Welcome to Asker Healthcare Q4 earnings call 2025. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions-and-answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to CEO Johan Falk and CFO Thomas Moss. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and welcome to our Q4 presentation for Asker. I'm happy to present this another robust earnings growth quarter for us. You know, I usually say that one of the best markets to be in is medical supplies, device, and equipment. Regardless how nervous the world is or financial hard the climate is in the world, we never give up, helping our loved ones. From we're born to we pass away, we need these supplies, and that's what gives this fantastic market very stable. Q4 isolated, if we just summarize it first, we had a good quarter, despite the headwind from tough comps in North and the FX. Net sales were up 9% to SEK 4.7 billion, adjusted EBITA increased by 16% to SEK 470 million, driven by strong performance in West and Central especially. We have some tough comps, as I mentioned, in North.
The underlying business to regions, municipalities, and private players in Nordic are still very strong, but once in a while you get these extra orders from different areas. This time, 2024, we had deliveries to the Ukraine war and the preparedness across the Nordic regions, so the comps were a bit tough, but the underlying business is performing well. I'm happy to say that we reached the EBITDA margin of 10%. As you know, that's one of our financial targets. Q4 is the strongest quarter of the year, so and we will see some weaker numbers for a while, but it's always good to feel that you can break the ceiling of 10%, so we're very proud of that. Our cash flow was very good in the quarter as well.
Even though we did 4 acquisitions in the quarter and a total of 14 during the full year, our leverage maintained at 2.26, which is good. We have a very, very strong pipeline for new acquisitions, coming the next year. Whoops. Thank you. All right, looking at the full year then, the best way to follow Asker as an investor, or if you're interested in our companies, to look at the rolling 12-month, I would say, it's a stable, slow-moving, but in the right direction, and we're proud to see that we're exceeding our financial targets. The most important promise I have to you as investors is the adjusted EBITDA growth of over 15%. And despite the headwind and tough comps, we have a 17% growth, which I'm very happy to see.
The ROWC, the operational important measure to be a working capital light company, we have 67% and on a stable level. On the rolling 12-month, even though we reached 10% in Q4, rolling 12 is 9.5% and continue to increase, which is good to see. Net debt 2.26, giving us headroom together with the strong cash flow to continue our M&A journey. For the first time as a listed company, the board proposed a dividend of 30%, which is SEK 39 per share. Looking at the longer time series, which I like to do because this is, I've been in now many, many years, and hopefully many years to come as well, we have a very exciting future ahead of us consolidating this market, and we have seen well above 15% CAGR over the years, quarter by quarter.
I know that some people are a bit nervous with one quarter and tough comps coming in, but the underlying business is performing very well. The Twin Engine, as we call it, with organic growth as the highest priority to grow faster than the market and get some efficiency gained, together then fueling the second engine of M&A, has delivered quarter by quarter growth above 15%, which we're looking forward to deliver as well going forward. So that's the summary of the quarter. I'll leave the word to you, Tom, to go through the detailed financials.
Great. Thanks, Johan. Let's go through the numbers in a bit more detail, just add some color to what Johan has said. So if I start with the group as a whole, net sales in Q4 up 9%, of which -1% organic, -4% from FX, and the Adjusted EBITDA in Q4 up 16%, -3% organic, -3% from FX. I'll come back to the different regions in a little bit more detail in a second, but as Johan said, the big picture, the big story is, of course, good, solid performance both in West and Central and moderated by those tough comps in North. I think the important thing from our perspective is to be comfortable that the underlying organic growth is very much for us to deliver on that target to be faster than the market.
And if we make that adjustment for those tough comps in 2024, we're confident that we're still doing that. The other headline note, perhaps, and Johan touched on it, the EBITDA margin reaching 10% for the first time. There's always some variation between the quarters, and Q4 tends to be the strongest quarter of the year. But even so, a nice milestone for us to reach. And then if I turn to the right-hand side of this picture, the full year, very much in line with what we've seen all the way through the year and what we see in Q4. Organic growth of adjusted EBITDA at 4%, strong contribution from acquired growth 16%. FX headwind that we've had all year and was particularly strong towards the end of the year, of -3%.
But overall, we're delivering adjusted EBITDA growth of +17% and, as Johan said, above our 15% external target. If I turn to the business areas one by one, let's start with Business Area North. Also here important for us to be comfortable and confident that the core business, as Johan mentioned, continues to perform well. Obviously, the growth rate figures are significantly affected by the lower project-based sales that we've talked about a lot through the course of the year, and we estimate those to have been around SEK 350 million of lower sales year-over-year as a result of that. But also important for us to repeat that we remain optimistic. We see this as an area of lots of activity going forward and lots of opportunity for us, but the timing remains uncertain.
Also in North, we should just touch on the new distribution center that we've talked about, progressing very nicely down in Gothenburg, putting in some of the automation and some of the other technical installations during the quarter, and going very well. We expect the operations to be up and running towards the second half of 2026 and then us really starting to get the efficiency gains and the benefits into the P&L during 2027. And then if we look at the full year numbers on the far right-hand side, again, I think no great surprise, the Adjusted EBITDA growth down at 9% for the negative reasons that I've described and net sales down 4% in the region full year.
Business Area West, a strong performance from region West, net sales up 20%, adjusted EBITDA up 36% in Q4, and the margin moving nicely above 9%. Actually when we look at region West, we see a very broad base of activity and improvements across the countries and across the companies in the region, both that strong focus on organic growth and operational improvements, plus, of course, the very positive contributions that we've got from the M&As that we've done, particularly the larger deals, HSL that we did at the beginning of 2025 and Scan Modul that came in during the middle of 2025. Both of those and all the other M&As contributing very strongly to the region. Small note, we did have some one-off costs relating to warehouse reorganization in the Netherlands.
that money has now been spent and was a temporary effect just here in Q4, so that affects the organic EBITDA growth a little in the quarter, but we expect to see the efficiency benefits of that coming through during 2026. Full year figures on the right-hand side, good to see Adjusted EBITDA growth at 39%, net sales growing at 20% on a full year basis. And then turning to our third region, region Central, also a strong performance in region Central. Net sales up 17%, Adjusted EBITDA up 44% in the quarter, and also pleasing to see that the margin moving, again, above 9%. As I've talked about before, we've really focused on driving margin in region Central, and it's good to see that, both the newly acquired companies have performed strongly.
They really help improving the margin mix, but they also, of course, help with the top line and the growth in the region. But actually the organic focus on margin improvements in some of our older businesses in the region is also bearing fruit. We see those efficiency benefits coming through, and a bit of a focus on phasing out some lower margin product categories in some of our companies. On a full year basis, Adjusted EBITDA growth up 52%, with a big chunk of that, of course, coming from the acquired growth, but organic growth also delivering very strongly for region Central during the year. And then net sales growth a little slower and a little slower on the organic growth you see there.
But as I've said, we are occasionally happy to sacrifice a little bit of, of growth to get the margins up, and that's what we've seen in region Central. A brief word on ROWC, EBITDA over net working capital, our key internal performance metric, keeping the organization, keeping the operations focused on cash and cash delivery. Happy to see that that is maintained at a high level. I've talked about it before, but we're always pulled in two directions on this metric because the M&As that we do tend to have a lower, working capital efficiency, working capital utilization efficiency, and we're constantly diluting the overall group picture, but we're working to improve things the whole time. And so as, as those two things pull in different directions, to deliver a flat result on an ongoing basis is actually something that we're very happy with.
It shows that the business is working and focusing on the right things and generating plenty of cash that we use to fuel the M&A engine that Johan mentioned and actually that we can see a little bit of here on the next page when we look at the cash flow. Solid cash flow full year and in Q4. The good performance on the top line, of course, contributing to that, but also, as we keep emphasizing, this real focus on working capital efficiency delivering. Full year CapEx running at a slightly higher run rate than I think is normal for this business, but we've talked about that as well where we have the big new investment in the warehouse in Gothenburg, which, as I say, is progressing nicely.
And then you also see on this page we had a relatively high level of acquisitions in 2025 post-IPO, but that was funded to some extent by the equity that we took in during the IPO that you see on the financing lines line on this slide. And then just one more from me before I hand it back to Johan. Stable leverage just below 2.3, also pleasing to see that this part of the model is working well for us, giving us the capacity to continue to drive the acquisition agenda using our own cash flow. We obviously remain extremely committed to our 2.5x threshold, and we're confident that we can manage that continued acquisition agenda, and use our strong own cash flows to continue to buy interesting and exciting businesses around Europe. And with that, I hand it back to you, Johan.
Thanks, Tom. Okay, talking a little bit more about acquisition, our second engine then. 2025 was an exceptional year. We had a little bit extra cash coming from the IPO where we used this to buy 3 platform acquisitions, as you know. So the activity had been a little bit above normal, but 14 signed acquisitions in 2025, and we entered into 4 new countries, 4 new markets, and continuing with this strong pipeline going forward. So I think we now have, you know, come, I don't know, half the way to the fully consolidated Europe. We are now present in 19 markets and a very nice and interesting years ahead of us. Continuing our journey.
Being the market leader in this market, it has been very good to see how we can attract the best niche players across Europe in different markets and being very disciplined when it comes to quality of the business, quality of management, and also being disciplined on multiples. As we have mentioned before, we pay usually 6-8x for normal deals, a little bit more for bigger platforms, but that has been very good to see that our strategy continues to deliver. If we dig down into two examples, which is good to do, I mean, it's all about numbers in this quarterly report, but for us it's delivering some 70,000 boxes per day ending up at the nurses, doctors' offices with critical products and solutions. One of those companies is Van Heek Medical.
The first one that I'm going to present is in the same area that we are very strong already in the Netherlands. They are a leading provider of medical supplies in the Benelux region. They've been around for a very long time, actually since 1926. This is a good example of how we buy sometimes three-generation companies with very, very good and stable business in their own niche. And this company is providing branded and private label medical supplies for diabetes, incontinence, and wound care, primarily to home care, pharmacies and nursing homes in the Benelux region. SEK 350 million revenue and a little bit more than 60 employees. So it's a good representation of how an acquisition can look like. Also a positive addition to our EBITDA margin. The next example is InnoMedicus.
This is a more niche company, highly niched actually, with the urology and prostate cancer selling to specialists across Europe. Here is a good example of how it's not only about supplies, device, and equipment, but rather the competence in a therapeutic area where you need a mix of products, a mix of services, and also expertise in software and solutions. So being a partner to healthcare, you need to be an expert in understanding the nurses and doctors' everyday life and put together a basket and the competence that makes their life easier. That's the type of company we buy. Together we're now more than 60 companies. We're becoming stronger as a group, using the efficiency and scale to be able to attract more companies and help the healthcare sector in a good way.
So two good examples, and we're very happy to have them on board. So if I just would summarise the Q4 then, solid quarter with an adjusted EBITDA growth over 16%, reaching the EBITDA margin of 10%, which is great to see. Strong development in West and Central driven by acquisitions and operational improvements. And, as Tom and I have mentioned, the tough comps in North is of course disappointing that we didn't get those deals that we got in 2024, but going ahead we think that this area could, could come in with some very attractive deals in, in the future as well. 14 signed acquisitions, all of them margin equative. So we're happy to see that the companies we buy actually have a positive mix effect on our EBITDA margin as well.
So all in all, a good year, and we continue to deliver on our Twin Engine and with a strong cash flow, which is very, very important. We see no reason why 2026 shouldn't be as exciting as the previous years as well. So with that, I think we stop the summarizing part and go to Q&A.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Carl Ragnerstam from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Good morning. It's Carl here from Nordea. A couple of questions. Firstly in North, quite impressive margins standalone, but especially adjusting for the defense volumes as you also mentioned. Can you help us understand a bit the margin drivers to this delta? Was it a positive mix in the quarter with smaller pass-through products and also especially if you compare it to the Q3 margin that was quite a bit lower, right?
Should I take that one, Johan? Yeah, thanks, Carl. Good question. I think the slightly trite and simplistic answer is you might have expected the margin to dip a little bit in North year-on-year because we have lost or we have not repeated some of the GDE business, which does come in at slightly higher margins. The reality is actually the rest of the business has been doing very well. It has had a good quarter. When I dive into the details of individual companies and individual areas with individual companies, we see a broad-based strong performance across the core distribution operations. And there are no big one-off effects that are driving that. Fundamentally our core operations in North are capable of delivering 13%-14% EBITDA margin. Q4 is always the strong quarter.
I think that's always to note, and especially when you do a sequential comparison, you go from the weakest quarter Q3 to the strongest quarter Q4. So that you perhaps shouldn't read too much into that. But if you look over the 12 months, the Northern region, even without GDE, is capable of delivering, you know, 13%-14% EBITDA margin, and that's, you know, pleasing for us to see.
No, that's very clear. And looking into North, you had the SEK 175 million top line impact on organic sales, meaning that underlying organic growth in North is low single digits, I guess. Entering Q1, do you see any reasons why that pace or shouldn't be kept as the underlying pace that is, given that I think we're exiting all of the defense comps in Q1, right?
Yeah, I can perhaps say a few words about that as well. I mean, obviously there is still uncertainty about whether the timing of this new lumpy business that we, you know, we still expect and hope to see. But I do think the fundamentals in North; it is a very stable business and it is moving in the right direction and we are doing lots of the right things across all of our companies and all of our countries in North. So, if we take a sort of a step back and view North without the lumpiness, you know, there's no reason to expect some dramatic acceleration or deceleration in the fundamental momentum in North. No.
Maybe in addition to that, I mean, good. I, I think we have a, a good 2026 ahead of us where we will hopefully overdeliver on our financial targets, as we have done many, many years before. But we should also say that we are investing in the warehouse, which of course is a very exciting thing to see. This, this business is, in the end game about efficiency, scale, robustness, and to, to allow ourselves to invest as we do in Gothenburg, in other areas. I, I think that's an important part of it. So that will of course affect us a little bit when you do such a big thing. So but the underlying business, once again, stable and robust, but you can expect us to, you know, with this investment, of course it will some disturbance in some quarters could happen.
Don't not raise expectations too high in addition to what you say, but nothing spectacular. Okay. That is very clear. Then we have, sort of, in West, you have the new logistics center. What is the sort of assessed net sales and EBITDA impact from the ramp of that? And do you expect it to continue in Q1 as well?
Sorry, Carl. I missed. Say the last sentence again.
Did you see the ramp up of the new logistics center in the Netherlands, what was the sales and EBITDA impact from that during the quarter? And do you expect sort of elevated costs in Q1 as well?
Understood. Yeah. So the sales impact, minimal, stroke zero. We took an approximate little bit less than EUR 1 million of extra cost in the quarter, that weighs down the result a little bit in West in the quarter. But that's money that's spent. There is no continuation of that cost coming into 2026. So the reorganization is done.
Okay. Very clear. That's all for me. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Carl.
The next question comes from Albin Nordmark from SB1 Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thanks, Andy. Good morning, Johan and Tom. Just, when assuming on CapEx, so quite high here historically at SEK 223 million, ending the year at 3.5% of sales. So obviously Gothenburg and the new warehouse in the Netherlands is some of that. But can you give us any guidance of what to expect here, entering 2026?
Yes, I can take that. So, the total cost of the warehouse in Gothenburg is a little bit more than SEK 300 million, approximately SEK 300 million. We've spent approximately half of that cost has now come in 2025. The other SEK 150 million-ish will be spread out relatively evenly through the rest of 2026.
All right. So SEK 150 million for 2026, but CapEx as a whole then?
Yeah, CapEx as a whole. This is a relatively CapEx light business on an ongoing basis. So, you know, generally we don't have big bits of equipment, machinery, those sorts of things. Our heaviest investment is in, for example, the high-tech automation machines, for example, the things that are a big chunk of the CapEx that are going into the warehouse in Gothenburg. So once that's gone, we should return back to a more normal CapEx level, which I estimate will be somewhere around 2% of revenue. That's the kind of rough run rate. And of course it will vary a little bit down over time, but under normal circumstances that's roughly where we can fit.
All right. Thanks. Understood. And then just looking at note two here, I think I note some different, some changes in accounting for goods and services in this quarter versus the last quarters. So now we see that services is 21% of sales. So can you please comment on that?
Yeah, that's just a technical change in definitions. It hasn't. There is no real change in the business. It's always a slight. Note two is a technical note, which I'm not sure is especially revealing. But we had a technical change in definition in one of our larger units, which explains the change. But there's no fundamental change in the actual business underlying it.
All right. Thanks. And yeah, that's all for me. Thanks a lot.
The next question comes from Jakob Lembke from SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, and good morning. My first question, sort of I want to come back to, the profitability in North here in the quarter. The way I have understood it is that these defense sales you've had in the past have quite strong profitability. And given that you sort of lose that year-over-year, my sense is that the underlying margin increase in North is actually very strong. So I'm just wondering if yeah, you could come back and sort of highlight what initiatives that has driven this or yeah, what is behind that really?
Yeah. I think you're right in terms of the way you read the numbers, Jakob. So the defense and preparedness contracts have typically been higher margin than the average. When we look into the numbers, they were slightly, a slightly lower amount higher in Q4 year-on-year. But net, you're right. You might have expected the loss of those to have resulted in a lower margin in Q4. But I come back a little bit to the answer I gave to Carl earlier. It is quite broad-based across the operations, across the companies, across the markets. Q4 is typically a strong margin quarter. But there isn't actually one individual or even just two or three small individual elements that have contributed to that.
Fundamentally, the business in North and that combination of companies, customers, and whatever is capable of delivering 13%-14% margin. So I understand it would in a way be easier if I could point to one or two initiatives that have driven that. But actually it's relatively broad-based across our operations and countries in North.
Okay. That's understood. I also follow up on the margin in North. I mean, as was mentioned previously, it's a quite big step up from Q3. And I think you were at around 14% also for the first half of this year. So the question is really would you say the sort of margin in between the quarters here in 2025 is representative for 2026 or how should you think about the seasonality?
Yeah. I, I think that's a that's kind of an important topic. So Q3 is always our, our weakest quarter. It's, from a margin perspective, without being too simplistic about it, it's driven by, you know, the holiday period. We, we have a we have a business that is a little bit quieter through that extended, Nordic holiday period. And Q3 is the lowest margin quarter. Q4 is the highest margin quarter. So when you try to do that sequential analysis, it sometimes looks like there is a sort of a big jump or something has changed in the business. The reality is it, it hasn't. It's simply about the amount of volume that is flowing through our operations. I would also say that, you know, 2025 has been a year where we haven't had very much of the lumpiness on top, the GDE or the, the preparedness on top.
When you look at the margin profile in region North in 2025, you have quite a good picture of what a normal underlying margin in North would be through the course of a year.
Okay. But, but just to follow up, I guess you would do lower volumes in Q1 compared to Q4. And should we also assume that you should do lower margin in Q1 compared to Q4?
Yes. Yes. If you look over and the margin doesn't wildly, dramatically change. Certainly, internally we're always looking at rolling 12, as Johan mentioned. Q3 is the weakest margin. Q4 is the strongest margin. So sequentially the margin in Q1 will always be lower than the margin in Q4, all else equal.
Okay. That's very clear. Now my next question is on West where, if I get it correctly, I, I sense that the sort of organic EBITDA growth, if you remove this one-off cost, is around mid-single digits here in Q4. And is that a reasonable level sort of to expect going forward?
Yeah. That, that's a reasonable conclusion to come to. Yep.
Okay. Good. And then also if you would like to comment any on the profitability in Central, which I think looks strong both driven by acquisitions, but also on an organic basis if there's something behind that.
Yes. I can maybe take that one. Yeah. The observation is right. The same applies for Central as it does for the other regions. Q4 tends to be the strongest margin quarter. I would say and I think we've mentioned this a little bit in the past as well. We have had a strong focus on margin in Business Area Central. It's been a key topic for the leadership down there. We've been looking at how we rationalize the range, how we take out low margin products, how we start to gain some benefits of economies of scale. And we have got a particularly positive mix benefit coming in from the M&As that we've done in Central as well. So it's a combination of factors that we are, you know, happy to see are bearing fruit.
Typically, when we look across the group as a whole, when we do our five-year backwards-looking analysis on margin, we see that approximately half the margin benefit comes from mix, from M&A mix, and approximately half comes from our organic operational efficiency type programs. Now that will vary quarter by quarter, region by region. It will vary a bit over time. But if you want a little bit of, you know, guidance to think about where margin improvement's coming from very, very simplistically and very crudely, it's about half from, from M&A mix and half from organic activities.
Okay. Good. And then just finally coming back to a question on the capital expenditure, I mean, I guess, if you remove or if we think, if we disregard all of this, CapEx to the distribution center, would you say that that is a sort of normalized level that we can expect going forward?
Yeah, I think so. We've discussed this here as well whether that's appropriate to do. Because as this business grows, as Johan mentioned, you know, we will look to drive economies of scale. We will look to find consolidational activities. As you know, we run a highly decentralized model. So that's not our main focus. But over the medium term there will be benefits to come from finding those consolidation activities. So you might argue that, okay, it was the Gothenburg warehouse this year. Maybe it's a warehouse in Central Europe in three years' time or something. But yes, sort of simplistically short-term mathematically, if you take out the Gothenburg warehouse, you have a CapEx which is sort of in line with our normal run rate.
but I don't want you to take that to mean that I'm promising that we might not invest in another big new warehouse in three years' time. Because we probably will.
Yeah. Okay. That, that sounds fair. That's all from me. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Erik Cassel from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. First, I want to sort of dwell a bit on your capacity to do M&A now in 2026. First, if we're looking at the sort of debt items outside of your definition of net debt as, you know, contingents and post-call options, what's the sort of timing of payments you're seeing for those? Because that's close to SEK 1 billion now. Just thinking if they may hit now in H1 or we could expect, for example, low M&A pace at the start of the year. Just generally anything on that would be helpful.
Yep. I can take that one. And good, fair question, Erik. So we have approximately SEK 450 million that will go out during H1 for earnouts. So of that, 900+ that you referred to, approximately half of it will flow out in earnout payments in H1 2026. Of course you can imagine we're super aware of that. We see that. It's in all of our cash flow forecasting and our M&A agenda. And it's built into the models. So it's a core and regular part of the business. It's slightly higher this year than next year because the remaining SEK 450 million-SEK 500 million in that liability flows out over the next three years. So you can imagine that the amounts are a bit lower in 2027, 2028, and so on.
But the answer to the heart of your question is no, we don't see that as a limiting factor. The business generates a lot of cash. It generates a lot of cash quickly. This is a well-known element of our model that we build in. We're confident that we can do the 10-15 deals a year, the 10%+ EBITDA extra contribution from M&As that we will buy through the course of the year and maintain leverage below 2.5 and pay out the earnouts. Sorry. That was a very long answer to your question. I hope it made sense.
No. No. That's good. That's good. But on that as well, I, I noticed that the sort of proportion of contingents and earnouts and post-calls, I mean, was a proportion of the acquisitions run a bit higher than normal. So I just wanted to ask now that we have, I guess, another upcoming SEK 500 million at least on these two acquisitions you closed now recently. Are you structuring these sort of deals any differently now with, say, a smaller part of cash out to sort of be able to keep the M&A pace as you target?
No. I wouldn't say so. We have, over the years, bought 100% of the shares as a standardised deal with 70%-30%, 70%-80% payout at the start and then 2-3 years earnout model. That's where we are. Sometimes it's a bit more, sometimes a bit less. But we're not adjusting this to keep up the pace. Kind of as I partly read your question and that, you know, we're keeping up the pace but increasing our debt going forward, that's not the model. So we will have proportionally the same earnout, dividend, and cash out every year. Since we're growing with 15% plus, we can continue to buy, you know, 15% more earnings. I mean, everything kind of scales up going forward. We've done this now for over a decade with the same model.
So I see no reason to be worried about that. So good cash flow. If anything, we're buying more better and better companies to, stronger, stronger our position is stronger. So looking five years ahead rather than five years backwards, I'm more positive to the future than I am to the past, to be honest.
Actually, I can add, Erik, that the trend actually is in the other direction very, very slightly. As I say, when we have this conversation in July when we've reported the Q2 numbers, that liability that sits, as we say, at above SEK 900 million today will sit at SEK 500 million or something because a large portion of it will have been paid out. The reason why there's quite a large chunk flowing out now is actually because a number of the businesses that came to the end of their earnout in 2025 have performed exceedingly well. It's, for us it's a good sign. It's the businesses are doing well. They're contributing. And they continue to contribute and will continue to contribute going forwards even after the end of the earnout period. So, yeah.
Maybe the last comment here. We, I mean, our business is so stable and slowly moving in the right direction, which also means that we have a very good visibility. We're actually internally discussing Q4 2026 and Q1 2027 when it comes to acquisitions. So for us 2026 is almost, you know, history for us even though we're just starting. So we have a very good visibility and control over our cash flow thanks to the stable business and the headroom in our 2.5. So this is the least thing I think we should be worried about.
Perfect. And that was a great segue to my next question as well. Could you perhaps talk a bit about how you're viewing comps into 2026, and also talk about how much potential volume that we could see from defense? If you think there's any areas of the business that will end up being mentioned when we have this, you know, end-of-year call next year as having been tough comps or something that sort of distorts the image of earnings that you've then reported.
Yeah. If I just start on a high level then you can detail this. And, I, I think 2020 2025 if we start with 2025 in 2024 I mean, 2024 was a normal year when it came to acquisition and operations. But we had this defense and the Ukraine war that gave us some extra deals on top. 2025 unfortunately did not have those deals to the same extent. I mean, we had some of the what we call GDE orders but not to the extent we had hoped for. 2026 we hope that this will be part of the year. So but I'll be very clear to tell you when things are coming in so we don't need to disappoint anyone. So it's as I see it we have a market with SEK 1,300 billion which is the value of this market.
On top of this we have some extra volumes coming from the defense right now. Back in the days we had it from COVID. And when these orders come they kind of change the picture in comps but the underlying business is the same. So hopefully we will we will get some extra of this business but, but, we will come back to it when, when and if it comes. The other part of the this year will be this investment in Gothenburg which could have a little bit of extra cost then. I mean, my philosophy when doing this is so important to be robust in having dual tracks and the possibilities to deliver to the customer regardless if there is some delays or problems. So maybe a little bit of extra cost could come into that. Hopefully not.
But, just saying what we see in the next year to come. And then, hopefully we'll just continue to see some positive effect from our scale and growth. And if anything I feel that when we now are a listed company we're growing bigger. More and more suppliers are turning to us and want us to take on their lines. More and more customers are turning to us. So I think every year becomes a little bit better going forward. But, I also don't want to raise expectations above our financial targets. But, I have a good feeling for 2026 and it shouldn't be any extraordinary things at this year. What do you say, Tom?
No. I think it's a good summary. I don't have anything to add.
Can I just ask you on a follow-up? Is there any part of the business that you think has tough, tough comps coming into 2026? Like HomeCare, for example, invested really well in 2025. Do you think that needs to have challenging comps in 2026? Like if you have any examples of that I think that would be helpful.
I think it depends a bit how you think about it, Erik. So obviously the organic growth in West in the first nine months of this year was boosted by increased patient numbers. So we shouldn't expect the same growth rates or the same extremely high growth rates. But it's not like this is going to go into reverse. That now is in the base and we will continue to grow organically from that new base. So it's tough in the sense that we can't deliver 15%-20% growth every quarter organically. But you know, there's no reason why we shouldn't deliver the you know, 4%-6% organic growth from a new higher base.
And I think we should come back to our most important statement. Our target to grow our earnings total earnings more than 15% we feel very comfortable about going forward. Organically we should grow faster than the market which is growing with some 3%+ . That's we're buying niche lead market leaders which perform that way. Of course sometimes it goes a little, you know, up or down. But as a group we have been doing that for many, many years. So that's what you should expect. And our bottom line EBITDA margin of 10% goal we are slowly but steadily going towards the 10% and breaking that, that ceiling as we did in Q4 in total as well. Thanks to mixed effect we're buying company over 10% EBITDA margin and we get some scale effect and positive effects from the business.
So, however you do your Excel sheets, at the end of the day, make sure it comes to those conclusions. And anything that is super extreme upwards or downwards, you should be relaxed about it because it usually comes to those conclusions, and view this business on the longer term. That's the best advice from me.
All right. Thank you very much. I'll jump back in here.
There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
All right. Thank you so much. I'll see you in three months' time. Have a good one.