Hello, and welcome to the Hexagon Q3 report 2019. Throughout the call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode, and afterwards, there'll be a question and answer session. Today, I am pleased to present Ola Rollén. Please go ahead with your meeting.
Thank you, and good morning. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this third-quarter interim report for the Hexagon Group. If we start on page four, we get an overview of the third quarter. Organic growth was -3% in the quarter, and the net sales recorded growth was +1%. The best performing business in the quarter was the PP&M division with an 8% organic growth. SI, as forecasted, returned to growth in the third quarter and recorded +1%. Geosystems recorded -3% organic growth, and it's been negatively impacted by tough comparisons from a big product launch that we saw last year and large orders for the mapping content business, which did not happen this year. We've also seen a general slowdown in the construction sector throughout the quarter.
Manufacturing Intelligence recorded -9% organic growth, that was largely mostly driven by the previously communicated decline that we'd seen in the electronics business in China. Gross margin was 63.2%, reflecting a very good and favorable product mix in the quarter, it's up 1.2% over the corresponding period last year. EBIT margin 24.7%, up 0.2% compared to the third quarter of 2018. As I just stated, we benefited from a favorable product mix and cost savings announced in the second quarter. If we move to slide five, seasonality and profit. Q3 is usually our second weakest quarter in the year, that seems to be the pattern this year as well. Moving on to slide six, key figures, the P&L statement. Recorded sales, EUR 956.3 million. The EBITDA margin was 34.1%, the EBIT margin 24.7% in the quarter.
This corresponds to an earnings per share of EUR 0.0051. Slide thereafter, slide seven, is just a nine-month summary for your reading afterwards. Let's turn to the cash flow, slide eight. Cash flow from operations before changes in working capital amounted to EUR 270 million. We had a positive change in working capital connected to the decline in organic growth of EUR 4.2 million, compared to minus EUR 91 million this time last year. Thus, the cash flow from operations was EUR 274.4 million, a very strong cash flow indeed, with a cash conversion of 97% in the quarter. If we look at working capital to sales on slide nine, we can see that we are now firmly below 15%. In the third quarter, working capital amounts to 12.7% of sales. Let's discuss the market development.
If we go to slide 11, we have the sales mix, the geographic regions in the third quarter, and this is usually a fairly static picture. Given what's going on in our business and in the global economy, we see huge shifts this time around. China is down from 17% to 13% of sales, whilst other regions, and especially North America, is gaining share, and is now representing 33% of Hexagon sales in the quarter. Slide 12, an overview of organic growth for geographic region, and we can see that South America is continuing to recover with the rebound in Brazil and lots of mining activity in the Andean countries. Eastern Europe, Russia, Middle East, and Africa is also recording strong growth, whilst we see slower growth in Asia, excluding China and North America, and we see decline in Western Europe and China.
On slide 13, for your own review, we have the arrow chart giving you the organic growth per segment and geographic region. Slide 14, EMEA. EMEA recorded an organic growth of minus 2%. Western Europe recorded minus 4% organic growth. We saw a very weak development in the U.K. market, especially for our leasing products in the Geosystems segment, where we saw a very slow market, probably on the back of Brexit uncertainties in the construction sector. We also saw a slowdown in the industrial segment and automotive in Germany in the quarter. Continued solid growth in Eastern Europe and Russia, and Africa recorded double-digit growth on the back of strong demand for our mining solutions. Moving on to Americas, slide 15. North America recorded 1% organic growth. It was good to see that public safety returned to growth.
We also saw strong growth from the PP&M division in the power and energy field. Growth was hampered by weak demand in surveying and mapping content products. South America, as previously mentioned, recorded double-digit growth, strong recovery in Brazil. Asia, China, -23% organic growth, China is the explanation to our negative growth in the quarter. China is impacting the Hexagon Group with -4% on the group level. It's largely impacted by the previously communicated significant decline we see in our electronics business in China. We've also seen decline in infrastructure and construction and positioning solutions in the quarter. Highlights in Asia would be Japan, Malaysia, India, and South Korea. We also see strong growth from the Southeast Asian countries. Some of it is spillover effects from companies relocating out of China and now setting up manufacturing operations in neighboring countries.
Reporting segments, slide 18, Industrial Enterprise Solutions. Organic growth -5%, MI records -9%, but had a stable EBIT margin. PP&M grew by 8% and expanded its EBIT margin. All in all, sales of EUR 482.5 million, down from EUR 489 million last year, and an EBIT improvement from EUR 23.7 million to EUR 124 million, corresponding to an EBIT margin of 25.7%, which is up compared to this period previous year. This is very much thanks to PP&M growing and MI maintaining strong EBIT margins in spite of a negative organic growth. Moving on to Geospatial Enterprise Solutions, slide 19. Organic growth of -2%, Geosystems contracted by 3%. It was primarily the large orders we saw last year in our mapping content business that slowed down, but also a general slowdown in construction across the globe.
SI developed according to plan and recorded 1% organic growth, positioning no growth, no decline, zero, was positively impacted by strong growth in Aerospace and Defense, saw a weaker demand in automotive. Sales for the segment amounted to EUR 473.8 million, up from EUR 457 million last year. EBIT amounted to EUR 118.4 million, up from EUR 114.6 million last year. If we move to slide 20, the growth margin, we recorded a record growth margin in the third quarter. Our rolling 12-month average is now 63% growth margin. The operating margin is at 25% for the past 12 months. If we move to slide 23, we're going to discuss orders and product releases and acquisitions. In the quarter, we acquired a small company called Melown Technologies, which helps us to visualize in 3D, creating so-called urban and natural landscape models.
It will be integrated in our reality capture solutions. Slide 24. We're creating digital cities much faster and much more precisely with the new Leica CityMapper. This enables digital twin creation for cities and metropolitan areas. Slide 25. We started a collaboration with the City of Calgary called Living Labs. It's an initiative that started to use our technology to do autonomous driving research and development in the City of Calgary, and it's the first in Canada. Slide 26, Subsea7, a Norwegian-based company, switched to Hexagon's BricsCAD Pro CAD products for all its business in Africa, Asia, Pacific, Brazil, Middle East, Gulf of Mexico, North Sea, and Canada. Huge win for the Bricsys business. Slide 27. Hexagon supports the U.S. Navy's cybersecurity. We've started a collaboration with something called SABER, the Situational Awareness, Boundary Enforcement and Response contract.
We've signed a contract, and we're working with NAVSEA, which is a body within the U.S. Navy, to do so. Slide 28. We also signed a five-year deal for our MinePlan software with Bayer. Bayer is using MinePlan to deploy complicated geologic modeling and engineering pieces in their mines. Slide 29. The country of El Salvador is using our location intelligence and AI solution to develop safety applications. They will use our AI and machine learning techniques to generate location-based situational analysis and awareness models to reduce risk for populations. Slide 30, it's a set of reality capture solutions orders that we got in the quarter from China Railway, that is using Leica Pegasus; Electra, a survey services company based in Dubai, using our drones; and then Palabora Mining Company in South Africa that is standardizing on RTC360 scanners to do 3D visualization of underground mines.
Slide 31. This has been a long process, but we've been working since 2012 with Case New Holland to enable them to standardize on our GNSS positioning technologies. Finally, Case New Holland is now rolling out their positioning intelligence solutions using our technology in all their brands, Case, New Holland, and Steyr. Slide 32. We got two very interesting orders where we will collaborate with the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra in India to monitor forests and wildlife and manage land records and property using our geospatial software and receivers. Slide 33. Volkswagen is kicking off a project called India 2.0, where they're committing to invest EUR 1 billion in India to strengthen the group's footprint and build vehicles tailored to the Indian market. They've chosen Hexagon's metrology solution and ultra-high accuracy machines to build quality-critical applications in car bodies and powertrains. Slide 34.
Airbus consolidates its database to reduce development lead time. They're standardizing on our product MaterialCenter to reduce the lead time further in their manufacturing workflow and design. Finally, on slide 35, we will host a Capital Markets Day on the 11th of December this year in Cobham, Surrey, U.K. We will start at 10:00 A.M. UK time. We will update you on our views on market trends and business activities. If you're interested in attending, please send an email to cmd@hexagon.com no later than the 25th of November. With that, we've concluded the Q3 earnings call. We are now ready to answer any questions there might be. Operator-
If you would like to ask a question, please press 01 on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing 02 to cancel. That is 01 if you would like to ask a question. Our first question is from Alexander Virgo from Bank of America. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thanks very much. Morning, Ola. I wondered if you could just expand a little bit on China for us. Maybe talk a little bit about the business ex electronics, and also perhaps if you could quantify quite how much of the -23 was electronics. Your comp gets a little bit easier as we move into Q4, so I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the prognosis and any signs of life in either the electronics business or you also mentioned seeing customers already building outside of China, so just wondering how that plays into how we think about Q4 and 2020.
Well, the contraction is roughly EUR 40 million in the quarter, and three-quarters of those EUR 40 million, i.e., a bit more than EUR 30 million, is related to electronics. You're absolutely right, that as we move into Q4 and next year, the comps will get easier. There is definitely sign of life in the electronics sector, and we think that next year might be more positive than what we've seen this year. Beyond electronics, what's happening is a very complicated situation where the tension between North America or United States and China is detrimental to the kind of business that Hexagon is doing, where we have, for example, U.S.-based technologies that we want to sell in China and vice versa. That is the remaining EUR 10 million that we see. We're trying to reshuffle our resources in China to simply go after non-critical applications where we can sell for the future.
It's going to be another tough quarter, but hopefully we'll see a silver lining as we enter into 2020.
Okay. Thank you. Perhaps maybe just expanding on that last bit, that last point there, how much of your portfolio would you say would end up being affected by that sensitivity? Does it extend beyond MI? I guess I'm thinking really about PPM and the strength that you've seen in the growth there in the last couple of quarters. It's really building up momentum. I'm guessing it's probably not really oil and gas, but maybe just expand a little bit on that as well.
I think that all technologies and all software products around the world could be affected by this if it continues, because in effect what's happening is that the Chinese government is reluctant to invest in systems where they use U.S. technology content, simply because they don't know if they're going to be cut off or not in the future. Vice versa, U.S. has put an embargo on Chinese technology. It's not just Hexagon. I would say that all technology companies could be affected if this drags out. Hopefully we'll see a resolution or a solution in the next few quarters on this issue. If not, we simply have to mitigate it and plan for a very different market going forward.
Okay. Thanks, Ola.
Our next question is from Adam Wood from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon, and thanks for taking the question. I've got two, if I could. First of all, you highlighted the issue of the tough comps in 3Q last year with the product launches. Is it possible just to help us quantify how much of the deteriorate in the third quarter versus the second quarter was due to those tough comps, which hopefully reverses as the hardware comes out in Q4 and Q1, and how much was incremental weakness in the macro across the geographies? That would be quite useful. Then just in terms of those product launches, you said in the release, end of 2019 for the hardware coming out. Does that mean we should really only expect them to impact in Q1, or will there actually be a meaningful benefit already in the fourth quarter? Thank you.
There will be an impact in the fourth quarter. Unfortunately, we're releasing them in November, so we will have one month out of three where we will sell the new products. If it's a meaningful impact or not, is yet to be seen. Going then to your question on the third quarter, yes, there is a significant impact in Q3 of 2018 from new products, which we don't see in the third quarter this year. I would guesstimate it to maybe a couple of %.
You'd say that the environment was really relatively stable versus the second quarter. Clearly some gives and takes, but net, relatively stable versus Q2 then?
Can you repeat that? I didn't get that question.
If that impact was 2%, and that's roughly the delta in organic growth between Q2 and Q3, overall we haven't seen a material movement in the underlying picture. Yes, there's some bits a bit worse and some bits a bit better, but overall it feels like it's been relatively stable versus what the Q2 environment was.
No, absolutely. That is my view of the situation. We're down, but it's not getting worse.
Perfect. That's helpful. Thank you very much.
Our next question is from Stacy Pollard from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thank you. A few questions from me as well. Seems that you're benefiting from the restructuring in Q2. Can you just remind us what was restructured other than China?
No, it wasn't just China that restructured. It was an overall restructuring, and encompassing roughly 700 employees. It's group wide.
No other divisions particularly targeted or Okay?
No, it was a general reduction in force. It wasn't just one division contributing, it was across the company.
Across the board. Okay. Second quick one would be autonomous vehicles. Approximately how much does this area contribute to your revenues today, let's say, on an annualized basis? How do you view the opportunity? Who are the competitors?
It's hard to point at competitors because we work with everyone right now, and we're a facilitator in the development projects that various OEMs are undertaking right now. It's a fairly small business. I would say it's roughly a couple of % of our total turnover today. We see a lot of traction in other areas than just cars, like agriculture, mining, and construction, where we could deploy these technologies to automate vehicles in those sectors, and that looks really promising as well.
Okay. Very interesting. Sorry, last one from me, just midterm guidance. Do you still feel comfortable with the 2021 targets of EUR 4.6 billion to EUR 5.1 billion in revs and then 27%-28% operating margins?
It would be a lie to say that it's not a tougher stretch given what's happened in China. No, we stick to our targets, and we believe that we can achieve them.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Sven Dennis Merkt from Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. This may be a quick follow-up from the question just asked. Your medium-term targets, what you feel actually comfortable around, is it the 5% average organic growth, or are you more comfortable in the absolute revenue target, i.e., if organic growth is weaker going forward, will you do more M&A to get to your targets?
That's why we're having a capital markets day in December, and we'll try to answer all your questions then.
Great. Looking forward to that. Then maybe just quickly, more generally, if we're now going into a more macro slowdown, how are you thinking about investments going forward? Would you potentially slow down investments somewhat, or would you just simply take a very long-term view and continue with your product investments?
We have been in a selective macroeconomic slowdown for a very long time, and I think that the global economy is in need of new technologies that are greatly enhancing productivity and quality. If you know that you can do that, I think you will continue to grow. Standard products and nice-to-have developments are probably something of the past. We do see that we have great products like the RTC360. Products like that can continue to grow in a very depressed macro environment, and that's where we have to invest, and we will continue to do so.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks.
Our next question is from Markus Almerud from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, Markus Almerud from Kepler Cheuvreux. My first question is on the BLK products which are to be released. Are there any pre-orders or anything like that which you can talk about to see how successful it's been? I would assume that the reception so far has been quite good.
Yes, there are pre-orders. We don't disclose that, but that gives us certain certainty that we will invoice in the fourth quarter. No, the reception is great. The BLK2GO is a small revolution in construction and design, and construction project documenting in 3D, the fact that you can walk around the construction site and document it.
Okay. Looking forward to that. Can I just ask on PP&M? The margin came off quite significantly in the oil and gas boom, and now that growth is back, is the margin also coming back to previous levels, or is it growing at a slower rate? How far off are we from previous levels?
Now the margin is back, and that's why we see margin expansion in our industrial segment in the quarter. It's not back to the peak levels where we were pre the oil crisis. No, it's improving significantly.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Our next question is from Viktor Hökberg from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Viktor?
Sorry. Was both disconnected and on mute. Maybe you have to repeat yourself, but for Geosystems, you said that the primary driver for the negative organic growth was the large mapping orders last year. Were those Q3 specific, and how much do they explain?
We wouldn't comment on specific numbers in the program, we saw a significant reduction in the sales to certain customers in that program in the third quarter.
Okay. Would that be only for Q3, or should we expect that to continue, or could you elaborate a bit?
Q3 is the big quarter for the mapping content. That's when you fly large areas and you then resell the data. Q4 is a much smaller quarter when it comes to mapping content. It will be easier to that extent to meet last year's numbers.
Okay, but it's a smaller quarter.
Yeah.
PMI seems to stabilize. What do you hear from your customers? What do they need to see for orders to come back again? What are they saying in your discussions?
I think it depends on what customers you're alluding to. You have different challenges. Sorry?
Within the industrial segment, within MI, maybe.
Within MI, we see contraction in automotive, and it's been electric vehicles that have stopped investing in China. We saw large investment activities in the electrical vehicle segment in China in Q1 and even in Q2, and that has faded off a bit in the third quarter. We saw a slowdown in the automotive industry in Germany, where orders didn't come in as expected, and I think it's a general uncertainty about demand in the automotive market. This usually lasts for a couple of quarters, and then we see new initiatives on design and new products, which will benefit the Hexagon business. If we move to electronics, which is the other segment, we do know that many OEMs are designing new products that could positively impact our business going forward. Whether that's a Q1 story or a Q2 story is yet to be seen.
Okay. In terms of M&A, what do you see out there in terms of price tags and available targets?
There is a never-ending activity going on in the M&A field, and we don't see any slowdown in the M&A processes. It's too early to say that prices have come down. They haven't. I think that might happen in the next few quarters.
Okay. Last question. Trimble said in August that they expect a flat organic growth in H2 2019, partly due to China. Could you elaborate a bit about what you see there that could be a differentiator between your and Trimble's product offering?
We don't comment on Trimble.
Okay. That's it for me. Thank you.
Thanks.
Our next question is from Erik Golrang from SEB. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thank you. I have two questions. The first one on SI, which at least to me is the trickiest one to forecast a couple of quarters ahead, but any guidance there will be very helpful. You talk about a continued expected improvement, but based on the order book, what that looks like and the order trend there, what kind of growth rates would you be happy with SI ending up in the near term here? Is it a rising digit level, or could it even be in the double digits?
SI is very difficult to predict indeed, even for us internally, because it's an on/off or do or die business. You either get the order, or you don't. Lately, with the launch of a new product called OnCall, which is a dispatch system for first responders, we see a lot of traction. We bid on a lot of big projects that are going to be realized next year. I think we have a cautiously optimistic view on SI, and SI could have turned a corner, and the outlook is actually quite positive for it, for the division.
It's going to be more of a continued success taking new orders rather than executing on an order book.
They have a good order book already. I think we will see new orders as well in the next few months.
Thank you. The second question, trying to square a bit all the moving parts here in terms of lower level of major new product launches and comparisons in electronics and sequential trends. You said that Q2 underlying, or Q3 underlying was similar to the second quarter. If you would guide us on sort of how has organic growth started the fourth quarter on a group level? Based on everything we learned about comparisons, it seems as if it could be a bit better.
We'll see. We were hit by the electronics segment before we saw the general slowdown in the global economy. Now we've taken the hit in the electronics segment, but we still see a slowdown in the global economy and how this will pan out when you tally up all the bits and pieces, that is still very difficult to do. I stick to my guns when I say I don't see it getting much worse. I think this is a level that is sustainable, and from here, we now need to start refocusing our resources to start building organic growth again as we enter into 2020.
Very good. Thank you.
Thanks.
Our next question is from Mohammed Moawalla from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you very much. Ola, could you talk a little bit about your kind of relative visibility, as you go into sort of this Q4 and into next year versus sort of a year ago? I know you've sort of walked through these issues around electronics, and also some of the comp issues. I'm just sort of curious in terms of, as you said on the last question, you want to turn the business back towards organic growth. Do you think that sort of by H2, you're reasonably confident that the group can be back to sort of organic growth levels given you'll have kind of lapped a lot of the difficult comps in electronics as well? Thank you.
I think this is a much bigger question than just a third quarter growth number. I think the backdrop in the global economy is that we have very little growth in the global economy right now, and in order for a company to grow in this environment, you need to deliver something extraordinary. If you just do the ordinary, you will be hit eventually as we see the next coming quarters in going into 2020. The focus has to be on new, innovative solutions that truly enhance productivity or do something meaningful for your customer base. That's what we're aiming at. We've grown 7% average organic growth since 2010. That is our growth rate, our normal growth rate in this very weak macro environment. We're definitely going to come back to that.
The question is how many more quarters will it take for us to build that momentum?
Do you feel you need to perhaps step up the rate of investment in the business, to sort of achieve that?
There might be a situation where we need to invest a bit more in certain areas, but I don't think it's going to be anything that we will have to flag on a group level right now.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Our next question is from Daniel Djurberg, from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you very much. Most questions are answered. I have two questions starting with automotive. You mentioned China, electrical vehicles, et cetera, and also Germany. We see here that Western European and also North America is weak on automotive. Can you comment a little bit on your, if you can maybe get this also from new products or what some of the outlook for 2020 in terms of automotive?
We think that automotive is slowing down, and you can see that in other research in the market. I guess that's no news to you that the automotive sector is slowing down. We also see a lot of activity in the design labs within the various OEMs, where they're changing their product portfolios to hybrids, electric, and more environmentally friendly products. That is going to benefit Hexagon going forward. We don't think this is a long-term slowdown for us as a company. Sometime next year, we should see an increased activity again from the automotive sector.
Yeah. Perfect. Also, if I may, on the normal question on Smart Build progress, with the BLK2GO coming up, can you comment on your go-to-market a little bit? You have done pilots with Skanska and others. Can you now bring some best practice and the market also for smaller sites, or if you can comment a little bit on the Smart Build progress?
We're planning the launch to early next year, but it needs to be a coordinated effort with the scanners and the software platform. Maybe we can discuss that a bit more at the Capital Markets Day.
Sounds great. Finally, for my own Process, Power & Marine, the power and energy did well. You had the subsea, some big sales order, et cetera. Can you comment a little bit on the outlook there in terms of power and energy in Process, Power & Marine, if the pipeline looks healthy?
Now the pipeline is healthy, what we've been working hard on over the past few years is to broaden the scope for our CAD products so that we do not only address oil and gas. We've expanded into other fields such as mining, petrochemical, chemical applications, shipbuilding and so on, and that has paid off. Hopefully the other initiative that you just discussed, SMART Build, will also pay off in the quarters and years to come.
Okay, thanks. Good luck in Q4.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Andrew Fisher from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking my question. First, just on the markets trajectory, I know you showed aerospace and defense slowing down in Europe and the infrastructure and construction weakness in North America. Just curious, can you add some visibility on that in terms of how are things looking in 4Q?
No, we can't really comment on visibility going into the next quarter. We more or less know the sentiment in that segment, but I have to remind you that we do almost 70% of our business in the third month of the fourth quarter, i.e., December. It's still early days.
Right. Aerospace and defense tends to be longer cycle. Is there anything sort of one-off in terms of the slowdown in the quarter?
It's not longer cycle for us. We typically deliver and take orders in the third month.
Got it. Just one quick question on your product, the RTC360. We hear from some users that some people consider it a little too expensive, but that the BLK doesn't deliver enough features. Do you plan or did you consider ever introducing a mid-level product that bridges the two?
We'll see. No one knows yet.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Our next question is from Alex Fell from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. Just two from me. Firstly, on construction, you mentioned that you were seeing something of a broader-based slowdown there. Could you just dig in a little bit on that, what you think might be causing it, perhaps kind of the outlook over the next couple of quarters? Is that going to further decelerate in your view as it stands? Just within construction, could you talk about how demand for your software offerings, specifically as distinct from the kind of hardware equipment might be getting on? I'll ask the follow-up after that.
We've seen a slowdown in the Chinese market with government-backed infrastructural projects, and I think that it's probably the slowdown in the Chinese economy driving that. We've also seen slowdown in the West, and I guess that is on back of a general slowdown in the large economies in Western Europe and North America. Whether this is it or if it's going to continue to get worse, I don't know. I'm no economist, we'll see. It's true what you're saying that we see less of a volatility with our software products in the construction sector compared to our hardware products.
Okay, thanks. On the software within MI, I think you mentioned it was stable in the quarter. Does that represent a deceleration for MSC specifically? How are you finding demand holding up for MSC within the automotive sector right now? Is it proving resilient despite the wider market slowdown, or is it also getting dragged down a bit by that general automotive slowdown? Thanks.
No, it's proving resilient. MSC started off as a restructuring case where we took an old, tired company and repositioned it. We're still gaining traction in the market with the new products that we're launching from MSC.
Great. Thank you.
Our next question is from Magnus Kruber from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, Ola. Magnus here from UBS on behalf of GMO. Just one question from me on Geosystems, sorry to labor this point. I think you mentioned, of course, you had tough comps from product launches and large order last year. If I try to sort of adjust for that by looking at the two-year compounded growth, I think still there is a quite distinct slowdown in the growth rate from Q2 into Q3. Is that the general construction slowdown you're talking about? Should we expect that to sort of remain at that level?
Yes, that is the general construction slowdown. Whether it remains or not, I don't know. The one who lives will see.
Brilliant. That's all for me. Thank you so much.
Thanks.
Our next question is from Agnieszka Vilela from Nordea. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. I have a question on IES, and if you can tell us if the mix that you said it was favorable in the quarter, was it because of the PP&M growing so strongly? Do you have much better margins there? Also, what's in your PP&M pipeline and what are your demand expectations there? Thank you.
No. As I stated previously, we believe that PP&M has repositioned its business in a good way where we're penetrating more markets outside of the traditional oil and gas field. We do expect PP&M to have a favorable trading situation going forward. When it comes to the mix, it's two things that happened in IES in the quarter. First of all, PP&M outgrew MI, which was beneficial. Within MI, the software business outgrew the hardware business. You had two factors impacting the EBIT margin in a favorable way.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thanks.
Our next question is from Vasu Rizvi from RBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Just two left from me. Firstly, just trying to understand the margin movement year-on-year. It's not quite clear, particularly in IES. Is it all mix or is some of the restructuring benefit in there? Actually, the restructuring benefit will come later? The second question was actually on the BLK products again. In terms of the revenue opportunity for those products, is that a similar size or bigger or smaller than RTC360? Because what I'm trying to understand is if these products launch and sell as expected, are we still looking at a net headwind or is it a net tailwind or is it broadly the same impact?
We start with the BLK product. We have great expectations for these products, but you would be a fool if you said a number what we expect. We will do our very best to introduce them, push for them and sell them, and hopefully we'll gain traction in the market. That's how all market launches work. When it comes to the restructuring program on a group level, we benefited roughly EUR 5 million in cost reductions year-on-year as a comparison.
Great. That helps.
Thanks.
Our last question is from Mikael Laséen from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, thanks. Actually, I also had a question regarding the MI margin. It was stable year-on-year, and just wondering how much came from efficiency effects. You partly answered that I guess, but maybe you could be more specific regarding that unit.
I don't know from top of my head out of the EUR 5 million how much MI contributes with. I guess a good guesstimate would be that it's almost 50/50, two and a half million per segment, and MI is the largest division within IES. PP&M did its restructuring earlier. Yeah. I really don't want to give you a number that I don't have.
Okay. In general, this efficiency program, EUR 51 million expected to be in cost adjustments. How should we model this? How should we expect this to develop ahead?
We expect full impact as of 2020. If we had EUR 5 million in Q3, I would do a linear extrapolation into Q4 and Q1, with one quarter per quarter as of 2020.
Okay, I expect it.
That's how I would do it.
Okay.
EUR 12 and a half per quarter going into next year.
To be clear, that means full annualized effect from Q1 2020?
Okay, got it. Thanks.
As there are no further questions, I will hand the word back to the speakers for any final comments.
We do not have any more comments, so we wish you a good day or a good evening, depending on where you are. Thank you.
This now concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect.