Hello, and welcome to Fasadgruppen Group Audiocast with Teleconference Q1 2022. Throughout the call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. Today, I'm pleased to present CEO Pål Warolin. Please begin your meeting.
Thank you very much. Welcome everyone to this presentation, Fasadgruppen's first quarter, 2022. This is the first time we have it in English, so a special welcome to English-speaking audience. My name is Pål Warolin, and I'm the CEO of Fasadgruppen. Together with our CFO, Casper Tamm, we will guide you through this presentation. Next slide, please. First of all, Fasadgruppen in brief. Fasadgruppen, we are the market leader in Scandinavia within facade work. Facade work is a highly specialized and local market with a high level of craftsmanship. By facade work, we mean almost everything that is related to the shell of the building. So the service offering consists, for example, of masonry, plastering, installation, renovation of balconies, glazing, renovation, installation of windows, renovation of roofs, almost everything you need the scaffolding to do.
Fasadgruppen focused on midsize projects in the range of SEK 1-100 million, with an average project size of SEK 3-4 million. 75% of projects relate to renovation. We have an active M&A agenda with the aim to consolidate the highly fragmented Nordic facade industry. The group currently comprises 47 businesses across Sweden, Denmark, and Norway in a very decentralized structure, and we have about 1,600 employees. Next slide, please. Take a look at some key financials last twelve months. I see that the net sales are close to SEK 3 billion, and the adjusted EBITA almost SEK 318 million with a healthy margin, adjusted EBITA margin 10.7%, well above our financial target. I'm also very satisfied with the order backlog, SEK 2.6 million. Next slide, please.
We go to the first quarter in brief. This first quarter is basically pretty much as a normal first quarter for Fasadgruppen. We have always lower activity in production because of the cold weather, the winter weather. Otherwise, it's been a great start. We have a lot of interesting discussion and a lot of inquiries more than normal. We have also strong growth in the order backlog. The net sales is up 70.3% compared to last year, which 4.3% is organic. Our adjusted EBITA margin of 5.9%, it's a pretty normal margin for the first quarter, and then the same level as last year. The order backlog is up, as I mentioned, 85.6%, of which 18.6% is organic.
We also have a really strong start to M&A this year, 9 acquisitions in the first quarter and 14 so far this year. We have price surges on material in March and April, so we're really focused on maintaining the profitability, and I believe that we've been successful so far. Of course, it takes a lot of time and energy for our organization to handle this. We have to negotiate with both suppliers, so they can keep a fixed price for special projects. We also negotiate with our customers. I mean, in most of our contracts, we have the legal rights to increase price if the material price is increasing a lot, but it's also a commercial point of view that we have to take care of.
We have also bought a little more for stock to keep all price. Of course, going forward, our quotes have shorter validity period, so that we are right, that we have the right prices in our calculation. Of course, all this take a lot of extra energy for the organization, but it's very important and a big focus for us, and I really believe that we've been successful so far. Next slide, please. We go to the acquisition overview. As I mentioned already, we have a strong start this year. 14 businesses acquired so far this year with annual sales of about SEK 792 million. We believe that we have a great opportunity to continue growing.
We have a lot of interesting discussion and we have a great pipeline going forward. Therefore, the directed issue carried out in March is to further accelerate value creation through more acquisitions. We still have a real small part of the market. The opportunity is looking good going forward. Next slide, please. Let us take a closer look to some of the acquisition made in the first quarter. First of all, Alnova, founded in 1979, one of Sweden's leading suppliers of balcony systems glazing. They have more than 200 projects per year to tenant owner association and construction companies. Several other subsidiaries in Fasadgruppen have already worked together with Alnova before to Fasadgruppen. We really see great cross-selling opportunities here.
I'm very proud that, Alnova now is a member of Fasadgruppen. Next one is Helsingborgs Fasad & Kakel. It's more of a classic Fasadgruppen company. They offer masonry and plastering and also balconies. They founded in 2009 and they are focused in southern Sweden with strong local position in Helsingborg. They have already had some cooperation with some other of subsidiaries in Fasadgruppen in the south of Sweden which I'm very happy for. Next one, Malercompagniet, a Norwegian company founded in 1991, one of the largest facade companies in the Oslo region with a focus on renovations. It actually consists of three companies, Malercompagniet, Murpartnern, and Meyer-Mørch and they work close together. This acquisition really strengthens Fasadgruppen's position in the Oslo region.
Next one is Herrängens Plåtslageri, Vantörs Bleck och Plåtslageri. They're both from the beginning of the 1990s, 1992 and 1993. They have worked closely since inception and offering sheet metal service in Stockholm. They are located very, very close to our subsidiary, Karlaplans Plåtslageri. It's actually an asset acquisition via Karlaplans Plåtslageri, which gives us even more competitive and a larger sheet metal company in the Stockholm region. Next slide, please. We have a case study from the first quarter, a facade renovation in Oslo, Norway. Our subsidiary, DVS Entreprenør, is carrying out two renovation projects for Oslo Municipal Housing Company, Boligbygg Oslo. The projects are complying with strict environmental requirements and are categorized as fossil-free construction sites. An example, only electrical tools and machines are allowed there.
Both properties are on the yellow list, meaning the renovation must preserve as much of the facade expression as possible. I would say this is kind of typical projects both for Fasadgruppen and also for DVS Entreprenør. Next slide, please. Then we are ready for some figures. I will hand over to Casper.
Thank you, Pål. I will take you through some highlights in the Q1 financials. Next slide, please. Q1 figures in summary then. We saw low season characterized the Q1 as expected due to seasonal winter effects, as Pål has already mentioned here. Revenues were up to SEK 737 million with an organic growth of 4.3%. This included twenty-four comparable companies out of the total today of approximately fifty companies in the group. Adjusted EBITA was SEK 43.4 million, where we reached the margin now of 5.9%. As Pål said, this is the normal margin for Q1, and it was also roughly in line with last year. Order backlog was up to SEK 2.6 billion, up nearly SEK 700 million from year-end.
Profit for the period ended up at SEK 22 million, with a basic earnings per share then of 0.48 SEK. Operating cash flow was SEK 75 million. Here we saw strong working capital development for the current quarter due to the shifts between the years in the positive working capital flows that normally occur when the project operations are predominantly completed at the end of the year. I will come back to that later also in the presentation here. The next slide, please. A little bit about net sales and order backlog in the quarter. Strong upturn here of the net sales, 70%, out of this, currency changes amounted to 1.9%. As already said, the organic growth was 4.3% and the acquired growth at 66%, M&A-driven by the acquisition agenda that Pål mentioned earlier here.
In the quarter, we had 9 new acquisitions. Order backlog had a strong increase in organic growth here, nearly 19% up. We saw new acquisitions here who amounted for SEK 330 million out of the total increase in the first quarter of SEK 700 million. Next slide, please. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter. We reached the margin here of 5.9%, more or less in line with the comparison period. We have non-recurring items then of SEK 4.8 million consisting of M&A costs. As said, the first quarter of the year is normally characterized by considerably weaker margin than the remaining nine months due to the seasonal effects from the winter conditions.
As Pål also said, we have the impact of higher raw material prices in the economy has continued to have limited effect on profitability also during first quarter for Fasadgruppen. The war in Ukraine currently is expected to have limited impact from the short-term perspective on the operations, due to the fact that the group only operates in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and we have very limited amount of personnel and material from the warring countries. The next slide, please. Some comments on the P&L. Looking on other revenues here, you can see a significant difference between the twelve-month rolling and full year 2021, when you compare with the quarterly outcome. This is due to revaluation of earn outs, positive ones then in the twelve months period, and we had none in the quarters.
On depreciation and amortization, we could comment that the depreciation from acquired intangible assets reached approximately SEK 6 million in the quarter out of a total of nearly SEK 23 million. In other operating expenses, you can find the non-recurring items that I mentioned earlier, which amounted to a negative amount of SEK 4.8 million. Next slide, please. Some comments on the balance sheet and leverage. We had a total balance of SEK 4.1 billion for the end of the quarter, so up SEK 1.7 billion since the end of the comparison period. On the asset side, it's of course driven by the acquisition agenda here. We have increases in brand goodwill and current receivables coming from our new acquisitions here in between.
We also saw an increase in the cash and cash equivalents, mainly coming from the directed share issue in March. Going to equity and liability side of the balance sheet, here we also see the positive effects of the directed share issue in March here on our equity, which is up to nearly SEK 1.7 billion. On the debt side, we now have interest-bearing debt of approximately SEK 1.2 billion. Going to the right side, you can see that our key indicator here, net debt to adjusted EBITDA, came down to 1.8x then, mainly driven then by the directed share issue in March here. Going to the next slide, please.
Some comments on the cash flow and cash conversion in the quarter here, so a very strong start on 2022 mainly driven then by the changes in our net working capital, which ended up at nearly SEK 34 million, which was a great difference then from the comparison quarter last year here. This is basically a year-end effect where positive working capital flows from completed projects that previous year was accounted for in quarter four now have fallen to January the year after. We can also conclude in line with this that Q4 2021 was somewhat weaker than expected cash flow-wise, but we have seen a very strong start for Q1 2022 looking on the cash flow and cash conversion.
When looking on Q4 and Q1 together, we can say that we have a more normal situation again. Taking this into account then, we had a cash conversion of 135% in the quarter, well above our target, and also on a healthy 90% on the 12-month rolling. The next slide, please, and then I leave it over to Pål here to make the summary and some concluding remarks.
Thank you, Casper. Yes, some concluding remarks. First of all, we really had a positive start to the year with strong backlog and high M&A pace. We have a real focus on material prices and maintaining our profitability. I also believe that we have really strong conditions for continued M&A. That's all for us. Thank you very much. We are ready for some Q&A, please.
Thank you. If you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Carl Ragnerstam from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Good morning. It's Carl here from Nordea. A few questions from my side. Firstly, regarding raw material prices, you sound fairly confident that you have sufficient inventory bought at low prices, which should seemingly offset. Should we interpret that as we would see a sequentially unchanged raw material impact on group margins in Q2 versus Q1?
Hello, Carl. That's a good question, but I still believe that we are handling this raw material crisis pretty good. I hope not. It's of course in the long run. It's hard for me to promise anything. What I see right now, I'm pretty comfortable that we can handle it for the coming months. I'm not so worried about that. I mean, the margin for the first quarter is pretty much the same as last year, a little bit lower. It's really hard to say that.
I mean, the first quarter we have so much lower activity, so I wouldn't take any guidance from just the first quarter. It's more like how we handle it, which makes me comfortable.
Have you changed your contract structure in new contracts, meaning that you have more clear index clauses? Because you have some type of index clauses already right now, right?
Yeah.
I don't.
That’s correct. We have it not every time in our standard contracts ABT, we also have a kind of secure in that standard contract. It’s more that we are a little bit more careful going forward. We don’t promise too much, and we make reservation and discussion with the customer. We have to be more focused on than normal. Because in a normal world, how it always have been worked before, we get a fixed price from the supplier, and we have the same price in the projects whenever the project is producing.
That's the change, what's changed to the market. It's forced us to be more careful.
Would you say that your customers are fine with the price increases on new contracts, or have you seen any signs of a market slowdown, or that your customers are pausing projects, as it's basically becoming too expensive to do a facade renovation or, yeah, similar?
Yeah, I understand the question, but we haven't seen anything like that so far. I mean, what the customer doesn't like is if we in a short run increase, if we would like to increase the price, of course, we have to negotiate and. It's really good to be as good, as prepared as you, as possible. As I mentioned here before, we have bought a little bit more for stock, for example, so we can use old prices. When it's like always, if you have a good discussion and you are good prepared, it's easier for the customer to understand.
Of course, I don't believe that any customer love to increase the price, but if you have a good discussion, a good relationship, and are good prepared, I believe that we handle it very well. So far.
Perfect. Did you see any impact from the Omicron outbreak in January and February or is it offset by-
No.
By-
No, no. I wouldn't say we have any impact at all to that.
Okay. Also on the order backlog, it grew quite nicely, 19% organically in the quarter. Which end markets are performing well both from a country perspective as well from a... I mean, by customer group perspective? Also would you say that you're gaining market shares?
I mean, the backlog is coming from all of our markets, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and also from different geographic areas in Sweden, for example. It's the same mix as always, even new construction in some geographic areas. I mean, it's a very strange situation that we have this raw material price increasing, but the market is really hot. Of course, you have to be always listening to the market and have a close discussion with the customers. What I see right now, and the order backlog is pretty much as normal.
It's from all the markets.
You said that the market is, I mean, still performing quite well. Would you say that the high electricity prices and the fact that a facade renovation could improve the energy efficiency or energy savings in a building quite substantially, would you say that the fact that you had high electricity prices is sort of offsetting the high raw material prices at least? I mean, meaning that it's that real estate companies-
Yeah.
Property owners are doing facade works despite the fact that they have inflation, as they could have substantial savings.
Absolutely. I believe that we normally say that we have three different market drivers, and one of those are the energy savings. In one way, I believe if the energy prices are going up, it can help to drive the market from that point of view. On the other side, of course, as you mentioned, the prices for the raw material. To be honest, the price for the raw material. As I mentioned before, I'm not so worried about that. Of course, we have to be very focused and it gives us a lot of extra work to handle that.
I'm more worried if, in the end of the day, it's hard to deliver stuff if they stop delivering in any way. That's a much bigger problem than the price increase. I don't see that right now, anything like that right now, but it's hard for me to see if I'm looking like six months going forward. That's from that point of view. It would be a bigger problem than price increase and so on.
Perfect. That's all for me. Thank you.
Thank you, Carl.
The next question comes from the line of Robin Nyberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Hello, Robin here.
Hi, Robin.
Two questions. Hello. Starting with the backlog, nice growth there. Is that growth coming from more of the same, I mean, normal sized projects, or is it also driven by some larger size projects there?
It's like always, it's a mix. I mean, we have projects from, let's say, SEK 1 million to SEK 100 million. The order backlog this time, it's a mix. It's both some bigger and some much smaller. It's like always more smaller projects than bigger.
All right. Related to cost inflation, probably, or at least it seems that for you it will be little bit more challenging for you to reach the long-term margin target this year. Would be very helpful if you could try to quantify the margin impact.
Yeah. Yeah.
For the full year in any way.
Yeah. What I see right now, I'm pretty comfortable that we will fight to have and be successful to have the pretty much the same margin as normal. That's our focus, and that's what I believe right now, what I can see right now. Of course, I don't think it will be a record year for margin this year. I mean, we have those challenges, and I believe that we handle those very well. I hope that we are reaching pretty much the same level as normal. That's what we see right now and what we.
If we take a look at those projects that we have going forward and also what we have done this first quarter.
Excellent. That's all for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Robin.
As there are no further questions, I'll hand it back to the speakers.
Okay. Thank you very much. Really appreciate this. We're coming back in three months, and thank you for listening.
This concludes the conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.