Hello everyone and welcome back to ABG Investor Days. My name is Adrian Gilani and I'm an equity analyst here at ABG, and I'll be moderating our upcoming presentation with Eltel. With us today, we have Communications Director Alexandra Kärnlund, as well as CFO Tarja Leikas, and they will give a roughly 20-minute presentation, and then hopefully we will have time for a bit of Q&A at the end as well. And with that being said, I'll hand the word over to you.
Thank you, Adrian. A very good morning to you all. I'm Alexandra Kärnlund, I'm the Communications Director for Eltel, and together with Tarja Leikas, our CFO, I have the big privilege to introduce or present Eltel to you. I was asked to join the company roughly a year ago, and I was asked then to leave the very cool IT business where I've been, tech business where I've been thriving for about 15 years. But my answer came easy. Yes. Yes, of course. Because I knew that I'd be joining a company that develops solutions and services that are hypercritical to our society. And I also knew that there would be a journey of lots of new adventures and change ahead of us. So we'll be talking a bit about those new initiatives coming up. Who knows Eltel from before? Yes? One, two, three? Okay.
And maybe some others looking as well. But just to give you a few facts about Eltel then, the company is about 20 years old. It became a company from a number of outsourcing field organizations in Sweden, a field organization belonging to Telia in Norway, the equivalent field organization to Telenor. And in Finland, it actually sprung from a power organization, the predecessor of Fortum, as you know. It was then split into Caruna and Fortum. So this is also why we still stand on the two legs of communications and power. But in the last few years, we've added some more flesh to those bones, which I will tell you about. We design, maintain, and upgrade networks like critical infrastructure, and then we talk about telecommunication networks and electricity supply networks. We have about 4,500 employees.
Our turnover last year was a little more than 9 billion SEK, 850 million EUR. Yeah, of course, mainly operations in the Nordics. I would say that 90% of our business is in the Nordics. But we also have operations in Germany where we mainly work with switching gas meters. Due to the ongoing transition that I'm sure you've heard of, it's a big transition in Germany from Russian gas to North Sea gas. And this puts a great demand on new instruments and everything that has to do with the distribution of this natural gas. So quite a lot going on there. And in the Baltics, in Lithuania, they're also operational in the new business, but they mainly work as a staffing organization for the Nordics. And some of our customers are on the left. I'm sure you recognize these brands or most of them.
We have the large telecommunication operators, Telia, Elisa, Telenor. But what's interesting about this is that that customer base has now expanded quite a lot, and especially in the public infra, the public sector, the public infra. You have Banedanmark, Trafikverket, the Swedish Defense Forces, and Trafikverket. That's a major purchaser of digital solutions because every major road in our countries has a lot of... They're digitized. You don't notice it when you drive on the road, but there is a lot of digital stuff beneath and around the roads. One example, of course, is Bypass, the Bypass, and I'm not talking about heart surgery now, but the big traffic bypass in Stockholm, Förbifart Stockholm, going from Kungens Kurva, west of the city, and up to Häggvik.
That project now reached a milestone quite recently, the big tunnel, which is, by the way, one of the world's largest motorway tunnels. It's about 18 km of tunnel. That tunnel is ready, it's blasted, you can walk from one way to the other. Now it's time to digitalize and electrify. You need to build all the networks inside the tunnel. Major project. We estimate that this year only we have about 100 man-year, and next year is going to be even more. Of course, many actors working there, but we are very proud to be a big contributor to that very important project. Then on the right-hand side, you see the power customers.
We have power and transmission and power distribution, and power transmission is the high-voltage towers, and the power distribution is then the intermediate distribution, like Ellevio is the owner in Stockholm of that type of solution. Okay, let's look at what's happening around us in society. We talk about three megatrends impacting or actually driving our business at Eltel. Of course, the climate change. It does, and it will continue to demand a lot of new technology, both to mitigate and stifle climate change, which we're part of, and then we also have, let's just see if I can get this to work a little bit on my behalf. We also talk about a new wave of electrification, and then we focus the discussion a lot on charging cars and ordinary passenger cars. That's quite fine for our current networks.
But when it comes to heavy transport, like trucks, distribution, then you need other types of more efficient electricity supply and solutions for that. Digitalization, I would say, oh, I have one more. Yeah, there we go. Trying to be pedagogical here with the colors. Digitalization then would say is more connected to the communication services. You read a lot about fiber. We have built quite extensive fiber, had quite an extensive fiber rollout, still ongoing in Finland, more or less finalized in the other Nordic countries. But now it's time to take that fiber into use and integrate it into our system so that we can reach this digitalization. So yeah, there are lots of things affecting the market. And we believe that by organizing ourselves in these two areas, communications and power, we are very well equipped to support our customers for their current and future challenges.
Very briefly, I think, about our services, just to be a bit more concrete on what we do. We work with fixed and mobile telecom and also so-called hybrid or fixed wireless, which is when you have sort of a wireless last mile. It can be in a sparsely populated area where you don't have the possibility to take the net or the transmission all the way. You have a last part, which is then fixed by radio communication. And as I said, on the energy side, we have worked with distribution transmission. But then on the power side, especially, we have then started to access these or go into new markets, for instance, e-mobility, charging of, as I said, mainly heavy transport. And we're looking more and more at renewable energy, wind, solar, but also battery storage. BESS stands for Battery Energy Storage System.
This is a very important thing and something that we believe in a lot that will grow in the future. Because as a lot of new green actors enter the grid, it can become a bit unstable, and then you need this type of services to stabilize the services. Because if the frequency is, I'm getting into very technical things here now, I can feel that I'm on a little bit loose ground, but if it's not stable, then nothing will work, so in brief. That's why this is becoming more and more important. I would like to show this slide, which is a little bit taken out of its context because this belongs to a presentation about our solar solutions. But here you can see how it sort of fits together.
I will talk more about these new businesses later, but here you have solar panel on the roof, generate energy. You have the charging for the e-mobility solution there for the trucks or the vehicles. And then you have the energy storing system for the grid, so this is what our CEO, Håkan Dahlström, likes to call a Kinder Egg, three solutions into one. So there it is. That's what we do, and I'd like Tarja now to tell us a little bit about how we're doing financially, and then I will talk a little bit more again on how we're doing with the strategy.
Thank you, Alexandra, and happy to talk about our... No, I only had one thing to do, press it forward, but we only have a brief moment to talk about Eltel, so I guess what I would like to... With this photo, first slide is about Eltel in that sense that how you read our numbers. Our business is highly impacted by the seasonality, so in our case, the recently closed third quarter, that represents the quarter which is packed with high-intensive activities and the volume, and therefore, we have brought you the third quarters of 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, showcasing you that when you compare quarters, Eltel is improving its run, and then the upper right-hand corner, there we have the last five quarters showcasing the profitability improvement, so Eltel is improving its run in all these profits and loss areas. We are growing.
Our net sales grew 4% organically. Top-line growth was flat due to the fact that we divested High Voltage Poland earlier this year, but organic growth, 4%. Then when we measure gross profit, there we see also quite extensive profitability improvement, 26%. And equally on EBITA level, we are improving our run. And in fact, our last quarter was Eltel's best ever with the current scope. And then if we look under the hood, take the top line, there we see, like I mentioned, top line is flat due to the divestment, but the organic growth, the growth engines here have been this quarter, last quarter, Finland and Sweden. And Alexandra was talking about Eltel's two legs. And this growth showcases these two legs. Sweden was largely driven by power and Finland driven by communications.
We still have quite extensive fiber-to-the-home projects ongoing in Finland, and that is contributing to our good top-line growth in Finland. In Sweden, it's the power. In Denmark, in the third quarter, we were reporting flat numbers, but that was due to the, I would say, timing. We grew in Denmark almost 20% previous quarter. Now it was flat, so it was more about timing. In Norway, we have been facing declining revenue due to the fact that the operators have been postponing and declining in their investments. And therefore, we have done some restructuring measures, and the measures are ongoing in Norway. But then the EBITA, there we, like I mentioned, 39% quarter improvement on EBITA. And again, here you can see on the right-hand corner, lower one, you see where it's coming from Finland and Sweden, where the growth came from.
Equally, the profitability improvement was the largest there. We see also improvement in other business where we benefit now from the divestment that High Voltage Poland was a loss-making entity. And after the divestment, this area is improving as well. But the story short, Eltel is improving on top line and on the profitability side as well. This year, 2024, is the first full year of new strategy execution. And we say that this is the end of the beginning. So we are not where we want to be because profitability-wise, we have communicated that the EBITA should be on 5% level. We should grow 2-4%, and our leverage should be between 1.5 and 2.5. And then, of course, the owners benefiting from the good results in the form of dividends. But that's shortly what Eltel is about. The seasonality impacts us, and we are reporting quite good results lately.
And the fourth quarter, then it will be reported in February. But Alexandra, if you continue.
Absolutely. Yeah, Tarja mentioned strategy execution, so I will walk you through the strategy very briefly. Our strategy is in short, and I would say the main absolute main focus here is to improve profitability. That has been like, that's the mantra, and we want to improve profitability in the current business, obviously. And we do that, of course, by increasing efficiency, but also by renegotiating new commercial terms, price increases. We've done a lot in this area, but we still have lots to do, but it's starting to show effects. We need to broaden the customer base. We cannot, it's not sufficient to rely on a few big companies in power and telecommunications, so we need to broaden that customer base. Doing very well there too. 16% of the value this year has been generated from customers that were not our customers prior to January 1st, 2024.
So going there. To grow in new and adjacent market, that's mainly done about new business, which I will tell you about. One thing that I did not mention was data centers, which is really something that we will focus a lot on in the future. Because what's interesting about data centers from an Eltel point of view is this is where we meet. And this is a way to mitigate also seasonality. Because we can, of course, do a lot of the work that we have done outdoors inside. You can work with the wireless network, telecommunication, electricity, everything indoor. And we are in a good, and I would say quite unique position in that sense to, for instance, work with data centers. And you might think that aren't there enough data centers in the world? No, no, no.
You know that with the future demands, not least triggered by new technology like artificial intelligence, the need is almost endless. The person in charge of data centers at Google says that they believe that there will be seven times as many data centers in five to eight years and of course integrate sustainability. This is very high on our agenda and our customers' agenda. We have projects where we are almost 100% electric, so to speak, where we use electric vehicles, so it's of course and I mentioned before the mega trend of climate change, a way to stifle climate change, so this is actually quite a nice illustration of what we do. Almost, I would say, all our services are summarized in this page. I will move on.
We have a very strong pipeline in general, but I would say in particular when it comes to new business, about 50%. And we have revenue from, in almost all our country units, we have revenue from what we still refer to as our new business. It's not showing a significant impact yet, but considering the fact that two years ago, before when Håkan Dahlström, our CEO, came on board, we didn't have that much ambition at all in this area. And today we actually have revenues. We have cross-country teams working with creating value in these areas. The growth areas very quickly and a bit blurry image, I realize, but this is mainly to show you that what I just said, that we have projects, we have revenues going on. E-mobility, I would say our Norwegian colleagues are doing very well in this area, which is really nice.
Then we can take knowledge from Norway and implement in the other markets. Solar, I would say that Finland is paving the way here. We have project-led, project-managed an entire solar park in Finland, which is now taken into production outside Helsinki. And we are working with several projects all over the Nordic countries. This is the solar park in Finland now taken into production. And of course, now we've taken the full responsibility, so that knowledge is very valuable then when we work, for instance, in Sweden. And what's interesting in this project is in April, we didn't have any, we had one person working as a safety expert in this project. And now we have 60 people working in this project. And it's going to be the largest solar park in Sweden, 64 megawatt peak.
In Norway, due to their topography, it's a bit trickier to create solar parks, but there we build mainly on rooftops, like for big industries then, industries and hospitals and then airports and so forth, energy-consuming. BESS. Just a picture to show you that here we are also aiming at becoming the so-called turnkey provider, the one that has the full responsibility for the project. And we have many interesting projects here, especially in Denmark and Finland, but the other countries are also following suit. So to conclude, why invest in Eltel? Well, as you see, as I've hoped to convince you, we have a big and unique expertise in many areas that fits very well together in very advanced and complex projects. We have a lot of expertise there. So that puts us in a very good position. It's definitely growth markets, both talking about the new business areas.
I mean, it's here to stay. The demand for energy, for instance, is, I would say, endless. We put a lot of focus on developing our commercial, I would say, both mindset and how we negotiate and price pressure and so forth, so to really aim for getting more profitable agreements and making a better or improving our profitability. And this is not worth anything unless you have the green, the sustainability perspective on everything you do. So I would say that we are a very important actor in society. And I'm still very proud to work for Eltel. Thank you.
Perfect. Thank you so much for that presentation. We're running a bit short of time, but I think we have time for perhaps one question from my end before we wrap up. Regarding the new revenue streams, obviously a lot of exciting areas with energy storage and renewable energy and so forth. Currently quite a small part of the business, but if we look sort of, say, five or so years out, can you talk a bit about the potential of how large of a share of the group sales could that account for if things go as planned here?
In a few years, we reckon that it will be about half of our revenues will be then generated from the new business areas. Absolutely.
Perfect, and perhaps a follow-up, does this also tie into the margin target? I mean, the new revenue streams, are the services somehow different from your old services? Do they come with higher or similar margins?
Better margins, yes. Easier. Better margins. I would say that when you negotiate with the so-called classic customers in telecoms and energy, it's a lot of talk about money and finances. But when you talk about the new business areas, they're after our expertise and how we can take them from A to Z. So would you say anything else to comment on that?
I emphasize also the classic business, that we have really, really good current customers who will be here in the future as well. And they are the makers of the future as well. That combination.
Perfect. And with that being said, I think we have to round up. So I'd like to thank you once again for your presentation and for answering my questions.
Thank you.