Welcome to the Dustin Q3 presentation for 2023 and 2024. During the questions and answer 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, Johan Karlsson, and CFO, Julia Lagerqvist. Please begin your meeting.
Good morning, everyone, and warm welcome to this Q3 Presentation from Dustin Group. As you heard, with me here in the room is Julia, our CFO, and also Fredrik Zetterström, Head of IR. Let's move to slide 2 and the Dustin in summary. Dustin is an IT reseller with its base in IT hardware and software products. And as you can see in the graph up to the left, 82% of sales is IT hardware, and 18% is software and services. Software and services has, in the last years, become a larger share of the total sales and has increased in importance. Our assortment is primarily sold online, and 60% of sales go through our online platform. The share in the Nordics is about 80%, and in the Benelux, the share is lower.
However, as you know, we have recently launched our online sales model in the Benelux, and the aim is that we would move to a similar share as in the Nordics when it comes to online sales. We're present in six markets in Europe, with our main markets being the Netherlands and Sweden. As you can see, our key customer focus is B2B, representing 98% of sales. With that said, let's move to slide 3 and a little bit more about the quarterly numbers. As in the last four quarters, sales was affected by a weak market, with continued general cautiousness by customers in many of our customer groups. Sales in the quarter was SEK 5,455 million, or 3.5% below last year. In SMB, organic growth was -10.2%, and in LCP, -0.8%.
The negative 0.8 in LCP was a significant improvement over Q2 and the result of new customer contracts. Gross profit at SEK 821 million was down SEK 36 million or 4%, while gross margin ended at 15.0%, down from last year's 15.3%. New contracts in LCP and high level of promotion sales in SMB affected the margins negatively. Adjusted EBITDA at SEK 130 million, compared to last year's SEK 169 million, with an EBITA margin down from last year's 3.0% to 2.4%, mainly as a result of lower gross margins and lower volumes. Items affecting comparability was at SEK 1 million as the integration's coming towards an end. EBIT was SEK 86 million, compared to last year's SEK 97 million.
Positive was cash flow from operating activities that ended in SEK 454 million, compared to last year's SEK 431 million, mainly coming from a strong working capital management. Leverage ended at 3.0, compared to last year's 5.0, where the main effect being the repayment of debt after the rights issue. Some other highlights from the quarter was that we continue our focus on synergies and reducing costs, and that Dustin joins the Science Based Targets initiative. And last but not least, the new PC launch from all major PC manufacturers, where they launch PCs with AI capacity, and we think this will be a help to drive a better market in the future. Now let's move to some more details on the numbers and Julia.
Thank you, Johan. We start by looking at the SMB segment on page 4, where sales landed at SEK 1.5 billion, or 10.9% below last year. As Johan mentioned, the continued economic uncertainty is still affecting demand in all markets. As in previous quarters, we saw low demand for computers and mobile phones, while the share of software and service sales increased somewhat, just above 12%, due to a healthy trend for contracted recurring services in the Nordics, combined with the weak hardware sales. There's been larger than normal promotion sales due to clearance of supplier stocks ahead of the launch of AI-adapted PCs, which put some pressure on gross margin. This has been partly offset by a better mix and a continued price discipline.
Our cost-saving programs have had positive impact on our cost, but has been offset by a cost inflation and currency effects with a weakened SEK. This I will come back to later in the presentation. So the lower sales, combined with the largely fixed cost base, has led to negative operational leverage and hence lower segment margins. All in all, the segment margin ended at 2.5%, compared to 3.9% last year, and the total segment result ended at 37 million SEK, compared to last year, 65 million SEK. Going to page 5, we look at the LCP segment. And the sales in the LCP was 4.0 billion SEK in the quarter, up 1.2% year-on-year, helped by currency, and the organic growth was minus 0.8%.
This is also a sequential growth versus a low Q2. As noted before, we have some volatility between quarters. The public sector was an important driver of the improvement, coming with several new framework agreements, while the performance in large corporates was slower. And from a geographical perspective, the sales performance was strongest in Denmark and Norway. Gross margin was slightly declining in the quarter, mainly due to new framework agreements with initially lower margins. Margins was also a bit impacted by, negatively by country mix. On the opposite, we saw increased share of sales reported on net basis, according to IFRS 15, which had a positive impact on the gross margin for the quarter. As for these, the sales is only, as for these sales, only the gross margin is supported in sales, it becomes a 100% gross margin.
In addition, we had a sharp increase in takeback, which had a positive impact on margin and EBITDA. Johan will come back to this later in the presentation. Costs were fairly stable, and in total, the segment result was SEK 100 million, which is SEK 141 million last year, and margin ended at 3.3%, compared to 3.6% last year. On page 6, then we look at our cost development. A continuous focus on extracting synergies from integrations together with cost-cutting activities has improved the cost base, mainly due to reduction in FTEs, which is down 9% from the beginning of the fiscal year 2022-2023, and 5% year-on-year in the quarter.
However, cost reduction activities and reduced number of FDs could not fully offset cost inflation, currency fluctuations in the quarter, and the total cost was up 2%. We continue our optimization journey. For example, we are still to capture further synergies from ERP harmonization. Overall, we aim to strike a balance between efficiency activities and being ready for when the market turns. Coming to page 7, we look at net working capital development. Net working capital improved with over SEK 180 million compared to the same quarter last year, and ended at SEK -200 million. We're back to negative numbers. This was partly driven by inventory, which was reduced by SEK 106 million versus last year, and is now at SEK 925 million.
Inventory is now at a balanced and normalized level, where we target to stay for the coming quarters. It's minor movements up and down, of course, still able to deliver on our service levels. Both accounts receivable and payables increased versus last year, mainly related to business volumes. Payables was also impacted by timing of deliveries within specific major customer agreements, where we had favorable payment term timings. Overall, net working capital has bounced back from the high Q2 levels. We always have some timing effects in individual quarters, but our long-term target for net working capital remains to be around minus 100 million SEK. We then move to cash flow and CapEx on slide 8, and summarize what we've covered up until now. So despite the low result, cash flow for the period was 340 million SEK.
Looking at the details, we see that cash flow from operating activities before change in net working capital was SEK 81 million, compared to last year's SEK 141 million. The difference was mainly driven by higher paid taxes. Cash flow from the change in net working capital was SEK 373 million, compared to last year's 289 million, mainly affected by the change in payables, as previously described. And overall, the operating cash flow was SEK 454 million in the quarter. Cash flow from investing activities was -65 million SEK, compared to -58 million last year. More on this in just a few seconds. And cash flow from financing activities was -49 million, which is flat versus last year.
Moving to CapEx, we see that the total investments in the quarter was SEK 149 million, compared to which was SEK 65 million affecting cash flow. The majority of the SEK 65 million was capital related to IT development, mainly the new common IT platform, which is key for our future operational efficiency. Investments in tangible and intangible assets was SEK 78 million, of which only SEK 20 million was affecting cash flow. The non-cash items are mainly lease, contract, and cars. Investments related to services was SEK 18 million, compared to SEK 23 million last year, mainly linked to harmonization of data centers, none of it affecting cash flow. And with that, I hand back the word to Johan.
Thanks, Julia. Let's move to slide 9. Here we return once again to our takeback business, as this is contributing positively to our overall business result. Currently, we are harmonizing the offerings between our countries, while at the same time, move operational processes into one harmonized system. We're currently on an annual run rate in takeback of approximately 1 million units, and this number is increasing rapidly. The underlying demand is strong, and we see that a good offer in takeback gives us advantages in tenders and large corporate business. We also see that our partners acknowledge that what we are doing and support us with approving us for more and more cooperation. Next step on our journey in circularity will be to start selling used and refurbished products to our Nordic and Benelux customers, both the large ones and via the web.
All in all, we see strong growth and good margins in our circular offerings at the moment. We then move to slide 10 and some news on sustainability. After the end of the quarter, we have sent in our commitment to join the Science Based Targets initiative. This is a national framework for companies that adapt science-based climate targets to limit global warming. The framework aims to support companies worldwide to achieve net zero emission before 2050. With this application, we maintain our sustainability commitment and are committing to set short-term targets to reduce emission in line with the latest climate science and Science Based Targets initiative. Really positive initiative from us at Dustin. Moving to slide 11, and then a summary of the quarter.
As we're summarizing Q3, we can see that the markets, as in the last year, have continued to be challenging, with organic sales down 3.5%. However, we see good progress in winning new tenders in LCP, and the launch of PCs with AI capacity is encouraging. Gross margin at 15.0% is slightly below last year, affected by new customer contracts in LCP and promotion sales of PCs in SMB, as the market is clearing stock to make room for the PCs with AI capacity. Low volumes and cost inflation affected EBITDA margins that is down from 3.0% to 2.4%, even though we see good progress in capturing synergies and cost focus.
Cash flow in the quarter, as we heard, was really strong and showed that we have established our net working capital model also in the Benelux region. And we remain with our focus to be around SEK -100 million in net working capital. In regards to the future market, we're encouraged by the re-release of new PCs enabling AI and the continued improvement in the macro environment in our markets. This leads us to continue to believe that we will see a gradual improvement of the market during 2024. And last but not least, we feel that sending our submission to join the Science Based Targets is the right move for Dustin. And with that, we conclude the formal presentation of the report, and 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 Daniel Thorsson from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi. Thank you very much. So a question on the weak margin here in SMB and related to the clean out trends that you mentioned in the end here, and increased promotional levels. Could you say that they are so aggressive right now because everyone knows that we will have new products in the market quite soon, which means that we will have a rapid effect upwards in terms of both not volumes, but, but sales and also margins, as soon as these new products come to the market, because the old ones will basically not be able to, to sell at all in half a year's time or so? Or how do you see this clean out playing out?
Well, I think, I mean, first of all, it's very positive that we see the launch of these new machines. That is clearly something that we have been waiting for, and it shows the commitment, I think, from the manufacturers when they are cleaning the value chain of old products the way they do it now. They really believe in their new launches and the new products, and that is, of course, encouraging. The timing it takes to actually see an effect of that is really hard to predict, but the activities that they are doing now is for sure positive for us.
Yeah. And if you were to estimate or guess on the timing here, I mean, those new products, those new PCs and laptops, I guess we will be able to buy them already in the fall.
Yeah, you can buy them actually-
As a consumer or... Yeah, exactly.
In both B2B and consumer. I think they will gradually increase in share, obviously, because they are, well, as you start to understand how good they are, but they are more expensive and more powerful, and they will not reach all, let's say, all customers. It will be the premium market, let's say.
Yeah. No, I see. And then secondly, geographically, do you see any meaningful differences between the markets or countries that are good to be aware of?
From our-
In general then.
No, I think there is not a big difference in general between the countries. We have an easier in the SMB in the Benelux because we are so small, so that, but that has nothing to do with the market. That's us, basically. And I think, and on LCP, we have some differences between countries, but that is more on the general tender business from the public sector customers. So no, no, no major difference between the countries, from a macro perspective.
I see. And then another question on the LCP new contract here and the rollout. Can you share any thoughts on how it will look like in the coming quarters? Is it anything in this quarter we should be aware of, you know, kind of non-recurring positive effects in terms of sales, or is this a good level ahead?
It is. We are hunting for quite some new tenders at the moment, and it will be a year where a lot of tenders change ownership, let's say. But it's really hard to, let's say, evaluate the first quarter effect of that. Because most of the tenders include a kind of push in the beginning. So the first quarter can be quite big, and then it gets more normalized. So I think it will continue to be relatively, let's say, volatile between the quarters, even though the long term rolling 12-month is a much more stable. But between the quarters, it's really hard to predict how much volume will go each tender.
Yeah, okay. Yeah, because that was basically my, my question.
Yeah.
In the coming quarters, do you have any visibility on that you know that you will have a big rollout or the rollout that started in this quarter, will it last for next quarter, or are your visibility also quite low?
Our visibility is low, for sure. Even in LCP, let's say. You could say that the visibility is about 4-5 weeks, which is what the order lead time to China.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Jesper Stugemo, from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello, and thank you for taking my questions. Just to follow up on the new framework agreements in the LCP, if you could give us some more flavor there on the margin dilution here in the quarter. I was thinking, is this just an initial thing, as we are starting to see the rollout here? Or is it more, the contract per se, that has this lower margin? I was thinking a little bit around your strategy and, where you're prioritizing margin over sales growth. So if you could give some color on this. Thanks.
Yeah, a very good question. And I think it is contracts that can give us better margin than the previous ones over time. But as you know, the public contracts is always low margin in the beginning of the contract period. Now, and that will usually have an effect with quite a large volume in the first quarter, and then the margin will gradually improve, and then the volumes will normalize, let's say, per quarter after that first push. We don't see any. The contracts we were capturing at the moment, they have the potential to improve margins going forward, but short term, they will affect it negatively.
All right, great. Thank you. And then, on the PC refreshment cycle, if you could give us some comment on what discussions you're having with the, for example, from the LCP side here. Do you see that the customers are interested to start to upgrade their computers here during the fall? Or do you think it's more, it will be more in the beginning of 2025, or what's the conversations?
Yeah, I think it, my feeling at the moment with conversations with customers and looking at the market let's say data, is that we will see an increased activity during the fall. And it will come from I think, on the SMB, mainly macro is getting better and then launching of new products in the market. And on the LCP side, I think it will be mainly on the upgrade of Windows and the, let's say, new product launches. Because the new product launches will come to some of the employees of the, let's say, large corporate and public customers. But both of these will drive future demand.
Yeah. Great. And then just my last question on the cost optimization here and the FD reduction. Is this mainly related to LCP, and you will remain a higher cost base in SMB, or are you starting to looking over the SMB segment here as well?
I mean, it's not only related to LCP, it's on both segments as a start. So we always, I mean, we look for cost optimization in all our segments. But as we said, we also want to keep this balance between having the right competence and the right resources when the market turns, because we believe it's very hard to keep that, to get that competence back once the market has turned.
Yeah. Great. That was all for me. 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 Mikael Laséen from Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you, good morning. I was just wondering if the campaign situation on clearance sales is continuing into Q4. How should we think about this?
I think there will be some clearance done in Q4 as well, but not the same magnitude as in Q3. So it's really hard to say at the moment if it has any significant change or impact, let's say, on Q4. But there are some volumes going out also in Q4.
Okay, got it. And also, I'm curious about the EBITDA margins or the gross margins on the takeback situation or takeback volumes. And if you can also comment on the EBITDA margins for software and services.
On, on, just on takeback, I would say that we are. I mean, we have, let's say, built the production capacity, which we're now filling with volumes. And volume is coming in to the level of our current, let's say, we are slightly ahead of our own plans when it comes to taking in volumes. We are still not at, you know, full scale of production, for sure not. And therefore, margins are not where they are supposed to be long term, but they are contributing to the, let's say, EBITDA result at the moment.
Okay. And what type of- You showed the graph with volumes. Do you need 10% more, or do you need a lot more to get?
Yeah, I think you need... I mean, to get to full scale, I think we can do that with maybe 20%, 20%-25% more volumes. But as the more volumes are increasing so rapidly, that can take, you know, maybe two or three quarters to get there. But the good thing now, compared to a year ago, is that we are at least result positive coming from takeback already today.
Okay. What about software and services? When you grow that, how should we think about the mix effect that could have?
I think software and services will contribute to the EBITDA margin, and therefore an increased share there will improve EBITDA margin. As we have said before, on the managed services side, we believe that the margin target is about the double compared to hardware. So that will give you somewhere in the round of 10% segment margin. And that is probably a little bit lower when you look at other services than that, but still better than the hardware margin.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Okay. Thank you very much for tuning in to the Dustin Q3 report, and we wish you all a very nice summer. Thank you very much. Bye.