Welcome to the Green Landscaping Group Q1 presentation for 2023. During the questions- and- answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing Star five on their telephone keypad. I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Johan Nordström, and CFO, Carl-Fredrik Meijer. Please begin your meeting.
Good morning to you all, welcome to this conference, where we will present the Q1 numbers, and later on we will open up for questions. Hopefully, we can have a good discussion. Presenting today, as mentioned, and as always, it's myself, Johan Nordström, and our CFO, Carl-Fredrik Meijer.
Good morning.
Let's begin here. Moving into the presentation. This is just to give you a brief overview of the Green Landscaping Group, and I assume that most of you are familiar with the business. I won't go into too much details here, but as known, we are a leading company in the landscaping service industry, and we emphasize the service part of the business because that's a long contract, no cyclicality, and so forth. We are also the leading consolidator in Europe. There are a few companies out there who are consolidating the market, and we have grown into becoming, I would say, the leading consolidator as we are having the highest pace of acquisitions among the actors in the industry.
The following two points is actually about the decentralization. It's a crucial part of our strategy, and that goes back to being a home for entrepreneurs. We have found out, and we see that being local, close to the customers, having the loyalty of the employees, having long customer relationship, and that is really about having a focus on the local presence. That results in above industry profitability, and also you can grow the companies on the local level and still maintaining the profit. It's a big market out there, and if you want to grow, you can lower the prices, but then the profit margin suffers. Our strategy enables us to have above industry average profit margins, and at the same time, we are growing organically at a healthy pace.
In terms of numbers for the last 12 months, we have a revenue of SEK 5.2 billion, and we do that with an EBITA margin of 8.3%, which is kind of a good growth rate and a very healthy profit margin given our industry. That's short of the company. Next slide please. Moving into the Q1 of 2023. To begin with, I'm very happy with the performance. It's a very stable and successful quarter to us, so I'm happy to report the numbers that we have continued high growth where sales increased by 43% and we met SEK 1.2 billion in revenue, of which we had an organic growth of 12%. It's a fairly high growth.
It comes from new customers, or new contracts I should say, but also the indexation and the inflation. There's proportion of growth, but there's also a proportion of adjusting for inflation in that numbers. Of course, the remaining part comes from new companies who are coming into the group that amounted to 33% of the growth. EBITA increased by 41%, and that is also quite a sharp increase in profitability here. That amounted to SEK 86 million compared to SEK 61 million previous the quarter a year ago. We also achieved an EBITA margin of 6.9%. We should keep in mind that the Q1, that season is the weakest quarter in this company.
It's the winter season. That means that most of the landscaping and some of the service companies actually have less to do than during the high season when it's actually growing and we can build stuff. We did have some negative mix effect from acquired companies. That's in particular from Norway. I will come back to that one later on when we go into that slide. We could also see that we had a very good contribution from existing businesses, and I would like to emphasize the weaker units we have, in particular in Sweden, which are continuously improving their profit margins and had a very strong first quarter. Given the historical performance of the first quarter, I think that's a tremendous achievement of those companies. The strong cash flow is actually SEK 221 million.
It's really impressive to see that when the profit margins are coming up, the amount of cash that we are generating from the business. Having an 8%-9% EBITA, which we are right now, that really gives us a very strong cash flow given the service industry and the low need for capital in the business. Also in the period, we have secured an additional financing. I believe Carl-Fredrik gonna come back to that one. Then we have a slight change in the segment reporting structure, where we have consolidated the Sweden regions into one region. We are reporting now out of Norway, Sweden, and then we have Finland. Those are the three segments we are reporting at this point of time.
Next slide, please. Looking upon the revenue here, and as we saw we are growing by, I would say quite hefty pace of 43%, where of the organic proportion was 12%. As mentioned, that's part inflation, part new contracts. And we are, as you can see from the profitability perspective, adjusting the prices according to the inflation, so we can keep the profit margins we have. For the last 12 months, that's on the right-hand side there, we can see that we are growing by 53% for the last 12 months. That's again a fairly high growth rate and a slightly lower organic with 11%. Still it's quite hefty growth rate that we have in the company. Next slide, please.
The order backlog, being in the service industry and having a high percentage, I would say a very high percentage or proportion of our business into the public sectors and long-term contracts, means that we have a very good visibility what would happen into the future. Having a strong order book enables us to basically plan ahead and see what's going on in the market. Right now we have, the order book is 8.1 billion SEK, and that one is growing by 41%. It pretty much grows in line with the growth rate we have. We'd be probably...
If you have a question whether or not we have inflation adjusted the order book, I think I'll probably have a question or the answer to that one, because that what we have discussed whether or not that has taken place. To the best of our knowledge, that is not the case. It's basically the old pre-inflation numbers that we have in the order book. As those contracts are being delivered to the customers, then the inflation will take into effect. That's for the order book. Moving on to next slide again. As can be seen, we have a steady increase of EBITA in absolute numbers and also from a margin perspective.
EBITA is growing in the quarter by a very high 41%, where the existing business contributed with 11% and the remaining part comes from the acquired businesses. On the right-hand side, we also again can see that there's a steady improvement over time. As mentioned, we are generating, I would say a significant amount of cash given that we right now have an EBITA margin of 8.3%. Being able to grow generating the cash is a healthy sign for our business. Moving on to next slide, please. Here we have the segment of Sweden, which is the combination of the previous regions we had.
That means that we reach SEK 703 million in revenue, and that's a growth rate of 18%, where 9% of that growth actually comes from organic growth. As been noted, we are not growing that aggressively, I would say, in Sweden on the acquisition side. The contribution is 9% and that's the reason why we do not see that high growth even though an 18% growth rate is still, I would say, quite high growth number. The EBITA. There we achieved SEK 57 million, and that's a growth rate of 33%, significantly over passing the growth rate. That means, as I mentioned, that the companies in Sweden with, I would say, lower margins, are steadily increasing the profit margins.
This is something that we have been talking about for quite a number of years, and I'm happy to see that we are capable of achieving an EBITA margin of 8.1% in the weakest quarter of the year, because the Q1 is a seasonal weak quarter for us. That's a really tremendous achievement of those people who are in charge of those companies. Moving on to next slide. We have Norway. As can be seen, they achieved or we achieved a revenue of SEK 500 million, and that equates to growth rate, which is very high of 85%. We are still growing quite significantly in Norway. They also had a very high organic growth rate with 20%.
Of course, there is an inflation going on there, where they are adjusting the prices, but it's also a very high proportion of organic growth in that region. Then we had some negative effects on the exchange rate, but overall high organic growth and a very high acquired growth that leads to an 85% growth in the total of that market. Looking upon the EBITA margin, they achieved a 7.4% EBITA margin, and that is down from, I would say, a very high 13.5%. The reasons why this one is going down is basically a mixed effect, and that means that we have acquired companies with profit margins, in line with the goal we have, and that is 8%-9% profit margins on acquired companies.
If you acquire quite a number of those companies and you mix them up with higher margin companies, then the overall margin will come down. The second reason is really about what type of companies we have acquired and what type of companies we had previously in Norway. I won't say the mainstay, but several of the companies in Norway previously, they had the high season during the fourth and the first quarter. That means they were road and winter service companies, so they made the absolute mainstay of their money during the winter season. The companies that were added to the group in Norway during last year were landscaping businesses, and that means that they have their high season starting in the second quarter through, I would say, half the fourth quarter, and they have a low season in Q1.
Those are the two mix effects. There's no underlying difficulties or problem in the Norwegian market. It's just a mix effect of adding, I would say, very, very successful and very great and profitable companies to the mix we already have. The mix effect means that the profit margins in Norway come down in the Q1, but it's not due to any other reason at this point of time. It's still, I would say, a very healthy market in Norway. We are growing at a very high pace, and I'm pleased to see the performance of the companies we have in Norway. Even though it might, on the surface, looks like we are coming down, that's not really the case. We are growing, and we have a mix effect to handle. Next slide, please. Moving on to Finland and Baltics.
Again, there we're growing of 354%. That means we are coming from, we started, I believe it was 2 years ago in Finland. This one is really still in a growth phase, so we're growing quite quickly in the market. We have been adding new companies to the group in Finland. We also can see that the organic there they grew by 10%, so they are adjusting the prices for the inflation basically. We're adding new companies to the group. From an EBITA, again, it's a Q1 season, and the absolute majority of the companies in Finland are landscaping companies, and that means they have a low season in the first quarter, and then the business will pick up in the second quarter.
There we had a negative EBITA margin of 9.8%. That is an improvement from the 43% they had the previous year. Worth to mention is the Lithuanian company, that's the Stebulė , that has been off to a very good start. They do have an even pattern of revenue and profitability. They are, I would say, a significant contributor to the improvement of profitability in the first quarter. They have their revenue and profit much more evenly distributed over the year compared to the other companies we have in Finland. We basically see the reverse effect of what we see in Norway when we are adding Stebulė to the group. Otherwise, it's kind of a new market for us.
We're still growing, quite significantly, but the companies per se are doing good in Finland, and we are looking forward to what they will be able to accomplish during the remainder of the year. Next slide, please. By that, I believe I hand it over to our CFO, Carl-Fredrik Meijer.
Thank you, Johan. Going into the financials. As you can see, we had a very strong development across the line. From my perspective, I state the fact or realize that our business model works really well. We had increased revenue of 43%, and that flows through all down to earnings per share. The EBITA increased by 41%. Record strong cash flow, as Johan mentioned. We have an increased return on equity up to 18%, from 16% at year-end. We have a solid order backlog, which is also growing in line with revenue about 40%. Earnings per share increased significantly this quarter, more than doubled. Here it's worth to mention that we had positive impact from foreign exchange changes during this quarter.
That had a sort of strong impact on the earnings per share, and that was because of the Norwegian Crown decreased versus the Swedish Crowns. Our financial leverage is in line with targets. We have a target of being below a 2.5. Given the stability and the long contracts and the strong cash flow generation, we think that between 2 and 3 is quite healthy, as you know, we have talked about. Moving on. Talking about the cash flow, SEK 221 million. I'm going into a bridge of that to describe that in detail soon. The two main positive things were the higher EBITA, of course, but also that we reduced working capital, which is expected during Q1.
The cash amounted to SEK 581 million at year-end. The cash flow bridge. We see that we had SEK 175 million positive change in net working capital during the quarter. This is a seasonal pattern where we have very high activity in Q4, and we close many projects at year-end, and we bill the customer, so we have high accounts receivables during year-end, which then gets paid during Q1. Then we naturally build up the working capital again during Q2 and goes almost all the way to year-end when it comes down again. I think it's worth to mention there that historically, we have had zero to nearly zero defaults on invoices.
When we send an invoice, it gets paid, and that still holds true. It's something we monitor very closely, and we are cautious about our customers being sort of financially healthy. I... Yeah, that's a good thing about being in this business. We spent SEK 37 million on CapEx and other investing activities. We took up new loans of SEK 14 million. We repaid debt of SEK 73 million, which ends with the net cash flow for the period of SEK 124 million. Financial leverage. You see, we deleveraged to 2.2two EBITDA rolling 12 pro forma. This is due to 2 reasons. One is the...
It's the strong cash flow, and it's the decline in working capital, it's also the fact that we have not made any acquisitions during Q1. We were quite, We had quite a number of acquisitions in Q3 and Q4, and 0 in Q1. I'm very happy to see the rate that the leverage is declining at, from record when we were at high 2.7x during end of September. Now it's 2.2x. Loan maturity profile. We have signed an amendment and restatement agreement of our existing facility, which means that we bring in a third party, Svensk Exportkredit, together with DNB and SEB.
We've added the room with SEK 500 million with an possible accordion to that to expand it further. We now have total maturities of SEK 1.8 billion, which matures end of late to 2025, and there's one year extension in the contract. That's very good. We have a lot of room to continue our acquisition journey. Financial targets. We have a growth target of growing 10% per year. We are at a rate of 43% now. We have a target of reaching EBITA margin of 8%, and in the quarter, we were at 6.9%. However, LTM number is 8.3%. We're still in line or actually above the target.
We have a leverage of 2.2x versus not being higher than 2.5, and we have not made any dividend. We have reinvested all the money into growth. Thank you, and over to you, Johan.
Yep. That is just to sum it up that we are quite happy with the performance in the first quarter, and we are off to a very good start where sales is increasing by +40%. We see that the EBITDA and the profitability goes with the growth rate here. Even though it's a seasonally weak quarter, it was a very strong performance. Looking at what will happen during the year of 2023, there are some uncertainties. When we talk to the buess leaders in our organization, we see that for the first, second, and third quarter of this year, the order books and the activity seems to be quite high.
Right now we are keeping an eye on what would happen in the fourth quarter, in particular as we talk about the housing and new construction. Our exposure into that area is limited, but we have to keep a close eye on what will going on. As we are filling up our production capacity, right now, we are Well, typically, we are at, like, a six-month ahead when we sign contracts, and that means that we are right now filling up the capacity for the fourth quarter. There we can see that there are somewhat weak market. That is kind of normal. It has been going on for, I would say, the last six months.
We have had this trend that we know what we're going to do for the coming 3- 6 months. The period above and beyond the 6 months, there are some uncertainties regarding what will happen in the market place. We will just keep on monitoring and if we have to make some adjustments or actions, we will do so. At this point of time, we're kind of just monitoring and see what's going on there. Given the start we have had of the year, I'm quite happy with the performance of the company, and I'm really looking forward to the coming quarters of the year of 2023. We're off to a good start, and it seems like we're gonna have a very good year. I think that's about it. We open up for questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial Star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial Star five again on your telephone keypad.
The next question comes from Karl Bokvist from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning. My first question is just on the latter comments you made there towards the end, Johan, about some uncertainty into Q4. Is there any particular customer group here that's where you see a slight weakness considering the kind of stability in public spending that you reference historically?
Hmm. Thank you, and good morning, Karl. Our exposure to new construction on the average for the housing per se, is limited. If you look upon the mainstay of our business, road and winter services and the green side of the business, there we hardly see any effect. We see some of the buyers are talking about that they have funding or they have to save money and so forth. These are long-term agreements, and from that perspective, we don't see any major risk or that the business should shrink in any way.
On the Landscaping side, we see the effect that some of the companies that were previously in the housing construction market, that they have moved into, and that is kind of natural, but they migrate into the work we are doing in order to secure work as they have less work. The competition have to some degree increased in that segment. Again, you have to have the competence, you have to have the people, you have to have the equipment in order to be able to compete successfully in that market. That's what we have seen so far, is really that the competition have increased to a certain extent. Otherwise, I don't see any major implications or impact on our business from if we're talking about the recession.
Yeah, we just keep watching and see what's going on here, and we'll adjust accordingly. We haven't seen any major negative impact on our business to this date.
What we have seen for the last year or so is that the customers are planning not so far ahead.
Yep
as they did.
Yep.
They wait much closer to project start because of the steep, yeah, the inflation.
That's yeah, that is more the cost side of it.
Yeah.
The inflation have driven the cost up.
Yeah. you can't quote it too far ahead.
Yep
Before the project starts. That's a trend, and that's probably why we see this. The visibility forward is, not as long as it was before.
Understood. Thank you. On that topic when it comes to in-inflation based on what you hear and what you see and the kind of indexation nature of your contracts, do you see that the input side is starting to stabilize somewhat? Also, perhaps if I could add a bit to it, the seasonality in the business, which is, I mean, fully natural, but are there measures you can take within your group companies to kind of stabilize performance to any extent?
For the first I didn't really understand the second part of the question, but for the first part, if we are talking about prices, really steep in terms of increasing. Also we had on top of it, we had a logistic situation that actually made the prices go up even higher because you couldn't even get the parts you needed. We, for instance, are buying stones in some cases from China, and you had the logistic with the freights going up 200%, 300%, 400%. Stone is a kind of cheap commodity, so they wouldn't even ship the stones. We had to get other sources.
That situation we had to deal with. To some extent, we have compensated. We have for the fixed contracts, we talked about a timing effect. That means that our contracts are indexed or adjusted on an annual basis. The date where you adjust that one, those prices are from the effectivity date of the contract, and that is spread out during the course of the year. That actually meant that as inflation began early on a year ago, then we had to carry the burden for the increased cost in those contracts. You saw that we had somewhat weaker margins, I believe in the third quarter, second and third quarter, because there we hadn't had time to index all the contracts.
Now we've almost gone a full cycle by the end of Q1, I would say, or half of Q2, then most of the contracts have been indexed according to the criteria of the contracts. The landscaping business, there you're quoting business, and that's a project business. That means that when you have delivered the project, and our projects are typically, they have a short lifespan. We execute the projects within 3- 6 months from the time we have been awarded the contract. We kind of naturally increase the prices given the prices of commodities and input values.
Yes, we see that prices have leveled out.
Prices have leveled out. We don't see the sharp increases in prices anymore, and we don't see the same. Even though there are still logistical challenges, they are not nearly as bad as they were a year ago. It's easier to control or foresee what's gonna happen when we quote the business today than 12 months ago.
Understood. Thank you. My final question is just on the organic earnings which are growing steadily and are now more or less in line with the organic sales development. I guess given what you comment on, one part being perhaps well-performing units who continue to perform well, but also what you highlight there with the historically, say, the challenges in certain units that they are also improving consistently. My question is really also with the cost inflation aspect to it as well, could we see a potential now in the coming quarters already where your underlying earnings could exceed the organic top line, given what you are doing within the business?
I wish that were the case, but I'm sorry to say, but we don't give that type of forecast. In terms of the improvement, we are referring to the low, I would say the companies that are making less money monthly. That's the case. We do have the red team or the lean team, as we call them. We do have in-house resources. That's a team of 6, 7 persons, spearheaded by Pierre Kowalsky, who is actually working with the companies in order to make them better, professionalize them, and we learn from each other. There's a lot of knowledge sharing going on, best practices going on, and it's a long-term work. We basically never stop. You just keep on improving what you are doing, and that's the mentality they have.
Do we believe that there are still room for improvement in those companies? The answer is a firm yes. There is still a lot of work that can be done. You are never perfect. You just have to keep on going. That's the nature of doing business, that you are improving constantly. We are quite happy to see that we are finally able to see such a good performance. There has been discussions about Stockholm. Those who have been with us for three, four years knows that we have left unprofitable contracts. We have closed down entities. There are a lot of work that we have been doing, in particular in Stockholm region.
Now those companies are showing very good growth rates, they are showing very good profitability, and they are also able to be more offensive given that they are delivering a higher quality with a higher margin. That means they can actually finally start to gain market share as well, because that's not on the top of your agenda when you're not making the profitability numbers, then you're kind of focusing internally. Now they are, so to say, being able to look outside the company and grow. I would expect that we should see a continued improvement in profitability in those companies. I am also expecting that we should see continued growth in those companies as well, which we haven't seen historically.
I think that would be the new, so to say, is that organic growth rates will come up in those entities.
Understood. Thank you. I'll get back in the queue.
Yeah. Thank you for the questions, Karl.
The next question comes from Henrik Jernbeck from SEB. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much. My first question is, want to elaborate a bit on the last caller's questions about the uncertainties on the later half of the year. Is this something that you see in terms of if it's, if this a problem related to Sweden and Norway or Finland, or is it pretty much the same throughout all different geographies?
Good morning, Henrik. That's a good question.
Good morning.
Um.
Uh, or-
I think it's a general view. It's a little bit more pessimistic in Finland maybe. They're more concerned, but I think that's the nature of the business there. I kind of concur that as we have 50 subsidiaries and when we are in constant, we talk with them every second week, and we're having our reviews and stuff like that. That's where we talk to the individual MDs for the business and their outlook. I would say that, as I did mention previously, that for the last 6-9 months, the MDs have kind of been uncertain what will happen beyond the 6-month timeframe because we have the order books.
We see that we have business for the coming 2 quarters. That's the nature of the business. Now I'm referring to the landscaping business. We are not referring to the service or to the winter and road companies. It's only that proportion of the business that do landscaping work where they need to fill up the order book in this way. For the last, I would say 6- 9 months, they have been uncertain about what will happen beyond the six-month timeframe. As each quarter have passed through, they have kind of prolonged. They have been able to fill up the coming quarter, and then they are uncertainties for the next quarter, and then goes another quarter, and they kind of fill up the coming three-month period.
They are rolling the uncertainty, what will happen in the month six to nine, and they have been doing that for close to a year now. I think that's the current situation. I would say the region where we don't hear it as much is perhaps Norway. Otherwise, Sweden and Finland for sure, they are voicing some concern what's gonna happen, but they have been doing so for more than 60 years.
Okay. Thank you. My second question is, you mentioned in the report that you've seen perhaps a bit less competition in the M&A market.
Yep.
Is there anything else you're seeing in the M&A market, perhaps that the price expectations are coming down as well?
In some cases yes, we could, we could believe so. Again, when we are typically in contact or in discussions with companies who are not officially for sale, it's we who actively approach the companies, then we initiate a discussion with them. The majority of the acquisitions we do are not structured processes. We are sole buyers. There, I would say that the entrepreneurs who are joining forces with Green, they have an expectation of the value of the value of their company. Given the competition, if there's less room for competition, that really doesn't have that big impact on their expectations of the value of their business. If we cannot meet the expectation, it's kind of a no deal.
That means they have too high expectation on the value of the companies, or if it's reasonable, then we can make a deal. For the proportion where you are in a structured process, there perhaps you could see that there potentially could be somewhat lower competition, but there are still competition out there in the market. From that perspective, even though there are companies out there who has been quite aggressive historically and are now not active in the market, there are still companies out there who are active in the acquisition market, meaning we still have competition. I don't see any major changes in the competitive landscape in terms of acquiring companies.
Okay. Thank you. That's all from me. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much, Henrik.
The next question comes from Alexander Siljeström from Pareto. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Most of my questions has been answered, but I was just thinking about the organic growth. If you could give the split between sort of new business won and price increases. Is that around 50/50, or is it a tilt towards price increases?
That's a Carl- Freddy question.
Thank you. No, really, we can't. Somewhere-
Yeah
... sort of, I'd say the inflation part is, 5%+.
Yeah
... and the other part is winning new business and gaining market share, et cetera.
Yeah.
Q1 is also a bit, dependent, of course, on the winter activities and stuff like that.
Yeah. There are activities going under the surface, so to say. You have companies who are performing very well. You have some companies who are not that performant. You have companies who had a bad Q1 previous year, all of a sudden they are coming back and they are looking good on the paper. It's complex to split between the inflation. The inflation is, I would say my estimate, take it for what it is that the inflation or the adjustment of inflation is a fairly significant part of the organic growth rate in the business at this point. We have a few companies who have been doing very well in gaining new businesses. The mainstay of the business is inflation with a minor influx of new business.
I mean, we know that the market is growing by 4%-6% per year.
Yeah.
That's a long-term trend.
Yeah.
I think that's still... You add the inflation upon that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I will go with that number as well, that we are growing in line with market.
Yeah.
Then the rest is, inflation.
Yeah.
Indexation, if you like.
Yeah. Okay. That's very clear. The price adjustments then I guess will sort of sequentially start to taper off here in Q3 maybe. Is that the sense that you are, that you have as well?
Well, it's difficult to speculate in. Yeah, if the cost doesn't or sort of slows down as we have seen now, the sort of the inflation part and the indexation will also do that, of course.
Yeah.
Yeah. Then, the next question is just a bit around the M&A pipeline and, yeah, what you currently see and whether M&A activity now will be tilted towards the second half of the year and if you're still aiming towards meeting the target around acquiring 10 companies per year.
Yeah. This might be quite of a long answer here, but moving back again into the second and third quarter of last year when we saw the inflation being quite high, and we were a bit scared of what would happen with our profit margins as we were absorbing the higher cost and what was our ability to push the cost increases over to the customer side. We saw somewhat weaker margins, I believe it was to the tune of 1%-2% in the third quarter and in the second quarter. We saw that the steady increase we have had in improving the profit margins, that tapered off for about two quarters. It was a bit of uncertainty. We saw the interest rate was going up and becoming very high.
We also saw that we might be going into a recession, and we had the previous logistical issues. We had, at that point of time or in that environment, when we talked about acquisitions, how should we pursue the agenda we had? We basically made the decision that, okay, let's continue with the companies we have in the pipeline that are ready to be closed. We were quite active in 2022, where I believe we made 11 acquisitions. Four of them we made in the last quarter. We continued with the strategy, even though we were monitoring the market quite closely, what was going on with the inflation. That it was a great uncertainty.
We made the decision that not to break, but basically ease off on the accelerator for the first quarter of this year and consolidate ourselves. That's pretty much what we have done, and that's the reasons why we have not made any acquisitions in the first quarter of 2023. That does not mean that we are stopping or that we have changed the plan. It's just that we consolidated our position, and we wanted to see what will happen in the market, what will happen with the profit margins and all of that type of thing. Also, as Carl-Fredrik mentioned, we have been in negotiations with the bank and increased the facilities. We do have dry powder.
We are in discussions with companies. I do expect us to continue the pace on acquiring businesses for the remainder of the year. Of course, we are looking into the markets where we are, that is Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the Baltics. We are also active, as we have mentioned previously, in Germany to perhaps make a market entry in that market as well. From that perspective, it's looking good. Even though we have been consolidated our position in the first quarter, I do expect us to pick up pace as we are moving towards the summer.
Perfect. That's very helpful. Then just a last question. A bit technical here, but just what drove the financial income here in Q1?
Yes. That was the revaluation of the loans we have in Norwegian crown, denoted in Norwegian crown.
Okay.
As the SEK improves, of course, the Norwegian loans becomes of lower value, and that has a positive impact on the net financials. That was the main part.
Okay, great.
Yes.
Perfect. That's all from me. Thank you very much, guys.
Thank you, Alexander.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Karl Bokvist from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. I just had one follow-up. It was now, with the strong cash flow and the working capital levels coming down, I understand it might differ a bit depending on what kind of businesses you acquire. Do you have any view on the kind of longer-term working capital level that you feel the group should be around in terms of sales, perhaps?
No, we don't have a number. I think the historic numbers in relation to revenue is what I would be expecting going forward as well.
All right. Yeah.
We, of course, are working with improving the working capital. I mean, there are things to do, definitely, to highlight this for new companies coming in. Some of them are really good at this, and some have not paid too much attention to this area. But again, I think the levels we see is representative for the future as well.
Mm-hmm. You're now entering the calendar Q2, which historically is perhaps a quarter where working capital is a negative item.
Yes.
Do you feel that you could still, perhaps, have a bit of, let's say, support from the internal improvements that you're making?
Yeah, I don't have a view on that. We'll see.
That is incorrect that we have a seasonality in terms of the pattern. That is really that now when we are moving into the high season, in particular, the landscaping companies are starting the projects and that ties up more capital and then as they execute the projects and obviously bill or invoice the customers, then the money comes back. That's a pattern that we have over the season and that we believe going to happen in this year as well. The capital need or the working capital need will increase in the second quarter. You have another peak in the third quarter.
Yeah.
And then it-
To some extent, actually, it's good with the high working capital because then I know we have a lot of business going on.
Yes.
Yeah.
All right. Understood. Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Okay. As there are no further questions, I think that concludes the Q1 report for the year of 2023. Thank you very much for listening in, and thank you for all the questions and have a good day, everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye.