
We have a good balance between our customer segments, making it possible for us to grow profitably, even despite the well-known situation in the construction sector. Some highlights. Q2 in brief, revenue grew 5%, 2.7% organically. Our EBITDA increased by 17% to SEK 201 million. Our cash flow improved from SEK 211 million- SEK 287 million. Is there any specific thing driving the cash flow development? No, it's pretty much across the line. A little bit better stock management, even if the stock levels as such hasn't come down much, a little bit better payment conditions and so forth, so across the line. We are updating organization to strengthen the sales. I'll come back to that in a few slides.
We have done three acquisitions. We are actually opening a greenfield, a new store in Boden, of all places. Business update, market situation, pretty much the same picture as it's been a while now. Strong demand in Norway, tendency to slow down in Finland. Sweden is already in a slowdown, as we have clearly communicated for quite a while. I think we, as a management, are reasonably proactive. We have a lot of different growth initiatives going. We work constantly, as you know, with our pricing, adjusting prices. We are negotiating with our suppliers heavily, increasing our joint competitiveness. Some sensitive categories, we even reduce prices, not to price ourselves out of the sector that we are with high-quality products at a decent price level.
We work constantly with customer profitability, where we need to have a decent profitability, otherwise, we actually depart from some customers. We constantly also work with our cost reductions, having done some 50 headcount reductions during the quarter. Delivery capacity is good, the macroeconomics, you probably know that better from other ones. It's an uncertain world. It's a turbulent business cycle, but I think we are navigating nicely through those stormy weathers. An organizational chart, you should never show an organizational chart to a customer or supplier or any of these type of meetings, but I do it anyway, just to illustrate two things. Firstly, we have launched a new role, which is Head of Industry, Customer Segment. Why is that?
The industry segment requires some more investment to get together a offering to those type of customers. It's more complex to its nature. It's more where we work closer with the customers, it's bigger contracts, it's more complex. We have launched a new position to, on a Nordic basis, support our industry sale. We also move some important product categories to this role, workwear, equipment, smart service solutions, welding, and so forth. This will be a very important position going forward. The heading, that will be Torbjörn Eriksson, and he will be replaced as Head of Sales, Sweden, by Håkan Wanselius, who is today the Assortment Manager.
That was one change. The other change is that we break out the profile company that has been a part of the Swedish organization and put it directly under me. One reason is to make the three different countries be more alike, because it differs, since Norway and Sweden has no profile company. The second reason is also to get a better feel for what they are, so we can see what our potential going forward. Could we make more acquisitions? How should they be run? To get a clearer structure and also to get a better understanding in what is this organism that we've built up, which is developing nicely and with good results.
As I said, own brands is the topic for today, and we do it for different reasons, of course, to increase our competitiveness and get higher margins, but also to ensure that we get the best quality. We need to have a good control of our supply chain and also the product as such. Take a winter jacket, for example, in Univern. It could be a 25-30-page long bill of material with all the components being into that jacket. We're not going to a fair in China somewhere and buying something which is already existing. We develop these garments from each thread, from each and every little single component. Out of these 18%, we say are our own brands, 77% is workwear, 23% is tools and consumables.
What brands do we have? We have Björnkläder, we have Univern, we have Gesto, we have Balance, and we have 1832 within the workwear part. The tools and supplies, we have AmPro, AWARD, Nima, and 4-USE. We have the workwear development is headquartered in Gothenburg, in Almedal, in a wonderful working environment. It's an old industrial building, built or renovated and rebuilt just according to our specification. It's a creative, wonderful working environment, and there is the place where we develop Björnkläder, Univern, and Gesto, and 1832. That task is to have innovative, sustainable, and certified range, and we build the brands the way they need to be built.
We have our own lab for wearability, color, to keep the colors and all the tests you need to do for these type of products, and we have that in-house. How do we position our own brands? Björnkläder is positioned as the iconic workwear, the oldest workwear brand in Sweden, for sure, potentially also in the Nordics. It's durability, function, and comfort. It's a reliable, tough brand for the basic needs. We have Univern. It's for tougher climate. Most of our pictures, brand pictures, is from the west coast of Norway. It's tough outdoor environment, more for extreme purposes. It's protecting us from wind, water, and cold.
Then Gesto, which we launched late 2013, beginning of 2014, in what was then Swedol, which has been a fun journey from zero to a fairly big part of our turnover today. I still remember when I was out in the city walking, I saw some construction workers, late 2013, wearing Gesto clothes, probably wondering what creepy guy I was, looking at them the way I did. Then we launched also the Gesto shoes, which has had a tremendous development with the BOA system. Really good workwear with function, with an attitude, as we say, at a very attractive price point. Gesto has been very important for us in our journey. Financials, finally, listen to somebody else than me. Yeah.
Thank you, thank you. As Clein mentioned, we continued to benefit from profitable growth and had a strong quarter and first six months.
Revenue increased by 5% to SEK 2.4 billion in the quarter, with one less trading day, where 4% was related to acquisitions. The organic growth reached 2.7%, driven by positive sales development from larger industrial customers in Finland and Norway. The slowdown in Sweden that began in Q4 intensified during the first six months and is seen across most customer segments. EBITDA increased by 17% to SEK 201 million in the quarter, corresponding to an EBITDA margin of 8.4%. The improvement in profit is driven by Sweden and Norway and is a result of stable growth, improved margins, and cost reductions. The gross margin improvement is mainly related to the increased share of sales of own brands, successful supplier negotiations, termination of the contract customers, agreements, and general sales and assortment management.
These positive effects are to some extent contracted by negative country mix. We follow our strategy of complementing organic growth with acquisitions within existing geographical markets and within the same or close product categories. During the quarter, additionally, three acquisitions have been signed and completed, adding approximately SEK 150 million in annual revenue. Sales in Sweden increased by 6.5% and were positively affected by the acquisitions of six profile companies, but contrasted by our decision to terminate unprofitable customer agreements. Organic sales in the quarter reached about 1%, and the slowdown observed in Q4 continued for six months, and most customer segments have been affected. The improved result is driven by successful sales and assortment management, supplier negotiations, and cost reductions.
The focus going forward is one, is on driving sales, and the decided organizational change that Clein mentioned is part of it. The positive sales trend in Norway in local currency continued in Q2 and was driven by the good market development in the oil and gas segment. Organic sales reached about 6% in the quarter and 7% for the first six months, there are signs of a weak market in other customer segments than in oil and gas. The improvement in profit in Norway is driven by stable growth, improved margins, and cost adjustments. The priority going forward is to increase the share of small and mid-sized customers and strengthen the sales and assortment management. In Finland, we have continued positive sales trend among larger industrial customers. Sales increased by 19.7%, favored by acquisitions and FX effects.
Organic sales were somewhat weaker compared to Q1 and reached about 3%. The result in Finland deteriorated in the second quarter due to investments in new and existing stores to better meet the needs of small and medium-sized customers. In the second quarter, cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK 287 million, compared to SEK 211 million last year. The improvement of SEK 76 million, or SEK 111 million, excluding IFRS 16 for the quarter, is related to increased EBITDA and decreased working capital across lines. One thing in specific is that we have decreased prepayments to our Far East own brand suppliers. The inventory levels continued to increase in Q2, but at a slower pace.
The inventory build up is driven by the ongoing assortment merge and rollout of our own brands, and that has temporarily tied up more capital. The investing activities for the first six months are related to M&A activities for SEK 122 million and consist of six completed acquisitions, but also store and central warehouse adaptations and IT-related investments. The ratio of CapEx to depreciation amounted to a multiple of 1.6. Finally, the financing activities are mainly related to dividends paid, increased borrowings, and amortization of leasing liabilities. The group's net debt amounts to SEK 1.6 billion at the end of the period, and the unutilized credit facilities, including cash, amounted to SEK 1.1 billion.
The ratio of net debt to EBITDA amounted to a multiple of 1.8, which is a decrease compared to corresponding period last year, which ended at 2.0, and well within the financial target range. Our covenants are related to interest coverage and equity asset ratio. These are fulfilled at the end of the period, and there is a 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 in our market.
Very good. Thank you, Irene. Moving into Q2 in summary, we had a strong quarter and a strong first six months of the year. We grew profitably. We improved our operating cash flow, and doing that in an uncertain macroeconomic environment, the slowdown we have been talking about, and everybody, it's obvious for everybody in Sweden, and we are closely following the development in Norway and Finland. We are working constantly with strengthening our competitiveness. We have had intense discussions/negotiations with our suppliers during the quarter to make us more competitive together. There will be some changes, have been some changes in the product range we have, different brands leaving and other brands joining our offering. We made three acquisitions.
We'd like to do more going forward, so far, three this year. We've got good delivery capacity for own brands, which is the other side of the coin, where Irene said that our stock levels are not coming down. We have a good availability on our own brands. Outlook 2023, we think we are well positioned in an uncertain market. The customer mix we have, I think we've proven that we can grow and we can grow reasonably profitable, even if one or two sectors are having tougher times. We are focused on driving sales. We have a lot more to do to get our offer out in the market and to activate ourselves. We have much more to do. A good availability we talked about.
We need to increase the share on small and medium-sized enterprises. We know it takes time, we know what to do, but it's frustrating that it's not going quicker. We're continuously looking at our cost structure. We are taking necessary grip. We're not doing too much to damage anything, but we're doing it step by step and in, I think, in a controlled way. We'd like to put some acquisitions as the cherry on the top on our fairly good basic development. That was all for now. Melanie, we are ready to take questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click Submit. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. Our first question comes from the line of Emanuel Jansson from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Good day, Clein and Irene. Thank you very much for taking my questions, and thank you for a very good and informative presentation. I think we can start off in Finland. You're mentioning the upgrade of the physical stores in order to meet the small, medium enterprise customers better. When are these implementations done, and should we expected to see in other markets?
Now, Finland, as we said, has the, within quotation marks, the worst shops, or at least the least one suitable for a small and medium-sized customers. Sweden has that store structure since way back. Norway is well on the way. Finland has a lot to be done, which is something our local management is addressing, and they're doing. As I think we mentioned last time, we have six projects running in parallel. The trick for our, their management in Finland is to do that in a balanced way. Even if it's the right thing to do, we need to do it in a way where we show a decent development at the same time, so we don't do it in all shops at the same time.
We have many more shops needed for, to do this renovation, redo, change, but we will need to do it in a controlled way. We need to show a decent development in Finland at the same time as we do this transformation. We are at the beginning of it, but we will not do everything at the one time as we did in Sweden back in the day.
Yeah. Okay, perfect. So we should expect this development to continue throughout 2023, then?
Absolutely. As I said, in a controlled way, if we head into tougher times in Finland, I, we will need to slow down the pace, to do this in a more controlled way. You need to both develop your existing business at the same time as you do investment and run your business in a, in a reliable way.
Perfect. Thank you. That's very clear. On that subject with the weaker end markets, I don't know if it's possible, but can you please maybe elaborate a little bit more on what kind of signs you see out there regarding the weaker markets in Finland and Norway? Do you have less visitors to your physical stores, or just what the customers are saying to you, or can you please elaborate a bit?
We consume all the market statistics available from our industry and from adjacent industries. I mean, the installation sector, we talk to customers, we talk to suppliers, we measure number of visits in our stores. We follow it closely. It's been a slow development. We signaled it early on, much earlier than most others, I think. Again, we have huge opportunities to grow even in tougher times. Our offering is well received in tougher times. We follow it closely. It's some customers are saying that we have kept our plants running just to keep them running, now we need to balance that in a better way. On the other hand, we have other sectors where we are successful.
we need to be quick, as we have proven to be in finding sales to the segments which are stable or even growing, even if other ones are having tougher times. We are consuming whatever we can get our hands on for everybody. We are, as you know, very nervous people.
Yeah, it is mainly in connection to the construction market, you see weaker signs in Norway and Finland, or is this also within some other industrial segments as well?
In Finland, we have some signals from the industrial sector, actually. On the other hand, we have so tremendously much to do in construction sector, small, medium-sized customers, hence the investment in the shops. For us, it's with eight customer segments, I think we are well on our way to build something which is not depending too much on a single customer segment. We can find growth avenues in other sectors. We need to be quick, and we need to be out there to fight for the volumes that are in the market.
Yeah, okay. Perfect, thank you. Also maybe I mentioned it a bit earlier, but could you please maybe highlight what kind of tools you have in Alligo that you want to highlight in order to handle these tougher markets in these market conditions?
Yeah, very much, what we are doing. We have had a very intense second quarter. We do it every time. This time it was even more intense. We intensified discussions with our suppliers to make us more competitive together, everything from financial conditions to what assortment we should offer. We look at our cost base. We have a solid history of quickly being able to adjust our cost base to what market is out there. We have a history of being good at driving sales. We have a lot more to do there to clear a target which customer segment we are going for, really making us go out there.
All the classic ones in a company like ours, we are addressing and have been addressing, and that's why we have a decent Q2 to defend despite the environment, because we're taking the necessary actions. We are far from a fine-tuned company. We have so much more to do, which in a way is good. We have upsides going forward.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. In this quarter, you were able to also increase the gross margin. You were mentioning that you're very active on pricing...
Yeah
and also reducing prices for some customers, while also increasing it for maybe for some other customers. Do you think it will be possible to maintain a stable gross margin in near term, given what you say on pricing and the fact that maybe the larger industrial customers are performing better than, than maybe the small enterprises, customers?
Absolutely. We have so much more to do in our agreements with our customers. We have so much to do together with our suppliers. We have so much more to do in offering our private brands, our own brands, where needed. Absolutely, our ambition is to continue to grow the contribution margin. It's also something we historically always have done, and we're not going for volumes and letting that erode our margins. We need to have a solid margin, and we are developing nicely so far. We have much, much more to do on that side.
Yeah, and that sounds good. I believe looking at the region in Sweden, you were able to increase EBITDA in a really impressive way, given the organic growth, I would say.
Yeah.
Obviously, you're doing a lot of good things out there.
Yeah. We're working closely with our suppliers, and we want to win together, and I think we have a good model to do that.
Yeah, great. Maybe, final question from my side. You are mentioning in the tier wording about the cost saving program and some layoffs. Could you give us some clarification in what area this mainly affect in Alligo?
No, it's everywhere, but it's of course, better to not touch the sales as much as possible. External sales is more or less untouched, a little bit on shop sales. Then try to see in what we call the Nordic functions, what needs to be done to be more efficient. We are becoming slowly a more efficient company. IT systems are in place, processes are getting better and better in place, absolutely not where we want to be. Then some roles you have to question, do we really need them? It's the closer you get to sales, the less our willingness is to reduce headcount.
Yeah. I assume, when you're also able to upgrade the logistics as well, you don't need as many personnel in the company, over time, if you get more efficient?
Absolutely, Emanuel. You can answer my question. You do that better than me. Absolutely.
Well, great, Clein. Thank you for taking my question. Thank you once again for a good presentation.
Thank you, Emanuel.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, Clein and Irene. A lot of good answers already, maybe I could start to dig into slightly more of Emanuel's questions there. Looking at, say, the sales development here in the first half, it's obviously impressive. Is it the Alligo brands that's been driving it, or is the independent stores doing what they should in this kind of environment? Sounds like it's more driven by the big brands at this stage.
Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit everywhere. We have areas where we are super happy. We have areas we are not so happy. Of course, we have a strong position in certain parts of the market. I expect it. The Swedol brand in Sweden is, of course, really strong. As we've said, that has traditionally performed well also in very turbulent times and has continued to do that. We've seen great improvements in Norway and in Finland. In all corners of our organization, we are getting better and developing nicely, even if we then this quarter invest quite a lot in Finland. It's across the line.
I think it's also fun to see the progress we are making with our partners and suppliers. We are in this together, and the way the discussions have been, they have been intense, sometimes tough, during the quarter. We connect, and we're gonna win this together. I think it's lovely to see how different parts of our organization has really stepped up in these challenging times.
It's good to hear. It sounds like you're very confident about your self-help opportunities in a, in a potentially weaker market. Is that the way we should see it?
Absolutely. Also, I mean, turbulent market opens opportunities, of course. When we have, as always, it's old news, but it's, we need to be more efficient, we need to tighten our cooperation with our suppliers. We see opportunities now where the weaker demand from a global perspective is opening opportunities in Far East. We are sending delegations to Far East to renegotiate the supplier conditions from for our own brands. We're doing whatever needed to be done, and we know how to do it, and we do it. No, it opens up a lot of opportunities, absolutely.
Good to hear. I heard you mention that you're looking to consolidate everything under one brand in each country.
Yeah.
Is that, basically phasing out the TOOLS brand name, if you're looking at it?
Norway and Finland, the TOOLS brand is the stronger brand. So there we are heading slowly but surely towards that brand. In Sweden, the jury is still out. We haven't really decided, but we are very cautious and will not do anything to risk anything. We have been talking a lot about our scalable platform, and we want to have as few concept brands as possible, of course, for obvious reasons, sometime in the future, for marketing reasons, for brand building reasons, and so forth.
Is it a big cost for you to support the different brands when you're looking at it at this stage, if you're looking at, say, potential cost savings by consolidating a further step?
Yeah, of course. I mean, if you are running a campaign, and if that's, this is available in Grolls, Swedol and TOOLS, it's a little bit confusing. Over time, we need to have a fewer concept brand, and that we've been clear on for quite a while, and our end game is one per country.
I remember back in the days when you started the integration process of the two companies that you talked a lot about supplier consolidation, huge opportunity there. Is this phase that we're now seeing, when you talk about, say, taking the supplier base a further step, the final move in that, or is this a new phase that is starting?
It's exactly. We had a board meeting yesterday, we described exactly that. It's our behavior these last two, three years, which is giving us a huge opportunity together with our suppliers. You, if you are a partner supplier or at least an accepted supplier in our system, then all other suppliers knows that they will not be able to come into our offer. The way we've been running our supplier negotiations and the assortment work the last two, three years is creating a tremendous opportunity for us and for our suppliers. Our model pays out. That's for sure.
Excellent. Just need to ask a question on that organizational chart as well, that you said you shouldn't have shown.
Yeah.
Looking at the mandate for Torbjörn Eriksson, is that the full one-third of the revenues that is related to industrial customers? I guess there must be subcategories under that. of revenue base as well.
Absolutely. It's not fair a normal sales organization in each country to develop a world-class industrial offering, that's my experience in many years back in different positions. You need to have somebody to head that to be able to package our offering, to work with those type of customers, if in a way, and when you win them, they are many times so big, so it's a company within the company. It needs to be set up in a proper way. You work with the suppliers in a different way, so that needs to be headed on a Nordic basis from somebody heading the customer segment industry. Otherwise, it's not fair.
When I call the country managers and informing them about this position, all of them said, "Ask him to buy a flight ticket over as soon as possible," because it's a huge need. It's too complex to be run by the traditional sales channel.
Looking at, how much does that represent of the revenue base of the company, about?
The industrial sector is 30% in its total.
In total, exactly, what you now would describe that is, Mr. Eriksson's mandate, so to say, to cater for and drive?
He will support the industrial sales in the different countries, so he will have when we have business reviews for him, we will look at the P&L in a way for the industrial sector, but the actual sales are in the countries. He and his team is supporting our offering to the industrial customers in all our countries.
Okay, excellent. Also the, when you talked about own brands, I see that you have a very strong position in the PPE and workwear segment. How can you drive this more forceful also, so you get going in tools and consumables? Because I feel that should be a more difficult area to penetrate with own brands.
Yeah. No, we see where we have opportunities, and it's not, I mean, we use own brands to increase our competitiveness, and it's not needed if we are extremely competitive together with a strong external brand, and we have decent contribution margins. It's not as necessary to have an own brand, so it's not given that we should have own brands for everything. In the workwear sector, where we have an own brand, as we call own brand, which is the oldest workwear and most renowned workwear brand in the Nordics, that follows with some responsibility as well. We develop them, and that's what we're offering our customers, and we have so much to do still in our rollout of own brands in our distribution channels.
We will come back to that, I guess, in the coming quarterly presentations. We have other product ranges where we are just about to launch own brands as well, for the reasons I just gave. We've said we'd like to be up to 25%. That would be a decent level. It's absolutely not necessary to be 30%, 40%. It's better to have good conditions from the external suppliers, in that case, not having too much own brands.
When you bridge that gap to the 25%, how much would you say that what you already have there should represent, and how much do you need these kind of new platforms to bridge that gap?
We could do it with what we have. We could do it-
Good answer, good answer.
With Univern, and Björnkläder, and Gesto, and Gesto shoes and gloves, and the whole assortment on the tool side with AmPro, with AWARD. We, for that purpose, we wouldn't need any more product areas. We could do it with what we have.
Just a housekeeping question also for Irene here. Looking at the IFRS 16 effect on the operating cash flow, there's a big variability between quarters there. Is there some way one could get to understand where that comes from, and maybe help us to say how that, the big data adjustment should be, so to say, in a normal environment?
It shouldn't be so large variances between the quarter, but I. There is a difference this quarter. It's a little bit the IFRS 16 effect is a little bit lower, but it's expected to be about SEK 90 million. That is due to adjustment in working capital that are added back and related to leasing payments. That's why the IFRS 16 adjustment was on a lower level compared to last year.
Going forward, you said, how much we should have as a base assumption for maybe a quarterly basis?
About SEK 90 million.
SEK 90 million. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you very much, and all the best out there.
Oh, thank you. Take care.
Thank you. There are no further audio questions at this time, so I'll hand the call back to Clein for webcast questions.
Thank you, Melanie. We have a number of questions coming in through mail of the web. The first one is a really good one, and I'm happy it asked. When you in the report write you ended the quarter strongly, does that mean the development at the end of the quarter was stronger? Can you say something about the beginning of July? Now, you should interpret that I saw the phrasing, or we wrote the phrasing. It should not be interpreted as it picked up greatly at the end of the quarter. It stable during the quarter with whatever we have said about Norway, Finland, and already the visible slowdown in Sweden.
It should not be interpreted as it's crazy turn up at the end of the quarter. Start of July, as everybody knows, it's always difficult. We follow it many times during the day, how sales is developing, but in a vacation period, it's really difficult to draw any conclusions on the start of this quarter. There's the next question: Do you see the prices on acquisition targets coming down? Are they on a reasonable level? How do you see the possibilities to continue to do acquisitions? We got the question on our general assembly, and not necessarily that the prices has come down.
We are very careful price-wise when we make acquisitions, and we are very focused on getting the post-synergy multiple to be on a very, very healthy level. I think the, the levels are good as they are. We cannot clearly see that the expectations have come down as such. Many times it takes some time, of course, before the prices come down. You as a seller, you have a price you think your company is worth, and it will take some time before somebody realizes that perhaps the value is lower. The opportunity to continue to do acquisitions is good, and we are very clear that we want to continue to do that.
Irene is making sure we have the cash to do so, and the balance sheet is in good shape, so we will continue to do that. A third question: You say that in Finland, the margin was down because of the investments, which we think is correct. How far has you come in this process? I think Emanuel was onto that as well. Of course, we are not through, we are in the beginning, but we need to do it in a balanced way. I mean, the crazy scenario would be to do all shops at once, but we will do it in a nice and controlled manner at the pace of our development in the Finnish business.
Continue to invest in small and medium-sized customers, and continue to change, our shops into the shop concepts that we'd like to have, but in a balanced and a controlled manner going forward. That was all.