Good morning, and welcome to Electrolux Professional Q1 results presentation. My name is Jacob Broberg. I'm Head of Investor Relations. With me, I have Alberto Zanata, who is the President and CEO of Electrolux Professional, and Fabio Zarpellon is the CFO. As always, in the quarterly report presentations, we kick off with Alberto. Please, Alberto.
Thank you, Jacob. Good morning to everybody. Q1 2022, I would summarize the quarter in five points basically. The first one is clearly strong sales development. Following the positive trend initiated spring/summer last year, we continue to grow the sales supported by a positive development of the market. The demand is increasing, is growing, I would say, across all regions, with some exception, particularly to be mentioned, China, where the return or the new lockdown due to COVID clearly stop a trend, a positive trend that was in some way the first one. China was the first market recovering and recently stopped due to the new lockdowns.
The second point is that this strong sales development we've been able to deliver this strong sales development despite supply chain challenges. Supply chains is a challenge since fall last year. I would say that increasing during the first quarter, but despite this one, with the great job done by the team, the multifunctional team putting together purchasing, engineering, and R&D, we have been able to to make sure that we did not stop our factories. We had to stop some lines here and there, but we have been able to, in any case, produce product to fill the inventories, to fill the warehouses, and to provide the product to be invoiced to our customers. We are still delivering product with a reasonable lead time despite all these challenges.
The third important point is that this is the first quarter we'll report a full quarter with the Unified Brands, the company that we acquired last quarter in December last year. Unified Brands is confirming the positive impression we had obviously during the due diligence, the acquisition phase, and the initial time spent working together. They deliver a strong quarter with an underlying business that is accretive to the group profitability. Integration of Unified Brands is continuing and progressing well according to plan. As expected, we are also very close to start working together to make sure that we will be able to create value with Unified Brands together with Electrolux Professional.
The fourth point that also is important is that execution of the strategic priority continues very positively in the meaning that sales to chains and sales of Customer Care, so all the products that are sold after having delivered the product to our customers, products and services, are growing healthily growing despite the strong sales. The growth of sales to chains and of customer product is above the product sales. Very positive also this one. You remember that is one of our target to mix up with this customer segment and this business typology. The fifth point is in some way the summary of all the three that I mentioned earlier.
All in all, the profitability is confirmed around the 10%, slightly below, including the acquisition cost and all the other extraordinary costs that we have during the quarter. If I look at the underlying profitability, it is above 10% during Q1. We are confirming the positive trend of the past quarters. If we look at the development per region, and this is the first time we see all the areas trending positively. The trend is different because the trend in the Asia Pac, Middle East area is, let me say, less positive than in the other two, in particular because of China. I think I mentioned it. China in some way is in lockdown, so the business is stopped there.
While the other region, Middle East, or some Southeast Asian countries are recovering fast. A mention here is that some countries, France, UK, Central Europe, if we talk about the European one, or Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Middle East and Africa, if we talk about the Asia Pac region and the Middle East, Turkey in Europe. All these countries are above 2019 levels, so the pre-COVID season. Turkey is more or less doubling the turnover in the quarter in that period of time. Also, North America is very positive compared to the 2019 level, even if I have to consider 2019 level without the Subway deal that was very significant.
Specifically going into Food & Beverage. Clearly, the Food & Beverage business was delivering most of the growth, 76% up. Half it's coming from organic, half is coming from the inorganic, so the acquisition of Unified Brands. Also in this case, I would say significant growth everywhere, specifically again, North America and Europe. Beverage, that was the area that was suffering the most during the pandemic, is very high. Again, without the Subway deal, we are on level in North America that are higher than 2019. In the quarter or in the recent month also, Europe is above the 2019 level. Very positive.
For Customer Care, the other thing that is very positive is that the Customer Care business in Food & Beverage is above the 19% level in all the regions. Very positive activities, in particular related to the consumables that are sold to our customers. If we move to Laundry is confirming the stable growth, not as high as in Food & Beverage, but a steady progression, in particular with the profitability. I think it's important to mention this one because in some way, the Laundry business is the most affected by the increase of the material cost. Despite this increase of material cost, the margin went up significantly, and it is now above 17% in the quarter.
In the Laundry business, Europe and North America are already above the 19% level along the full quarter, the full first quarter. It's clear that the market suffered less during the pandemic and is already on the 19% level. In Asia is not back yet, but this is mainly related to a specific situation that we have in a pretty large market that is Japan, in that region. With this said, I would let Fabio commenting the financials with more details.
Thank you, Alberto, and good morning to everybody. As you see from the material, since quarter two last year with the market re-recovery, you have been able to consistently increase top line, but also the operational EBITDA compared to the previous year. In absolute terms, quarter one EBITDA was more than double of what we delivered last year, and it was the highest quarterly EBITDA since quarter two, 2019. Margin was 9.5%, and as said by Alberto, if we exclude the Unified Brands integration cost, mainly related to inventory step up and IT-related cost, underlying EBITDA margin was 10%. That I would call a remarkable and consistent performance along the last four quarters. Volumes were the main driver of the EBITDA improvement, clearly in this scenario.
When reading through the P&L, as you see, the gross margin was in line with the previous year, despite the large increase in material cost. This due to the price increase we put in place and higher sales and production volume. Productivity in operation quarter one was also quite better than the previous year, and currency also contributed positively with roughly SEK 15 million to the gross margin and EBITDA of the quarter. Very happy to report that the announced price increase has been executed in a very disciplined way, but as anticipated, was not enough in quarter one to cover completely the additional material logistic cost. We reported what we anticipated, a gap of roughly SEK 70 million b etween the benefit from price increase and the additional cost we had in direct material component and logistic cost.
Our team has worked hard to secure product availability, component availability throughout the quarter, but also put in place additional measures to secure pricing for the remaining part of the year. Happy to report that we have also secure at this moment majority, I would say, price for the second part of the year. The cost level that we covered was higher than original plan due to the development of raw material cost in the market. As a consequence of this situation, we have decided to put in place an additional price increase with effective date quarter two this year. The new price increase will be in place already from first of May, meaning a few days from now.
We estimate that this additional price increase, we will be able to compensate on a full year basis the overall material, transportation, energy cost increase.
The gap that we have for SEK 70 million between price, direct material, cost in quarter one will be a significant reduction for quarter two. I expect that the gap will be, let me say, minimum. I would estimate below SEK 10 million . Still looking through the P&L, selling administrative expense increase in value, but the weight on sales was reduced by roughly 3 percentage points compared to quarter one last year. Business initiatives are in place to support the volume growth, and the labor cost in the P&L considers also the accrual for the variable pay of the people. Investment in innovation as well as digitalization of our company are continuing in accordance with our plan and are reflecting into our P&L.
A few additional words on Unified Brands to complete what Alberto was saying. Performance of the company, both in terms of top line and bottom line, was in line with the plan. Integration activity are well proceeding, and we expect to conclude them, let me say, by quarter two, where we expect also to book, let me see, roughly SEK 5 million of remaining integration cost. When it comes to the operating working capital, as you see from the curve represented here, we have been able to further improve the ratio operating working capital on the sales. That is now running at 14.4%, well below the level we had last year, but also below December 2021, when we had close to 15%.
After the acquisition of Unified Brands, clearly our financial position remain pretty strong with a ratio net debt on EBITDA below 2, meaning at 1.8, slightly reduced compared also to the December level. We have a solid balance sheet, but also a solid liquidity situation with cash in our hands for SEK 690 million and a revolving credit facility available for over EUR 100 million, meaning that we are fully equipped to support the development of this group going forward. Cash flow was negative in the quarter. The negative cash generation was not due to profitability that, as, was, reported so far as being pretty strong, but due to higher working capital requirement due to the significant growth of the business.
I would say that despite the performance in terms of cash generation in quarter one, we have a good underlying condition to continue to deliver solid yearly cash flow for 2022 and going forward. I would say pretty good sales profitability development in quarter one, and we are ending the quarter also with a strong balance sheet to support the business growth, the profitable business growth going forward. With that, back to you, Alberto Zanata. Thank you, Fabio Zarpellon. Thanks a lot. Let's continue with the quarter mentioning the activities according to the strategic priority. Beginning, I mentioned the results or the achievement, if you want to say, for what the quarter is concerned, for what concerned chains and Customer Care.
Another thing that is part of our priority is to continue to bring to market innovative solution, and this is what we have been doing also in Q1, introducing to the market the SafeBox. That is a pretty good tool, a good product that we develop, by the way, coming from an idea that was generated by our people during the pandemic, when we had the innovation competition among our people that were in lockdown. This was an idea that we transform in a product, we tested with chains because it's addressing a specific need that is the takeaway, the delivery that every restaurant turned out to create as an alternative to the normal business. Now it's something that is going to stay and to further develop.
This is a great product that we introduce in the market and is under test with several chains around the world, and we are expecting a lot from this innovative solution. In addition to that, we are also happy to report that we receive the Red Dot Design Award that is probably the major design award referring to the design of the product, the overall concept of design, not only the aesthetic, but all the characteristics. This year, we receive it for two products. The Trinity product was introduced at the end of 2021, and the Libero product is that we introduced beginning of this year. Again, new product that we introduce that are addressing the growing trend or the new trend in this industry.
Again, company that is continuously bringing new product to the market. I strongly believe that the new product are the fuel, let me say, for the growth, and these are clearly good product to support our development.
With this said, before coming to the summary, let me have a couple of words also about something that is obviously in the mind of everybody, that is the situation in Russia. I have to say that we took actions immediately when the sanctions came in place, when the war started, and we stopped receiving orders from customers in Russia independently if they were sanctioned or not. At beginning we put on hold all. We stopped collecting orders. Then obviously we comply with the sanctions list, so not delivering product to any sanctioned customer or product that were in the sanctioned list. We still have an organization in Russia, roughly 25 people. We care about them.
They are mainly used to manage business outside Russia. Currently, we are not only, as I said, since the beginning, collecting order, but we are not even sending shipping product to Russia. We stopped weeks ago to do this. This is the situation in Russia. Russia, in any case, business-wise, besides the humanitarian situation, and as you probably know, we supported both with donation, money donation, matching the donation of our people, but also with product delivery to organization that are supporting the refugees in Romania and in Poland, in the neighboring countries. Besides this humanitarian situation, business-wise, Russia is a tiny business for Electrolux Professional.
It's less than 1% of our net sales last year, so it is not impacting our performance, the current situation. We don't have a supplier base in those countries, so also the supply chain is not impacted by what is happening in that part of the world. With this said, I would summarize the first quarter result, confirming that the recovery of the market is still there. Still a good recovery. As we said, we were expecting the market to be back to the 2019 level. It is the case in most of the countries in Europe, in some countries in Asia Pac, surely North America, the market is back to the 2019 level, and our sales are back to this one.
Also in terms of typology, at the beginning it was mainly the quick service restaurant, the chains were back. Now also institutions are moving. At the beginning it was mainly replacement business. Now we clearly see that both of the chains are restarting the rollouts, but also the project business is back. Medium size, but also large size projects restarted. Secondly, this recovery is happening and the growth of the sales are strong despite the supply chain challenges both in terms of availability of components, but also in terms of price. As Fabio said, the negative impact during Q1 was significant. We believe that in Q2 it will be pretty close to neutral between the price and the material cost increase.
We are implementing additional price increase in May to make sure that we are able to compensate this delta. It will be price increase or surcharges according to the different geographies to make sure that they are effective from May 1 . Another important thing that I like to mention is that a week ago we announced an evolution of the organization. Still we will be reporting under the two segments, Food and Beverage and Laundry. Within the two segments we decided to have decentralization of the business ownership. We created business areas that will be focused on specific geography or product categories.
This is in line with the guiding principle that we announced a year ago, and that are the one that we want to see that are in some way, as I say, guiding the behavior and the way of working of our people. It is in some way a progression from the separation from the Electrolux Group when we said that one of the reason was to be closer to the customers, to be very specific, to become more flexible, agile and fast. I believe this evolution of the organization is exactly addressing these things. The last point is about Unified Brands.
Integration continues well according to plan, and I'm confident that in a couple of quarters we will be able to start thinking about the additional value that we can create having Unified Brands part of the group. Q2 with the Q1 confirming the positive trend. The order stock is large. It has been confirmed despite the strong sales, so the confidence about Q2 are good. The second half of the year still with a lot of uncertainty related to the geopolitical situation, social situation that are affecting the different region of the world. With this said, I would turn it to you, Jacob, for the Q&A.
Thank you, Alberto. We will now open up for questions, so please go ahead, operator.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do wish to ask a question, please press the zero followed by the one on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from Johan Eliason from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning. This is Johan. Thank you for taking my questions. I have three small detailed questions here. On Laundry, it did fairly well, obviously. We remember that sometimes there's some restocking going on with your big distributors like I understood the Q1 2020, for example. Was there anything similar impacting the quarter this time around?
There is not an effect like the one we had during 2020 when it was the stocking, let me say, and then restocking later on. Absolutely not. In the meaning that sales to our distributors in Q1 were strong, very strong, but also its external sales were very strong. No, there is not an effect like this one.
Okay, excellent. On the gross margin and this sort of cost inflation you're talking about not fully recovered SEK 70 million, is the logistics part of that also included in the gross profit impact, or is that also further down below the gross profit margin?
The logistics related cost being transportation, warehousing, and so on are into the gross margin. When I mentioned the gap between price and cost of this cost, material and logistic cost, that was SEK 70 million for quarter one, and it expected to, let me say, reduce to less than SEK 10 million for quarter two. It includes also the logistic cost.
Excellent. I was just curious a little bit about the price hikes. You mentioned something about surcharges, and I can't remember if I've heard you mentioning that before. Has there been some sort of change?
Yeah
You're using surcharges to recover the cost inflation a bit faster or-
Yes
Is it just?
You're perfectly right in the meaning that we didn't use this in the past. It was used some spot situation, but it was not used, and for sure, I did not mention it in the past. We are using this one because it give us the possibility to be effective short term. It will be in place May the first. In some countries you need to have three months before having a price increase effective. Material are impacting us today. With this one, we are very fast in being effective. Secondly, it is temporary. The surcharge is as a temporary effect, limited in time. We announce it for six months.
This means that in six months from now, we will take a decision if we have to further increase the price of our product or I don't know the conditions. That is the big things is that the second half is still full of uncertainty. We are covered, and we have the freedom to decide what to do.
Okay. Does it also mean that the orders you have in the backlog from Q1, you can add this surcharge on, or is it just on new orders?
It is automatically on new orders. For old orders and not for all of them, it is applicable. We also add this one for the price increase that we apply from January first. We said that for every order that are not invoiced by the end of February, the new price would have been applied even if the order were placed before January 1. This cannot be done for all the prices for all the orders and for all the customers because we are bound by contract in many cases. Whenever it is possible and it is justified, yes, it will be done.
Okay, excellent. Just finally, you mentioned Laundry Japan declined. Was there any specific reason behind that?
There are some specific reason related to the market, and something also related to our performance, the performance of our organization. Obviously, again, Japan is not a super large market, but in Laundry and in the Asia Pacific, we have always to remember that Japan is the second largest market in the world after North America. That's the situation. Traditionally, we are the first non-Japanese company. So ahead of us, there are a couple of Japanese company. It is a pretty significant business in the market. Limited if I look at a global view, but quite significant if I just specifically look at Laundry and the Asia Pacific region.
Okay, excellent. Many thanks.
Thank you. As a reminder, to register for a question, please press zero followed by the one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Karri Rinta from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Thanks. Karri, Handelsbanken. I have two questions. Firstly, about pricing and these price increases that you announced. Firstly, can you give us a sense of with these price increases that you're now putting in place from first of May, roughly where are we if we would sort of compare price index from first of May to where prices were 2019? And then secondly, with this sort of announcement that you have made to your customers, are you starting to see any meaningful pushback in some of the categories, some of the geographies, in some customer groups? Those would be my two pricing-related questions.
Okay. The price increase that we are going to apply from May 1 without being specific because again it is different region by region and business and product by product because the material increase has a completely different effect considering the different product and location where we produce them. I think I mentioned the fact that when I was commenting the development of the profit of Laundry that the Laundry product are more affected by the increase of the material than the Food and Beverage one because of the use for instance of carbon steel that is increasing more than the others. We cannot be specific. On average we are talking about May 1 a low single-digit %.
Remember that the increase that we had in January was in reality in the high single digit. All in all, we are talking about a pretty significant price increase. Compared to 2019, I personally didn't look at that one. The comment that I can make is that in the 2019-2020 years where the price increase was basically following the inflation. We are talking about low single digit. For sure, during the pandemic, there have not been price variations. This means that probably we can aggregate the price increase we have in 2021, the one in June and the one January first of 2022. This one, this is the delta compared to the 2019 level.
We are talking about more than 10% in terms of price. I'm looking at Fabio if he has a different comment on the matter, but I see him confirming-
Yeah
more or less this delta. We are talking about price. The second one is the pushback. Here again, I can only tell you that the order intake, so receiving orders also during the month of April, is still stronger than the net sales. We still have a good collection of orders. I believe in this moment our customers are more concerned about the product availability than all the rest. I said that the market is recovering. We had a look also at the statistic, at least the one in Europe, about the touristic trends during the Easter season. That is the first in some way, how can I say, signal related to how is going the movement, the hospitality industry for 2021, and they were super good.
They were super good basically all across the European countries. There's been notice about Americans coming back. Obviously, there are still no Chinese, Asian, Russian tourists, but the Americans are back, the Europeans are moving, and they are back also in the cities. If you remember a year ago, we mentioned that the tourism was good along the coast in the let me say open space touristic place, while it was very weak in the big city like Paris or the typical touristic destination like Rome, Venice in Italy, London or places like Madrid, the Spanish ones. In the cities, the cities were fully booked. That is an important signal for the market. In this moment, our customers are concerned about product availability.
They are placing orders, and this is in some ways the reason why I'm still cautious about the second half of the year.
Thanks. It sounds like demand is not really a problem at the moment, but what about supply? You mentioned. I think you mentioned that you had to take some short-term downtime with some machines during the first quarter. How confident are you that you will manage these component shortages in the second quarter? And is there any difference between Laundry versus Food and Beverage in terms of component availability?
There are not significant differences. It depends on from where we get the component. In this moment, the factories that are, for instance, using electronic component made in China are the ones that have more troubles or challenges because of the lockdown in Shanghai, in Shenzhen, in that part of the region. It is still a moving target, let me say, that we are managing with the team that I mentioned earlier. We call it the speedboat, in the meaning that it is a multifunctional team that is looking at the planning of the factory and is looking for resourcing, replanning, and in some way also replacement of a component to make sure that we are able to deliver the product.
It's not a great situation. Absolutely not. It is good to see that in any case, productivity improve in our facility. It is true that it is compared to 2020, that was a year still affected by the pandemic in some way. It is good how they've been able to manage this in the different operations.
Thank you. Finally, the Customer Care business, as you mentioned, has been growing faster than your overall growth rate. What have you done to drive this growth, and what actions do you have planned for future?
Well, what we have done. We have been, honestly, I think, probably the easy thing is to say that we executed. We really did what we were supposed to do, in the meaning that we have been talking quite a while about the program that we mentioned, Essentia. That is a holistic project that is encompassing the creation of a complete program of product. This means accessories, consumables, but also services that we can offer to the customer. We have been hammering the customers with this program. It is relatively new for our industry, so it took time to get grip on, or to get the customer understanding the benefit, evaluating the cost versus the benefit of having the product, being maintained during the life.
Understanding that the real cost of the product is when the product is installed. The running cost in many cases are by far overtaking the ticket price. Step by step, we are getting traction on the matter. The first one are the big customer chains, so the multi-units operator, so people that they have a better understanding of the business. Now we are really happy about that. What is good is that it is not happening only in countries where we are very strong, like the European one, where it was expected because of the large install base, but is happening also in Asia Pacific. It seems a general meaning.
I have to say that we have to consider with the lack of product availability that generally is around the market, customers are caring more about the product that they have and to make sure that the product can work longer.
Thanks. Those were all my questions.
Thank you.
Okay, we take a question from the web then here. Stefan Stjernholm at Nordea. He asks, group common costs are up substantially year-over-year in Q1. What's behind? Is this a new level? And how should we think about group common costs going forward?
Yes. We had a growth of group common cost compared to Q1 last year and the previous quarters. I would say that besides some inflation item related mainly to labor cost, the main growth is related to, I would say, specific advisory cost that we have for several project we run in quarter one. I'm expecting for the quarters to come that group common cost will come back to a more normalized level, meaning in line with 2021, plus some inflationary items to be included.
Thank you. Operator, I don't know if there are any more questions.
Thank you. We have one question from Henrik Christiansson from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes, thanks. Good morning. So I have two questions here really. First one is on the cash flow that's a bit weaker. You call out inventory buildup and receivables. Could you give a bit more color what the inventory buildup is about? Is it half-finished product? Is it components? And when do you expect that to normalize? And is there any sort of Unified Brands effect there as well? To follow up.
Okay. Let me develop the concept. First, overall operating working capital on sales was reduced further, and I believe we have achieved the one of the lowest level of the very recent quarters. In absolute terms, operating working capital increased because what you said, we have added in Unified Brands that, by the way, overall is operating with a level of operating working capital in line with the rest of the group. We have increased also in value receivables and inventory. To develop around these two last items, yes, we grew receivables. We grew receivables consistently with sales. I have to report that in terms of quality of receivables, the balance sheet is pretty strong because we have reported even a further reduction of past-due in this quarter also compared to the previous quarter.
I believe we have at one of the best historical levels in terms of past due on total receivables. The quality of the balance sheet is pretty strong. When it comes to inventory, yes, inventory went up because of the inflation, let me say, that is reported on raw materials and therefore on the value of our entire inventory. This is definitely an effect. Also we are building up the i nventory to serve customer and I would say pretty strong order stock that we have to enter into quarter two. I would say that is a situation that is pretty well under control, both in terms of receivable and inventory, and I've not any specific concern for it going forward. Meaning I expect, as I mentioned earlier, that income in terms of cash generation for the year, all the ingredients, all the historical good ingredients are there.
Thank you. On the EBIT, you mentioned, if I heard correctly, that you had an FX tailwind in Q1 of around SEK 15 million in the gross margin and on the EBIT margin. What do you expect the effect to be for the full year, based on current FX rates?
First of all, I'm not going to speculate to the development of the currency because it's not my role, and it's very, very difficult to predict. We see also I was looking in this hour, the development of the US dollar that has been further strengthening against the other currency. I mean, just to give you a hint, if US dollar continue with this development, we will see also some positive currency contribution in quarter two. Difficult to predict more.
Great. A final question here. You know, talk about strong order book, and you say you're comfortable ahead of Q2. I mean, how long is the order book? You know, if you would receive zero orders from today, how long would the current order book last? If you could talk a little bit about lead time in deliveries as well. If you're a customer, if you order something today, when do you actually get it delivered?
Yeah.
Thanks.
As I said, the lead time is a reasonable time. Reasonable means longer than what it was normally the lead time. We have a pretty large stock, so we have a product that can be delivered on hand to customers. It depends on the product categories. There are product categories that we are delivering with a lead time that is more than a month. There are others that we can deliver on the spot. It is not a generic prolongment of the lead time. It is more case by case. I believe the important thing, or at least the one that I'm following, is if it is reasonable if we are able to manage the urgent orders of some customer.
For the time being, I have to say that we have been able to do it. We did not receive order cancellation because of such a situation. Probably also because it is in general a critical situation for the entire industry. With the large stock that we have, a portion of the stock is booked, so this means it is already with the name of the customers. In case we are waiting for a product to complete the order of the customer to pick them up, and we can redirect some of this product when there are urgency. For the time being, we are able to manage the situation. We are monitoring it day by day, because clearly the supply chain is very critical.
Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you. The next question comes from Björn Enarson from Danske Bank. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Yes. Hi, sorry if you have answered this question already, or maybe I just didn't get it. On the surcharges that you are now implementing, and they are temporary for 6 months. If we would assume a continued inflationary pressure, is it possible to renew them, or is there a risk for a negative gap, et cetera? How quickly can you renew those if needed?
For what we know, this should be enough. Again, it's limited in time also because typically the full period, so the after summer period, is the period where normally, not only us, but in general, all the company are relooking at the price list. I believe during these crazy years when all the price list have been increased every 4-6 months, I think in October we will have to realign the price according to the new situation. Hopefully, in a more stable situation. If not, they are renewable. We can renew, and we can extend, and we can change these surcharges. Absolutely, yes.
Okay. Okay, I got it. You're raising prices in the meantime, and then they should be max matched, hopefully.
Hopefully.
Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you. The next question comes from Fredrik Moregård from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead, your line is now open.
Thank you. Good morning, all. Just a question on potential bottlenecks when it comes to demand. I think a couple of quarters ago, you mentioned a lack of craftsmen in the industry holding back growth and holding back the market recovery. Is that still an issue or has that situation improved, or is it simply that the bottleneck has moved from craftsmen to product availability?
You mean craftsmen for us, so to produce or in the industry, so?
No. In the industry for your customers.
For our customer, it's still an issue. It is still an issue. If you walk around, you see that they are looking for people. I would say that more than holding back the development of the market is, at least, again, probably also personal opinion as a customer, is reducing the level of service you get. It is an issue, this one. Generic issues across all the countries in the industry. Absolutely, yes. I don't think is holding back the development of the industry.
Okay, good to hear. To what extent is it an obstacle for you in developing your Customer Care offering?
No. I would say no, not at all.
Okay. Very good to hear. Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you. There appear to be no further questions. I'll return the conference back to you.
Okay. We say thank you for today and speak to you next time. Have a good day. Goodbye.