Welcome to the Ferronordic Q4 2024 report presentation. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode. During the Q&A session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing #5 on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to Speakers CEO Lars Corneliusson and CFO Erik Danemar. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Lars Corneliusson here. Welcome everybody to this presentation on our fourth quarter for 2024. We saw in the quarter continued strength in the United States, strong performance, and we created a much stronger position to go forward in Germany and Kazakhstan. We had a 43% revenue increase, obviously then driven by the addition and growth in the U S. operations, mainly. We had an operating result which increased to SEK 2 million, or SEK 19 million excluding effects of impairment of inventory in Germany and Kazakhstan. Net profits ended up at SEK 9 million, partly because of exchange rate effects. We have, of course, after the acquisitions of the U.S. operations, partly driven by expansion of the rental fleet in the U.S., we have a net debt of SEK 1.978 billion. Given the negative result we had for the year, no dividend is recommended.
If we look a bit more into the U.S., we're starting there, we saw, as I said, continued strong performance, good margin development, and cash generation. Total revenue was SEK 720 million, with a strong operating margin then of 9%. Overall, our sales of machines grew by 15%, while service and parts sales were stable quarter on quarter. We do have a higher inventory and rental fleet in the U.S., which is in line with our strategy to take market shares further. In the articulated hauler and excavator segments, we have been successful in gaining market shares in the U.S. throughout the year, and we see opportunities to grow that further. If we go to Germany, the market declined by 14%.
However, our own deliveries on new trucks in units actually almost doubled, which is partly on strong order intake we had of new trucks in the previous quarter, but also continued efforts to clear out old stock, which has been standing for too long. I will come back to that. Given the current market conditions in Germany, we had to recognize another impairment of SEK 13 million on the remaining stock that we had left. There is not much left, to be honest, but we took another SEK 13 million there. We saw stable parts and service business, and we saw good continued development on our electric rental business. I will come back to the cost efficiency program in Germany, but we have now been able to take the cost down to the targeted level that we set for ourselves before that program started.
Also in Kazakhstan, we had to give up margins to clear out all the inventory, and we also recognized an impairment of SEK 4 million in Kazakhstan. Overall, group revenue increased 43% to SEK 1.3 billion. Strong growth, obviously, in the U.S., German revenue more or less flat, and the decline in Central Asia. We had an operating profit increasing to SEK 2 million, and again, SEK 19 million if you exclude the impairment of inventory in Germany and Kazakhstan. Most notably, it is very interesting and very positive to see the profit that is delivered from our U.S. operations going from SEK 25 million to SEK 65 million. Also in Germany, we had an increase in the operating profit, but we are still negative, obviously, partly because of impairments, but we are negative there. We will come back to that. Net income increased to SEK 9 million.
Some operational highlights from the U.S. The market for construction equipment was more or less flat compared to Q4 2023. In our own market, there was a slight decline mainly in the excavator market. Our own sales, however, if we compare to Q4 2023, both, I mean, if we take sales of new machines and conversions then from rental fleet into account, we actually increased by 22%. Obviously, we then continue to take market shares in our market, and we have, as I said, we've done that throughout the year. It is very good to see that we're actually able to increase the sales and create a population for the aftermarket, also in a stagnant market. We had a particularly good increase in excavators and wheel loaders.
Sold in all, we sold 65 new units, 53 were converted from sales to sales from rental, and we had 22 units invoiced. We had a stable service and parts business in the quarter. The mix is basically 58% new and used equipment sales and conversions, 9% rental income, and a healthy 33% to service and parts. If we go to Germany, the situation is different indeed in the sentiment of the market and in the economy, obviously. We saw a continued decline by 14% in Q4. All in all, the market was down 13% in 2024. In our sales area, it was a decrease by 8%. Again, we increased our own truck sales in units by 90% to 317, compared then to 167 in Q4 2023 and 96 in Q3 2024.
Again, we had a strong order intake in Q3 2024, which part of that was then delivered in Q4, not all of it. We also then, obviously, continue to sell our old stock, which we have had throughout the year. We still have some left of that stock. Given that the pricing level in the market throughout the year has gone down quite a lot and continued to go down in Q4, we had to take another impairment there of SEK 13 million. As you can see, total inventory then, we had SEK 574 million in Q4 2023, and now that is down to a total inventory of SEK 262 million in the end of Q4. We saw parts and service sales remaining stable in the quarter. However, we see a continued strong demand for aftermarket services.
The problem is that we can't fulfill that demand because we lack skilled mechanics in some of our workshops, and we have a very high focus on attracting skilled mechanics to the network, both from within Germany, but also from other countries in the world where we have. Looking very promising for certain countries with a good regulatory environment when it comes to work permits, etc., outside the EU. There are a few other countries, quite many actually. We have a high, high focus on attracting skilled mechanics to the network. It's pivotal for making the German operations profitable. We go to the efficiency program, which we have talked about before, which was launched in Q4 2023. Obviously, the key objective is to increase our absorption level, which is how much our fixed costs are covered by the gross profit from the service and parts business.
The expectation was that we would have a run rate of SEK 60 million less annually. We have reached that target starting from Q3 2024, which obviously creates a different base and a different resilience going into 2025. At the same time, we continue to invest in our aftermarket business and in e-mobility. If we go to Kazakhstan, Central Asia, the market grew, and the economy is doing well. Our sales was unchanged, and we have had a similar problem in Kazakhstan as we have had in Germany with too many machines on the yard, basically stock units that we have worked very hard throughout the year to sell. We have been successful in that. Obviously, partly it comes at the expense of gross margins to do so. We are clearly in a much, much better position now than we were going into 2024.
Sales are used to construction equipment, slight increase. Also here, given the age and the current market conditions for some of our remaining machines in the stock, we had to take a SEK 4 million impairment in the quarter. Again, as you can see, we have more than halved our inventory throughout the year. We had a recovery of the service and parts sales from, if you compare to quarter three, but it was slightly lower than in Q4 2023. Total revenue decreased by 38%. Equipment sales decreased 45% and a 16% decrease in service and parts sales. U.S. network, some of you have seen this map before. This is our footprint in the United States. We are operating then in either fully or partly in nine states in the Midwest in the U.S. It is the second largest market for construction equipment.
In the area where we're operating, the total market in 2024 for general purpose equipment, meaning bigger machines that we are mainly focusing on, amounts to close to 4,000 units. In Germany, we have a network of 20 outlets spread out through the territory that we are representing. In Kazakhstan, we have concentrated our efforts to these four locations that you can see on the map, which are where the main economic activity is taking place in our industry. That is where we are. All in all, I should say it was a good performance in the U.S., really. We created a strong, I would say, platform in Germany and also in Kazakhstan for profitable growth going forward. We have a very, very different situation and a much better situation now with the balance sheet positions both in Germany and Kazakhstan.
We can operate now more in normality than we have been able to do due to the very many customer cancellations that came after the supply started to actually work again after the very, very long lead times we had during the COVID phase. A lot of customer cancellations happened because prices were different, and they might have put orders in for different brands at the same time just to make sure that they actually got some trucks. That created far too big inventory that we had going into 2024. The situation is now very, very different, and we are very happy with how we can focus on expanding the aftermarket going forward, which is really where we as a dealer make money. All in all, I am positively looking into 2025. By that, I am handing over to Erik for some more numbers, please.
Thank you very much, Lars. I'll pick up on the next slide to which you opened up for me. Thank you very much. Yeah, as usually, opening up with some of the macroeconomic context that we've worked in. Our industries do correlate with the macroeconomy, but also driven by specific investment programs, both government, but mainly private initiatives that are going on. Starting in the US, we saw strong growth in 2024, 2.8%. There is a consensus for about 2.1%, so continued strong growth in 2025. The range of forecasts, I think, reflect an increased uncertainty about how the U.S. economy will develop in the new political context. I've seen from 1.5% to 2.8% there. Meanwhile, inflation lingers arguably a bit higher than the market had previously anticipated, also lifting the interest term structure a bit, so a bit higher curve.
That said, the funds rate was decreased during the quarter. We are impacted directly by our funding, both with Volvo Financial Services and our other funding facility that we use in the United States, but it also impacts our customers, of course, their liquidity. Germany, very different situation, as Lars already indicated, negative 0.2% growth in 2024. That's the second consecutive year of negative economic development in Germany. It is an economy that is struggling at the moment. For 2025, there is an expectation for a turn and a small pickup, as you can see from this slide, at 0.8%. Inflation rate, they're also arguably a bit still high above target for ECB to lower aggressively and that way to stimulate the economy. In Kazakhstan, continued strong growth.
It's more for us, I think, how that translates into investments on the corporate side for companies working in construction and resource extraction. I mean, funding is a factor in Kazakhstan. Inflation has come down to 8.6%, but the central bank rate remains high, and that's propagated into the rest of the economy. Funding has been and remains a constraining factor on demand in Kazakhstan. Moving on from that macroeconomic, again, context to our income statement and performance in the quarter. Starting from the top line, we see a 43% increase in the revenue. That's, of course, very much driven by the addition of the United States operations in end of November of last year. That's one month we had a very strong month, as we commented in the Q4 report of last year. One month all the same.
Yeah, we have the effect of the full quarter now this year that drives a big part of the growth in the top line. If we look at a revenue mix in the fourth quarter, 55% U.S., 43% Germany, and 2% Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is small there, 2%, but probably not expected to be more than 5, but low in that quarter. We continue to see a lot of potential for our main markets, United States and Germany, to grow organically from where we have them in this quarter. In terms of revenue mix, about two-thirds equipment and trucks or 63% and 30% aftermarket. The 7% other, I remind you, is mainly rental income. Aftermarket is, of course, an area of intense focus for us.
In Germany, Lars mentioned that even as the economy is weak, we continue to see strong demand for repairs and maintenance of the truck parks that are out there. Indeed, when fleets are not renewed, the demand for maintaining the older fleets tends to increase. We are, to some extent, constrained by not having as many qualified mechanics as we would like. Gross profit up significantly, again, driven by the consolidation of the U.S. business. SG&A, I would tend to look more on a percentage of revenue basis. There we are down year- on- year, 15.6% compared to 21.5% last year. Operating margin positive, but not by wide margin, but a big increase versus last year, 0.2% or SEK 2 million.
That's after, of course, these provisions or reserves that we took on the trucks in Germany, SEK 13 million, and inventory also in Kazakhstan, SEK 4 million. Without those, we would be at SEK 19 million in the fourth quarter. Net income, positive SEK 9 million, significantly driven by foreign exchange effects, SEK 66 million positive effect in the fourth quarter. Remind you there, that's driven by the assets the parent company has in the subsidiaries. Investments in Germany in euros and in U.S. and Kazakhstan, as it were, in U.S. dollars. Moving on to the balance sheet in a summary, again, movements year- on- year now would have the U.S. included. When it comes to increase in PPE, it's really driven by changes in the businesses as they stand.
In the U.S., you will probably recall that we have said that we have increased the rental fleet as part of our core strategy to gain market share in the United States. That is reflected also in the balance sheet. Looking at these segments and in terms of our effort on working capital, we do aim for, as a strategy, to increase our capital turnover on the operating capital side. In Kazakhstan or Central Asia, working capital increased, but it is really a decrease in inventory. What we have had at the same time is the maturing of payables. That is what drives up the working capital. In Germany, working capital is down, and that is, as Lars described, as we had been selling out the old stock, but also had good sales of new trucks in this quarter, specifically with big volume sales.
Lower inventory driving the change in working capital there. In the U.S., the change is more marginal with a more business-as-usual replenishment of inventory in the quarter, increasing that a little bit. Again, the rental fleet sits in PPE, so that's not included in this calculation for working capital here. Net debt's a small increase, very much driven by a move, which is non-cash, as we stress here, of payables into debt, other financing arrangement, and thereby it goes from working capital into the net debt calculation. Equity to assets decreased slightly, quarter on quarter, to 30%. Moving on, added this, and it's really a response to questions on our PPE. I thought it would be good to illustrate the distribution of PPE in the different segments. I would say notably the United States here, the American segment that we have.
To make clear to investors and readers of the report, the share of property, plant, and equipment that is related to the rental fleet, you can see it's almost 70% for the group as a whole and more so in the United States. Really, most of the rest of PPE is properties, so our workshops, the ones that we own. I have put the IFRS 16 separately here, so you can see that as well. That would also mostly be related to properties, but to some extent also carpools, vehicles that our mechanics and employees work as they produce for the business. Moving on, this one slide illustrates the EBIT year- on- year. Mind you, this is all compared to Q4 of last year. Here, the U.S. increase is very much driven by, again, adding two months more. December last year was very strong.
It is more of an effect here of, again, having two more months added. Germany, we took a hit on the inventory. As Lars said, we have made efforts to really clean up the balance sheet and put ourselves in a good situation as we enter into 2025. We have also in 2024, as you know, made a lot of efforts to streamline the organization and increase efficiencies in our SG&A and OpEx. In the fourth quarter, we are up versus last year. Again, maybe more investments going still into this quarter to put us in a better position really for the year to come. Kazakhstan, small change and a small saving also on HQ costs in the fourth quarter. With that, I move on to the next slide to explain movements in net debt.
I really put this in to show, as I mentioned on the balance sheet slide, that the movement in net debt is very much driven by non-cash effects in the U.S. and in Germany. To explain that, we initially buy inventory and into rental fleet with a payable term. It is payables in our balance sheet. It moves over to other funding arrangements, typically Volvo Financial Services related as our supplier. It moves over from payables to interest-bearing debt at that time. That is, again, a non-cash transaction. On our group NAV, just illustrating the shape of our balance sheet there. You can see the inventory and the U.S. rental fleet we have separately here making up a big part of that. You can see other property, plant, and equipment.
In this case, that other property, plant, and equipment would hold also the German rental fleet. That is that on the balance sheet. I move over to our financial objectives that we introduced at our capital markets day on the 2nd of October, I think it was. We have but started our journey towards those objectives. We are growing versus our starting point, but we obviously have much more ambitious targets there. Similarly, on operating margin, we do believe we can lift our whole organization to a large extent by organic growth. On our net debt, we are working to come to the target levels we set there. With regards to dividend, as Lars mentioned, given that we had a negative earnings result for 2024 as a whole, the board is not recommending a dividend dispatch on the year 2024.
With that, I give back to Lars for a very brief outlook before we take questions from the audience. Thank you.
All right.
We are optimistic about our expansion into the U.S. and the business opportunities we see there. We see that demand is supported by a dynamic economy and significant need to upgrade infrastructure. The new administration has paused many government initiatives, but we believe that federal and states' infrastructure programs will continue to support demand. We also expect further large construction projects involving data centers and logistics centers and hubs in the U.S. Midwest. The German economy, however, remains weak. As we talked about, we've taken actions to cut costs and make our organization and balance sheet more resilient. We have been successful in optimizing the balance sheet. We are confident that the demand in service and parts business will remain strong.
We are optimistic about the long-term potential in the German markets and particularly in the opportunities that e-mobility and sustainable transport solutions provide. Kazakhstan represents a small part of our business, but we continue to see opportunities in the markets. By that, I am handing over for questions, please.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Adrian Galani from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello, Lars and Erik. I would just like to start off with a question on Germany, where the equipment sales took a big step up compared to prior quarters.
I guess, is this entirely driven by the inventory selloff that you mentioned, or do you think that there may also be a component of improving end market demands baked into that figure?
Actually, most of our unit sales in higher admin, by the way. Most of our unit sales in Q4 were actually new orders taken, mainly in Q3. We have nowadays a normal delivery timing, not 15 months anymore, of course, when the supply constraints were there, but now it's three, four months, which is the usual cycle. Orders we took in Q3, part of them were actually then delivered in Q4. We had a strong order intake in Q3, where we saw we could adapt. We had the opportunity to adapt to the price changes that were quite dramatic in the market last year, actually, going from January to December.
That development continued in Q4, and that is why we had to make another impairment of our stock, the remaining stock that we have. We saw potentially a higher supply out in the market than demand, if I put it that way. The only conclusion I can make is that we were not the only one having a stock problem. That is basically what it is. I mean, the market is still there. It is down 14%, but for sure, there is still demand for renewal of the fleets. Most importantly for us, we do not see any downturn at all in demand for our aftermarket services.
Okay. Understood. For Germany, for Q1 specifically, should we read anything into sort of the run-up ahead of the election and whether that has had any impact on your business in Q1?
Also, perhaps if there are any potential policy impacts we should have in mind based on the outcome of the election then? I mean, we can't talk too much about Q1, but there is, of course, an uncertainty when there is a new election and the previous government has resigned and called for a new election. There are a lot of issues going on in politics in Germany, for sure. I think the real issue that they need to tackle going forward is how do we go back to getting economic growth, which they haven't had now for two years. It's been actually negative, not a lot, but negative growth in both 2023 and 2024. Despite that, we don't see actually too much decrease in transport activities, which we can measure very precisely thanks to road tolls and etc. in Germany.
Clearly, we do not expect too many policy changes in our industry. I mean, our industry is really driving economic activity. Clearly, there is an uncertainty regarding the elections coming up. No question about that.
Okay. Understood. Perhaps a bit of a detail-oriented question, but a fair chunk of your net debt position now is these machines that have been moved from working capital to net debt. Can you say how high the interest rate is on those, or does Volvo not want that info to be public?
I'll probably hold off on that one, Adrian, as you might suspect from me. I think also if you go back to last year's annual report, we do fairly detailed disclosures there. Obviously, April 11th, you'll get another one with updated.
Given that we haven't put anything in place, I wouldn't put it out on this call. Please refer to, I think, the report that is out there. Yeah, I think you can make reasonable assumptions about how much that would have changed through the year.
Okay. A final one just on the net debt as well. I understand you won't give hard guidance on this, but given that it has risen really every quarter now for the past year and Germany is, in a sense, limiting your ability to generate cash flows, can you say anything about when you expect to sort of turn around the trend of rising net debt levels?
No, I think, I mean, you're right.
That would be to give guidance, which would cause us on I would probably go back there to what we said at our capital markets day and what is in our financial objectives, that we are higher than we want to be on a sort of long-term basis now. We are working both to make our balance sheet across the organization as efficient as possible. In that way, in Germany, for example, we have taken down the debt part. In Germany, it did not, in this case, generate much free cash flow. The trucks we sold were funded by BFS mainly. When we sell them, we should keep a margin. For some of the older stock, there was not that much margin to keep, so not one went back to BFS. We have still, again, decreased and shrunk the balance sheet, which is part of our strategy.
Overall, we, of course, aim for Germany to start contributing and for the U.S. to continue to generate good cash. Similar with Kazakhstan, but that is obviously a significantly smaller factor. I think more, Adrian, that we have an aim to bring it down. That comes together with our wider strategy to grow the business in Germany and continue to do the business in the U.S. organically. Through that process, we do expect that we will be able to bring down the net debt for the group as a whole.
Okay. I appreciate the answers. That was all from me, so thank you.
Thank you very much, Adrian.
The next question comes from Anders Åkerblom from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, Lars and Erik. Thank you for taking my questions.
I was wondering firstly a bit on the U.S., if you could elaborate a bit on the reasons behind the sort of sequential decline in services and parts sales and how we should view this going forward.
I think we were more or less flat in service and parts sales in the US in the quarter and also year- on- year, actually. Not a big change, quite stable performance in the U.S. I think, I mean, we have seen, again, some, I mean, I would actually call the new equipment sales market relatively stable as well. There, as we discussed in the previous quarter, we had a bit of an uncertainty and caution ahead of the elections. After the election, that sort of dissipated, and especially towards year-end, we saw quite a strong market, actually.
With regards to parts and service, I think we've had quite a stable trend there.
Okay. Thank you. On the measures you're kind of taking to ensure that you have a skilled pool of mechanics for your aftermarket business in Germany, could you elaborate a bit more on specifically what type of measures that includes?
It is a wide range of measures, Anders. We have started that previously. That, of course, includes we have an apprenticeship program, which is successful, and it is actually supported by the government. We have kind of our own sourcing of young mechanics, which we train and come out. It is a four-year program, and they partly go to school and partly work in our workshops, being trained by our key technicians on how to do it. That is one part of it, that we actually have an internal supply, so to speak.
It is not enough to cover for the demand. We are also going quite aggressively out to technical schools to attract mechanics. We go to competition. We go to other industries where we can find good technical skills that we can train. We pay finder's fees for our colleagues to bring a friend or somebody they know into our workshops. We also go internationally. Mainly, so far, we have focused on three countries, which are Turkey, Morocco, and Vietnam. They have a good supply of skilled mechanics and a reasonably well-functioning regulatory framework with Germany, making it easier for them to work in Germany. We look quite optimistic about those programs. Particularly, Turkey is obviously, from a language point of view in Germany, easier to assimilate into the workshop. We have a lot of Turkish people working or Turkish-speaking people working for us already.
These are some of the measures we do. I mean, obviously, considering the importance of the success of this recruitment for our aftermarket business, we follow this up in the same way as we follow our parts sales and ordering take on trucks every week. Where do we stand? How do we do? How many do we have in the pipeline? How many interviews have we done, etc., etc.? This is extremely high up on the agenda. Again, it's a general problem in Europe, actually, and notably so in Germany. There is a fight for this type of talent, and we need to be strong to get the best in here. It's good to say, I mean, it might be a positive problem. We're lacking, the demand is there, but we can't really fulfill the demand because of lack of people.
We just need to become better at recruiting good skilled people. It would have been worse if it was the other way around. The demand is there. That's the most important thing.
Yeah. That makes sense. Thank you for that elaborate answer. You broke up a bit, but if I interpret you correctly, I mean, I guess what I'm trying to understand is, do you think that it could potentially be a constraint to growth in the coming quarters to kind of continue the solid in the aftermarket business in Germany owing to this? It is already a constraining factor for our sales in the aftermarket.
Yes, absolutely. We can sell more if we have skilled mechanics. That's why it's so extremely important that we quickly can attract skilled mechanics that can start working from day one.
At the same time, obviously, as we need to continue our apprenticeship program and build for the future. It is a mix of things that we need to do. Clearly, this is one of the main constraining factors for growing our aftermarket business. Again, it is good to see that we have demand, and now we just need to make sure that we can fulfill it in a good way.
Okay. Thank you. I think finally, on sort of the gross margin in Germany, it is clear that, of course, this is quite affected by this quarter specifically and sort of the lower price points. If you could kind of help us understand a bridge to a more normalized gross margin and the timing impact of this, I mean, should we see this normalize already now in Q1, would you think?
Or will there be a few quarters of still quite suppressed gross margin? If you could help us understand that a bit more.
Yeah. Thank you, Anders. I think, as you know, I mean, we do not give guidance, so I cannot sort of give you anything specific. Maybe, I mean, in terms of how to think about this and interpret the results we release, I would say if we look at Q4, you are absolutely right. I mean, in that quarter, we have a big volume of trucks coming out, I mean, 90. Year- on- year, in our case, an increase. A lot of those are the ones that we did adjustments in terms of the value on our balance sheet in Q3.
Maybe a bit hint, at least, that we took another 13 now on trucks that still remain in our balance sheet, and they will need to come out. We also say that it is our strategy to really make our balance sheet more efficient as quickly as possible. With those trucks we had remained that we took an adjustment on at the end of last year, our aim is to get them out as quickly as possible in the beginning of this year. Not sure if that helps you, Anders, but I hope so. Maybe just going back to your previous question on the aftermarket, I mean, first thing to say is, I mean, I know you're. Again, if you compare year- on- year, then you have the effect of one month of December versus three months this year.
Quarter on quarter, yes, there is some decline there. I think there are sort of some temporary customer and seasonal factors there. I do not think it is indicative of anything. I mean, we did have, as we said also in the beginning of the fourth quarter, a bit more caution and uncertainty in the business around the elections. I think towards year-end, we were through that effect, so to say.
Yes. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that because I was just looking at the numbers. It was SEK 270 million-SEK 275 million in Q2 and Q3, and now this quarter, some SEK 235 million. I just wanted to clarify that, but really appreciate it.
Okay. That is all from my end. Thank you, Lars and Erik. Take care.
Thank you very much, Anders.
There are no more questions at this time.
I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.
I think maybe I hope we are still online. Questions from the audience. Lars, we have a question with regards to sustainable transport solutions in Germany, if it is up and running and if there is a pilot project going there. Anything you can comment on that? The pilot project is still not up and running. We are in the preparatory phases for making that happen. We will let you know when we have that rolling. It looks promising, but we have not still started. We continue to develop also our electric rental business, and that is developing well as we write in the CEO comment of the report.
Another question is with regards to if there are any plans to introduce new product lines or brands to RAT's portfolio, specifically forestry logging, maybe. The question in the email says.
This is one cornerstone, actually, of our strategy, and that is that we should be able to leverage on the network that we have in the countries where we are operating to add then complementary products to what we have already. In the U.S., particularly, then we have quite a big portfolio already of brands for different assignments, if I put it that way. It is not only Volvo. Volvo is the biggest one. We clearly want to develop that further in a smart way. We see opportunities to grow our product portfolio in the United States, definitely.
We just need to be very smart about it and make sure that we do not lose focus on what we have. We need to, it is a big responsibility to take on brands. We need to perform, and it should be profitable. Yes, indeed, there is potential to grow not only geographically in the United States, but also within the territory we have to expand our product portfolio.
Thank you very much, Lars. I do not see any more questions online at this point. If there are no more questions from the audience, I would pass back the word to the host of the call.
There are no more questions at this time.
If there are no more questions, then we thank you very much for your interest in Ferronordic and encourage you, if you do have follow-up questions, you can reach out to Investor Relations at that email or call me at Ferronordic after this call as well. Thank you very much for your interest, and goodbye.
Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye.