Welcome to the Green Landscaping Group Q3 Presentation 2025. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode. During the question- and- answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Johan Nordström, and CFO, Markus Holmström. Please begin your meeting.
Thank you, and welcome to today's earnings call. As mentioned, my name is Johan Nordström. I'm the Managing Director for the company, and I'm also joined by our CFO, Markus Holmström, as mentioned. He will take care of the financial section of this presentation. Let me tell you about our most recent performance and put that into context. All in all, for the third quarter of 2025, we believe that we delivered reasonably well in the third quarter, in particular given the market headwinds. However, if you look upon the results, they do differ quite a bit between our segments. In particular, Sweden and Norway, who faced the toughest market conditions, did struggle to meet our expectations. On the contrary, Other Europe, and that is Finland, Lithuania, and Germany, continued to outperform and delivered a very strong set of results.
We have also, in the meantime, invested in two good companies so far this year, and that has taken us halfway to our ambition of acquiring SEK 80 million-SEK 100 million of EBITDA for the full year of 2025. This ambition remains valid for the remainder of the year. We have also renewed and extended our bank loans during the last few months, and together with the bonds that were issued in May, we have effectively secured our financing for the coming years on, I would say, very good terms. That's to frame in the performance. Let's dive into the presentation. Let's move on to the slides here. Yes, an overview of the company per se, the Green Landscaping Group. We are, I would say, the leading landscaping company in Europe for ground maintenance and the landscaping industry.
There are three headlines I would like to go through there, and that is that we are active in a very attractive market. What do we mean by that? It's a very large market to begin with. It enables us to choose what type of services we would like to provide, what type of customers we would like to have, and so forth. That is a strength that we are not in a niche. We are in a broad market. Of course, it's a stable market, and even now we are facing market headwinds. There's a great stability, so there is still an attractive market out there, even though it's, I would say, more competitive than usual. This market is also supported by, I would like to highlight, two mega or big market trends, and that is the urbanization and the environmental.
We do seek to be in those parts of the market that benefit from those two mega trends. In terms of our strategy about applying the right business model, we have learned since many years that being close to the customer is really the way to go forward. That means that we have a delegated responsibility, and that is when we talk about decentralization, it's about delegating the responsibility and the authority to people who are close to the market, close to the customers, and close to the people who provide the services. The upside is, of course, that we are agile and that we are more profitable than many of our competitors as we can provide a better service to the customer and getting paid for it. The last item is about the M&A strategy, as we are an active company who chooses to invest in other companies.
We have been active for a long time, meaning that we have a long experience. We really know what we are looking for, and also we know how to take care and improve the companies. I think that's a critical part on the M&A story. It's not so much about finding the companies, even though that is very important. It's even more important on how you take care of the companies, meaning how do you do the onboarding and how do we develop the company to be even better once they are a big part of the group. Also, to mention that we do have solid pipelines of companies that we are in communication with. I think those were the three headlines we had on who we are. Now, to sum up for the rolling 12 months, our revenue is pretty much unchanged.
It amounted to SEK 6.2 billion versus SEK 6.35 billion. Organically, we are down by 9%, while acquisitions contributed to 9%. We have to keep in mind here for the rolling 12 months, we have the first quarter that was basically a very weak quarter for us, given that we didn't have any winter activities or hardly any winter activities, I would say, in Sweden and in Norway. We started out the year, I would say, in a kind of a tough way. Of course, we have the market headwinds, and that's why we are basically trapped on the net sales side. Profit-wise, we decreased by 12%, SEK 463 million. That means we have an EBITDA margin right now for the rolling 12 months at 7.5% versus 8.4% a year ago. I think that's kind of the telling for the story.
If I look upon the revenue, it's kind of a slow development, I would say, for this year, while we lost 1% in terms of the profit margin. I think that's kind of a solid performance, even though I'm not happy with the performance. If I look upon it from a macro perspective, that's where we are, and I think that's an okay performance. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to SEK 390 million, slightly down compared to the previous year. Of course, for the last 12 months, we have completed five investments in other companies. Now, moving into the third quarter, we can see that net sales increased by 4% to SEK 1.6 billion. Organically, we actually had a - 3% in the quarter. From that perspective, I think we were doing okay, while we saw that we were down on EBITDA by 12% to SEK 140 million.
You have to bear in mind here that we typically don't work with adjusted EBITDA. We did adjust for a project write-down in Norway to the tune of SEK 21 million. If I add that one back to SEK 135 million, that actually put us back on where we should have been under normal circumstances. From that perspective, EBITDA at SEK 140 million gave us a margin of 7.1%. We have the cash flow of SEK 47 million. That one came in, I would say, slightly lower than our expectations. The third quarter is a strong quarter from a cash flow perspective. It's basically the fourth and the third quarter that are strong cash flow quarters, but it's on the weak side, I agree, on the cash flow. That gives us a financial leverage at 3.0x versus 2.7x.
As we move forward, we will see a natural deleverage in the fourth quarter. Also, as I did mention, we did have the new finance agreement in place in October 2025. We completed one investment in the third quarter, and we confirm our ambition to invest about SEK 80 million-SEK 100 million for the full year effect of 2025. Long-term performance, we are a high, I would say, fast-growing company and have been growing quite significantly during the course of the years. Also, we have a resilience in adverse market conditions. If I look upon the year 2025, I would say that this is a year where we do not see that high growth. Organically, we are down while we are adding companies. The strategic growth is working while the market headwinds are actually negatively contributing. That's basically why we are flat on the growth side as a company.
Coming back to the profit margin, we are at 7.5% versus 8.4%. I would say that given the market conditions with the Q1 performance without winter and the headwinds in Norway and Sweden, I'm not overly happy with the 7.5%. On the other hand, it's one unit of a percent down, so it's still a stable performance. I think that proves that we are working in a stable environment. Even though we are facing a lot of headwind, I think the performance is, given the circumstances, I would say okay in terms of profitability and cash flow. Looking upon Sweden, moving into that one, there we see that we are down quite significantly by 40%. There are two reasons for that we are shrinking in Sweden. Number one is, of course, the headwind in the market. The other thing is also that we are closing down unprofitable businesses.
Those two items together are the ones that are accruing to 14% down on the net sales. Of course, the EBITDA is down by 39%, and that is a significant number. That is also with the conjunction we have with the market condition as well as cost for closing down the companies that are not performing. As a whole for Sweden, when I look upon it, even though the numbers are bad, I agree. I think we have turned a corner on Sweden. For the coming, not so much for the fourth quarter, but coming into the year of 2026, we see a significant upside in Sweden, and we do expect a significant both recovery and that we should actually succeed or surpass the profit margins level we have shown historically in Sweden.
It's actually looking good that we finally have turned a corner in Sweden, and I'm looking forward to the performance in the coming year to show the numbers in Sweden. That is actually looking quite good. Moving on to Norway, and we look upon the rolling 12 months there. Given the conditions again, they are actually keeping it together revenue-wise in a very good way in Norway. They are keeping up the volume. However, it comes with a price, and that is the profit margins. We are getting the work, but it's a highly competitive environment in Norway. We are keeping the revenue at, I would say, a good level, while we are doing this by lowering the prices. By that, we are sacrificing our profit margins in order to keep up the volume.
The net sales achieved in Norway was SEK 2.467 million, where you had an organic negative contribution of 7%, while we had one acquisition, if I remember correctly, that contributes with 5%. As I did mention, we have a significant decrease in profitability by 40%. That's quite a big swing, and that's to a large extent the market conditions that we have in Norway right now. Moving on to the third quarter performance, we saw that we only shrank by 1%. Again, we are keeping the revenue high, while we had a significant drop of 75% on the profit. That is two reasons for it. It's the challenging market conditions, as I did mention. Also, we made one project write-down. Actually, it was more than one project per se, but it's in one company.
It's an isolated event in one of our bigger entities in Norway, where we, in the beginning of the year, had a change of the Managing Director, and later on, we changed the CFO. As they started to look into the company, they were not happy with the performance or the way the projects were accrued for. That led us to a project write-down to the tune of SEK 21 million that we actually went for in the third quarter this year. From that perspective, it's a significant write-down, but it's a one-off in Norway. Moving on to other Europe. For the rolling 12 months in other Europe, we have a significant increase of close to 50%. There we achieved almost SEK 1.3 billion. They were fast-growing. They have an organic growth of 2%, while their acquired growth was 48%.
There's both organic as well as strategic growth in that market. Of course, we had an even higher increase in profitability by 52%. That led us to a margin of 19.8%. I would say it's a fantastic performance in that region. That is Finland, Lithuania, and stable entities. We can see that Finland is since three quarters, I believe, on a very positive trend. I'm happy to see that one. Lithuania continues to perform in a very good way. We have a stable performance of our entities in Germany. Again, looking upon the third quarter performance, we saw that we had a growth of 35% in the quarter, and we had an EBITDA increase to SEK 96 million. They actually delivered a stellar performance of 22.7% EBITDA margin in that region. That is really working for us.
To the last slide here, we do welcome Tessmer & Sohn, who is a company that we acquired a while back. They operate in Hanover, and it's kind of a classic company in terms of what we are doing. They're offering landscaping, earthwork, and drainage services. They have a revenue of about EUR 16 million, and they do that with about 45 employees. We do welcome Tessmer & Sohn into the group of Green Landscaping companies. By that, I hand over to Markus to go through in more detail on the financial side. Welcome, Markus.
Perfect. Thank you, Johan. I will cover the main financials. Moving into the quarter, we can see that in Q3, we had a net sales of SEK 1.6 billion, concluding our rolling 12 months to SEK 6.2 billion. As Johan mentioned, our strategic acquisition compensated for the negative organic growth we have had during rolling 12 months. From that perspective, we've been flat. On an EBITDA margin perspective in the quarter, we delivered SEK 140 million, which was lower than last year. We must have in mind that we then absorbed this project write-down of SEK 21 million from one subsidiary in Norway. Adjusting for that, EBITDA would have been SEK 135 million, which is slightly exceeding last year. Doing the same calculation to an adjusted EBITDA margin would be roughly in line with last year on that level.
I will cover cash flow in more detail in the upcoming slides, but we conclude that operating activities contributed with SEK 47 million, which was slightly weaker than we had expected. We foresee that it will come back to us in Q4. Financial leverage increased sequentially to 3.0 x. The order backlog amounted to SEK 7.4 billion, which was lower than last year. We've seen it for a few quarters now, and the decline was particularly noticeable in Norway and to a lesser extent in Sweden, while other regions were more stable. It is also, as we always say, important to note that the order backlog fluctuates between quarters, so it should not be viewed as a short-term leading indicator. Looking at our earnings per share in Q3, it declined 42% to SEK 0.56 compared to SEK 0.96 last year.
The drivers behind that were the lower profits delivered from operation, but we also had last year positive net currency effects in our financial items that impacted that year positively. Moving to cash flow, in line with seasonality, our cash flow turned sequentially positive now in Q3, but it was slightly behind what we had expected. That was mainly due to the working capital increased by SEK 71 million compared to SEK 25 million during last year. This will come back to us during Q4, and we have a high focus on this conversion rate. Rolling 12 months cash flow came in slightly below last year at SEK 390 million compared to SEK 399 million. Working capital development and cash flow generation continue, as always, to be a high focus area for us. We expect the cash flow to be strengthened in the fourth quarter in line with normal seasonality.
Looking at the quarter's cash flow bridge, as mentioned, operating activities contributed with positively SEK 47 million. We made one acquisition impacting cash flow negatively of SEK 77 million. We had CapEx and lease amortization of minus SEK 73 million. The net difference of new loans and debt repaid was plus SEK 50 million, concluding our cash position negative for the period at SEK 53 million. Looking at financial leverage and financial position, financial net debt increased to SEK 2.5 billion, which was sequentially roughly SEK 100 million higher than in Q2, driven by working capital and investment activities, as we could see in the previous slide. Leverage increased sequentially from 2.9x to 3.0x, which is temporarily above our financial target. However, we maintain sufficient headroom to meet our financial confidence in our funding agreements.
As we enter Q4, which is usually our strongest cash flow quarter, we have a high focus to deliver upon that seasonality. The loan maturity overview has been updated since the last quarter. Following the end of the third quarter, we successfully renewed our bank loans in line with our long-term plan as they were maturing in 2026. Together with the bond issued during the second quarter, we have now secured and broadened our financing base for the coming years. The new loan terms were significantly more favorable than previous ones, which will help us to reduce interest costs going forward. This is not only strengthening our financial position, it's also sending a clear signal that the credit market has a strong confidence in us. The concluding slide on my end was reviewing our financial targets.
We can see, as both Johan mentioned and I mentioned, we have a financial target of 10% of total growth. In light of the market headwind we have faced during this year, we are actually on flat despite us continuing on the strategic acquisitions. The EBITDA margin, we came in at 7.5% rolling 12 months perspective, which for us is, of course, below our financial target. Once again, it's for us a testament of that our business model has the margin resilience we foresee in tough market conditions. Looking at financial leverage, which is at 3.0 x and temporarily above the financial target. As expected, we should come down towards the financial target at the end of the year if we follow the normal seasonality. We have a fourth financial target of distributing dividends.
In line with the previous year, the AGM decided that we should not distribute any dividends for the fiscal year of 2024. With that, I hand back to you, Johan.
Okay. Thank you, Markus. That was quick. Yes, to sum it up here, I think it has been a challenging year for 2025. As Markus said, I believe we are a resilient company because if you look upon the profit margin, the EBITDA at 7.4% versus the 8.4% that we compare with. Given the market conditions, I think it's a solid performance, even though I'm not happy with the performance per se. It is a soft market this year or tough market conditions. Seeing that we are at a profit margin at 7.4%, I'm still happy with the performance, even though I'm not happy with the number, to sum it up. I think that's pretty much where we are. By that, we move over to the part where we open up for the Q&A session. We hand it back to the operator to open up questions. Thank you.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad.
Sorry, there was a problem with the AI here. The first question comes from [Johnny Yin] from SEB. Please.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon, Johan and Markus. A couple of questions from my side. I want to start off to come back a little bit to the project write-down you had in the quarter of SEK 21 million. I think I lost you a little bit there, but could you maybe elaborate what happened there? Maybe more importantly, do you see any more similar projects in the books that risk to be written down ahead? That's my first question.
Thank you for the question. I was about to say welcome to the club. I think that's the first time we are in communication here. The project is from one of the bigger companies we have in Norway, who had been on a positive trend profit-wise. I was kind of happy with that one.
As we replaced the Managing Director as well as the CFO in that company, they started to look upon the project and the valuation of how we have valued that project. They weren't happy with how that had been done. That actually goes back into the previous years as well. We went into a thorough analysis on that particular company on how it was accrued for profit and so forth. We ended up with taking a conservative look upon what's going on there. That led us to reduce the project profits in the current projects they had and be more conservative going forward into the future. That's the reason for it. It's one company where we had a new management in place who went through the order books and the current project they had and decided there was a need to do that write-down.
We also have to keep in mind that we do have our auditors and everybody else involved in this one. We took a conservative view and did the write-down that is needed to the best of our knowledge at this point in time in that particular company. You don't see any more risk that further project will be write-down ahead? No, we did the analysis. Of course, we have 50+ companies within the group. This is one company. I'm not saying there's a risk in other companies. I'm saying that we have a conservative view on it, and there's no risk of having a follow-up or you should have any consequences in other companies as well. This is one company where this occurred to us when we replaced management, and we took the consequences of it and did the write-down. We are moving forward for the next quarter.
Okay.
Yeah. Okay. We'll see. Speaking of the order book, how is the general margin quality now, would you say, in the order book, particularly if we go into Sweden and Norway, as organic growth seems to stabilize there, but margins continue to decline? How should we view on the margin going forward?
I think that it's a tough question. Of course, if I look upon the market, and we typically don't disclose too much information about looking into the future there, it's kind of common knowledge, I would say, that there's a slight optimistic view on the development in Sweden as a general remark. I think, given what I hear from our Managing Directors in Sweden, we concur that they are much more positive to what's going on in the marketplace at this point in time, meaning that there are more projects to bid on.
To some extent, I won't say it's less competition, but if there are more projects, then of course that will have a positive effect on the quoted margins. If you have an order book that you have won when the market was competitive, it will take some time before you will see the increased profitability in the new projects coming into place. From my perspective, when I look for Sweden in the fourth quarter, it might be a slight upside, but you have to work through the order book you have until you will actually see, let's say, a significant uptake on the profit margin. I foresee Sweden being more or less equal moving into the fourth quarter. It won't be an immediate effect. I have a slightly more conservative view on Norway. I don't see the same market development as I see in Sweden.
From my perspective, when I make my plans or our plans, I would say for the coming year, I don't see any big change in Norway. There's tough market conditions, and I don't see margins changing. I will see that the margins that we are currently winning at, that we will continue to do that until further on in Norway. I'm not forecasting any change in Norway at this point in time, and I don't have the signs of anything going on. In terms of Finland, I think it's actually our performance in Finland that makes us more profitable. There we are on an improving profit margin. Lithuania continues to outperform, and so does Germany. All in all, I'm slightly positive to Sweden. I'm very positive to the rest of Europe, so to say, and I have a conservative view on Norway.
What is driving the weakness in Norway, would you say? It sounds that it could be a little bit... Is it a structural shift that you see now, or what part of your business is driving this weakness, would you say?
You have two factors. We had a tough start of the year because in Norway, we have a snow dependency to begin with in Norway. We have to keep that in mind. That gave us a very weak start of the year, and we are still struggling with that one because we have companies like Hooglund, Machine Lift, and those companies. They are road clearing companies. They remove snow during the winter. That's what they do. If we don't have winter, it's a tough situation for them. They started out in a tough marketplace to begin with. The market per se in Norway is quite competitive. You have a lot of bankruptcies going on. There's no risk of any of our companies going into bankruptcy. It's very well-kept companies. They're a well-run company. They are adapting to the market conditions.
You can clearly see that they are adapting to the market conditions in terms of keeping the revenue decently stable. In order to do so, they have to be more aggressive when they submit the quotations. That hurts the profit margins in Norway. As soon as the market comes back, and this is basically macroeconomic, to the best of my understanding, we haven't seen any change in interest rates and so forth in Norway. I think there's a stability in the market, but it's a very high competitive environment in Norway at this point in time. Now we're on to...
Yeah, I know. Sorry. I understand. We'll see. I have just one final one on the cash flow and maybe tying that to M&A. I think you mentioned in your presentation that cash flow in this quarter came in below your expectations and that you relate that to working capital. Maybe you could elaborate a little bit more what happened here in the quarter that drove this weakness in the cash flow and then tying that to M&A. I mean, your reported leverage is now at 3 x EBITDA, and that is up sequentially compared to Q2. Do you think that cash flow will be strong enough in Q4 here so that you could acquire these SEK 30 million-SEK 50 million in EBITDA this year? That would be helpful.
Yes. I can take the first part of the question maybe.
Yes, as you say, Johan, we were on a weaker end of what we had expected on the working capital conversion in the quarter. However, when we compare to last year, last year was standing out from a seasonal perspective in terms of a reference on how much we usually manage to convert. We are addressing it, and we feel comfortable with the working capital position that we go into the quarter that we will be able to convert it in line with normal seasonality, everything equal. From that perspective, we're having a high focus on it and pushing for a collection out in our subsidiaries. It's basically that simple for us.
Of course, we are monitoring our leverage position, but in light of our confidence on our operational cash flow, of course, 3.0 x is not the levels we want to be at, but everything equal, we will deleverage from this point during Q4. The way we look upon it is actually that we will be able to both start to have a deleverage on the 3.0x and fulfilling our promise on the acquisitions. We can actually do both items in a thorough way during the fourth quarter.
Okay. I understand. That's all from me. Thank you for taking my questions.
Thank you.
Super. Thank you.
The next question comes from Alexander Siljeström from Pareto. Please go ahead.
Hi guys, a follow-up here on the performance in Norway. Just wondering what has driven the sort of sequential margin decline here in Q3 as compared to Q2. I would assume that the contract portfolio is quite similar.
Yeah. From that perspective, Alexander, we feel that the market is tough, and it is a bit tougher from that perspective now in Q3 compared to Q2. Not a significant movement, but we see that as we work through the order book, as Johan said, the new contract going in, we are on another market awarded on a more price-pressured level. That we can see in general in our subsidiaries in light of the performance report. Other than that, it is the project write-down that stands out.
Sorry, this was excluding the project write-down. Maybe just on that as well, you guide for sort of more depressed margins in Norway going forward, and then maybe excluding sort of a Q1. Is it around sort of a 6% level that you see here going forward as well, or what should we sort of account for looking into 2026 for Q3 or Q2 maybe?
Yeah. We don't guide from that perspective in that sense, but we have circumstances this year, which the year began with that we had an abnormal winter demand. Going into Q2, we managed to perform fairly well in light of a tough market. Now what we see is that the tough market impacts us to a more significant extent. What margin levels to expect in next year, I guess we will come back to. For sure, we're pushing for improvement from these levels we are at.
Yeah. You sort of the weakness is mainly explained by landscaping and soft pricing on increased competition. Is that correct in terms of Norway?
Yes. Yes. It's as we said. We started out the year with significantly less winter activities. There has been a high price pressure in the marketplace. I think that's the market we had for 2025 in Norway. The winter, I would say, was very unusual in Norway. That gave us a tough start for the year.
Yeah, for sure. Maybe moving on to Sweden, you seem quite confident on margin improvements heading into 2026. You mentioned a market recovery. Just wondering what else drivers you see here for improved margins.
Of course, we had an impact again on the winter in Sweden as well as in Norway in the first quarter. Also, we have done significant changes in Sweden with closing down companies and profitable businesses and so forth. We have actually made a major turnaround of the Swedish business. When I look into 2026, assuming we will have a somewhat more normal winter activities and that the market is actually slightly improving in Sweden, that leads me to believe that yes, I'm actually quite positive on the development of the margin in Sweden for 2026. I probably have to eat up my hat because of that remark, but that's how I look upon it. I see that the market is recovering. I assume we will have more normal winter activities, and we don't have the burden of the companies who are losing money.
I'm positive to what's going to happen in Sweden for next year.
That's encouraging. Maybe just on Sweden in Q4, again, it seems quite muted. If I remember correctly, you had sort of one-offs that weren't disclosed, but I think were around maybe SEK 20 million in Sweden in terms of credit losses and write-downs. Don't you see the positive effect on that in Q4, or do you see sort of an organic drag offsetting that in Q4?
Sorry, I really don't understand the question. Can you clarify it for me?
Sorry. In terms of the Q4 performance last year in Sweden, I think you had some one-offs of maybe SEK 20 million. You guided for a sort of muted performance here in Q4 in Sweden. Just wondering if you see a continued organic drag here in Q4.
Yeah, we had a few one-off items in Q4 last year, Alexander. As you mentioned, it was a credit loss in terms of SEK 5 million, and then also a project-related write-down, roughly SEK 5 million. On top of that, we now see that we still will be affected by these activities that we close down, these loss-making businesses that we will go clear out from with the end of this year. We still have some losses to absorb from those ones. In terms of that, we see that the organic growth will sequentially improve during Q4 compared to Q3.
Okay. Have you done any sort of major exits here in Sweden during this quarter that will affect Q4 negatively?
Not impact negatively from that perspective, as you mentioned it. Of course, these businesses that we decided to close down due to their position and that they were loss-making, we have absorbed that during the year. That is one of the effects Johan refers to when we look into 2026 that will positively contribute. The effect in Q4 will be, compared to last year, minor, but we will have the positive in 2026.
Okay. That's clear. Maybe then a last one from my side, just looking at the order book, I think it was down 7% here. Can you share some color on that and what's driving that decrease and how should we look upon it?
Yeah, the sequential decrease of the order backlog is mainly related to Norway. Even if we say that we don't use the order backlog as a short-term leading indicator, it confirms that the market descriptions that we tell you here in the call reflect also how the development of the order backlog has been in the quarter. It's fairly stable in all regions, except that we are minorly down in Sweden, and the residual adjustment is actually in Norway.
Okay. That's very helpful. That's it for me. Thanks.
Thank you, Alexander.
The next question comes from Carl Johan Bonnevier from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon, Johan, and thank you for all the additional color already given. Just to pick your brain a little, Johan, on the Norwegian development further, you obviously have gone through what I would call a little more of a surgical procedure to get Sweden to becoming a positive outlook into 2026. Do you feel that there is a need for doing something similar in Norway?
Hello Carl Johan, and thank you very much for the question to begin with. The starting point of Sweden is to a large extent the legacy units of what was Green Landscaping at the time and also Svensk Markservice Those two entities had a combined revenue of roughly SEK 1.6, SEK 1.7 billion. At the time, they were loss-making entities. We have been spending a long time getting those companies into shape, and finally, we're actually seeing that those companies are starting to perform in a very good way. I think that's the starting point. It's a long history of how those companies were centralized and then became decentralized, and then we added companies by acquisitions to it. That was early on, and perhaps we did acquire one or two companies that we shouldn't have done in the beginning of our, let's say, consolidation journey or roll-up journey.
Norway is, from that perspective, totally different. Norway was, even though early on in our acquisition strategy, so to say, that we started to buy companies, we had actually acquired, I don't know how many, but at least 10 companies or 15 companies before we actually entered into Norway. We were in a much better shape in terms of what we're looking for in terms of type of companies, how do we take care of the companies. I would say that the quality of the companies, now my Swedish colleague is going to be quite mad, but the quality of the companies that we have in Norway had a totally different starting point. We have quality companies in Norway. The deep-rooted difficulties that we have had in Sweden, that we do not have in Norway.
Right now, the situation in Norway in the quality of the company or the companies, as we have, these are well-run entities with very good entrepreneurs who are actually doing whatever they can to perform in a very tough market situation. From that perspective, I don't see us having to do that type of work, as you are referring to, where we have to be a little more heavy-handed, if you understand what we did in Sweden. There's no need of doing that in Norway because we are managing the companies, even though it's a tough market in a good way. I do expect our entrepreneurs in Norway that as the market returns and becomes more healthy, we will actually see significant improvements going back to the old performance they had in Norway. I think the starting points are quite different.
There's no need to do the same type of, let's use the word, heavy-handed as we did in Sweden. We have a much better starting point in Norway than we had in Sweden.
It makes total sense. On that subject, I guess that makes you more positive towards the local management teams in Norway, maybe chasing volumes at lower price points to keep market positions at this stage to basically hard hibernate until the market recovers. Is that a good way of looking at it?
I think you can look upon it from two ways. What I clearly see in Sweden is that given the history we have and a very high focus on cash flow and profit margin in order to increase that in Sweden, I think several of our Swedish entities are focusing on cash flow and profit margins and not so much on the revenue side. While our colleagues in Norway are coming from a position where they have high profit margins and a high revenue, when the market becomes difficult, they are winning contracts at slower margin. Do I think that's a good strategy? I think it's to some extent okay, but there's a danger to it because you're actually adding risk to it as you are lowering the margins.
The key question is that if you have lowered your margins, you have to make quite certain that when the market recovers, you're actually recovering your margins and not the revenue. You're not getting used to, if you take a company who has gone from 15%- 7% profit margin in order to win the contracts, and all of a sudden when the market recovers, should they keep the 7% or are they happy at 10%? No, we have to move back to the 15% where we're coming from. I think that would be the challenge in Norway as the market is going to recover. We have to be quite focused on recovering the margin that we had before in Norway. There's no doubt in my mind that the majority of the entrepreneurs are quite aware of this, and they would execute accordingly.
There will be a lag, that's my experience anyway, that you will see that the market is recovering, you will see that the revenue is recovering, and then you will see that the profit margins will take a little bit longer time before they recover and come back to where they were. We are aware of the situation. We are in communication with them. We have a heavy focus from the operational team in Norway. They're spending a lot of time with our... They're actually spending more time in Norway these days than they do in Sweden. From that perspective, we are focusing on that subject. As soon as the market is going to recover, of course we're going to recover the profit margin as well. That's my take on it.
Sounds logical, and it's going to be an interesting journey to follow. On the back of short-term demand opportunities in Norway, you had a hope earlier in the year that maybe the low snow removal volumes would allow budgets to be replenished maybe in other parts of your business coming after the end of the year. Have you seen any of those kinds of projects, or is that a hope that we shouldn't put much into at this stage?
Sorry to say, I would be careful doing that given the market conditions.
Sounds logical. One final from me, looking at your keeping the acquisition kind of range for SEK 50 million-SEK 80 million in contribution and EBITDA for the full year. I guess that's the speed of it. Looking at what has happened here so far in this year, have you held back on transactions for some reason, maybe out of the cash flow perspective, financial leverage, and then getting the new credit lines in order, and maybe then having bigger opportunities in those credit lines to do acquisitions on top of the gearing level you have at this stage? Have you, in the transactions you've been involved in or looked at, been outbid by somebody else, or any change in the dynamics on that side?
No, I think that to be honest here, the major competitors are not in a position to do any acquisitions at this point in time. We are actually one of the few companies who continues to acquire at this point in time. Anything else equal, I would say that we are in a good position on doing it. I'm not happy with the leverage that is too high, so that one needs to come down. It will come down organically, but I will also have the capacity to do investments. We are not holding back. However, given the situation where the market is tough and there's less competition, because there is less competition on the acquisition side, we are really not holding back. We have a plan on how much we should acquire and what type of companies we should acquire.
In terms of the quality, I think we are actually increasing the quality of the companies that we choose to invest in. Anything else, we are becoming more picky in this market situation. That actually means that we are buying more quality companies. The price situation or the price competitiveness, if I go back three, four years in time, we were outbid by 50%- 100%, and those days are gone. Now, if anything else, I'm not saying you won't see a significant decrease in prices, but the competition in terms of acquiring companies is actually lower today than it was a couple of years ago or significantly lower, I would like to say. The quality has gone up, and we are paying approximately the same amount of money as we did in those days.
We are managing the debt level quite carefully or the leverage quite carefully, and we have a well-developed pipeline. We never have had such a good pipeline of companies as we have today. We are having a plan, and we are actually executing very close to our plan. That perspective of the business works very well for us.
Sounds very good. You're summing it up very well, Johan. Good luck on executing it out there and all the best.
Perfect. Thank you, Carl Johan.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Okay. Thank you everybody for listening in, and thank you for the questions that we did receive during this call. By that, it concludes the presentation. Thank you.
Thank you all.