All right. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Inission's Q2 presentation. My name is Henric Hintze, and I'm an equity analyst at ABG Sundal Collier, and I cover Inission, and that's why I'm here to moderate this presentation today. We will start with a summary of the report from CEO Fredrik, and after that, we will move on to a Q&A session, which I will moderate. If you have any questions during the presentation, please ask them in the Q&A chat, and I will read them out for Fredrik to answer afterwards. With that, I leave it to you, Fredrik.
Thank you very much, Henric. Welcome to Inission Q2 presentation. My name is Fredrik Berghel. I'm one of two co-founders and one of two principal owners of Inission. Myself and Olle, we started this company seventeen years ago, and we are both still active. I am the CEO, and Olle is the Chairman of the company. Today, as we have said a few times now, Inission Group consists of old Inission EMS, contract manufacturing of industrial electronics, and Enedo, which is a company that develops, markets, sells, and produces power supplies. Both these business areas are operating with customized high-end, high-mix, low-volume industrial electronics. I will present the Q2 financial performance, go through the main items, what we have been about in the quarter, and I will also finally comment our targets, financial targets.
Then, as Henric said, we will end with a Q&A session. To the hard numbers. Reported sales increased 1.4% to SEK 570 million. However, adjusted for the AXXE sales, 46 million, sales decreased 38 million SEK, meaning that we had a top line organic drop there with 6.8%. As a high-level explanation of the Q2 result, I would like to comment that, due to lower top line, our net added value and the way we count that, that is revenue minus direct material, that are the money that we are living on, are actually 9 million higher compared to last year.
Then, if we again adjust for AXXE here, that is new in the group, AXXE's NAV in the same period was 20 million, meaning then that our net added value was 9 million less. Cost-level wise, we are 20 million up compared to last year, but again, AXXE adjusted, it's 5 million up for the group. All in all, that gives an EBITDA of 29 million SEK, which is then 12.6 million lower than last year. AXXE contributed in this period with 4 million of that money. I talked a few times last year about the beauty of organic growth. Exactly the opposite happens now when we have organic decline.
We are losing out net added value, and that requires that we need to save back on cost here to maintain our profitability and margin. Lower financial cost, I will talk a little bit about our bank procurement later, but we have lower financial costs now, and we will see that also coming forward, but then in the period, we also had a currency-related cost of almost four million, which brings down the earning per share here to 0.65 SEK or 65 öre, Swedish öre. Important now for the organization and for Inission is, of course, to lower cost level here. We have started breaking, but there is a time lag in breaking.
And some of the factory that is still doing well, they are perhaps not breaking, but the factories that are low-running now on lower volume, they are breaking, but it takes a little bit time to have these cost cuts come through, and that is where we are fighting now. But forward, we have to do this even harder. If we zoom out a little bit and look at the longer time horizon, I think we have had a fantastic journey. If we look also at the last 12-month numbers, we have net sales of just over SEK 2.2 billion.
We have an EBITDA amounting to 157 million SEK or 7.1% as a margin, meaning really that we are running slightly faster LTM compared to 2023. But profit margin and profit are lower than 2023, a little bit. So over then to the split between the business areas. I think if we look at the first half year for business area Inission EMS, we did it reasonably well. We have a NAV in the quarter adjusted for AXXE that are on the same level. And I think that is, since we have lower sales, so that I think that is I consider that good. However, costs are 3.2 million higher compared to last year.
So all in all, that gives, in the quarter, an EBITDA of SEK 4.1 million. So of course, the same goes for Inission EMS as for the group. We need to come down in cost there, and that is the message to the whole organization. Looking at Enedo, the top line drop is severe. They are down almost 30 million, SEK 28.6 million in the quarter compared to last year, or 20%. And of course, that is difficult to catch up, and out of these 12.6 that the group is below last year, 8.5 of those is related to the Enedo program. Also, Enedo is saving back, but again, they are breaking, and they are trying to save back cost. But year on year, if you measure it, they are slightly up.
Of course, then we have to remember that we are shrinking in head count a little bit. We are saving back, but we also have all costs with inflation increasing here, so that have to be remembered. Here we have a more challenging, I would say, cost-cutting situation, because since we took over Enedo, we have shrunk it to profitability. And we have almost somewhere, and in some functions we have cut quite close to the bone here, so shrinking further might require, if needed, then structural changes. But we are doing our best here actually to save back and see where this takes us. Over to some descriptive story then, what we have been up to in the quarter, some main items.
Inission South have invested totally in new equipment in the factory for the SMT line, which is the heart and the core of electronic production. Inission board have also, in the period, decided to prepare the company to change to Nasdaq main list, so we have started that project. All the consultant needed to run this have been appointed and made contracts with, and the first meeting are starting there. We think early next year, somewhere Q1 next year. The main reason for this is to get perhaps a little bit more attention in the media coverage, but also to be able to attract especially international investors. This is a long-term thing, really.
We listed ourselves at Nasdaq First North in 2015, and now we think the size of the company and the strength of the organization can actually carry this next step, which we find quite natural. New equipment has been launched in our sheet metal factory in Tallinn, worth 2 million EUR. And this is of course a little bit ironical, because we have been running bottleneck machines twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four seven, some of the bottleneck machines. And now when we have new machines covering these bottlenecks, the economy is going down, and now we don't have that problem at all. So. But there will be, the times will be, sooner or later, better, and then we will be prepared.
We're also restructuring the group in that sense that we have these two business areas now where we have appointed Mathias Larsson as business area manager for Inission EMS. Meaning for myself then, that my time will be freed up to work with the whole group and also with acquisition on a strategic level going forward. Mathias will be in charge of the and work together with the company managers in Inission EMS. And here we have another important thing. We are now starting up and begun a project where we will move the organizational home for our factory in Tunis from the Enedo to Inission EMS. And all in all, ex AXXE, the group have 10 companies and 10 factories.
Nine out of those factories belong to the EMS organization, and they are really professional and really good in production. Enedo, on the other side, they only have one factory, so it comes quite natural to move over the organizational home to the Inission EMS program. Then they will have the central, they will have support from the central support functions that is helping out with factory product development, sourcing of material, machine machining development, and so forth. And also by doing this, we see that Enedo will be a more focused product company, and that is really a trend among our new and modern customer that have OEM customer. They don't have factories, and Enedo Finland, they don't have a factory.
They rely on EMS company to produce their goods, and that will be also the future then later for Enedo Italy. So Enedo will be more focused, and also another good thing that we see with this move is that we will, from Inission EMS, have a wider offering to our customer, meaning that we can actually produce a little bit higher volume with a lower cost level, since salaries in Tunis is production salaries in Tunis is quite attractive. Inission South have also decided to relocate the factory in Borås, so we have found a new premises. We have signed a contract there, and we will move spring next year. And since we are moving, we have almost sort of a clean sheet there, that we have a white paper.
So together with our lean consultants, we can really have a fresh start and design that factory to be really flow-orientated from the start. We have done a few very good recruitments also now in the period. We have got Elisabeth Nilsson hired to be the MD for Innovate. Elisabeth is she has a background from Volkswagen and have been working centrally there in Germany. She also have been at McKinsey as a consultant. We have also recruited Charlotte Jansson to be our Chief Digital Officer.
So making sure, and this is on group level, Charlotte's job is on group level, to take care of both Inission and Enedo, to make sure that we are collecting our data, taking care of our data, and as a base for that, of course, that starts with the IT infrastructure, which is also one of Charlotte's responsible areas.
We have in the quarter also done a bank procurement and our main bank, I would say, because we have a set of banks, our main bank made the best offer, so we have a better structure set up also now for our bank services, where we have quitted or are about to quit lending on invoices and also selling on invoices that have been a part of our cash infrastructure. So now we will have a clean cash credit line. We will have more simple setup. However, cash flow-wise, this is affecting us with about SEK 30+ million in the quarter. So when you see our cash flow there, that is actually we have sold invoices less because they go off balance sheet.
But again, then cost-wise, and also administration-wise, we have a much better setup now. This bank procurement was for the whole group. So now we have financed also the Enedo program, which was quite costly financed, a little bit here and there, and now we have one program for all of that, which will lower our financial cost and can be seen already in this quarter, but also lowering it forward. Something about our financial targets. We are in the situation now where the economy is breaking our customer here and there. They have still a little bit too much on the stock level, so they are hesitant. They don't place orders with the same horizon anymore.
So but we still think it's doable to reach our SEK 2.4 billion as a turnover, about. So that is our target. We still think also we are balancing there now on 7% at EBITDA. But we still also think that we can actually shrink this company down to that EBITDA level. So that is our target. And our targets then for capital structure, they are, well, our performance for capital structure, they are well in line with our targets. So then, with a little bit longer horizon, annual growth 10% organic. Yeah, difficult to say now when we are shrinking 6%-7%. Acquisitions, we have never been growing so little as 5%, so for us, it's more like don't...
We should be very cautious with acquisitions. The market is back there, we think, and we have a handful of opportunities, but we will be quite selective and cautious. But then again, the things that I have talked about earlier, it's about to be very efficient, to have a good production set up. We are, as said, going towards larger business units. We are centralizing, we have centralized resources for sourcing that is helping out, centered sales resources. And again, then shifting to organic growth rather than acquired growth. And then we have the mega trend, even though now economy is breaking, but the mega trends about nearshoring, optimization, robotization, digitalization, and not the least, electrification.
That will be a driver for our industry with a little bit longer timeline. So that was all from me. Do we have any questions, Henric?
Yes. But before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone who's listening that you can write your questions in the chat, and I'll read them out for Fredrik to answer them. But let's start with some questions for me. The Q2 margin was 5% now, down from 7.3% last year. Could you just talk a bit more about what drove this and what you are doing to adapt costs to demand? And also how long does it take for cost reductions to have an effect on the P&L once you implement them?
Yes. As I tried to explain, the way we talk and think about this, we see top line, and then next level is, of course, how much of that top line or revenue goes to our supplier. And what is left there, that is then our net added value. And we are defending that even though top line is going down. So I think we are both for Enedo and Inission, we are making reasonably good business. But, of course, with... Then we have a new factory here, so we are doing about the same net added value, but we have another, the AXXE factory. And if you would make it really, really simple, you could say that the cost of the AXXE factory here.
But then we are not prolonging hire people that are hired on temporary contracts. If someone leaves, we don't replace. We are cost cautious wherever we can. We are also running programs at Enedo with shorter working weeks, together with them, with the unions and the society. They work less, and they get some compensation from the society and the unions, and we pay less. So there are those programs. But yes, there is a time lag, of course, and that is also one year ago or a little bit over one year ago, the big question was how can we equip our factories, hire enough people, and get enough material to produce to all the customers?
That was really, if not screaming, at least shouting, "Give us more, give us more, more products." So when you have started that journey and all the whole organization is moving in one direction, and when you start to break that, there is a time lag, absolutely. But I think it's also... There is another component, and that is, this is not one company, it's ten companies, and some of those are doing still really well, and they are not breaking. So, and they have good margin, and they have a little bit less margin now, since their cost is perhaps more adequate and more sustainable compared to one year ago.
But that extra cost, that goes on the total, and then the companies that is doing less well, they are trying to cut costs, but the total there is, as I showed, you know, it's ending up with a couple of millions more at Enedo, and a couple of million more spending or total cost level compared also for Inission. But, yes, that's where we are. But this have to be, the cost cutting have to be enforced, and that is the program that we are running now together with Mathias and his company managers, Kalle and his company managers. Now we have to... Because we are not. We, we don't have a size problem.
If we sell things running rate for SEK 2.2 million, even with ten own factories and then AXXE factory including here, it, the, it's not a size problem. We can shrink this to profitability, no problem. No problem. But then there's also a balance act. When will the customer revert and, and want material again? Because I, I am so old, so I've seen this a few times. You know, all of a sudden, stock levels are too low, and then they will start to order again. And, and, yeah, they- it's, it's a balance also. It's, it's not just only to slash and send home, our coworkers. It's not, it's not that simple. Yeah.
Yeah, so given that there is a time lag here, and you now in Q2 have the 5% margin, what are the chances then that you during H2 can get these costs under control sufficiently to reach the 7% target for the full year?
We regard them as good, you know? Otherwise we would have changed the target. So we see that we can shrink ourselves down to maintain the margin where we are now. H1, 7 or 6.99, if you really count. LTM number, 7.1. We can, we should be able to. That is. Of course, we have asked. We do this bottom up, since we are off our budget track here. We have asked each and every daughter company to revert to their budgets and replan now for H2. If we sum that up, it looks absolutely doable. Absolutely doable.
But then, of course, if it breaks even further, yeah, then we have to chase down even further, and that is, of course, a $10 million question. Will the economy sort of go from here and flat out, or will it drop further? If it drops further, yeah, then it will be difficult. If it goes from here and then catch up towards the end of the year, yeah, then it's absolutely doable. But so-
Mm.
So, and that we don't know, and we really try to talk to our customer and be close to them, but they are difficult, you know? They, as I've said, I think both last presentation and the one before, a lot of these people are very optimistic, but they don't place orders. So that is the paradox here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that kind of touched on my next question here. You wrote that book-to-bill has improved quite significantly since the Q4 low, but is still below one, of course.
Mm.
If you could just elaborate a bit on that, and whether you think that underlying demand is in an improving trend, or are there more timing effects with, you know, orders being delayed and placed now instead of back in Q2, Q4 and Q1, and also what you're hearing from customers?
Mm
... which you started talking about?
Yeah, and there is a fragmented picture. I mean, we have customers that is doing well and ordering more, and we also have, on the other side of the scale there, we have big, super big, international, well-known customer names that they say, "Maybe we don't need anything for the whole 2025," which I don't think is true, though. But there is... "We have so much on the shelf, Fredrik." Is that really true? So, there is a big scale here from the ones that is ordering and are moving forward to those that is really facing this, you know, and are extremely cautious. But as a total, I think the way we judge it now with our revised plans for H2, that is pretty stable.
Pretty stable. That is how we revise it. So meaning then, that now during Q3, we need to see, of course, that the book-to-bill comes back to one. Otherwise, this will be a further shrinking system. So, yeah, that's where we are.
All right, and you mentioned that you think the SEK 2.4 billion sales target is challenging but still achievable. Do you think you need additional M&A to reach this target, or is it still possible to reach it organically from here?
It is challenging to reach it organically, of course, and then the way we have formulated it, it is about two point four. So it is challenging. No, M&A is not in that thinking at all. We have, as I said, a handful of contacts, but now it's mid-August already. The likelihood for us closing any of those deals affecting the top line for 2024 is. It's not zero, but it's limited because there is wisdom from the history. It takes a few months, you know, half a year or even longer to actually close a deal, and we don't have any. We are not engaged in any negotiations, to put it like that, you know.
Yeah, okay. And, how dependent is your margin target on reaching this SEK 2.4 billion sales target, would you say?
No, we don't need to do that. We don't.
Okay.
We need to, and that is really the internal communication. We really have to cut down cost now, so that we can reach that on two point three or two point two five. You know, we should be able to reach this seven anyhow. That is that is our ambition. That is our ambition. Because, as I said earlier, it is we don't have a size problem, and now, since we have actually working on this, that not only in this and being a little bit bigger company, but also the daughter companies, the average size of the daughter companies are shrinkable, if I put it like that.
Mm.
Of course, also, I think with the Enedo program, where we recently, two years back, you know, we have half the organization in Italy. There are functions that is where we only have one now, and to cut that even further, and now with this limited time program, yeah, then we can cut cost, but then it's not permanent, and the cost you actually save is also less, compared to if you really shrink. To shrink further in Italy, that will also be. That is time-consuming also. We want to move forward. We also don't want to shrink, you know? We want to move forward, and we. Now, that's the balance that we have there. That's the balance that we have.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, we have some question from the audience as well. And one audience member here is asking if you could give some more color on the M&A pipeline, and why you're remaining a bit cautious there. Are you afraid of a potential recession, or why is that?
... No, my experience from the M&As we have done during the initial time is that we have a lead, either that is someone we find, and those are normally the best, or that is a sales process going on. We have been quite cautious due to our balance sheet and our net debt situation. Now that has improved, so we don't think that should be a problem. But also we have been bidding, but we haven't won the bids because we are cautious bidders. So but now we think that the price expectations actually are coming down. So we think we can close deals.
But then also we have a little bit of a shift since we think we are down in Sweden, we think we are down in Norway. We could do something more in Finland, and we have been in contact there. Unfortunately, though, some of those, some were out a little bit, too, of the scope. Some was more like, again, these turnaround candidates, and we really try to avoid those. But then we want to move further away from our home, meaning going down to Poland, Germany, Austria, and that may be also a bit of the reason why we are cautious. We are a little bit trying there, and it's not home turf for us, so we have engaged consultants, and we are looking at names, and we have discussions ongoing.
Yeah, sooner or later, we will do something in, I think, in Germany. That would be my preference.
All right. Another question from the audience, "Do you have any comments on your construction customers, and how they are commenting on the current situation?
Yeah, our sheet metal factory, especially our sheet metal factory in Tallinn, has a big account with the Danish customer that is in ventilation of office buildings and big buildings. And they are running extremely slow, so that is hitting the operations there quite a bit. The customer and the customer that we really have a good cooperation with, we do a lot for them. So when the construction business coming... And we have other those, and that is a sheet metal, but we have also other electronic customers that is also construction-related. That is really slow now.
Yeah, I don't have any prognosis when that turns back, but I think that is a lot related to interest rates, and now we see interest rates coming down. We see valuations of real estate stabilizing. We see and also hear that the financial market is back to actually provide that type of companies with capital, and the immediate risk of, like, a big, big failure there or companies going bankrupt is over, so step by step, it will be a stabilized situation. That is our opinion there, but for the moment, it's very slow. For the moment, it's very, very slow. Yeah.
All right. A final question from me, while we wait and see if there are any more questions from the audience. I was just wondering if you could go into a bit more detail about these new bank terms that you negotiated. What kind of effect will that have, and from when do these new terms-
Uh, we, we-
Yeah, start having effect?
We got a better deal when it comes to the margin, meaning measured from the base interest. We got less. We pay the bank less margin on the program. That is very beneficial, of course. But then also structural-wise, we have cut out our factoring program. We have been borrowing on our invoices, meaning that we are sending the invoices to the bank, and we get 80% the day after, and that has been our way of financing this company. And then we have had a cash credit on top to take variances, but the big money has been coming from the factoring program.
Since we have been a little bit, we never had a balance problem, net debt, EBITDA, and then if we sell the invoices, we have been discussing this with the bank because we think if we have an invoice to Epiroc or ABB or ASSA or whatever, you know, we think. And they, we have that, we have borrowed on that, it should be pretty safe. So they could go in the bank covenant thinking it could go off balance sheet, but they don't think it like that. So but then we said, then we have done a small portion. We have actually sold those invoices. We have insured them and sold them to the bank. And by insuring them and selling them, we have had a cost level neutral.
We have a cost-neutral cost level. But what we have done now, we have cut that out also, and that actually, the way cash flow is measured, of course, if we don't sell invoices, then, if we stop selling invoices, that comes, shows up now as... And that can clearly be seen our receivables has almost, not exploded, but they have gone up quite a bit, even though sales have come down. So and that we can't say by decimal, but we estimate that to about SEK 30 million, that has costed us in cash flow in Q2, and it will cost us perhaps another SEK 30 million in cash flow.
And then that is how cash flow is reported, because the invoices that we have in the factoring program, they are very similar. But they are also cut out, but they are in our balance sheet, so they are not measured as cash flow. But both selling and factoring is meaning that we get the money immediately. But now we have a cash credit that covers for that, and the big earnings is less costly, and then also a lot less administration. So we have a cleaner structure now, much cleaner. Optical, it looks worse, but operational-wise, it's much better.
All right.
That I also think that is. The big Swedish banks, we had three or four bidding here, and that is new for Inission as a company. They always, earlier in history, they wanted to have the invoice as the base for the security. Now they trust the company on next level a little bit. We also judge it like that.
Mm. All right. Thank you very much for that, Fredrik. That's all the questions for this time, so I'll leave the word to you for final remarks, if you have any.
Thank you, Henric, and thanks to all the listeners. Then we are done for today. No further remarks than that. Thank you for listening, and take care. Goodbye.