Welcome to the Beijer Ref Q1 presentation for 2026. 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 the CEO, Christopher Norbye, and CFO, Joel Davidsson. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and welcome, and thanks for calling in. Christopher Norbye here together with Joel. We'll go over some slides and explain a little bit how we look at the first quarter of the year. Then of course, we'll have some Q&A to wrap it up. Maybe we'll get started right away. If you summarize this quarter, I would say stable is a very good word. As you all know, Q4 and Q1 for us are a somewhat smaller quarter as we're just now starting ramping up for the summer season in most of our key countries around Europe and the U.S. In general, we had a stable development in most of our markets across the world. Our organic growth for the quarter was flat. We had some effects of weather, if you remember, in the U.S., closing down branches three or four days in January.
We had some extreme comps in some acquired companies, et cetera. Underlying positive growth in Q1. Acquisition added 3%. We had a fairly steep headwind on the currency in Q1 that hopefully will improve here as we roll over to Q2. On the margins, good development across all regions. Margins up in the U.S., margins up in APAC, and then flat-ish or a little bit down in EMEA, and we'll come into that in there. In total, numbers in line with last year. Cash flow continues to be positive as we continue to work very active with our cash flow position. We are building inventory here in Q1, and we'll continue doing it here in the beginning of Q2 to ramp up for the summer season, of course. In general, very good control of the cash flow.
We had one acquisition closing in Q1, and we'll come back and address a little bit on the pipeline that's coming up here in Q2 and the rest of the year. Also worth calling out our green OEM, SCM Frigo and Fenagy continue to have very, very strong order intake and have record backlogs moving into Q2 and for the rest of the year. Very positive on the OEM side, on the green OEM side of the business. Moving on to the next slide, the highlights in the different segment as related to our green OEM continues to do very well and order books are increasing, so we're positive as we ramp that business up for the rest of the year. Especially worth mentioning is the Fenagy had a record order intake quarter here with over SEK 300 million of orders in different segments.
It's very encouraging and a lot of activities. We also mentioned here, the first time in a couple of years, good pre-season for HVAC in France. It's a big market for us in there. The rest of it, if you look at the segment, fairly stable. Commercial refrigeration, 1%, OEM up five but with good order books. HVAC, if you adjust a little bit for the U.S., would also be slightly positive for the first quarter. In general, a good start, stable start to the year. If you then move in a little bit to EMEA, I have touched on some of these points. Just trying to break it down a little bit, I would say positive growth in most of our regions.
Worth calling out, as we said, is U.K., and then as I mentioned, a nice start on the pre-season for HVAC in France for the first time in a couple of years. We do have some headwind on comps in acquired companies and Eastern Europe that was extremely strong in the beginning of the year last year. All in all, a fairly stable quarter and also a smaller quarter for us in Q1 as we're starting now to ramp up for the season. Green OEM continued to be strong, as we said. Reported margin a little bit diluted by acquisition. We had some currency effects last year. In general, a stable quarter on the margin as well. Moving into APAC. APAC continues to develop well. +3% organic sales compared to a good quarter start to the year.
They're just phasing out their high season, moving in a little bit more to not winter, but the summer season is over. They had a good summer season across the board, and especially worth calling out here is very good development in the largest market in APAC, in Australia. They continue to take market share and develop in a very good direction. Also good activities on the OEM side and a lot of activity in Southeast Asia on that with good order line and pipeline from our businesses across the globe. A lot of activities, investment from our side on OEM and refrigeration in Southeast Asia is also proving to be the right strategy. If you look at the margin and development they had over the last couple of years, we're extremely proud of the team over there.
Has done an amazing job on improving margin in their underlying business, but also moving into segments and parts and supply in a larger way to drive a positive product mix. A little bit copying and working with the same type of model we have in the U.S. on the HVAC side. A more ducted solution, more parts and supplies, so very positive for them and how they're working with the margin side. A good quarter in APAC, based on a lot of good quarters lately in that region. You move over to North America. An active quarter, as we said, I think on last quarterly call, we had quite some extreme weather and being a branch-based business as we are, when you close down all our branches, it's tough to do any sales.
After a tough January with three or four days closing of our branches, we had a positive development in February and positive in March. All in all, a continued good execution from our U.S. team, not only on the sales side, but also on the margin side. You can see also very strong margin development in the U.S., driven by a lot of strategic initiatives that we are driving and will continue to drive despite dilution from the acquisitions that we did at the end of last year. Continue to open branches, just opened one, the first new branch in Alabama, I think in 20 years. I'm excited for that branch and we'll continue to do that for the rest of the year. Also nice start to acquisitions that we did close at the end of last year.
We do continue to see that there's no big change in our view on the markets in the U.S. As you all know, we are heavy on repair, and that continues to be active. Also looking forward for that market to start strengthening. Right now it's a stable market for us with good margins. We continue to invest in branches. We invest in our private label initiatives. We also continue to have a very strong pipeline on acquisitions in the U.S. that we're pretty sure is going to start executing here in the near term. All in all, I would say a very solid quarter in North America. A little bit on the financial. Won't spend too much time on this. We went over the quarter here. You see the trends here.
Of course, currency is a big headwind right now, but that's probably going to ease up a little bit as we move forward. Then a stable organic growth on the total reported level. Same on the margin. I would say solid Q1. As you see, if you look at that, the Q2, Q3, of course, much bigger quarters for us. I think we're in good position, good inventory position, good cash flow, stable margins across the globe to continue to have a nice development here as we move into Q2 and Q3 for us. All in all, I think this is my last slide. Joel, I think I've said this a couple times.
I think we'll summarize it as a stable quarter to start off the year, and we look forward to ramping up here for the season and moving into Q2 and Q3 for Beijer Ref. With that, Joel will take over.
All right. Thank you, Christopher. Good morning, everyone. Covered most here, but as always, starting with EBIT, excluding items affecting comparability of SEK 746 million in the quarter, which is down 4% compared to last year. We are, as said, significantly impacted by FX and on a currency-neutral basis, our Q1 EBIT is up 3%. Our net financials continues to develop very well. We have had strong cash flow generation for a number of quarters now, and net financials come in at SEK 109 million here, which is slightly more than SEK 20 million below last year, driven by a combination of lower rates and FX movements. On a comparable basis, interest costs are roughly SEK 10 million lower in the quarter compared to last year. Tax side, relatively uneventful, SEK 156 million in the quarter. Effective tax rate of 25% in line with last year.
All in all, we report a net profit which is also in line with last year. If you adjust for FX, we are up 5%. Moving over to EPS, clearly, in the quarter, 0.94, same level as last year. Again, the FX headwind, so adjusting for that, you have a net profit or EPS which is up 5%. A little bit on the cash flow. As you know, Q1 is a seasonally weaker cash flow quarter due to build up of working capital, as Christopher mentioned before, ahead of the primary selling season. We did, however, continue to deliver a solid operational cash flow in Q1 of SEK 385 million and the positive cash flow trend continues, which is also here visible on the next slide, where we have now 11 consecutive quarters of stable and good cash flow.
Obviously, we are in the middle of our journey on improving our capital efficiency, so looking forward to continue to deliver strong cash flow here. Just moving over to leverage. Leverage ratio in the quarter moved up slightly sequentially to 1.90. Same level in all material aspects as last year, which means that we continue to have a strong balance sheet and that together with our cash flow generation abilities, we feel that we have a very strong pipeline and ability to execute. With that, I hand back over to Christopher Norbye.
All right. Just to wrap up a little bit, the comments on Q1, stable across the board on sales. I would say good margins starting off the year. As you all said, solid cash flow despite building inventory for the season. Then a small acquisition closed out in the year. Then of course, mentioning also record order books in our OEM business, we will look forward to for the rest of the year. I think in the long term things looks good for us. A lot of activities in our segment on the sustainability electrification regulation continues to be positive and active in our regions. Good balance sheet for future expansion of our business. Also as we said before, good acquisition pipeline.
We'll have an active first half of the year, and we'll continue to have an active, I would say, second half of the year on the acquisition side as well. I would say solid start to the year and also now looking forward to going into more active season for our company and for us. I think with that, we'll wrap up the first part of the call, and then we're open for any question from people on the call.
The next question comes from Adela Dashian from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. A few questions from me. First, if we start with the organic growth trends. You mentioned that there was some weather-related closures in North America and also tough comps in parts of Europe. On North America specifically, would it be fair to assume that had you not had these closures, that organic growth would be somewhere in the 2%-3% range instead? And also similarly, in Europe, how should we expect the underlying organic growth as you exit Q1 and once these effects roll off the tough comps?
In the U.S., it's, I would say underlying probably slightly better than your comment. In Europe, I would say we had a very strong, as you know, also in Q2 in our M&A acquired companies. Similar comps, I would say in Q2 in Europe from that aspect. Obviously, it's an important part of the year with Q2 in the other markets, in Europe, where we are. As I said, we saw a good pre-season in France, for example.
Yeah, I think just summarize, slightly better if you do mathematically the closure. U.S. was trending more positive than that in February, March. Still early days of course. EMEA, I would say all in all, will be positive with those type of adjustments. When we try and package this together, I would say that Q1 underlying was probably up 1%-2%, but that's the case. The main reason there is the, I think it's the U.S. that did have underlying positive trend in Q1.
Great. Thanks for that. On the OEM visibility here, you mentioned that you have a record order book going into the second quarter. What's the phasing of those deliveries?
Yeah. I would say when you say order books, I think there's two parts of the business. You have the daily running or business in what we call SCM Frigo with cooling systems, while Fenagy is much, much longer lead times. I would rather summarize my answer in this way. Based on how the order book looks and how it's developing right now, this activity in sales will be ramping up percentage growth as we run through Q2, Q3, and Q4. It will start flushing out some of those order books in a positive way here for the rest of the year. Of course, Fenagy will most likely have a good order book based on this rolling into 2027 as well.
Thanks. Lastly, I know your answer to this is going to be that you don't have a direct impact, but the change to Section 232, what has the partnerships that you have with the suppliers, what do they sell and say that will be the implication of that, if any?
We don't see any changes from our partners or anything in the market. As we see, the market continues to move on as it had independent of this. We have no information that anything has changed because of this.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Karl Bokvist from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. The first one is also on North America. We started to see some signs from the industry, both on shipments and among distributors here in the end of Q1 that things started to improve. The first one is really if you agree with the market data that we're now seeing. The second point is really about if we get improving activity in the market, how you think about the mix in the business currently, and that relates to the margin profile.
Yeah, I think in the first one, and I think we talked a little bit about this in Q4 as well, when we had slightly negative organic in the U.S. For us it was more related to very strong comps and then orders versus daily trading business. I think what we said all along, in our model in the U.S. being very active on parts and supply, repair, replacement, as a segment. I wouldn't say that Q1 has shifted any of our expectation or view on the market. I think we saw the market pretty stable in Q4 last year. We saw the market pretty stable here in Q1. We did have strong development as we roll into February, March, but that's also related to the weather issues we had in January.
I would say we continue to have the more stable outlook in the U.S., and I would expect us to continue to take market share and do better in our model than probably most competitors. I think it wouldn't be, I think, saying that something has shifted a lot in March. I think not really. I think it was a good March. In general, we're still seeing the U.S. as a stable market and let's see how it plays out here. I think now you're rolling into Q2, it's a lot of related to weather and heat waves and starting to ramp up in the season. No major changes either negative or positive for us. We continue to develop stable.
Looking at your margin, yeah, we do have a lot of initiatives on improving margin in the business, driving product mix, adding spare parts in our acquisitions, driving private label, and improving the business. I think a very solid development on the margin, as you said, some driven by product mix, more repair and then project, as we said also in Q4. I think it more shows the strength of the, at least we think about our business model in U.S. and, we're opening, as I said, a new branch here, end of Q1, and we have a couple more coming here in Q2, Q3. We expect the market in the U.S. continue to be pretty good for us.
All right. Thank you. I'll get back in line.
Thanks, Karl.
The next question comes from Carl Deijenberg from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, guys. A couple of ones from my side. First of all, if you could remind us a little bit of your heat pump exposure in the European business. I remember back in the previous energy crisis. I guess you had a little bit of benefit of having such exposure. Could you just, brief words what the percentage that is of the mix? Do you see any shift here in Europe now given what we're seeing in the Middle East on the gas and oil price and so forth?
Yeah, I think we always said around our heat pump exposure is somewhere between 5%-10% of our HVAC sales in EMEA. Of course, not a significant part, but not a completely no part as well. I think it's too early to say, to be very honest, and I don't really agree with the comments that you will see an effect short term on what's happening on that side. I think it reminds Europe and our policymakers here, how vulnerable we are with the energy system we have with gas and other type of solutions. I would say right now we haven't had a big effect from it. Our heat pump sales, as of last quarter, continued to grow and expand after we had the dip here for a couple of years. We had a solid quarter for the heat pump here in Q1.
Of course, for us, heat pump is a lot of Q4, Q1, and now we ramp up more into the cooling side. Also remembering that in a lot of parts of the world, you use air-to-air both for heating and cooling. You can always debate if it's a cooling or heating solution. Our air-to-water and that type of product that we mainly allude to when it comes to heat pump has had a nice development the last couple quarters anyway.
Good. I wanted to ask on pricing in Europe as well. I guess maybe pricing in the U.S. is a different topic now with Section 232 and so forth. Given how corporate prices and so forth have moved, I guess we've heard more and more from the OEMs that price hikes have started to come back. Is that something you're seeing in Europe as well that price adjustments are coming back? Second question to that as well, the comments you gave around the pre-buy activity in France and in the U.K. in Q1. Could there be any risk that there were any pre-buys on that, on anticipation of higher prices given what we're seeing externally? Or is this just a regular pattern you're seeing?
Yeah. That was a long question, but I'll try and answer it in a good way. I will go a little bit across and of course you add price increases on material, right? If you look at a lot of our components, you use copper, you use steel, aluminum, and that type of things into both refrigeration products and HVAC products. As I said, I think in Q4 you see on the HVAC side a price increase coming through here in end of Q1, beginning of Q2 on the HVAC in the US. That's moving along and being executed. I would say in HVAC, you saw probably 45% price increase being executed across the board, in the US. If you take EMEA and your comment around there, I would say there haven't been any big price increases in EMEA yet.
The pre-sales and et cetera has nothing to do with prices. We're following very closely. What we're hearing and seeing in the market is that we also believe as you move into the second half of Q2 and the rest of the year, prices will start coming up on the HVAC equipment in EMEA as well. That's what we're hearing. For now it's been fairly modest, despite these increases in copper and other materials. Nothing right now, but most indication shows that the second half of the year, you'll start seeing this flowing through in EMEA as well, which I think will be positive for us.
Maybe just final on that, with regards to Europe and lagging on prices and so forth, are you surprised that this haven't happened earlier? Because I guess, the prices we're talking about or external materials have been elevated for quite some time. Or is it just, inventory still having been flushed out and so forth?
Yeah, I don't think much inventory, I mean, left to be flushed out. I think it's just our OEMs also looking for how the market develops and the strength in the market. Usually when you come into the HVAC, price increases usually doesn't come until end of April and May anyway. That's the cycle when you start looking into the prices as you ramp up to the season. I'm not super surprised, but we're keeping a close eye on it, and we also see some opportunities, even if the OEM doesn't go, that we have opportunities to raise prices in the market as we're moving into the second half. As I alluded to, been pretty good activities in some markets, and which is positive for us. Let's see.
Great. I think I'll stop there and get back in line. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Gustaf Schwerin from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Morning. Two questions. First, follow up on the U.S. OEM pricing and that 45% range. Can you give us any kind of sense about the pace that in your own organic growth for, well, Q2, Q3?
Yeah, I think if you look at it probably touches around 40%-45% of our business on the HVAC. You'll get maybe a tailwind of a couple of percent on the total mix in the U.S. on that price increase as we're moving out to Q2 and Q3.
Okay. Great. Yeah, second on the topic of acquisitions, what are your thoughts on Home Depot going into HVAC now? Do you think this changes the playing field for you in terms of competition, multiples or anything really? Are you hearing anything about them looking to work with other OEMs as well?
No, it's early days, right? You can view it in different ways. Our guys are not too concerned about it. These are not the type of assets that we are looking at. We have our platform in the U.S., so it doesn't affect, in our view, our business in any way. The add-on acquisition and in the area that we want to expand or grow has very little to do with this. I think for us it's more wait and see. At least right now. Then also the business model we have that much more focus on parts and supply and replacement, versus how we see the acquisition they did that's much more on the applied and commercial side. Right now, we don't see any changes in our industry for it.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Karan Thakkar from Bloomberg Intelligence. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my question. I just have one about the projects that you have won in Europe for data centers. I think this is the second kind of announcement you're making in this particular area. Do you think, or do you foresee any further wins in this area going forward?
Yeah, I think it's the same as I said before, when we captured the first one. It's the same type of solution where, with a heat pump running on isobutane, when you connect data centers and district heating, which we think is a fantastic solution for many reasons. We do have a strong cooling pipeline activity in that segment. It's not only that type of solution, it's also industries that do create a lot of heat, where you can use our solution in a very efficient way. In the same token, when I say those things, and as I said last year, I'm not here to drive that expectation. Of course, the more we do in this segment, the more we have our solutions out there, the more reference and interesting cases we are discussing. I think long-term, let's see how it works out.
For now, I think we should be positive on the short-term trends in this, and then if we see a vast activity increase around these type of areas, then we would communicate it. For now, I think it's step-by-step in these type of segments.
Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Karl Bokvist from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you, [uncertain], on the cash flow here. Back in Q3 and Q4, you had, using your own definitions, higher cash flow year-over-year, and you talked about the strategic initiatives kicking in and showing a clear benefit here. This is a quarter where cash flow is down year-over-year. I'm just curious if you think it's more about temporary effects, considering that Q1 last year was also a seasonal build-up quarter. I know we talked about this before, but what more you can do here structurally to lower working capital and especially inventories?
Yeah. Yes, you're right. I would say the difference here is small. It's smaller timing effects in the cash flow compared to last year. Underlying, we are satisfied with the cash flow generation in Q1. You're right in the sense that we are obviously still having a lot of opportunities on the cash flow and the inventory efficiencies, which are, as I have said a couple of times before, we did correct our inventory levels partly last year, going back to more normal levels from here, where the ambition is clearly to drive structural change going forward. We are in the middle of that journey, but it's something that will continue for quite some quarters and also years to structurally improve the business setup.
Okay, understood. Thank you.
The next question comes from Michele Baldelli from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thanks everyone for the good questions and listening in. Of course, if there's anything more you come up with, we can help clarifying, you know where to reach us. Thank you very much for this morning.
Thank you.