Welcome to the Dustin Group Audio Cast with Teleconference Q2 2022. Throughout the call, all participants will be in Listen-Only Mode, and afterwards, there'll be a Question-And-Answer session. Just to remind you, this call is being recorded. Today, I am pleased to present CEO Thomas Ekman and CFO Johan Karlsson. Please begin your meeting.
Good. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and most welcome, both our existing, of course, new and potential new shareholders to our second 1/4 presentation and conference call. I hope you are all well. Here on my side of the call is myself, Thomas Ekman, and Johan Karlsson, CFO, and Fredrik Zetterström, also Head of IR in the room as well.
Today we present our second 1/4 results for our fiscal year 2021-2022. To start with, I must say this has been, of course, a very special 1/4, starting the 1/4 with more or less open markets and societies in December with the then relaxed corona restrictions to complete lockdowns in all our markets in the end of December and January, causing a lot of challenges, of course. Then to fully open markets again in February.
A couple of weeks later into a catastrophic phase of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A lot of turmoil, but despite all this, we continue our growth journey this 1/4 with 80% reported growth and a very strong 12.2% total organic growth.
Margins, which we'll come into later on, were impacted by mix effects, driven by high deliveries of low-margin products and temporary cost increases due to a lot of sick leaves in the middle of the 1/4, and also, of course, a higher share of LCP sales in general. As always, I've said it before, but I'm always very proud of everyone in Dustin Group for doing their utmost every day to deliver a great customer experience.
This second 1/4 very much puts the light on the skills and competencies and engagement we have in the group, given the turmoil in the world and the effect, of course, it has on us as humans and our work. The supply chains are continuously disrupted and driving an intense work in sourcing and delivery.
Despite all these challenges, as I said, we managed to have a double-digit growth and capture the demand from our customers. The second 1/4, once again, shows that availability and delivery capacity, it is the driver of high growth and generates high growth. That, of course, builds on our cash generative and asset-light business model. Let's proceed in the presentation.
For your reference, we have Dustin at a glance on Slide 2, but I think we can move directly to Slide 3 for the financial highlights to see how we are performing during and improving during this 1/4.
A strong organic growth of 12.2%. We have strengthened our position in the markets, and our proactivity and position in the value chain, of course, benefited our performance. Our EBITDA margin was impacted by customer and product mix effects, as well as temporary cost increases due to corona lockdowns. Adjusted EBITDA increased to SEK 275 million, while the EBITDA margin came in at 4.2%.
Our SMB segment performed strongly on both the growth and margins in the 1/4, and our LCP segment had a very strong growth, while slightly lower margins due to high share of sales of low-margin products such as PCs, Apple mobile phones, and software.
The market trends that we build our strategy on, the online shift growth, mobility, and cloud services, demand for predictability, costs focused on security and integrity, and of course, sustainability. They have continued during the 1/4 to increase in importance, and that, of course, makes also our long-term position better. Total net sales were SEK 6.6 billion, up 80% versus last year on reported level.
The organic growth, as said, was 12.2%, for which SMB showed a positive 10.1%, LCP at a very good 17.2%, and B2C a negative 22.4% as an effect of much less campaigning due to the overall shortages of products.
Overall, good organic growth and strong, which shows not only a good underlying demand, but of course, also our capability to make use of it and deliver. Gross profit was SEK 904 million compared to last year's 591. That give us a gross margin at 13.7%, down from last year's 16.1%.
The change is mainly attributable to an altered mix with higher share of sales from LCP and within LCP, and that, of course, relates to the acquisition of Centralpoint, together with higher organic growth also in LCP.
Our adjusted EBITDA increased to SEK 275 million versus last year, last year's SEK 201 million. As said, that gave us the adjusted EBITDA margin of 4.2% for the 1/4 versus last year's 5.5%. The EBITDA margin was affected by the customer mix towards LCP and the product mix of Lower-Margin products within LCP, as well as the temporary costs that I went into before here for sick leaves in December and January.
Items affecting comparability was SEK -13 million, and that consequently giving us an EBIT of SEK 220 million compared to last year's 177. EPS, earnings per share, was 1.27 SEK per share versus last year 1.34. Strong cash flow from operating activities at SEK 388 million versus last year's SEK 218 million.
Our leverage at the end of the 1/4 was 3.3 versus 2.0 last year, increased obviously because of the acquisition of Centralpoint and the dividend payout during this 1/4. We are working our way down in leverage to come into a range of being between 2 and 3 times versus EBITDA.
Apart from an intense 1/4 in general, from an operational perspective, we have continued the integration work with Centralpoint and former Vincere companies in the Benelux. We've also come further with our Nordic integrations with, for example, now Danish Exato now fully integrated. When you want, you can take us through the financials on our different segments. Or we go Slide 4 then.
Yes. On Slide 4, we see SMB. Sales for the 1/4 in SMB was SEK 1,941 million. That was an increase of 20.2% over last year, representing an organic growth of 10.1%, as Thomas mentioned. Sales growth continued to be strong despite the challenges in the global supply chain and with a very high underlying demand. During the 1/4, we saw strong demand for hardware in general, but computers and mobile phones in particular.
All customer groups in this segment performed well. However, the largest customers performed at the best. On the services side, the standardized managed services performed well, while the consulting business was down from last year. This is a result of higher standardization of the service portfolio and in line with our strategy.
From a geographical perspective, sales was strongest in Norway and the Netherlands. Segment result for the 1/4 ended at SEK 214 million, up 26% year-over-year. Segment margin was up from last year's 10.6% to 11.0%, despite a negative effect from customer moves affecting margins negatively with 0.3%.
Private label continues to contribute positively as we are increasing sales in both Nordics and Benelux, and also using the supply chain challenges to our advantage was improving the margins. However, the 1/4 was also affected negatively from high share of computers and mobile phones with lower margins, and by higher cost of delivery coming from the high sick leave due to COVID. The delivery cost issues was mainly affecting December and January and is now back on normal levels again.
In summary, we saw the same trends in demand for IT products, and services in Q2 as we did in Q1. We then move to Slide 5 and LCP segment. Sales in LCP was SEK 4,533 million in the 1/4, which was an increase of 139.3%, of which 17.2% was organic. During the 1/4, we saw a very high sales increase in both public sector and large corporates.
As our 1/4 2 contains the end of the calendar year, we also had strong software sales in December. This was affecting sales positively, but margins negatively. Sales in the 1/4 from software was up by 300% compared to the same 1/4 last year. From a geography perspective, growth was strongest in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
Segment margin was at 6.5%, down from 7.2% last year. As said before, product mix was affecting margins negatively as software was increasing in share of sales. Further to that, large inbound deliveries to fulfill large rollout commitments further weakened the margins. Also, higher cost in delivery, as mentioned in SMB, was affecting the LCP margins.
However, private label product increased as we were expanding in the Nordics and launching in the Benelux, and this contributed to a higher margin. The customer transfers from SMB and cost reclassification added 0.7% to the segment margin compared to last year. Segment result was up from last year's SEK 136 million to SEK 298 million, an increase by 119%. We move to Slide 6 and B2C segment.
B2C segment lost 20.5% of sales and ended with SEK 139 million of sales. The main reason for the lower sales was the reduction in price campaigns as the supply of product was scarce, and all focus on delivery was put on SMB, where margins are higher. Segment margin went up to 9.6% from 8.6% last year due to the lack of price campaigns, which usually affects the margins negatively.
Segment result was SEK 13 million, which was down from SEK 15 million last year. Let's move to Slide 7 and net working capital. Net working capital continues to perform well. It was negative SEK 433 million compared to last year's negative SEK 549 million. You can compare it also to Q1 of this year.
Net working capital in this 1/4 was approximately SEK 100 million lower. As in previous quarters, we have seen negative effects on inventory levels coming from turbulence in the supply chain, but this has been compensated by longer payment terms to suppliers and more efficient, more effective payment process from customers.
We look at the details of working capital. Inventory in the 1/4 was SEK 1,259 million compared to SEK 574 million last year. The main reason for the increase was the inclusion of Centralpoint, adding SEK 476 million, and higher purchase volumes to reduce the risk of shortage of components.
Accounts receivable was up SEK 1.351 billion, mainly as a result of Centralpoint adding SEK 995 million and higher business volume coming from the strong organic growth. Moving to accounts payable, which was SEK 3.784 billion, SEK 1.753 billion higher than last year. Again, Centralpoint added the majority of that difference compared to last year.
In total, we continue to see strong performance in the area of working capital, where we continue to stay in or below our target range of SEK -100 million to SEK 200 million. Leverage, as we heard before, that is the net debt in relation to the rolling twelve-month EBITDA at the end of the 1/4 was 3.3, including rolling twelve-month numbers for Centralpoint.
As you know, our target is to stay between 2 and 3. The effect compared to last 1/4 was mainly coming from dividend and a slightly higher net debt due to currency differences in the debt number. We move to Slide 8 and look at the cash flow. We can see cash flow for the 1/4 was SEK 15 million compared to -SEK 32 million last year.
If we look at the parts, cash flow from operating activities before changing net working capital, SEK 278 million compared to SEK 207 million last year. Change in net working capital was SEK 110 million compared to SEK 10 million last year. The main difference came from decrease in receivables. Cash flow from investing activities was -SEK 75 million compared to -SEK 18 million last year, where majority comes from CapEx investments.
Cash flow from financing activities was SEK -298 million, compared to SEK 231 million last year, the main difference being the increase in dividend. When I look at total investments, they were at SEK 90 million compared to last year's 43. CapEx related to IT development amounted to SEK 40 million. That was SEK 31 million above last year, mainly coming from IT investments in Centralpoint, where we are moving the ERP platform to the cloud.
Investments in tangible and intangible assets increased to SEK 40 million from 24. Last but not least, in the CapEx investment in assets related to service delivery was at SEK 9 million, basically the same level as last year. All in all, SEK 54 million out of the SEK 90 million in CapEx was affecting cash flow. The others were changes in lease or rent contracts.
With that, moving back to Thomas.
Good. Thank you, Johan. Continuing over to Slide number 9, let's do a little deep dive in our EBITDA margin development. As you know, our target range long term is between 5%-6% EBITDA, and we're not back there yet, but we are on our way.
The challenging turmoil in the markets in general obviously affects us as everybody else. To give you some flavor to it, you can see the graph at the Left-Hand side of the Slide showing development since Q4 as a reference. Also Q4 was the first 1/4 really with fully Centralpoint in it.
What has affected the margin in Q2 is, as we have been into before here, you heard from Johan as well, is the customer mix with strong share of sales from LCP and within LCP. It has been a higher share of basic hardware in both segments, as well as large software rollouts within LCP.
That has, and to that, the temporarily higher cost connected to the extensive absence we had due to corona lockdowns at approximately SEK 15 million. We have also seen higher irregularities in inbound deliveries caused by the disruption in supply chains, making it slightly harder to exactly forecast the estimated time of arrivals for products.
It is somewhat, of course, difficult to assess the short-term effects from both lockdowns in China as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what might be the effect of all that. I can assure you that we have our eyes on the margin ball to reach our target of it being between 5% and 6% of EBITDA.
It is actually, as you also heard from Johan, the share between SMB and LCP. SMB had a good continued good performance with strong margins and good performance on growth. The higher share of LCP sort of pushes down the margin somewhat, but that is also why we're working hard to increase the share of SMB sales in our whole profile.
Good. Continuing on to Slide 10 to give you also an update on our value creation agenda. During the 1/4, we have continued our rebranding activities in the Benelux, with now all the former Vincere companies rebranded to Dustin. We have also initiated the rebranding of Centralpoint, and that will now take place in May, which is very exciting of course.
We have also launched our private label product, as you heard from Johan, in the later part of the 1/4. That's of course very exciting given, as you know, private label is a good contributor to our margins. The initial response also in the Benelux is very positive, so that is very promising.
Several group initiatives are also ongoing. Now we're setting up a global procurement and vendor management team that's being set up, as well as the launch of our group common Cloud-Based ERP platform. That is built now from the Benelux side and then will be integrated also to the Nordics. This platform we aim to complete during the next fiscal year then 2022-2023.
As previously announced, we plan to invest approximately SEK 50 million to extract the estimated annual synergies of SEK 150 million, and those will be fully implemented in the year of 2023-2024. We have a solid agenda to speed up our ability to reach our long-term targets.
Continuing on the long-term agenda theme, let's move to the next Slide 11. Let me just give you some 1/4 highlights connected to our 2030 commitments. During the 1/4, we have launched our In-House take back service also in the Nordics to increase circularity. We have a production facility south of Sweden to cover for the Nordics, and we also have the facility in south of Netherlands to cover for the Benelux.
Our circular share in relation to net sales now amounts to 19.7%. Since we launched in the middle of the 1/4, we have sold also refurbished products for around SEK 5 million, which may not sound so much, but with SEK 5 million, it's a very important milestone to start off this in the way we do.
We can already now see the margin contribution possibilities this will give out to us going forward. We have also finalized our solar cell facility, which enabled us a greener warehouse and lower electricity costs.
All in all, we work hard to fulfill our 2030 commitment, and we are on a good way there. Before going into Q&A, let me just sum up our second 1/4 results on Slide 12. Net sales grew with 80%, to, on report level to 6.6 billion SEK, where organic growth for the group was 12.2%, with SMB at a strong 10.7%, LCP at an equally strong 17.2%, and B2C at a minus 22.4%.
Gross profit at SEK 904 million versus SEK 591 million, and gross margin came in at 13.7% versus last year's 16.1%. A change in sales mix, as we've been into with higher share of LCP sales and higher share of our vast deliveries, actually of basic hardware and software is behind the change in gross margin.
The adjusted EBITDA came in at SEK 275 million, giving us an EBITDA margin for the 1/4 at 4.2% due to the flow-through of the reasons for the drop in gross margin and the extra cost due to the temporary corona restrictions.
EBIT at SEK 220 million, an increase from last year's SEK 177 million, and EPS at 1.27 SEK per share versus last year's 1.34. On balance sheet, on a strong operating cash flow at SEK 388 million, and the leverage ended in the 1/4 at 3.3x EBITDA. Solid growth in the 1/4 with the mixed effects negatively impacting the margin right now.
The pandemic is still present in the world, teaching us a lot, and not the least a new way of working. The escalation of the war in Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine also puts pressure. Of course, we sincerely hope for an end to that. The market trends continue to accelerate with the distinct changes in customer behavior.
The IT service demand is there, and there is an increased demand for instance, availability online as well as security, mobility, and remote management. Security and knowledge around cybersecurity is obviously a big topic at the moment and will continue to be given the overall uncertainty in the world. We have extensive experience and knowledge in that, and we can serve our customers in all our markets in those areas.
For us, I must say the last years has meant that our position is clearly strengthened and shows that our asset-light business model is very robust. In short, we are well-positioned. With that one, I think we can conclude our presentation and are happy to take any questions you might have. Operator.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypads now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero 2 to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Daniel Thorsson of ABG. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, thank you very much. I start off with a question related to software. You say that software sales are up 4x in the 1/4, but that is not affecting the margin that much. It's actually diluting the margin. How should we think about that in the future? What type of software is it? Is it like Microsoft licenses or anything else?
Yes. When we talk about it in this perspective, it is large deals with, in this case, mainly Microsoft licenses, yes.
Okay. They bear a margin more or less in line with the basic hardware sales, I guess?
Lower, much lower than basic hardware.
Lower. Okay. Thank you very much. Secondly, yep, go ahead.
No, I think you can split software into groups. These are larger, let's say, one-off deals with low margins, and then you have other types of software which actually is relatively good margins. It's not all software that is diluting margin at all.
No, exactly. I imagine that. Can you give an example of a high margin software deal?
Well, that you can do Microsoft 365 is much better than, let's say, these big roll-outs to large customers. If you do it to small customers, let's say. That's more in line with hardware sales.
Okay. I see. Secondly, on the COVID effects here in the 1/4, what part of the organization caused the SEK 15 million negative effect from sick leaves? Is it mainly the logistics centers? Is that fully behind us now as of Q3?
Yeah. Yes, it is. You're correct in both. It was the logistics center, and it was as we remember, we had nearly forgotten it, but it was in January and December when we had quite strict quarantine rules, so people were sent home. Then we had to have extra personnel in, and that was causing the cost in the warehouses primarily. That is sort of behind us now.
Okay. You could still deliver the product, but it cost you more money.
Yes.
It was not loss of sales.
No. No, it was not. We had to bring in a lot of extra people to the warehouses.
I see. That's clear.
That was.
Yeah, I see. Okay, that's clear. Finally, how should we think about your service organization as a margin driver, as you have now decided to trim that a bit post the pandemic, sales from services are declining year over year. Is that still an important contributor for you to reach the margin target, or should we expect that to come back? When should we expect that to come back?
I think it is an important contributor to the margin target over time. What we see in services is the transition from, let's say, the old world of selling services to the new world of selling services, where we are transforming, let's say, highly customized service offerings to standardized.
That means that you will basically sell less of time and material consulting, and you will sell more of standardized managed services. In the long term, that is really good for the margin and also really good for the relevance to the customer, us becoming more sticky to the customers with that offering. I think it's really a margin contributor going forward.
Of course, the transition from the old way of doing it to the new is, in some cases, painful.
Okay. Is the market development in favor of standardized managed services at the moment, or do you expect that to happen maybe in 2023 and onwards? Is that more of a bet you're taking on the future or something you see right now?
No, we see it right now.
Yeah.
We are doing quite good in that sector, but because of the mix, let's say, within services, it's hard to see it on the total number. From standardized services, we are growing very well. The more, just to complement that, the more complex sort of the IT world becomes with the complexity and security and mobility, the more standardized solutions you tend to seek for as a company.
Even the most sort of a tailor-made CIO is seeking for standardized solutions right now because you need to have that in order to be safe and secure in your networks.
Okay, excellent. That's all from me.
Good. Thank you, Johan.
Thank you. Currently we have one further question in the queue. Just as a reminder to participants, if you do wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypads now. That next question is from the line of, Mikael Laséen of Carnegie. Thank you.
Good morning. I was just thinking about the central functions cost, how we should sort of model that going forward. If you can help us out a bit. It increased quite a lot sequentially here. Should we expect the same level in the coming quarters?
I think the level where we are at the moment with the current activity as we're doing is the level we will see for some time. As you know, I mean, we added Centralpoint and we kind of included the central cost of Vincere.
That affects the numbers, of course, from last year. We are also driving a more aggressive IT agenda at the moment, compared to what we did before, because we believe that will drive the synergies and integration of Centralpoint in a better way.
We are taking costs here that are higher than before and will continue for at least, I would say, 1-2 years because of that is the time it will take to take the whole group up to the cloud-based ERP and CRM platform. I think you can keep that number is a good number for at least for the next 4 quarters. Let's start with that.
Okay. All right. The same, I guess, is relevant for the selling and admin expenses?
Yes. I don't see that we have any special cost there except for the SEK 15 million of delivery. That was in this 1/4 that is odd. I think that the numbers we have minus the one-off, let's say, or COVID effect in this 1/4 is a number we can keep.
Okay. There's no seasonality in that or, it usually comes down quite a lot in the summer, for example.
Yeah, because of holiday, I think that's maybe the reason for some of it, because activity goes down a bit during summer and therefore cost is usually a bit lower during that period. If you take the other effect comes in our Q4, I would say, mainly. Even for the Netherlands, you would see that effect in August, probably.
In the near term, this level is relevant and where you're operating right now, I guess around SEK 655 million.
Yes.
Okay. Another question here is on the product mix dynamics. If you can talk to us about that. What is sort of the difference between a weak mix in terms of EBITA margins and a strong mix? The spread there, and how we should think about this mix going forward. Is this something that you see continuing right now that customers are demanding these type of products? Or how should we model this?
If we start by looking at the variance of the mix, and if you would start by, let's say, a gross margin around 15%. Then you would see PCs and mobile phones being, you know, a couple of percentage points below that on average. You would see, you know, accessories, these type of product groups would be higher, in general terms, and also infrastructure is higher, for example.
That would be the product category mix. Then, of course, you can add to that the customer mix. If you are a little bit below on PCs, you would be even more below, let's say, if you sell to a large frame agreement, public customer compared to the SMB customers that are relatively good margin also on PCs.
That would affect your mix when it comes to customers. You have the 1/3 variance that you can talk about, which is the vendor mix. Meaning that if you sell vendors like Apple, you receive less margin percent than you do if you sell HP. That would be your vendor mix. All these 3 are of course then working at the same time and all together. That is a little bit what we are trying to explain in this call and in the report, that these are the things that has impacted the numbers for this 1/4.
This is an unusually sort of unfortunate, sort of mix at the same time.
Well, I would say that.
In all these different segments.
Yeah. You could say that it's rare that you have all these 3 moving against you, because sometimes, most of the times you would have compensating factors, let's say, within the system. Now, this time we got everything positive on volume, but then probably all the factors that could push its margins down was actually on the low side.
Okay. Your margin targets of 5%-6%, what type of mix sort of is built into that assumption?
Well, I would say it's a mix that you would take. If you take the average of a year, if you go back a year and look at the total effect of what we had for that year, that's what we have based the target on, not on a specific 1/4 that can have, you know, pluses and minuses. I think if you take a longer period, then that would be the mix. We haven't assumed a change of, let's say, either brands or within the categories, let's say.
Yeah. Makes sense. Here in the near term, do you see that this mix is continuing into Q3 so far?
It's really hard to predict because of the turbulence in the supply chain. If we get release of some of the larger, let's say, deliveries, then of course there is always this effect. On the other hand, there is relatively good margins in, as we look at the backlog that we have at the moment, so that will compensate positive. I think it will be. I don't see that any obvious thing that it should continue on a very low level, no.
Okay. My final question is on the general availability of IT products and how that has changed during 2022 and now in the short term after the invasion, if you have seen any effects from that so far during March.
I mean, overall it is a turbulence of course, and it's we'll see what how it comes out with the effect from the invasion of Ukraine. That sort of disrupts the ways goods travel, whether they go by plane or by train or by boat. It creates an overall turmoil.
What creates right now more is how actually China also will deal with their. They have a, as you know, they have a zero zero vision for corona, and they close down and open up, and that of course affects the deliveries from China.
In general, we are as we have been in the other quarters very much on our toes to source and find products and take them into our warehouse and use our model for that. That has proven to work very well. We see it as probably as it has been during the full pandemic, but now with extra attention to it of course, given the invasion.
That is, from this perspective, a part of the world that does not disrupt sort of the traditional value chain that much, but it of course disrupts in general, and that is all. It's the same level as we have had before.
Okay. Can I just follow up with one final. It's on transportation logistics costs, if that is impacting your margins in any way or if the distributors or OEM side is taking that?
I think you could say that yes, it impacts because prices are very high. We can see it on our own private label. We have, let's say, our way of operating that is of course to add that to the price of the customers. In the times like this, it's sometimes hard to raise your prices fast enough.
There is an inherent, you know, maybe small loss of margin from a time perspective as to how fast can you cover up for the increased cost, primarily on transport side. No big impact coming from transportation on our own margin, rather on price to customer.
Okay. Got it. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. We have one further person in the queue. That's Daniel Djurberg of Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Oh, yeah. Thank you. Good morning. I mean, it's pretty good now. You've been over 10% organic growth for 3 quarters in a row, so obviously the demand for your products and services is out there. Now we have the corona situation in China, we have the semiconductors, you know, might be issue or have an issue with the Ukraine-Russia war and, you know, the fr8 or shipment issues that you talked about as well. I mean, how should you look at this?
Can you actually continue this organic growth role that you actually are on and have been on for, like, 6 quarters or something? I mean, Volume-Wise, I guess it will be difficult, but on the other hand, if there's great demand, it should be compensated by prices on the same product.
How should you look at the organic growth potentially in the coming quarters?
I think well, I mean, first, there is, as you said, there is a strong underlying demand. That it is. There is a change in customer behavior that sort of is behind this. There is also a need for upgrading in terms of systems when it comes to security and mobility, for example.
That we see right now is continuing. Over to the interesting question regarding pricing and the overall inflation. Of course, as you know, our products is quite, it's quite, sort of, the pricing is sort of setting the market in a way.
Of course, we compensate where we can increase prices wherever we can at all times using our what we have talked about before, our dynamic pricing model. It is so the short term, as you almost implied, so it's of course affected by the share, the mix of between the segments, how much LCP rollout we have versus how much SMB rollout we have.
But we still believe there is a demand, but for us, it's more going forward. I think it's more the balancing between the margin and the growth here that will be even more delicate for us to drive, to continue to find the growth. And we which we can do, but also securing that we do it with the right margins.
Mm. So-
I also think that, I mean, again, we haven't changed our view that 8% organic growth over a cycle is the one we are chasing. We had some difficult quarters before the pandemic, and now we've done very good in the last couple of quarters. I think it shows that our 8% on average is not such a bad number. And of course it will not stay at double digit forever. It's a strong period now and you know, it will, I think, naturally goes a bit up and down.
Yeah.
in the course.
We stick to the 8% and the 5-5.8% growth and 5%-6% EBITDA margin.
Yeah. Yeah, because the thing here is that I was just wondering that, I mean, this is my very amateurish, you know, conclusion. You know, when a lot of people want a product and the product is not available, the prices on the product should go up. Why I say this is because, I mean, electronics industry has been on the price decline for a long period of time.
Now, since there are more things than ever need to be done within this industry and the people realize that, okay, it's not as easy as it was before to get the product due to the corona situation, due to the shipment issues and so on, the same product should go up in prices. That's my conclusion, at least. Or what's wrong with that kind of argument?
That's a good conclusion. If you look at the SMB market, where we are kind of setting the price in the market and where we are also having better margins than in a long time. It does affect actually our margins in SMB positively. On the other side, you have the public tenders, and there, unfortunately, supply and demand doesn't affect that much. There you don't see the same thing.
The delivery and also the contracts are set, and that has been of course challenging with that, the long delivery times. The contracts are set with the prices and then we deliver sort of on those prices that were when the contract were set. We still don't have any negative effect of the cost for the products, but it's still based on the pricing that we set at the time. It's more of an old pricing than product prices.
Yeah, because somewhat that's really weird to me. I mean, the public sector can buy like 2,000 computers, and you have to buy 2,000 computers from somewhere else in the global market in order to get that kind of volume. Then the customer doesn't pay for it. It means basically that you have negative margins on them, on these framework agreements or is that correct?
No. No. In, like, most of the contracts or basically all contracts where we have a price commitment, that price commitment we have a back-to-back agreement with the manufacturer or with the brand.
Yes.
Oh, okay.
We are not squeezed.
I also had another question related to your friend or your enemy or however you like to say it in Norway. They have been much more severely impacted by the supply chain issues over the past 2 years than you have been because they sell a lot more servers, for instance, than like clients.
What I also saw was that Dustin was one of the providers now for a Swedish framework agreement for selling just servers. How much of your sales is clients versus servers, for instance, and also are you expanding into servers?
To start with infrastructure and including servers are a relatively small part of our sales. I mean, clients and associated products to clients are probably 5 times as big or 6 times as big, which is, as you rightly say, it's the opposite probably for them or not, but a very different split in our friends in Norway. That is clear. We are, I would say, not increasing that much in that area.
We are increasing a little bit because we are adding functionality to our own platform, so it's possible to sell these kind of products, but not rapidly increasing. We are increasing, however, in the, let's say, software products of infrastructure because they fit our sales model much better.
We rather sell infrastructure on tap through a sourcing arrangement.
Mm-hmm.
Rather than selling the server itself, physically, we have changed. We are using SaaS as a delivery model or cloud as a delivery model, rather than selling hardware.
Yes.
in that sense.
That's about it.
Mm-hmm.
Okay. I like that you call them friends and not enemies.
Mm.
Sign for humanity, Johan.
Thank you. I mean, they have.
So, yeah, just the last question then. I mean, Q2 is actually a kind of high margin 1/4 generally for Dustin, and now you've been at 4.2% this 1/4. Should we expect that you could go down below 4% in the coming quarters, given that Q3 and Q4 are generally much weaker than Q1 and Q2, or how should you look at that?
Well, I think you're right in seasonality. Q2 is normally a strong 1/4, and you could see that last year was probably the highest number we've ever posted, a bit affected by the cost reductions coming from COVID. I think you should normalize this 1/4 and then look at the future, which means, yeah, that we will come to weaker quarters seasonality-wise, but they will become better from, let's say, all these mix issues that we talked about now.
Yeah.
I don't see any reason why we should now, let's say, use this 1/4 to extrapolate seasonality and then end up with a very low number. I don't see that coming.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Excellent. Thank you very much, and have a good day.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. As there are no further questions in the queue at this time, I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.
Very good. Thank you very much everyone for listening in and just reach out if any further questions to us, and we will be happy to respond that. Apart from that, have a great day and stay safe out there. Thank you.