Good morning, everybody.
This is my third and last quarterly report in Beijer Alma. Next Monday, the permanent CEO, Oscar Fredell, will join us, and he will take care of this company for the future. I'm glad to say this is the best report during these three quarters and probably since many years ago also, I think. In spite of that, we have not really pushed everything to be a maximum. It's a very normalized result we see after this quarter. We had a healthy growth in the period, an organic growth that was very nice. The reasons are, among other things, we have, for instance, expanded. It's four factories within Beijer Tech that we have expanded, and two of those, actually three of those, have during this period started to deliver from the expanded production area.
That has also, of course, meant that we can actually work down the backlog we have from those factories. There have been too long delivery times, and that is one of the reasons why we have more deliveries in this quarter and also better results. Demand has improved in general, but it is normal. In our case, it's a volatile market depending on where in the world and in what segments we are. Lesjöfors has mixed demand, and we have organic growth both in sales and bookings. What is especially good in this quarter is Chassis Springs that has expanded dramatically and is mainly Germany and the United Kingdom that are the strongest markets. In industry, Asia and Europe are growing.
In Sweden, we see a very stable market, but we see large customers like ABB and Volvo Trucks are reduced, but we have others growing like Hitachi, and other smaller is growing. In total, it's a stable market in the Nordic. In the U.S., we see a market that is down depending on some large customers we have in industry, but also that the Dexcom project, as some of you might have heard, for the medical market, according to plan, now is on a lower level. At the same time, one of our companies in the United States has actually got more orders to the medical market. I can foresee a more push for sales in the United States in the future. Our problems, like Alcomex, we are halfway through. We have done a lot. Not everything is finished yet, but it's going according to plan.
Probably at the end of this year, most of the outstanding problems are solved. We have also taken care of the problems in Turkey and reduced costs there. In Beijer Tech, there are also variations, but overall a stable demand. We see some companies, as I said, that have expanded their capacity, have really boomed in the quarter with deliveries to customers. It's a growing organic growth in the quarter. Of course, as you've seen, there are profitability improvements. It's a combination with mixed effects, but also some specific companies. After the quarter, we have acquired a company, Ewona, in Finland. I can say we have more coming up in the future. We have a backlog of potential acquisition targets that we are working on just now.
As you can see here now, the order booking has increased by 7% to SEK 1.7 billion and net revenue by 12%, organically 7%. The adjusted EBITDA margin was now on the good level of 15.8%. My view is there is a potential to grow that further in the coming quarters. Of our turnover, the most part comes from Lesjöfors, but 34% comes from Beijer Tech. At this moment, it's in Beijer Tech we are acquiring businesses, but acquisitions will come later on in Lesjöfors in the future. Specifically, Lesjöfors, we have the net revenue increase by 7%. I can comment there that even though this medical project in the U.S. in [Dexcom] has slowed down according to plan, we are actually growing in other areas of the world to the medical sector. We have a special sales resource working in that area, and they are working with customers worldwide.
Chassis Springs are doing very well, and they see optimistic on this year in general. We have some plans eventually to also expand that business for the future. The adjusted operating margin increased to 18%. It's on the way to the long-term goal. In Beijer Tech, order bookings increased by 18% to almost SEK 600 million, and net revenue increased to SEK 650 million. As I said, we have now reduced the backlog, and that's a healthy reduction because delivery times in a couple of the companies were far too long for our customers. They were forced to say no to orders earlier. Now we can cope up with the demand from the market. All are doing well, but of course, niche technologies are extremely well. That's niche-oriented companies selling mainly outside the Swedish market that are doing very well. Regardless of the general market, they have their niches.
They're normally always performing very well. The adjusted operating profit EBIT increased to SEK 84 million. Also, the margin was slightly increasing in this area. I leave the financials to Peter.
Thank you, Johnny. Yeah, a brief look on the financials. I think we have gone through most of them. We present a fairly strong cash flow. That's a metric we haven't really discussed, driven by the good profitability, but also that we have a little bit positive effect from Chassis Springs, that the stock buildup has been a little bit slower in the quarter compared to last year, giving a positive cash flow effect compared to last year. Net debt is at 1.8x, meaning the acquisitions that Johnny is talking about, we should have had room to do without, sort of say, gearing up the net debt too much. Yeah, that was all for me.
An acquisition then was the Ewona company, it's a niche company in Finland, who is a nice size of business, and it's a high margin business. It fits in very well to the Beijer Tech portfolio of companies. In this industry, when you win projects, it's not only price, it's also the connections you can get between the buyer and the seller. It is very much up to the people from our side that meet the seller, and they like each other, like the future ideas. That is, I should say, more important than the exact price you pay. In this case, obviously, we have been good in meeting the demands or wishes from the sellers. As I said before, we see a lot of activity going on in the acquisition market at this moment.
We will see how many of these deals we can win, but I hope there will be a number of them during the coming months. If you look at the history, we have done 32 acquisitions since 2019. This year will be a better year than last year. I expect that this is a trend that will continue in the future. We are going to put more efforts on acquisitions in the future. We have hired another person to work with acquisitions coming in the beginning of next year. In conclusion, Lesjöfors has reduced the overhead, and we have clarified that the geographical area managers are really fully in charge of their businesses. I think we have good people out there in the organization, very competent, many of them with very long experience.
They have a full understanding of also how the market looks like, who is a customer, and how to take care of the customer. I think we have a very good base now for future growth in the Lesjöfors area, combined also with future acquisitions in other areas with similar products and not only springs. Beijer Tech, as you've seen during last year, are performing better and better and obviously have the ability to convince sellers that we are the best buyer. In a week, Oscar Fredell will take over. He has a very long experience of acquisitions and with the setup where you leave them in like a compounder. I think there are opportunities for the future development of Beijer Alma is extremely good.
Great. We 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 Korsheden from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good day, Johnny and Peter, and thank you for taking my questions. Obviously, a very strong quarter, thank you for that. If we just turn the page a little bit and look on order intake, that was perhaps something that came in slightly weaker compared to the rest of the report, which looked very, very strong. Could you perhaps elaborate a little bit what you're seeing there in terms of order intake?
I'm not that worried about order intake. As I said, we had a very huge backlog in a number of businesses, and that's why the delivery level has been very high. We have companies who really have no book, and say they get orders on delivery within a few days. I feel pretty confident for the next quarter.
If you also go back and look, we had a little bit of the opposite situation in Q2, where we had higher organic growth in the orders than in the revenues delivered out. That also created a sort of backlog. Adding to that, third quarter book to bills tend to be a little bit lower due to the summer season as well. I think Johnny summarized it good that the strongest is in Beijer Tech and then most difficult to estimate in Chassis and then industrial. There we have a mixed demand with good markets and bad markets. That's where we see the biggest uncertainty for Q4 as well, for sure.
That's very clear. Could you perhaps also help us break down the variable parts here driving the clear margin uptake in Lesjöfors year-over-year? I'm guessing it's a combination of the Chassis mix, medical mix.
You have a solid organic growth, and obviously, the Alcomex cost savings program is starting to yield effects. Would you say those are the key drivers here, or is there something else we should keep in mind as well driving this uptake?
No, I think you summarized it very well. It's a mix of those. The cost saving effects are solid in the quarter as well.
All right. Thank you. If we get into a little bit more detail, could you give any indication where we are currently in terms of margins in Alcomex now that you have seen some effects from the cost savings program? Just remind us again, perhaps, where you see this business over time. Is this a 10%, 15%, 20% EBITDA margin business, or what's your ambitions in the more long term with Alcomex?
I mean, Alcomex was like a group in itself. It had a head office with a lot of people, and there was a kind of centralized organization. We have removed the central organization, and we are now building up. Each individual company will act as it should do, and it will take time. I think in a few years, they will be on an average level as other companies within Lesjöfors. You know, to change the culture, it takes time. Yeah, but it's positive at this moment. We are on the positive side.
Yeah, exactly. We guided, last quarter we started the year negatively, then we were at low single digits year-to-date at Q2. Q3 is in the same range as Q2 in terms of profitability. We're moving in the right direction, but it's not a fast journey. It will take time. We will also be helped by a better construction market and more demand for the door springs. That is a hefty portion of the Alcomex business to drive a good margin increase coming up to the rest of the companies in the group.
Yeah. Thank you very much. That was all my questions.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Max Bacco from SEB. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good day, and very well done here in the quarter. Johnny, very impressive work during your interim period, I must say. I have some quite similar questions. If we circle back to the very nice margin expansion in Lesjöfors, would it be possible to give some indication of the drivers or the magnitude of the different drivers? I mean, I noticed that the mix was favorable for profitability where Chassis Springs increased the share of total sales, and then you also have the cost savings program that is currently being implemented and so on. If you could give some comments on the magnitude of each component, if that's possible, if we start with that.
If you look at the cost saving initiatives, if we start at that point, in this first phase, there's quite a lot of people leaving, and those costs go out fairly quickly, meaning that we guided around SEK 35 million on a yearly basis as well. We are at a good pace to reach that target, so to say. A lot of those actions are a little bit front-heft in the third quarter. I think on the mix side, you're absolutely right that we are, so to say, Q3 last year for Chassis Springs was, I would say, fairly weak, both in terms of profitability and also in terms of the volume. Of course, you get a little bit of a mixed effect in that. The overall, so to say, mixed effect is a little bit more difficult to comment on, but sure, it's a positive effect.
I must say I'm impressed by the organization. As you might remember, we had a factory in Finland that was burnt down, and 1/3 of that turnover, we have lost. Two-thirds we have kept, even though some of them by acquiring products from competition from the market and selling. We also have closed down Foy, the factory with Alcomex, where we also probably have lost 1/3 of the customers. In spite of that, we have these strong figures. When we can do this and still increase the margin and not only depending on reduced costs in central costs, I think the organization has a very strong potential in the future.
Okay. Understood. Very good. To circle back to one of the other questions, I mean, organic sales growth is very strong in the quarter, 7%. It seems like some outperformance at least versus the market. The organic order intake is plus 2% year-over-year organically. As you mentioned, Q3 normally is seasonally slower, and some companies not even having an order book. Which number would you say is more or the most representative of the underlying market and the improvements that you're seeing, if you understand the question?
It's not easy to answer. We have companies who have said no to orders because they were fully booked. Now, when we have increased the capacity, they can start to open up to the market and say yes to orders coming in. It's not so easy to judge where the real level is.
I mean, if you tend to look at it, I think we tend to look a little bit more positive, so to say, on the Beijer Tech side, and then a little bit more negative on the Lesjöfors side, if you look at the volume, so to say.
Of course, I mean, the market was very strong in the quarter, and we don't see any drop in quarter four on that side.
Okay. Understood. Yeah.
The Chassis Springs, I mean, they had an easy comparison as well from last year, and I mean, that drives the growth of the 22%.
Yeah, sure. On that topic, how would you describe the comparables here in Q4, perhaps mainly within the Chassis Springs? Just to remind us.
I would say fairly normal for Chassis Springs.
Okay. Okay. Understood. The final question, you mentioned earlier, Johnny, that you aim to perhaps not immediately, but over time to expand the offering and the share of Chassis Springs within Lesjöfors. Is the intention to do that through acquisitions or is it through greenfield investments? What's your thoughts on that?
Organically.
Okay. Understood.
Distant resources.
Yes. Perfect. That was all from me. Thank you very much for taking the questions. Once again, very well done. Thanks.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial the pound key five on your telephone keypad. There are no more phone questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions or closing comments.
I want to thank all who have been listening to me during three calls now. I don't know if this is the last call ever I will have in webcasts in my life, or some new cases will show up. Who knows? It's been actually, I've liked this period and my ideas I had during the board time about what we should do and have been able to actually do it myself. That's been very nice, and we can see the outcome also. I'm also satisfied with what we have seen. I've been involved in the process of hiring in UMD, and I'm also very satisfied with the person we have found. I wish the company good luck for the future. Thank you.
Thank you.