Welcome to the Bergman & Beving Q3 2024 report presentation. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode. During the Q&A session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad. If you are listening to the presentation via webcast, you can ask written questions using the form below. Now, I will hand the conference over to our CEO Magnus Söderlind and CFO Peter Schön. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Welcome, everyone, to the Bergman & Beving interim report for our Q3 quarter . My name is Magnus Söderlind. I'm the CEO, and on my side here I have Peter Schön, our CFO. So, just to start off with some highlights from the Q3 quarter , we have another quarter with increased earnings, profitability, and we also now have an increased EPS. And if you have followed us, we have now 20 consecutive quarters with increased profits. And this quarter, the turnover increased 6%, but that was mainly due to acquisition, and we'll come back to them about the organic top-line growth.
But we had an EBITDA increase of 10%, and that was mainly driven by the acquisitions contribution we had during the quarter. And we continue also to improve the EBITDA margins, so we're now at 9.6% this quarter compared with 9.3%, the comparable quarter. And we also continue to improve our profitability, so our profitability we measure as profit over working capital, and we now have an increase of 6% units, and this is measured rolling 12, so there is a kind of lag of the improvements we have made, so the rolling three figures is even higher than the rolling 12 figures, so all the activities we have been running for the last quarters are now showing results in improvement in this ratio.
A nd we also have, as earlier stated, an increase in earnings per share, rolling 12 to 755 compared with previous year 715, and we have achieved this despite a continuous sluggish market. We have said earlier that the best KPI on an aggregated level for the group is the number of employees within the construction industry sector in the Nordic. The Q3 calendar figure for that showed a decrease, if you kind of weighted the countries and the different segments, industry and construction, a decline of 3%. And if we dig into the figures, actually the biggest decline is actually in Norway within the industry that had a decline of 6%.
And the lowest decrease, actually all markets, all segments have a decrease, is the construction market in Finland that is decreasing with 1% this quarter. But then you should remember that they have had a very strong decrease earlier in the earlier quarters, so they are kind of flattening out now, it seems. But still, it's a sluggish market. I said it in the previous quarter report, and I say it again, the diamonds are formed under pressure, so we still have not the market with us on a group level.
So, we continue to lower the cost and to work with, you know, working capital decreases in overall kind of organic units. And we have some progress here. But also, in terms of the gross margin, we are doing some activities. You don't see an improved gross margin this quarter, but there are some extraordinary items, and I will come back to that during the different division presentation, why we don't see that improvement in this quarter. But underlying, I would say, we still have a strong gross margin as such. We also had very successful acquisition quarters. We made four acquisitions in the quarter, whereas three were made in December.
And our target, yearly target in terms of EBITDA to acquire is SEK 50 to 80 million. So we are now in that range. But that doesn't say we are not stopping acquisitions, and we will see if we manage acquisitions. So in total, we made six acquisitions so far this fiscal year. And we presented a Maskin & Verktyg acquisition in the previous quarterly presentation. As I said earlier, we made four acquisitions the Q3 quarter. The biggest one is Levypinta. It's part now of the Core Solutions division. It has an annual revenue of SEK 180 million roughly. And as you can see on the EBITDA, we only acquire companies with an EBITDA margin above 15%.
So this is kind of the level that Levypinta has delivered historically. And we also only acquire companies with a profit over working capital above 45%, and this company has a profit over working capital well above that range. Levypinta has operations in Sweden and Finland, and they are leading in producing high-quality laminate boards used under high pressure and heating. They are typically used in situations where you need really high-quality products. One example is within furniture within the professional segments, typically within hospitals and schools and those types of environments where they need high-quality furniture.
Another acquisition that is adding up to the Core Solutions is Oveta, and they are building special purpose doors. It's kind of a sound-isolating door or fire safety doors, turnover SEK 35 million, a margin well above 15%, and also they have a profit over working capital above 45%. They are selling to typical constructions and installation companies, and it's in situations where you need those special purpose doors, typically within also government buildings and those types of situations.
They are currently only present in Finland, but we are looking into the possibility to expand their business into other Nordic countries. One other acquisition we made was K.L. Industri, that's a Swedish company, and that is now part of the Safety Solutions division, turnover SEK 60 million, and have an EBITDA on the range of 15%, and also them having a profit over working capital well above 45%. We own several companies within making signs, special purpose signs. This is a company that also has a very strong position in that niche market. We now have companies in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark in this niche.
This is kind of strengthening our position in the Nordic in these specific markets. And lastly, Labema is a Finnish company, and that is now part of the Industrial Equipment division, SEK 35 million with a very strong profit margin and also a very strong profit over working capital ratio. And they are the distributor of laboratory equipment used especially within the government sector. So they are kind of representing a lot of leading manufacturers within that laboratory equipment space. So you can see we acquire three companies in Finland, and we think we have a very good experience with acquiring companies in Finland.
And there are a lot of high-quality companies, and we also feel that the price level in Finland tends to be a little bit more, a little bit lower than in many other of the Scandinavian countries. So all in all, we acquired SEK 385 million so far this year. And as you can see, all of them have a profit margin above 15%. So if you calculate backwards, you will see we are already in the range of SEK 50-80 million profit acquired so far this year. I said it before, but we now have 20 consecutive quarters with increased EBITDA, and that increased 10% this quarter. And we have currently 27% in terms of the EBITDA development.
And the EBIT level increased 4%, and the EBIT level was flat compared with previous quarter, but there are some extraordinary items in the financial net that explain why the EBIT level didn't increase this quarter. So that is some special terms or special items there that affect the financial net in a negative way. And once again, we also continue to improve the EBITDA margin. So if we then look at the revenue development, we said that we had an increase of revenue with 6%, and on this slide, you can see the acquisition contributed with 11%, and the organic growth for this quarter, 5%.
We previously talked about we are phasing out high-volume, low-margin product, but as stated in the previous quarter, we are getting to the end of that. So I think this organic kind of development in this quarter more reflects the underlying market. And it's a little bit higher than the 3% I indicated about the number of employees in the Nordic, but you can't see that KPI as a 100% reflection of our kind of underlying market. It's the best proxy we have. So we don't feel that we actually lose market shares in the markets, generally speaking. We actually win some deals. I will present some of them later on under the division presentations.
So I think this more reflects the kind of underlying market situation as such. With that, I will leave the words to Peter to explain more about the financials in the Q4.
Yeah, good. And if we look at the gross margin, we see a slight decrease in the gross margin, but still underlying, we increased the share of revenue from owned products. And the reason why the gross margin is slightly decreasing is that we have some call it one-offs. ESSVE is doing a lot of. They retake products from the new customers, which affects their gross margin a bit in this quarter. And also, for Fastening, we have discontinued an operation in Asia and sold out some stock to zero margin. So we increased the gross.
We anticipate the gross margin to stabilize and still be on that high level going forward, even though we won't see the gross margin increasing at the pace that we have had historically. And if we look at the group target overview.
Yeah, as you can see, we have a continuous improvement in the profit over working capital. We are now at 30%. The target is to reach the 45% latest fiscal year, 2026 to 2027, that's two years plus from now. And as I said earlier, we have a continuous improvement in this ratio, both because we improve the profit, but also that we improve the working capital efficiency. So my expectation is that we should see a continued improvement in that going forward, still aiming for the 45%. If we look at the EBIT development, we are now at rolling 12,395. We have the target for 500, and we are moving in the right direction.
We see opportunities to reach the 500, but we had expected the market to pick up a little bit earlier, and we need to have some help from the market to kind of get to the 500. But many indications show that we will see a pickup here in the next quarter to come. So that's still in reach. And the EBITDA margin is now 8.31, and we aim for the 10%, and that is also something that we will see improve over time, still aiming for the 10, even if that's also quite challenging.
Yeah, so if we look at the earnings per share, it continues to increase after a period earlier where we had a decrease in the earnings per share. And as Magnus said, the rolling 12 is 755 compared to 715 last year. So still an increase. And for the inventory level, we saw an increase in the inventory level, and it's mainly a seasonality effect that it's mainly ESSVE that is now purchasing a lot of products for the spring orders that they will deliver in our Q4 and Q1. So they build up quite a lot of stock, which is normal. We had an organic inventory reduction from last year of SEK 90 million.
So still, we are decreasing the inventory level organically, and we will continue to do so. It is a slower pace, but yeah, still, we anticipate that it will be decreased over time organically. We still don't have an ITO on the pre-COVID levels, so we will continue working with the lower inventory level. If we look at the cash flow from operating activities, it's an all-time high cash flow, and it's seasonality-wise, it's a strong quarter cash flow-wise, so it follows the normal seasonality, even though we in this picture have a bit, yeah, COVID-related issues, but still, this is a strong cash flow quarter.
Next quarter is a bit weaker, and the main reason is, again, the spring orders from ESSVE that is delivered next quarter, but quite long payment terms, so they get paid in the summer, so yeah, the main reason is, of course, stronger profitability and lower working capital. That's that both parameters are going the right way. And the net debt has also increased, even though we did acquisitions of SEK 263 million in the quarters. It only increased roughly SEK 1 million. And that's, of course, due to the good cash flow. During the quarter, we also renegotiated our credit facility, and we also increased the credit facility by SEK 500 million.
So we now have SEK 2.5 billion in credit facilities, and it's a 3+1+1 agreement. So we have, even though the net debt EBITDA has picked up a bit, we're not too worried about that. So the acquisition target remains intact, and we will continue to make acquisitions in the current pace.
So let's get into the different divisions then. Generally speaking, Core Solutions division company on aggregate still faces a slowing underlying market. But due to many successful acquisitions, we have a good profit increase in this division. As you can see on this slide, you have the rolling 12 figures on EBITDA level as well as EBITDA, so it's going upwards. So the revenue increased 16% in this division, and the EBITDA increased 53% this division. So it was a very strong EBITDA development here in this quarter. And also here, we have a strong margin underlying market increase. We're now at 7% compared with 7.3% last quarter. So generally speaking, it's a very good development.
And we have now acquired Levypinta in October and Oveta in December. So we continue to have a good traction on acquiring high-quality companies into this division that will also, over time, make sure that we have a good development of this division as such. We made some structural changes in this division as well. B&B Fastening had an Asian operation, as Peter was saying. We have discontinued that operation during the quarter. It's part of our kind of effort to kind of not invest or having companies that don't have the possibility to reach the profit of working capital of 45%. And we didn't see that was the conditions for the B&B Fastening Asian operation.
So that's why we discontinued that operation during this quarter then. I mentioned earlier that we also had some customer successes, and ESSVE actually got three new major customer agreements during the quarter. And the effect of that was also Peter mentioning. We have to rebuy the current suppliers' stock on those resellers. And that has affected our gross margin since we buy back those products, and the value of that is less. So we have a negative effect on the gross margin in those buyback activities. But that over time will not be there any longer, and then instead, we will have an increased top line in ESSVE with good margins.
So over time, this will have a positive effect on ESSVE. So overall, I would say a good development in this division. The Safety Technology, they perform on a similar level as kind of previous year, and they are also facing a slow margin. This is the division that has the highest dependency on the Nordic industrial and construction reseller. And this is partly then very affected of the development of those segments in the Nordics. This company acquired, as earlier mentioned, the K. Lidén Industri in December. So that will bring some positive development to the division. We also had success here. Cresto Group is our company in this division that has safety equipment to work on high heights.
And one type of business here is to sell to wind power manufacturers because they need that type of equipment when they deliver their products from the factory to make sure if there are some problems in the tower, they can kind of rescue people from that type of situation. And we have early communicated that Vestas is a customer here. And basically, all Vestas windmills leaving the factories have Cresto products. And now they actually got a breakthrough at Siemens Gamesa that hasn't been a customer of Cresto previously. So we got quite a big order from Siemens this quarter in Cresto Group.
That is also building some opportunities to continue to grow that business going forward. But as you can see on the curves on the lower side here, this is a division that hasn't had that positive development over time. We actually have had a decreasing EBITDA if you compare with two years back as well as the EBITDA margin. My expectation as communicated in the report is that we at least should get back to the previous level here in some time. To get that, we need to have a stronger underlying market combined with additional acquisitions. The EBITDA was flat here. It's SEK 40 million, and the EBITDA margin was also on the same level as previous year, roughly at 9.1%.
Here we have an opportunity to get above 10% over time. As I said before, my expectation as a first step is to deliver on a historic profit level and margins. And then lastly, the Industrial Equipment division, the profit continues here to expand and is mainly driven here also by acquired companies. This is a division mainly dependent on the Nordic industry in combination with the UK since we have some companies here in the division acting in the UK market. And the Nordic industry customer demand has been stable during the division, but still on a lower level. The underlying profit in this division is not growing, but the profit still has increased 11% to SEK 63 million.
And the EBITDA margin is continued expanding and is now at 13.6%. And that's mainly due to acquisitions. And we acquired additional one here, as communicated earlier today, Labema in December that also will contribute to the division going forward. Luna is the biggest unit in this division, and we have made some cost reduction, major cost reduction in that company and some product phase-out.
We still have some things to do here, but the majority of those cost reduction and product phase-outs is now finalized, and that has had a positive impact on Luna performance, but it has been outweighed by the slower underlying market as such, so all in all, the target we have to communicate is the 500/45, and how to reach that, as said earlier, we need to get some help from the underlying market. We had expected that to pick up much earlier. I mean, this time last year, I expected it to pick up during the summertime. We are now in the last quarter here, and we still don't see that recovery.
When we look at the kind of the indicators as such, we get some indication that the expectations for the underlying market that we are acting in should increase during 2025 in the range of 2% to 5%, and that is necessary for us to get all the way to the 500/45, but we will continue to do what we always do, prioritize profit expansion over revenue growth, and we continue with our capital allocation through our focus model to make sure that we have suitable strategies and priorities company by company. It's not one size fits all.
It's really dependent on where they are in our capital allocation model to make sure we have investment in growth if you have a high profitable working capital and growth opportunities, and really to focus on profitability improvement if you are in the lower range of our profitable working capital expectations. We also had, as we said before, the toolbox. The Bergman & Beving toolbox is a way to support the companies in the development, and that's still, of course, in play. And we will continue to acquire highly profitable B2B companies with leading position in growing niche markets. Peter showed our debt situation, and we have a strong balance sheet.
So, the kind of, it's not the financial that puts the limit on our acquisition pace. I don't see any reason why we can't continue on acquiring in the range of SEK 50 million to 80 million because the market is there, and we have the balance sheet that enables this. So the expectation is that we should continue to deliver on the acquisition path we had had during the last two years going forward as well. And we also have some specific growth team. We talked about it earlier. It's really to continue to work on reducing the stock and to improve the ITO to get back to the pre-Corona levels. Based on the kind of underlying market situation, we still have a tight cost control.
We continue to do some efficiency measurements in some of the companies, but once again, the big kind of takes are taking already, but we still to continue to make some adjustments along the way, and we will continue to kind of protect our gross margin development. I said it before, the underlying gross margin is in line with the previous quarter. We have some explanations why it's a little bit lower this quarter, but my expectation is that we should get back to the previous levels in the quarter to come here, but you shouldn't expect any significant gross margin improvement from the level we are today.
And we also prepare especially companies in the growth zone to capitalize on the economic situation. As said earlier, that is expected to pick up during this fiscal year in the range of 2% to 5%. So overall, I hope and expect that we are getting into a better market situation now in the next coming quarters. I don't maybe expect it to be this quarter, neither the next quarter. So my current expectation is that we should see some pickup here after the summer. We don't see any signals when I talk to our customers, when I talk to my colleagues around the group or other industry experts that we should expect any kind of pickup here in the near term, actually.
So we keep our fingers crossed here that we should get some help from the market here in mid-2025 then. With that said, we open up for questions.
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 Zino Engdalen Ricciuti from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Magnus and Peter, and thanks for taking our questions. I would like to start off with discussing some of these non-recurring items to get a better understanding of the underlying margins in the segments. If we start with the earnout revaluation, can you talk a bit about how it was distributed or give an indication of that between the segments? Yeah, we really don't communicate exactly how it is distributed, but it's a large portion of the revaluation is from construction-related acquisitions, you can say. So it's, yeah, that's a bit of functions. Yeah. Yeah. And in ESSVE regarding the buyback of the stock, can you give some color on the impact of that?
We can say that much. During the Q3 quarter, it was a couple of millions that affected the result due to the buybacks.
And then lastly, to the divestment of the Asian operations, how much that one impacted?
It was also a couple of millions. Yeah, a few millions, yeah. So it's, yeah.
Okay, this is very helpful. And just regarding on the same topic with the divestments, I think this is the first time you've mentioned looking at companies or making some possible structural divestments or such since you changed your financial goals, so to say, if it was one and a half years ago or something like that. Are you seeing that you are closer to looking at other possible divestments or other structural solutions?
Just to comment about what we have done historically, I mean, ESSVE has one operation in Europe and one in Asia, and we have now kind of dismantled the Asian operation. Historically, we've done several kind of structural measurements. ESSVE, for example, has closed the operation in some of the countries and so forth, so it's not kind of the first time we do this type of structural changes. It's been a handful of those during my time, but this is something we continuously look into and evaluate, so with that said, I don't say we will make any, but I don't say that we will not make any going forward. It's a continuous kind of evaluation.
Very clear. Thank you a lot. I'll get back in line.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Albin Nordmark from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi, Magnus and Peter. Albin from Nordea here. Just one or two questions from my side. The organic decline in staff of 21 people, was this mainly due to the discontinued operations in Asia or was it more across the group?
It was more across the group.
All right, thanks. And then obviously, you don't see a pickup before the summer, at least in the market. But can you comment? You were down 3% organically last quarter, now 5%. So is the market quite stable here or is it getting worse? And also if you can comment on the pricing, current pricing in the market for your companies. Thanks.
Yeah, start with the pricing. We are continuously pushing our companies to make price adjustments to make sure we have this gross margin protection that I talked about earlier, so many of our companies have announced price increases during this year already, but typically, they are below 5%. I mean, during the Corona time, it was in some companies double-digit figures in terms of price adjustment, but it's not on that level currently. Talking about the organic development, I mean, generally speaking, we don't see any big difference from the previous quarter. We mentioned that some of the kind of organic decrease was due to fewer working days in this quarter.
It represents 2%, so that, I think, is explaining why this figure was a little bit higher compared with previous quarter. Many of our companies felt, I think it was 17 or 18 of December, the orders just stopped coming. So we had some people indicating that many of our customers, especially the industry and construction resellers in the Nordic, were preparing for the year-end and were optimizing their stock levels. So I think that was part of the explanation as well why the last half of December was very, very slow.
All right. And have you seen any pickup from that preparing of working capital through the year-end? Have you seen any pickup from that after the, yeah, in the beginning of January?
You mean the inventory level or? Sorry. Yeah. No, it's normally before year-end and then, yeah. So I don't really have the January figures yet, but I don't expect it to increase.
All right. Thanks a lot. That's all from me.
The next question comes from Marcus Almerud from Carnegie. Please go ahead. We can't hear you, Marcus. Marcus Almerud from Carnegie, your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me now? Yes. Yes. Hi. Hi. Wanted to maybe start with an answer to the question, one of the previous questions about orders just all of a sudden stopped coming at the end of December, mid-end of December. How has that started in January? Has it bounced back, or is that kind of the same level as you exited the year?
Yeah, we have seen it's very hard to say what's sustainable or not, but we've seen a small pickup.
A small pickup. Okay. Okay. And then just to if I got you right, I heard there are no actual signs from subsidiaries about the market picking up, but there's more of indications, the same indications as I read about the market coming back towards end of the summer or in H2. That's correct, right? And follow up on that, is there any difference between construction and industrial manufacturing?
Just to make some clarification, we are close to 35 companies in the group. Of course, not all companies are facing this type of tough market conditions. Some companies have very good growth. But we own these Luna, Skydda, and also ESSVE and Guide, and those companies are very dependent on the Nordic industrial and construction markets. So that, of course, has an effect on the group level as such. Sorry, what was your questions?
No, if there's any difference in terms of signals or what you hear from your subsidiaries on the industrial and construction.
Yeah, I think there are clearer indications that the construction market starts to pick up. If we look, for example, ESSVE is very dependent on the ROT market, and there are some clear indications that that is picking up. So if we look at those 2% to 5% organic growth, that is kind of expected for 2025. A larger portion of that increase is from the construction sector than from the industry sector, even if the industry sector as well indicates some growth.
Okay. That's perfect. And then also follow up on the one-offs. Is it possible to quantify the total impact on earnings from these one-offs in the quarter?
Yeah, when it comes to, yeah, it's a few millions, so it's not that much when it comes to if we talk ESSVE and B&B Fastening. So it's not a huge impact on the EBIT level. Margin-wise, it's a bit more, but it's not significant, I think. That's why we haven't really mentioned the number.
Okay. Okay. And then finally, maybe on the M&A market, the M&A climate, can you say anything about has there been any changes whatsoever? What's it like in Sweden? You mentioned Finland is a bit cheaper. What's it like in the UK?
I would say, generally speaking, my experience is that the price level, both in the UK and Finland, has been on a lower level compared with the rest of Scandinavia for many quarters. With that said, I mean, there are still opportunities to buy very nice, highly profitable companies in Scandinavia within the valuation range we have set. So you shouldn't see that we acquired three companies in Finland and one in Sweden as a pattern that could continue going forward. It's more kind of an expression for that those specific deals were materialized during this quarter.
And as you can see now, there have been no changes. If you look at the second half of last year and maybe going into 2025, the M&A environment per se has been kind of unchanged in this time.
I said it before. When the economy is very strong and the interest rates are a little bit lower, there are typically more companies for sale, but there are also more buyers in the market. This situation currently, when the market is a little bit slower and interest rates are a little bit higher, there are much fewer companies for sale in the market. But at the same time, there are much fewer buyers. So I think our kind of possibility to acquire in the range of the 50to 80 is different now compared to when the economy is very strong. I think just the dynamics is a little bit different.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much.
Karl- Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Your line is open Please go ahead.
Hello, Magnus and Peter. I'm not sure if I was introduced, KJ from DNB here, so. Yeah. But now you're on the air. Yeah. Hello. It was some delay to opening up the line for me here, so. No, good morning, Peter and Magnus. Good morning. Lots of good answers already. So you had a couple of smaller ones from me. Looking at the phase-out that you're still highlighting in Luna and Skydda, is that fading away, or are you still seeing good opportunities in enhancing those pipelines?
No, I mean, the majority of that work is done. Still, there are some opportunities still left to be materialized, but not in the magnitude that you will see an effect on, for example, the gross margin or the top line. Once again, the development of the top line on the group level is more reflecting the underlying market than what we're doing, phasing out currently. And that's my expectation going forward as well.
Very good to see the strength of your own cash flow generation. And having that in mind, what kind of comfort zone would you see yourself having for the moment when you're looking at, say, doing acquisitions and maybe taking on more gearing on the balance sheet?
I think we said it before. We're feeling comfortable going up to net debt ratio of three. So I think in the short term, we're quite comfortable taking on more debt. Personally, I don't see our balance sheet to be any kind of restraint from us to acquire the companies that we want to acquire. It's more making sure that we acquire high-quality companies at the right financial conditions.
Yeah. And I guess the kind of quality companies you are looking to acquire probably comes in with a good free cash flow generation from start as well, just adding to the picture, doesn't it?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Excellent. Thank you very much, and all the best out there.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Emanuel Jansson from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Magnus and Peter. And thank you for taking my questions. You were talking a little bit about the margin. You were talking a little bit about the resellers. I wonder, is it maybe possible to quantify the exposure to resellers in amounts of percentage of group sales for the group as a whole and maybe within the safety segment as well?
Yeah. As I said before, if we look at the biggest companies in the group, Ikaros, Skydda, Luna, ESSVE, Guide, for example, their main kind of channel out in the market is through the Nordic resellers within the construction and industrial segments. See, if you add up the turnover of those companies, you get above 50%, and especially in the Safety Technology divisions, most of the companies there, including Arbesko, Cresto & Zekler and partly Group, is also dependent on the Nordic resellers as such. So it's quite high exposure.
Yeah. I understand. Thank you for that, and going forward, would you say that you have a strategy to move away from these kind of resellers within the Safety Technology? Is that possible looking into new acquisitions?
Yeah. For example, Ateg that we acquired in that group and K. Lidén Industri is actually mainly selling direct to end customers. So we have in our acquisition strategy an aim to acquire companies, and that you can see also that we have been doing that isn't dependent on the Nordic industrial and construction resellers. So there is a strategy to kind of add on new companies that doesn't have that dependency.
And so far, how has the performance been from these kind of companies which are not aiming directly towards the resellers if you compare the development here in the short term?
It's a mix, I would say. Some companies actually have a very good development. We mentioned in the report, for example, Lidalco that is newly acquired. They have a strong performance. Ateg as well has a very strong performance since they joined the group. So we have several companies improving the profits despite the tough markets. We have some companies that also are not dependent on the Nordic resellers that are also facing tough markets, especially companies with investment products, for example. Some companies are selling machines, and those companies, I would say, have even tougher markets than the companies selling to the Nordic resellers.
I would say it's a mixed picture. Overall, I would say.
Okay. Perfect. Totally understand. Sorry, sorry, Magnus. Continue.
No, I would say overall, if you aggregate our companies not dependent on the Nordic reseller, they are performing a little bit better top line-wise than the cluster dependent on the Nordic resellers.
Perfect. Thank you, Magnus. That's very clear. Just assuming that the market will eventually pick up by the end of the summer, upcoming summer, what do you estimate the EBIT distribution will be between the three segments when you will potentially reach the SEK 500 million EBIT? Is that possible? I mean, given that you obviously also have an M&A pipeline out there, but what do you think the splits will be between the three segments?
That's very difficult to say, I would say, and maybe not a question I would like to answer. Generally speaking, as you said, also it depends on what companies will the different division acquire along the way. It's also this pickup that I expect that to be a little bit different within the different type of segment as well. It's very difficult to make that type of estimation. I guess you can make a good guess. I understand.
Yeah. I had to try at least. Yeah.
When I indicate this. Yeah. Sorry. When I indicated this underlying market development of +2% to 5%, as the indicators are indicating, I applied that on a group level. And then, of course, some will face a little bit higher, and some will maybe face a little bit lower organic underlying. But my expectation on the group level is those 2% to 5%.
Yeah. Okay. Perfect. And maybe a last question from my side. Can you maybe give us some comment on this? You're mentioning that you are seeing or maybe expecting the construction market to pick up or has a clear indication of that it will eventually start to pick up. Could you maybe give us a view on the Swedish construction market and what you see there and what's the expectation for 2025 as well, especially on the Swedish market?
Yeah. If you talk about that, we follow an index called the Building Material Index. That is kind of an index indicating the value of building material going forward and the development. And that indication says plus 6% in Sweden for 2025 compared with 2024. Then, of course, we're different between different product categories, but that's still an indication. If we look at the roof market in Sweden specifically, within business premises, the figure is plus 2%, and within the housing segment, it's plus 6% in Sweden.
So generally speaking, it's an increase across the building and the construction segment in general, but it's different between different subsegments.
Yeah. I understand. Perfect. Thank you, Magnus and Peter. That was all my questions for now. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.
So there are no written questions, at least to my knowledge, Peter or Denna, no. So with that said, thank you very much for listening in, and looking forward to having you listen to the next quarterly call. Thank you.