Bravida Holding AB (publ) (STO:BRAV)
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May 4, 2026, 5:29 PM CET
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Earnings Call: Q2 2024

Jul 12, 2024

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Hi, and good morning, everyone. I am Mattias Johansson, CEO of Bravida, and I will take you through this presentation of the S econd Quarter 2024 for Bravida, together with-

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

With myself, and I'm Åsa Neving, CFO of Bravida.

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Great! Welcome again, and we kick off immediately. And we will tell you of the experience when it just works. Some things in life, we just expect to work. You expect the light to turn on when you press the switch, for water to flow from the tap, and to be able to trust the security systems in a building. Bravida provides technical solutions for everyday, day life and the future in a way that care for properties, people, and the environment. Bravida, in numbers, figures, we are present in 190 different locations. We are close to 14,000 employees, and last twelve months, we have had sales at close to SEK 30 billion. We have more than 80,000 customers, more—a lot more than 300 branches, and we are approximately 40 regions in four countries.

Bravida helps create a resilient society today and beyond. I don't know if you hear the sound or the noise, but if you do, that is something happening in this building, and I think that just shows you all how important installations are in buildings that we are servicing and maintaining. We will serve, and we have plenty of opportunities in the market going forward. Automation that provides energy-efficient buildings, energy-saving measures in buildings. We are working with hospital buildings with operational certainty, energy-efficient technology solutions for industrial customers, future infrastructure projects, and reliable security systems. On top of that, you can also add, defense, properties, investments, depending on, Sweden, Finland joining NATO, Norway, expand that, budget as well going forward. So why is Bravida an investment case for you? First of all, stable and profitable growth with strong cash flows.

In recent years, Bravida has delivered stable growth with maintaining EBITDA margins and strong cash conversions. If we look back for the last 10 years, we have been able to deliver a cash conversion above 100% as an average for the last 10 years, which I think is very, very good. We are leader in our industry in the Nordic region. With our size and broad competence, we are well-positioned to grow in a market with excellent opportunities. Well-positioned for the future as well. Energy-efficient buildings are high on customers' wish lists. With our offering, we contribute to increased automation and energy efficiency.

Going forward, I think this is even more exciting because the new rules from EU, the EPBD, Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, will force or motivate the owners of different buildings to invest in buildings to make sure that the energy consumption is going down. Stable sales with good risk diversification, more than 80,000 customers, 14,000 employees in many, many different places creates a portfolio effect. We have a very high diversification in our customer portfolio, in different segments, et cetera. The high sales stability enabled through many recurring assignments, low dependence on individual customers, and large service revenue share. And we also, finally, have good, good opportunity for growth through acquisitions.

We have done more than 150 acquisitions over the past 10 years, which have added SEK 11 billion, all financed by our strong cash flow that I started to mention on this slide on the top. The highlights for this quarter then. Despite expected challenges in the market of Finland and in south of Sweden, as we have communicated in last quarter, we are able to present an organic growth at 1%, total growth at 5%, and we have a sales growth, service sales growth at 8%, with some including some organic components, plus continued high order books that gives us visibility, as well as comfort to offset some regional challenges going forward as well. 4% of the growth comes from acquisitions, and the FX effect in the quarter is 0%.

Order intake increased slightly, driven by Sweden and Norway, and that is even if we haven't received any large orders in the quarter. I think that is also a sign of our ability to be in many places, high competence. We have been able to be attractive to many different customers in different segments. Order backlog remains at high SEK 17.6 billion, one of the highest order backlogs ever, actually. The EBITDA margin is the thing in this report that we are not happy with, of course, but as expected, it's going down 4.5% compared to 5.6%. It's primarily affected by operational challenges in three regions in Denmark and weak market in south of Sweden, which we all have told you about earlier.

On the other hand, Norway are on the same level as last year, even if we have done the strategic acquisition of Thunestvedt, which dilutes the margin. So, adjusted for the acquisition, the Norwegian business is improving, and, very happy to see that they are, organically growing 10%, and the acquisition of Thunestvedt is also delivering due to our plan. So everything all good in Norway, and then in Finland improved as well, which is impressive depending on the tough market they are facing. The best KPI maybe in the quarter is cash conversion or strong operating cash flow, SEK 548 million, which will be compared to SEK 134 million last year. Cash conversion improving in the quarter to 112%, and the injuries is going down with 19%.

Then we have really strong KPIs for the moment regarding the ESG, which is very, very good. The bridge regarding the net sales, last year, we had SEK 7.3 billion. This quarter, we are adding SEK 45 million in organic growth, coming from service as well as some installation in some parts of the company. M&A adding SEK 319 million, and you have some currency effect, adding SEK 24 million, and that brings us to seven point, yeah, SEK 7 billion in sales for the second quarter this year. Again, organic growth 1% in this environment is really, really strong. Regarding the EBITDA margin 4.5%, as I said, compared to 5.6%. The margin is improved in Finland and Norway, if we exclude for the acquisition I just told you about.

As expected, we have continued operational excellence in three Danish regions and a weak market in the south part of Sweden that brought down the group margin as well. In Denmark, we can see that we are definitely ahead of the transformation, or if we look at the organization. We have some projects we need to finalize, but I will tell you that if you look at medium-term target, Denmark will be a strong part of the company going forward. It will take some time, but our communicated plan from last quarter, where we see tough margins in Q3 and normal margins again, Q4 is still what we are chasing and are expecting. Of course, continued implementation of cost reduction initiatives to improve the margin is carried out where we think it's needed. Order intake and the backlog in the quarter.

As you can see to the left, we have a quite positive development of the order intake over the quarters since mid-2021. There is a seasonality in the order intake, so you can look at the line, quite solid and good improvement of the order intake. To the right, you have the order backlog, which only contains the installation projects. It's one of the highest, as I said, it's decreasing only SEK 276 million in this quarter, and I think that is good due to the selectiveness we are using on the project selling side, as well as a tough demand or tough market conditions we are seeing in some areas. Order intake increased slightly year-on-year and increased in Sweden and Norway.

When we come to the sustainability or ESG, today, 33% of all our vehicles are electrical driven. We can actually see some quite some impact in the KPIs regarding sustainability today. The CO₂ emissions from vehicles is down 11%. If we compare, that is not on the slide, but if we compare to the emissions we had in 2020 and adjust for the sales, we have actually lowered the CO₂ emissions from our car fleet with more than 30%. LTIFR on group level is down 19%, and we're getting closer to our group target at 5.5%, which is really good. We have lower LTIFR in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and Norway and Sweden are already today below the target.

As previously reported, we have dealt with the incident of over-invoicing in a specific branch in Sweden decisively, and no other such issues have been identified as part of the reviews we have conducted. Meanwhile, since this happened in April, we have been asked to do some audits with customers. Around 30 customers have been doing an audit together with us in Bravida, and we have not found any signs of the same issue that we had in one branch in Malmö, that we also filed to the police in the spring, and that is, of course, good. The inflow from customers who wants to do audits has decreased a lot. We are seen as a very strong, reliable, and good supplier for most of our customers, and I think that is really good to see.

We also have presented some new contracts the last weeks from public customers, which is the sign of that we have a big trust in the market, which is good. With that said, we have to deal with this certain matter in one branch of south of Sweden. We have done it, and we will continue to do it.... Regarding acquisitions in 2024, eight acquisitions is completed in so far this year, adding around SEK 400 million in sales. We continue to see a good pipeline or opportunities regarding acquisitions. The pipeline is strong or potential candidates, and that will gives us the opportunity to continue the strategy of selective M&A growth. With that, I hand over to Åsa, who will take you through the different segments.

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

Thank you, Mattias.

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

To you, Åsa.

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

And then, as always, let's start with Sweden, which is our largest country, where we had the top line grew marginally to SEK 3.7 billion, and the organic growth was negative in -2%, compensated by growth from acquisitions of +2%. We have a really strong production in the installation business in Sweden, and also service declining a bit in the southern part. So that means that the service part was 48% of the total sales, compared to 50% last year. The EBITDA was SEK 221 million, compared to SEK 248 million last year, and that is a margin of 6%, compared to 6.7% last year.

So the margin is declining a bit, and that is, as Mattias said, because of the very weak market that we see in the southern part of Sweden, that also has an effect on the margin. We have been taking actions there to adjust to the market conditions, and we will continue to do that. Order intake, +17%, and the main part of that is coming from installation. We have a large activity in installation projects in Sweden now, from infrastructure and in industrial projects. So backlog increased +15% year-over-year, and also increased in the quarter. Then let's move on to Norway. Norway did a very good quarter, this second quarter. The growth in sales was high, 22%.

So, the top line was SEK 1.6 billion, compared to SEK 1.3 billion last year. And the growth came both from acquisitions and from organic, so 10% from each. The Thunestvedt, the acquisitions, the larger acquisition that we did last year is included in these figures, and, it's adding about SEK 600 million yearly. And year to date, it was almost SEK 300 million that are in the books. So EBITDA was SEK 92 million, compared to SEK 75 million last year, and that is an EBITDA margin, unchanged of 5.7%. And if you would have excluded Thunestvedt, that is diluting the margin, it would have been 6%. But so, we are improving in Norway.

The Thunestvedt is going according to plan, and that is, we plan that it would be a zero margin in this year, and they are, they are on a black zero. So that is all, all as planned. The order intake was 25%. That is mostly coming from service. Service grew a lot in Norway this quarter, I should say, and the service part of the sales was 54%, compared to 52%. And if you look at the order of intake, most of the order intake came from service, but, but it was also an almost double-digit coming from the installation side. Order backlog, -17% year-on-year, also decreasing in the quarter.

But we see that there are many interesting projects in early phases in Norway that we hope will be going into our order books later on. Then moving on to Denmark, where we have a new division manager started first of May, Christian Alsø. And in Denmark, we had an unchanged top line on SEK 1.7 billion, and the and the service part actually grew a lot. So installation went down, and service, the service part is 45%, compared to 38% last year. And this is according to plan. We are taking down installation in these regions that we have, that we have some challenges in, and we're being very selective on taking on new projects. Organic growth was zero, and also the growth from acquisition was zero.

If you look at the EBITDA, it was SEK 2 million in the quarter, compared to SEK 71 million last quarter, so that is, of course, a big change. EBITDA margin was just a black zero, 0.1%, compared to 4%. And this is, as Mattias said, and as we have communicated before, due to these challenges we have in three regions in Denmark. The others are performing very well. We are taking actions, and it is going according to plan, but we still believe that we will go back to normal margins in the second quarter, or in the fourth quarter, sorry. It takes some time for these projects that are now running with low or zero margin to get out of the order book.

So order intake was SEK 1.6 billion, and that is down 32%, and the order backlog is +7% year- on- year. And the order intake is down in the installation business, and that is also according to plan, where we are being very selective on taking on new projects. But as we said, we expect us to be back on normal margins in Denmark by the last quarter, end of the year. So moving to Finland, which had a good quarter and a growth in sales of 17%, and this growth is coming from acquisitions. So the net sales was SEK 647 million, compared to SEK 553 million last year. Also, the EBITDA improved SEK 30 million compared to SEK 16 million last year, and the margin improved to 4.7%.

And they have, even though Finland is a very weak market now with a low demand, they managed to improve the margin and improve the profitability in the installation business. So order intake decreased by 11%, and this is due to a decrease in the installation. And the order backlog was -7% year-on-year. So then let's look at our financing and cash flow. If you look at the chart in the middle, you can see that we have improved the cash flow a lot this quarter to SEK 548 million, compared to SEK 134 million, and that means that year to date, we are on SEK 947 million, compared to SEK 193 million.

This improvement is mainly driven by the working capital, where we have had a big focus on, and a lot of the improvement is coming from Denmark, which we are very happy to see. Cash conversion also improved to 112%, quarter- to- quarter. It was SEK 90 million the last quarter, and last year, it was SEK 69 million. And this, good, strong cash flow means that the net debt on the left-hand side remains low, and that is providing capacity for us to continue to do profitable M&As and continue to distribute dividend to our shareholders. Yeah, so the net debt EBITDA level is, the net debt is SEK 2.5 million, and the net debt EBITDA ratio is then 1.1.

We still have three large unpayment receivables that we have talked about earlier, and that is one in, one in Norway and two in Denmark. And the one in Norway, the Stavanger Sykehus, the hospital, is expected to be... We hope that we can solve it before, but probably it will be solved in arbitration at the end of next year. The two Danish ones, one is also a hospital, and that was supposed to go to arbitration next year. That has been postponed and will not be resolved until 2027, is the latest that we have heard about that. Very unfortunate. The other one, the university, Niels Bohr, we expect that to be solved end of next year also.

So it will take some time before we get that money into our books, but we believe that this will have a, it will not have any effect on the PNL, but it will have a strong cash flow, positive cash flow effect. So of our financing, we have an RCF of SEK 2.5 billion. It matures in 2027. It has an option of 1+1 year. We also have a commercial paper program, a SEK 1.1 billion, and EUR 550 million. And, on top of that, we have a three-year term loan on SEK 600 million mature, and that is maturing in August 2025. And by that, and with a strong cash flow, I'm happy to hand over to you, Mattias.

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Thank you, Åsa. Let's talk about the market and the outlook for the market. That is always a question you have. Overall, we see stable demand for service activities. There are, of course, some challenges in installation that will continue, and there is a big variation between different geographies. In many places, we have a lot of investment in industry, infrastructure, the transformation of the society, electrification, et cetera. In the areas where we don't have these investments, for example, in the south part of Sweden, the challenges are quite big. But on the other hand, it's also fantastic that we have the ability to offset those changes in the market with the new type of segments due to the fact that we are in many places and have a very high competence in the company.

Infrastructure, industry, defense facilities, and civil engineering will provide business opportunities for us going forward. We will, of course, maintain our project selective strategy with continued focus on cost control across all projects, and margin over volume is important, and we continue to see an attractive pipeline of acquisition opportunities. Next slide is our financial targets. You know, we have a target to reach above 7% margin. Today, we are a bit away from that target. More than 100% cash conversion is presented to be above that today, and on average, we, the last 10 years, we have been able to provide numbers exceeding this target as well. Net debt, as also I just told you about, is well below SEK 2.5 million. That will give us a fantastic opportunity to continue to develop Bravida going forward.

Sales growth above 5%, which we also present in this quarter, despite the fact that we have some challenges in the market. And the one of you who have been shareholders for a while, you know that we have for ever since the IPO in 2015, increased our dividend every year, and we paid out more than 50% of the net profit this spring as well. So if we should summarize the quarter, the second quarter of 2024, we do it with an increased sales at 5%, 8% coming from service, which is very, very good. Organic growth, 1% in a challenging market, and that shows us all a resilience in the business model, in Bravida as a company, in a tough market.

Growth from acquisition is +4%, and as expected, the margin is affected by challenges as we have earlier communicated in both Denmark and south part of Sweden. So when we bounce back in both Denmark and the south part of Sweden, the margins will recover, of course. We see good performance in Norway and Finland, a strong order backlog, improved cash flow and cash conversion, and the ESG KPIs are improving, both regarding the injuries and the safety for our employees, as well as emissions from our business. So with that, we open up for some questions.

Operator

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.

Carl Ragnerstam
Head of Small Cap Research Sweden, Nordea

Good morning, it's Carl here from Nordea. A couple of questions from my side. Looking into the margin in Denmark, it sequentially worsened a bit. I mean, is it just quarterly volatility, or do you see any type of hiccups, or was it bigger writedowns in this quarter compared to Q1, or what's the reason behind it? Or, and also secondly, has it changed your conviction in sort of the Q4 5% margin guidance at all?

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

No specific reasons. No, we haven't changed our guidance. No, it's not that we see it's more difficult.

Carl Ragnerstam
Head of Small Cap Research Sweden, Nordea

Okay, that was very clear. Okay, but could you also help me a little bit accounting-wise with the margin in Denmark?

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

No, I think, Carl-

Carl Ragnerstam
Head of Small Cap Research Sweden, Nordea

Yeah.

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Good morning, first of all. I’m sorry for that. No, but I think it's when it comes to project execution, there is a timing in the projects in the first place. Then when it comes to how much you are producing in different projects affect the overall average margin. We have a new management in place who has to learn to understand all the KPIs and learn to know the organization. So I think there is more, no, really, some fact you can point at. I think it's just in line with what we have said, that we expect low margins in Denmark in the first, second, the third quarter, and back to what we say, normal margins again in Q4. So we haven't changed anything.

It's more a timing effect of different things, of course. So, we are still very confident that Denmark will come back to good margins, and this is isolated to three regions. What we can see is that we have been able to win new projects with better margins, with better contract terms, the last six months than we ever had done before. So this is just a matter of time. If you look at the medium-term target, I will expect that Denmark will be one of the best divisions in Bravida. That's something I'm quite confident about, if nothing dramatic happens in the market, of course. But, if we look at the situation we have today, we are very confident with Denmark going forward. Except for the Q3 next quarter.

Carl Ragnerstam
Head of Small Cap Research Sweden, Nordea

Sounds very-

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Yeah.

Carl Ragnerstam
Head of Small Cap Research Sweden, Nordea

Yeah, sounds very encouraging. And accounting-wise, I mean, obviously, given your margin-implied margin guidance in Q4, this will also be implied that the project, problem projects will be fully delivered upon in Q3. Have you taken sufficient writedowns? I mean, you have done writedowns for quite a while in Denmark. But how is the POC looking for the three problematic units, i.e., will Q3 be weaker than Q2, as projects will be fully delivered upon? And you also, perhaps, depending on the POC, facing a risk of a vacuum in the revenue recognition, or how is the finalization of these projects looking from an accounting point of view?

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Normally, not that number we are disclosing. I don't know, I'm sure we have the 100% fact either, but the POC in Denmark as such is improving. In these certain projects, of course, when we are doing writedowns, adjustment in the projects, they are going the same direction. I don't have that numbers, but the POC in Denmark is improving. Do you have anything to add, Åsa?

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

No, it is improving, and we are seeing that we're getting the new projects that we are getting into our portfolio has good payment plans also. And we, yeah, as you said, most of the projects are, like, 9 to 10 years long, so they will go out from the order books soon. So if not all, of course, in Q3, then some in Q4 also, but we believe that, you know, that the Q3 will be also a weak or weaker, and then it will improve in Q4.

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Yeah, and I also think if we take some more color on Denmark from another perspective, as you know, Carl, I spent some months in Denmark to learn to know, to try to steer the Danish organization. What I learned when I were there was that we have very, very skilled people. Today, with the leadership of Christian Alsø, we also see that we have done some changes in the organization. We have a very motivated management team in Denmark, a skilled team, and we also see that we are very attractive to new people who wants to be part of the Bravida journey in Denmark going forward. We are attracting a lot of talents, which is also a good foundation for the journey going forward.

It's not only that we are cleaning up the business, we are preparing the organization and improving the organization week by week as well.

Carl Ragnerstam
Head of Small Cap Research Sweden, Nordea

Okay, very helpful. And also in Sweden, we discussed the pricing situation quite a while now. Any updates there, sequentially better or worsening? And also looking at your order intake in Sweden was up 17% year-over-year, as you said, driven by small, mid-sized projects. If I recall, is Sweden's southern part a third of the Swedish business? Could you update us a little bit by the order intake by region, and whether you've been sort of more prudent in southern parts, given the pricing, and maybe more forward leaning in the northern parts, or how is it looking, or-

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

No, but Sweden is, if you take, draw a line between, yeah, Stockholm and Gothenburg, and go, and going south, the, the market is challenging, maybe a bit north of that as well. But, the further north you get, the better the market is. As you said, south is slightly more than a third of Sweden. The market condition is tough. It isn't worsening for the moment. It is... I think it has bottomed out a bit. We hear some few positive things, but I think it's too early yet. We will have a challenging two quarters, at least, ahead of us in, in the south part of Sweden. But on the other hand, the rest of Sweden is doing well.

So when the market conditions comes back in south part of Sweden, we expect Sweden as a segment to go back as well. And let's see what happens with the interest rates, et cetera, due to the news this morning. So there are some months, quarters before it starts to improve, I think, but we are closer and closer to that point.

Carl Ragnerstam
Head of Small Cap Research Sweden, Nordea

On the order intake side, the 17%, is it driven primarily then by the northern parts, given that you might be more prudent in southern, or how is the order intake looking, in southern parts then?

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

No, but I think that reflects what we have said, the order intake is better than in north.

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

It's the order intake is very good up in the north, actually, and then the more south you come, the worse it gets. And that goes for services also lower in the southern part so... But as Mattias said, we see some signs of it sort of bottoming out so that we can, maybe it will improve a bit now.

Carl Ragnerstam
Head of Small Cap Research Sweden, Nordea

Okay. It's good to hear that you're prudent then in the south. Okay, very good. Thank you so much.

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Thanks.

Operator

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-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.

Karl-Johan Bonnevier
Research Analyst, DNB Markets

Yes, good morning, Mattias, and also a lot of questions already asked here. Just one reflection, though, if I, if you could give me, Mattias. If you look at how you now describe the demand outlook, and also that the order intake is driven more by what I would call bread and butter kind of order than larger projects, would you see the- would you assume that we are maybe past the low point of this down cycle for you, and going into 2025, 2026, we are in a recovery phase, given that nothing new strange happens, so to say?

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Yeah, I think you are right. Then the timing is always quite difficult. We are late cyclical, as you know, which... When investments decision are made, it takes some time before we have started to actually build the new houses, et cetera. So I think it will take some time. The interest rates aren't really adjusted yet. The confidence is probably better in the market due to the fact that everyone or many expect the interest rates to go down, which gives of course the investment cases to look a bit better. But it takes a while before we will see the improvement. But if that is the beginning of 2025 or summer of 2025, we don't know.

But with that said, I think it's fantastic that we. I think the market is down 10% this year, down 6% last year, and still we have been able to offset the top line with new orders. And I think that is due to the fact that there is a lot of industry investments, infrastructure investments, the transformation, electrification, and we are one of the companies who are actually delivering the services to make the transformation in the society happening. And I think that is the reason why we have been able to handle this downturn in the market this good as we have done so far. When it turns, it's hard to say. You said in the beginning of 2025, I hope you're right. Could maybe take some months longer, but, let's see.

Meanwhile, we are going to run the business in the best way we can to adjust the, the organization and cost where needed, and continue to try to benefit from the opportunities we have in the market. And I think the market is very good, where you have the energy that you can use to, for industry, et cetera. In the south part of Sweden, where you don't have any energy, the investments are lacking. So hopefully we can see some better market in the south as well going forward. But I think we have to wait some time before that happens.

Karl-Johan Bonnevier
Research Analyst, DNB Markets

Good for the extra color. And just on the Region Skåne issue, and good to hear that those orders that you described with 30 other clients didn't kick anything out. But if you look at your overall internal system, sort of, for catching these kind of things early, have you come up with anything that you need to say, basically, go through in deeper detail, work through in more in your own structure and your own system to be able to catch these things early?

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Yeah. Firstly, before Åsa can give you some more information about what we have done, but I also think it's important to remember, of course, we have two customers in the south part of Sweden who has been treated in a very bad way. But overall, in a company large as ours, we have 13,000 employees, more than 300 branches in many places. We have 80,000 customers, and most of the customers are happy and rely and trust in Bravida. And I think the system has actually shown that they are working.

But when you have a person or 1 or 2, let's see what the police will find out, who deliberately or intentional try to break guidelines, processes, and, and values, for that sake as well, then it's hard to have system actually protected to 100%. So I think we, from the start, we had system who actually worked very well, but we also were trying to improve that, of course, so.

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

Yes, of course. I think it's also very much of a leadership issue and a governance, of course. And what we are doing is that we are looking at our systems. We are looking at whether we can automate them more, and this is an ongoing process. But we also have put in some controls in the invoicing process so that we early can detect whether there is discrepancies in the registered hours. And then we have educated almost everybody now. There will be another session after the summer. But we have educated service leaders, branch managers, and everybody who is connected to service and the registration of hours and billing. So a thorough education, and we have still another session after the summer.

What else are we doing? We are improving the Code of Conduct. We have reviewed that, and we are also adding that to all the employment contracts that you need to sign on the Code of Conduct. Yeah. So I guess-

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Yeah.

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

Yes.

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

And then in media, there were some news last week again, but I think that was the old news, or old news that were told once again. Just want to remind you that when Region Skåne actually contacted us about the fraud in the agreements to them, we also found the fraud against the Malmö Stad, the municipality in Malmö, and we contacted them proactively and have had discussions with them to solve that topic, and I think that was what was presented in the media last week. So that was actually nothing new. It was just another way to tell the same thing again. Otherwise, the inflow of customers who wants to do audits has decreased.

I said earlier this presentation that we have had around 30 customers who we have carried out audits together with, both public customers as well as private customers. We haven't found any intentional over-invoicing in those agreements. The customers have said they are happy with the audits, and we have a big trust in each other, so.

Karl-Johan Bonnevier
Research Analyst, DNB Markets

Well, good to hear how you have worked through the challenge, and all the best out there.

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Thank you. Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Karl Norén from SEB. Please go ahead.

Karl Norén
Equity Research Analyst, SEB

Yes, good morning, Mattias and Åsa. Some questions from my side as well. Yes, firstly, on southern Sweden here, I noticed you have laid off some staff in the southern parts and even closed some branches here. I'm just wondering if you can give any flavor on if you think you're done enough, or if you think you will do more to take out cost here in the southern parts, and also what this will make to the margin here going into the H2?

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

... Yeah, of course, we, as we always do, we adjust the resources due to the local demands. We are a local business. It's important for us to have the right sizing where the, in different cities, et cetera. And I think you have read some in the media that we have closed down some branches, had some layoffs in some other places, and that's quite normal in Bravida. We have that every year, even when the market is considered as good. We are hiring some places and sizing down in some others.

So why we are doing that is, of course, due to the fact that the market demand in south is too low in some places, and if you haven't been able to make money or made enough money in a market where we think the demand is good, then you will struggle even more in a tougher market. So in some places we are doing it proactively, in some other places we are probably doing it more reactive. But we are working with some 25 different places to adjust the sizes for the moment. That will of course defend and bring up the margins again. Åsa, do you want to?

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

No, we will, we will continue to adjust-

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Yeah

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

... also in the next quarter. When doing that, of course, you can lose some productivity, but I think on the margin side, you could look at it almost as in Q2, I would guess.

Karl Norén
Equity Research Analyst, SEB

Okay, that's good. And then I just have a question also on. You said you had some audits, et cetera. You had done some investigations yourself, et cetera, and had some advisors. I was wondering, did you have any, like, extra costs related to the audits or investigations here in the second quarter?

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

Yes, we have had. You can say that we have had a lot of extra internal costs. But, if you look at the external costs, we have had. Say that we have like SEK 4 million-SEK 5 million extra in cost.

Karl Norén
Equity Research Analyst, SEB

Okay. And that is in the Swedish segment, I guess?

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

Uh, yes.

Karl Norén
Equity Research Analyst, SEB

Yes. Okay. That's good. And then just the last one on the cash flow. I mean, you've had quite strong cash flow now for a while, and your working capital is starting to look more normalized. I didn't really hear if you said it's still more to be done, or what, what should we think regarding the working capital going forward, do you think?

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

Well, tricky question. We hope that it will. I think, I mean, it will, it will improve a bit more. It can improve a bit more, but I don't think we should expect it to stay on an extremely low level, like -6% or so, that we had some while ago. But, but, yeah, around 3%-

Karl Norén
Equity Research Analyst, SEB

Current level-

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

Around 3%, I guess, and then-

Karl Norén
Equity Research Analyst, SEB

Yeah

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

... let's see.

Karl Norén
Equity Research Analyst, SEB

That's good, and that's all from me. Have a good one.

Mattias Johansson
CEO, Bravida

Thank you, Karl. It seems like we have no more questions from you. Thank you for good questions and discussions. As always, when we are presenting the second quarter, we will take the opportunity after a long day today to have some weeks off, and I hope you will get the same opportunity. So we, from Bravida, we wish you all a very nice summer. Thank you so much.

Åsa Neving
CFO, Bravida

Thank you.

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