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Earnings Call: Q3 2020
Oct 20, 2020
Thank you and good afternoon and welcome on our behalf as well. We are obviously looking forward to present this report. We are happy with the content of the report. And we start immediately by introducing some of the highlights from the 3rd quarter. You see on the slide that we gradually improved the market situation or we experienced a gradually improved market situation.
But still the overall demand impacted negatively by the COVID-nineteen situation. And we will obviously elaborate a lot more on this further along in the presentation. Briefly then, organic order intake, minus 2% and organic net sales unchanged, so a strong sort of demand situation. Significant variations, as we have said in the previous quarters, between companies, segments and markets. And we are presenting a record high EBITA margin, to some extent, driven by positive demand in certain segments and also, to a large extent, very good cost management.
We had also in quarter 2 very strong cash flow and we are also happy with our acquisition pipeline. Now we have acquired 9 companies, very good companies so far during this year. And we will talk a bit more about the acquisition situation further down here. In terms of the situation overall now, I would say that we have had, I would say, the same priorities this last quarter since the pandemic started. 1st of all, obviously, the health and safety of our people and also the people around us, being customers, suppliers and others having sort of reasons to interact with Indo Trade.
Secondly, to really try to protect our profit margins and thirdly, in a dynamic situations like this, there are always business opportunities arising. So try to basically capture on the volatile and dynamic landscape around us. If we then turn slide, and we thought it would be helpful and meaningful to quite early in the presentation start to try to describe the effects we have had of the COVID-nineteen situation this quarter. So we have a couple of points trying to explain this. First of all, perhaps not surprising, again, demand has improved gradually, but a majority of the companies were still, to some extent, negatively impacted by the pandemic.
I would also say then that some medtech companies have had a positive impact by COVID-nineteen, but this impact is slightly less in quarter 3 than in quarter 2. So from a market perspective, a majority of the companies had negative impact and a lower number of companies in the medtech sector has had a positive COVID-nineteen push. It was much stronger in quarter 2, but some impact in quarter 3. The cost measures have been taken, I would say, strongly by all companies who have experienced decreasing volumes. So that's a broad type of activity.
And we have had short time work, which has declining. So at the end of this quarter, we had approximately 600 persons involved in short time work activities out of 7,200 employees approximately. And number of sort of permanent reductions since quarter 1 is EUR 260,000,000. Yes, as a reference then in quarter 2, we had approximately just as a reference then, in quarter 2, we had approximately 1,000 persons furloughed. So it's a dramatically lower number now than it was at the end of quarter 2.
We have been given some governmental support and that corresponds to approximately 0.5% in relation to net sales and in absolute terms SEK 22,000,000 approximately. And that's also dramatically lower than in quarter 2, where we had 1.5% of sales in profit impact and approximately SEK 70,000,000. So that's also decreasing, but having some impact on profitability. And then we also had in this quarter now a total of SEK 21,000,000 nonrecurring items, and this is primarily relating to the pandemic. And what we have done is that we have basically released earn out provisions of SEK 197,000,000 and they correspond to a bit more than a handful of companies.
And unfortunately, these companies haven't been able to realize their top line and nor their bottom line plan, you can say. So then we have made these earn out provision releases. And linked to this, we have written down the goodwill in some of these companies with SEK 141,000,000. And in addition to that, based on the difficult cost situation in some of the companies, we have also made some restructurings. And this has been primarily done in the UK and Sweden, and this accounts for about SEK 35,000,000.
And then the net, which is the net result of these activities is SEK 21,000,000, which had a positive impact on our profit in the quarter here. So by this, you should have a good understanding of COVID-nineteen effects of our numbers. And all one off items are reported in the consolidated financial statements and no effects on the business area level. Then I think we turn to the order intake slide and try to explain this a bit more. So as I said, the pandemic continued to have negative impact on the majority of our companies, but less impact than in quarter 2.
And again, yes, stating that there is large variations between company segments and business areas. We have seen strong development in some companies, primarily in the sectors in medtech and Pharmaceuticals. Some of that has been COVID-nineteen related, but actually majority of it has not. Other good segments is infrastructure related and in specific more water and wastewater, good segment and quite a lot of companies having positive impact on that. We have also had a the demand for valves for power generation continued to be good, but this is sequentially flattening out and is also having a difficult reference from 2019.
Many of our companies exposed to the general engineering and automotive sectors still have lower demand, but slightly improved versus quarter 2, so picking up step by step. If we look at Business Areas, I would say that Business Area Flow and Fluids and Mechanical Solutions had the best development and the more weaker situation in measurement and sensor technology and in DACH. And I will come back to this in a separate slide. The book to bill was slightly negative, minus 2%. And if we exclude the power generation impact, it was more or less flat actually.
So to sum up, all in all, total growth in the quarter, minus 3 percent organic growth, minus 2 percent. If you exclude power generation, more flattish, I would say and acquisition effects, plus 3% and then currency, minus 3%. If we comment on a more general dimension, I would say, which I've said before, that what I call the day to day business is on a good level, I would say, generalizing. What we lack is more project related sales, which on a customer level involves CapEx investments and things like that. That's where many of our companies are behind versus last year, I would say.
Then we turn to net sales and obviously a bit in line with the order intake development, also negatively impacted by the pandemic. But there has been a strong backlog, which has been positively used to invoice. And the sales situation is, hence, a bit better than the order intake. So we were flat in terms of total net sales, and acquisitions made it plus 3% and currencies, again, minus 3%. And if we try to talk about sales in more of a geographic perspective, it's a lot of markets where we are rather flat, I would say.
Standing out positively is Denmark. Not sure I can explain exactly why, but maybe more that we have some really good companies in Denmark gaining market share in a positive sense. And then weaker development in Germany and Finland. Germany, I think, is easier to understand, high impact on the automotive sector there. And Finland, a lot of base industry, process industry, CapEx intense, less investments.
So we see, in general, then that Finland is going down a bit. UK is also problematic, and we'll see what happens in terms of Brexit there. But yes, difficult quarter for many of our companies there. That was more or less on the sales side, all I wanted to say. If we then look at the profitability, so despite flat sales development, we grew with 16%, And the EBITA margin in total was record high with 14.9%, obviously, a great result, all time high.
And organic impact increased 16%, acquisition 3% and currency again minus 3%. We usually really want to follow profitability more on an in an underlying perspective or organic perspective. So obviously, we want to exclude these one offs I spoke about earlier. And if you do that, the margin was 14.4%. And the contribution improvement is again coming a lot from the medtech sector, pharma sector, strong invoicing and hence profitability in the power generation sector, wastewater sectors.
And also really a good sort of proof of the agility in our company's great cost measure measures taken and cost management in a lot of the companies. So they really try to follow expenses in relation to sales and bring this down as quickly as they see order intake negatively affected. I already spoke about the headcount sort of situation, so I don't think I need to reiterate that. But the governmental support was also impacting approximately 0.5%. So perhaps more true underlying, we were at 13.9% then compared to 12.8% last year.
The governmental support, I would say, are good to have. But if we wouldn't have been given this or awarded this, we would have dealt with our costs more resolutely anyhow. So I think we would have managed well even without them. I would say that a lot of our companies is in a situation now where they basically will balance, should I invest now in quarter 4 going forward for a potentially better market and bring up the cost base a little bit? Or should I be cautious and keep the low cost level?
And I think this will differ between different companies, but I think it's going to be difficult for us to keep the very low cost level we have right now as an ongoing level going forward. So costs will, for sure, I think, go up to some extent. But I think our MDs in our different companies will manage top line and try to balance this as best possible. So we still think we will manage this in a good way going forward. If we then look at how the different business areas have dealt with top line in the quarter, You see that in the graph here.
And again, there are large variations, as I have said. And the pandemic have had impact basically in all business areas, obviously. The strongest development we saw in business area Benelux and explained by good power generation sales and also the medtech sector, I would say. We have companies involved in pharmaceutical, you can call it, packaging broadly and also a lot of single use type of equipment in a broad number of application areas medtech wise. So good development there.
The decline in DACH is, I would say, mostly related to the automotive and engineering sector in Germany. The Swiss cluster in the DACH region is much more stable. So it's more of a Germanic or Germany impact there, one can say. And in Finland, I spoke about that already, fewer projects, CapEx related investments. We see bigger customer companies in Finland like Warts, Nest, John Deere, Forest Machinery and so on, having more of a slightly difficult situation.
And I think Q4 will be a bit more difficult in Finland. But there are some investments. I know the Mets companies investing heavily, and we gained some business from that. Business Area Flow stand out very positively, great performance and driven again by biopharma investments and medtech investments, but also in general some process industry and again infrastructure, water, wastewater related. And they also, I would say, in general, benefit from not being that involved in general engineering in automotive.
If we take Fluids and Mechanical Solutions, they had good development and that was driven by the aftermarket in the automotive sector and also, to some extent, water, wastewater. More problems, I would say, in terms of filters and hydraulics linked to the pandemic. In Industrial Components, we saw a stable, slightly positive situation, lot of variations within industrial components, but strong positive clustering in the medtech sector. But they also have quite a lot of engineering automotive related companies with clearly lower order intake and sales, but as I said, sequentially improving a bit at least. And then we have Business Area Measurement and Sensor Technology and UK noting the largest declines.
And this is related, I would say, mostly to the automotive sector. In the UK, the aerospace sector, where we have a couple of companies usually having a great performance, so mix wise having quite a lot of impact there. And we have a few companies also related to oil and gas in that region. If we then look at the profitability in terms of business areas, it's anyway comforting to see that 7 out of 8 business areas had an improving EBITA margin. So broad, stable, most part of the group has actually improved.
Strongest improvements in Flow Technology and Industrial Components, but also actually all time high in Finland. So really good performance there. And I think I've already mentioned the sectors driving this. I don't need to reiterate that. Very good cost management.
I've also spoken about along basically all areas, all companies. And yes, really impressive work by our management teams in our companies. And even if we take out the governmental support and so on, this doesn't really change the situation in any significant way. It's still broad and solid profit improvement. And the only area where we had we saw a decline was, as you see, in the UK.
And this is definitely linked to the pandemic and a broad number of companies being challenged by that, but still presenting a 12.5% margin is actually great work. If we then look at acquisitions, we have made 3 great acquisitions recently in, I would say, really good segments where we want to be. We bought the company HOFHA in the Netherlands, involved in specialized fasteners, critical component in a lot of systems applications, low piece price and used sort of very broadly in terms of customer base and so on and so forth. So really a product area we want to be in and a product area we know well from other companies. And then we acquired UK Gas, Medtech company and Cheron in Czechia, also a Medtech company, both of them with low cyclicality underlying growth in the segments as such and good profit potential.
So very pleased with that. So far, we have now made 9 acquisitions, totaling sales of slightly more than SEK 700,000,000. So even if we have the pandemic, we are able to close some good transactions or projects. We are also quite happy with the inflow of companies. So we feel that we have a good sort of number of interesting companies to work with.
However, we are prolonging the project time or activity time in these cases just to make sure that when we close, we close at a time where we have a sort of a stable business environment and the acquisition can be accretive basically immediately when we finalize the case. And I think still the acquisition perspective is very positive, and I would be surprised if we wouldn't continue to do something before year end here. So by that, I leave the word over to Patrick to elaborate on the financials a bit more in detail.
Thank you, Bo, and good afternoon, everybody. So let's dive a little bit more into the details, the financial details, Dan. As we noted earlier, then total growth for orders was minus 3% and unchanged for net sales in the quarter. And year to date, we are plus 4 for orders and plus 5 for sales. As Bo spoke about earlier, order intake was 2% below invoicing, and that is explained then by valves for power generation.
They had a very strong quarter in terms of delivery and sales, while orders are more flattening out a little bit. And so that explains the book to bill situation very much. Gross margin is slightly lower than last year, both in the quarter year to date. And it's primarily, I would say, the mix related, slightly less favorable mix regarding companies and products. And on top of that, we also have some extra costs for inventory obsolescence in the quarter.
So that also explains part of the gross margin, the lower gross margin. EBITA grew 16% in the quarter, and margin improved to record high 14.9% versus 12.8% last year. And again, repeating a little bit what Bo said. And if you exclude the nonrecurring costs and also governmental support, the underlying margin would have been then 13.9%, still well ahead of last year. Cumulated, 20.4% versus 12.5 percent last year.
Going further down the P and L, finance net is lower than last year, And that's partly driven actually by we had some positive impacts actually from the nonrecurring items, also on the finance net connected to the release of our non provisions. So that's a onetime effect that helps us a little bit in the quarter. And on top of that, we have also a lower debt, which also reduces the finance costs. On the tax side, where the tax costs are only up 12%, while the profit before tax is up 21%. That's also connected to the nonrecurring costs in the quarter.
Underlying, I would say, we are relatively stable on tax rate close to last year. Earnings per share, up 25% in the quarter and twelve percent year to date. Return on capital employed, basically the same level as last year, 19%. Cash flow as last quarter, very strong, up with 43% to €761,000,000 And I will elaborate on that a little bit more on next slide. Net debt EBITDA, lower than last year, and that's, among other things, driven by the good cash flow.
And I'll elaborate a little bit more on that also in a few slides. Okay. So cash flow then. As you can see, very strong, grew 43% versus last year. And the improvement is mainly driven by improved working capital development.
Last year, we actually increased the operating working capital slightly. This year, it's going down slightly. So that's the biggest impact. And then, of course, the higher result helps us also a lot. Inventories show a slight decrease organically, but we still feel it's on a slightly high level.
And we have deliberately chosen not to push too hard in this area during the pandemic so far to make sure we safeguard service levels. That's important in the competition about the customers. So this I think this has actually supported us in some market share growth during the quarter, during the pandemic so far. Earnings per share grew, as I said earlier, with 25 percent to SEK 3.8. And the improvement, of course, mainly comes from the strong EBITDA.
But also then, thanks to lower finance and finance cost and tax cost I talked about earlier. If you look at a more longer term perspective and the 3 5 year rolling 5 quarter rolling earnings per share, they are up 12% 13%, respectively. Debt. Interest bearing net debt continued to decline and was at the end of the quarter at basically at SEK 5,800,000,000 compared to SEK 6 €100,000,000 last year, so basically €1,000,000,000 lower. The decrease comes from the strong cash flow, of course, but also the fact that we did not pay any dividend this year helps us, of course, on the debt situation.
And slightly fewer acquisitions also completed during the year so far. So that, of course, helps us also on this side. Net debt equity ratio decreased to 61% from 85% last year. And from a historical perspective, I think this is a low level. And consequently, our financial position is very strong.
And in general, the debt ratios are relatively low. And another perspective then on the financial position, if you look at the end of quarter 3, our short term funding was slightly lower than SEK 500,000,000 and our long term unutilized credit facilities were SEK 3,500,000,000. So good headroom and yes, good flexibility and capability to act if we want to. And I end there. Thank you.
And I leave over back to Boen.
Okay. Thank you, Patrick. Here you see a slide basically describing our main segments. And I just want to reiterate that we are fortunate to have a broad customer segment portfolio with basically no or low segment dependency and a bit of a business cycle hedging. And I would say that we are very resilient in weak cycles relative a stereotypical industrial company.
So strong, strong position to have. Also very importantly, I would like to spend some time on digitalization and sustainability. I think we are making great progress and taking a lot of large steps forward in very short time here. To start with digitalization, we are basically forced to do this in a positive sense based on the pandemic. And there is great progress made in our different companies, perhaps mostly in the area of sales, where you basically constructively question outside sales versus inside sales and invest a lot more in electronic tools to, I would say, improve quality, lower cost basis and increase efficiency and so on, both marketing and training, a lot of new, I would say, tools using online sort of webinars and things, which are also actually improving quality and reducing cost.
And we see also in the industrial system a lot of more control related opportunities, which can be cloud based and so on, which are more and more used. And also in administration, we are trying to become more efficient. And I know that even one company are investing in some sort of robot in the bookkeeping area basically. So a lot of interesting things happen, and we are keen to progress in this area. Also in sustainability, we think we are quite good and have been quite good for some time based on our long term perspective and our commitment to things.
But we are wanting to become even better, and we are working as a team now on and have been working on this for quite some time on our long term sustainability vision. And we are basically soon going to launch a new sort of set of goals in this area, which are, I would say, challenging and inspiring and hopefully also comforting for the external audience in terms of what Indo Trade is targeting in this area. We have also launched ESG related KPIs for this year for all our companies to work with, and we have introduced systems to manage this efficiently. So yes, I would say positive commitment and great engagement in this area, broadly in the group. And this is not something we only think is sort of something we do for basically the external world are pressuring us.
We believe this is good business sense and creating business opportunity and also making us, obviously, a relevant and good employer and being relevant for both customers and suppliers. So good progress in this area, important. Then if we go to the summary slide, try to elaborate a bit on the key takeaways of our presentation. So we see a gradual improvement during the quarter, but still majority of the companies have been impacted negatively by the pandemic. Large variations between company segments and markets, we have said that before, it's still true.
But the total outcome of all of those variations are still positive. And we had record high earnings, and this was driven by some strong segments, but also very good cost management and agility in our companies. It's continued uncertainty going forward and perhaps it has increased a bit even based on that we see further spread of COVID-nineteen in some countries. Brexit is coming up for sort of the final decision between the EU and the UK. There is a U.
S. Election and so on and so forth. But October is, I would say, still what we see now looking good, but November December is more uncertain. In terms of invoicing days, we have one less invoicing day in October. And theoretically, we have 2 more in December.
But it still depends a little bit on how different customer companies will manage the last week, 52 there. If they keep open a bit in the beginning of the week or if they close sort of early. But hopefully, they are open. But even if the world is a little bit uncertain, we have focus on what we can impact. And there is a large desire to make progress in the Intertrade Group.
So we are still sort of cautiously optimistic going forward. So by that, we end the formal presentation. And thank you for listening so far, and we open up for a question session.
Thank Our first question comes from the line of Johan Dahl of Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Just on the clearly impressive margins in the quarter here, even if we exclude all this, both one offs and government support. But what I'm curious about is, is it primarily in your minds, is it business mix? Or is it cost out that I've explained this rapid improvement in margins?
I mean, you took out, I think you said in the report, 260 people. So that seems it would explain a lot of the productivity improvement or is it rather business mix?
Yes, I would say both actually. I there is a lot of dynamic movements below the surface sort of. So we have a large number of companies who have suffered a bit, but been extremely good at reducing costs, so protecting margin. And we have some companies then having a great performance top line wise, gross margin wise and improving profit levels. So I think there is an impact from both.
But Patrick is smarter than me, so he can perhaps explain this even better.
No, I don't think so. But it's both, of course. And but elaborate a little bit on the cost side, I think our companies have been extremely good in managing the costs and taking out people permanently has been sort of one tool, but definitely not the only one. Of course, they work with all sort of levers they can and travels, other types of external costs have been held very low during the quarter, of course, and that impacts a lot as well. So cost management has helped the, call it, the suffered companies a lot, and they protected their margin in a really good way.
And then on top of that, we have also a good number of companies performing really, really strong. So I think it's I don't know if we disappoint you, Johan, but it's both.
No, no. I'm just trying to get the numbers right here. But you made a charge here in the quarter, a one off charge for redundancies, I think. Was that for the €260,000,000? Or is that sort of for new productivity measures?
And secondly, the 600 people on furlough, is that also sort of a representation of further productivity improvements? Or is it
something else? Well, the $260,000,000 the one off we took is related to the 260. And we will see some more in quarter 4 that relates to this one off. But I would say 80% of the headcount reduction related to the one off is seen in the Q3 numbers. Then let's see.
I mean, the companies are still evaluating what potentially needs to be done more as but that's a balance, of course, how quickly sales recovers and governmental support and furlough solutions are disappearing.
Just finally, before getting back in line, how concerned are you that this health, medtech related products that are selling very well at the moment sort of becomes a difficult comp going into next year. Is that something you're thinking about? Or do you think it's more of a structural growth story in this health
care exposures? But a minority of the health care cluster is having a positive COVID push. And they will obviously have a very difficult reference in quarter 2 next year, perhaps also a little bit in quarter 3. But a majority of the sales from that cluster is not having a COVID push COVID-nineteen push. So that's normal not normal, but very positive organic growth, which hopefully will continue going forward.
But every company is unique and every company's situation is a little bit unique, so it's always tenders to generalize. But that's the overall perspective, I would say.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from the line of Karl Alexander of Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's Karl Ragnostam here from Nordea. So first of all, on the U. S. Topic here, you mentioned that you've been taking out 260 FT feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet Es since Q1. How many of these did you take out in Q3?
Or was it all of them?
I don't have that number exactly, but I would say slightly more than half of it is in quarter 3, yes.
Should we expect the majority of that to be or the effect of that to be seen already in Q4? Or is it more of a going into 2021 thing for the half that you took out in Q3, that is?
I would say that the sort of the savings effect from that, that will come already in quarter 4. And but it is partly I mean, as we also wrote in report, it's much related to the business area or country that did most in this area is UK. And they are already now reducing furloughs. So it's sort of this permanent reduction is replacing the temporary reductions, the furloughs. So it yes, it helps them going forward.
Okay. Perfect.
And also, you also mentioned talked about the cost ramp up as a function of sales recovering. Is it possible for you to sort of quantify what impact less traveling and thereby less sales selling expenses had in Q3? And a little bit how we should look at the cost ramp up going into Q4?
I think we refrain from that. It's a little bit too much sort of detail.
Okay. Perfect. And the final one from my side. If you could give some flavor on the MedTech or Medical segment growth in the quarter And also how much MedTech represented in terms of group sales in Q3?
No, we don't have the I mean, we only disclose these numbers on an annual basis. And they represent represented, I would say, 30% of our group sales last year. And they have I mean, they have grown more than group average, so it's slightly more now then, but that's basically all we can say.
And could you say anything about the general growth pace for the sub segment in broad terms?
Sorry, could you repeat that?
Could you please give us some information about the general growth pace for the sub segment medtech or medtech plus pharma in more broader terms?
It's very a lot of actually different application areas comprised under the heading MedTech Pharma. So it's impossible to generalize there to actually still be professional, I must say. So we can't really do that.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Robert Reddin of Carnegie.
Two questions, if I may. So listening to your comments basically on the business areas, what I heard was basically farm, romantic energy, water, wastewater, positive in Q3. Engineering Automotive, I guess, that includes heavy trucks and maybe you said Oil and Gas and Aerospace in the UK weak. So if I generalize, the cyclical segment is still weak, noncyclical segment is strong. So what I'm thinking, could you say something about how that developed during Q3, if those cyclical parts were at all improving throughout Q3?
Were they stronger at the end of Q3 or at the start?
It's a good question. And yes, general Engineering and Automotive was sequentially stronger in the quarter. But Aerospace and Oil and Gas, which are obviously much, much, much smaller segments, We're still on a very low level, unfortunately, so no real progress there.
So if we generalize for those cyclical sort of end markets, were they improving, like if oil and gas and aerospace is so much smaller? Yes.
Yes. All
right. And
on order intake, it was, was it 2% below sales? And you talked about valves having a strong delivery quarter, but I guess a more modest order intake. My question would be, if there was a seasonality in ordering take or book to bill. I sort of looked into my model here, and I see that over the past 10 or so years, the average book to bill in Q3 is 0.98%. Is there some type of seasonality in book to bill or orders in Q3?
I'm not really sure. It's not actually something that we have yes, we've not calculated as a sort of an empirical evidence that it is like that, But could be, I'm not sure.
Or do you believe that that book to bill below 1% is sort of a negative sign for Q4?
It's very as I said, November December is very uncertain in terms of order intake, more certain in terms of invoicing sales. So a lot of companies have a fairly good order book now. So I think, yes, I feel more certain about an okay invoicing quarter, but our order intake will develop in 2nd part of November December and so on is more difficult to guide, unfortunately. I mean, if a lot of companies follow Ireland now with more complete shutdowns, we can go quite quickly downwards. So yes, can't really guide there.
Okay, okay. But you said something about October having talked about? Yes. Okay. Thanks.
Thanks. Thanks. Thank you so much.
Our next question comes from the line of Johan Dahl of Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Just a quick follow-up. I just did the back of the envelope calculation on the acquisition multiples year to date. It seems to be some inflation up to 10%. Is that something that you agree with? And do you make any conclusions from that?
And finally, also on the margin target of 12% for the group, I believe it is currently at substantially higher levels at mid to the pandemic. Any thoughts on that? If
you talk multiples first, then I we are not buying at any sort of higher prices now than before. It's a bit you can go wrong a little bit looking at the numbers in the report and because there are several reasons for that. Partly, there are some more small acquisitions that we don't that we have not published, which is also part, of course, of the numbers in the report. It's also the fact that we are sometimes we have earn out clauses in our in basically all of our contracts. And normally, we hope and think that these are now that we've been reached, so we book these as goodwill.
But they, of course, are not in the current sales and profit of the you're not comparing apples with apples really. When you compare the disclosed information on sales of the companies and booked goodwill and so on, Does that make sense?
And your second question, we it's a good question. We are actually obviously considering that. And at the appropriate time, we will come back to the market with views on that. But yes, we will let you know when that will be going forward.
All right.
Thanks.
And there are no further questions at this time. Please go ahead, speakers.
Then we say thank you for participating, and thank you for your questions. And have a nice afternoon.