Hello and welcome to Today's Broadcast With Inwido. We're President and CEO Fredrik Meuller and CFO and Deputy CEO Peter Welin, who will present a report for the third quarter of 2025. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A, so if you're dialing in and would like to ask a question, please press star 9 to raise your hand, and then star 6 to unmute yourself when given the floor. You can also submit questions using the form to the right. And with that said, I hand over the word to you guys.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this webcast covering Inwido's third quarter of 2025. My name is Fredrik Meuller. I'm the President and CEO of Inwido since April 2024, and I'm joined here in Stockholm today by Peter Welin, our Group CFO and Deputy CEO. As usual, we will go through some of the highlights of the group's performance, first of all, and then dig into the detailed financials. We will have a BA run-through and finish off with a summary outlook and, of course, a Q&A session. As usual, you will find the material available also on Inwido's website. So let's get right into it, and we will start with the quarterly highlights at group level. And this is a slide you're, of course, familiar with. I do hope, though, that you can see that we've added two sites since the last quarter.
They are Vimmerby in Småland, Sweden, and Nottingham in the U.K., of course, very much linked to the two transactions that we have done over the last month. We'll get back to those in a minute. Inwido is otherwise leading in Europe, of course. Still, we have lots of white spots on the map, meaning that we have huge growth potential, both organically and through acquisitions going forward. I think the exposure that we have is rather unique and particularly important as a strong feature in times like these ones that we are currently experiencing. If we look at the quarter and the highlights, it was really a quarter with two phases, where July in particular started off on a rather soft fashion. August was a little bit better, and primarily September was a nice rebound.
So we finished off the quarter in a much better fashion than we started it on. So there is a silver lining there. I would also highlight that we saw a lot of variations between our different markets. Sweden was one of the brightest spots, improving quite a lot at last. We have been waiting for that recovery, and it's, of course, also from very low levels. So that was promising. Finland, in turn, was a rather negative surprise to us. We said already in Q2 that Finland had bottomed out. That's what we thought then, that we really couldn't get any lower, but it did. So Finland is a bit of a disappointment in the quarter, and it just goes to show that it's a very tough market now at new all-time low levels.
So overall, the much-anticipated and much-needed consumer demand recovery was slower than we had planned for, particularly, again, in the market of Finland. Sales were flat. Order intake up slightly, very much linked to our project business. Order book also up a bit. Our GM1 margin is quite okay, linked to price increases that we've been able to push through, rather stable raw materials side. But we have been affected and hampered by a less favorable mix geographically and segment-wise, and we've suffered from a stronger Swedish krona. So the main issue is really gross margin too, with productivity and staffing basically hampered by lack of volume. Having said that, I'm overall quite pleased with the cost control that we have. It's really lack of volume and the soft market that's the main problem. So once again, certain entities have been forced to cut deeper into their cost base.
That's frustrating. It's painful, and it takes some time before we see the full impact of it. I want to say, though, I mean, do note that the fundamentals for this business remain rather intact and overall quite positive. There's a lot of pent-up renovation and new build demand that needs to be covered at some stage, and that demand is just growing. On top of that, of course, we're expecting energy efficiency legislation to come through across all of the E.U. early next year in the form of the EPBD directive being implemented. M&A is more important for us. Our hard work is thankfully paying off, but we've also been a bit unlucky with one larger process also this quarter. I'll get back to that later on. We've done two excellent deals. There's more to come, and I do remain rather optimistic about our M&A going forward.
So looking into a snapshot of the Q3 key financials relative to the same quarter last year, we can see that the lower order intake that we experienced already in Q2 pushed through to us lacking volume in this quarter, and again, particularly in Finland, we were simply not prepared for it, so we had too high of a cost base, something that we've been forced to manage with throughout the remainder of the quarter, and we've had an adverse mix geography-wise and segment-wise with more project sales than consumer sales. Last but not least, our EBITDA was hit by an 8 million SEK of FX from a stronger Swedish krona. From the BAs, Scandinavian e-commerce were the main contributors this quarter, and the other two faced much tougher market conditions.
On the positive side, we have a strong cash flow yet again, lower gearing yet again, and that offers comfort for us in turbulent times, but it also enables us to have a very solid war chest for the M&A going forward. Adding the first six months of the year, we get the full nine months year-to-date performance. And I have to say it's been a bit of a mental roller coaster ride: low visibility in the marketplace, lots of geopolitical unrest, and erratic consumer behavior. But again, I think our broad exposure, our financial strength certainly helps. We perform better than our peers. We've gained share. We're seen as a flight to safety. I'm overall proud of our performance. I think it's important with a reminder that we are all in all in 12 different markets, all of them with unique features and at different stages of the cycle.
Variations between the markets were very clear in Q3 and also even within some of our business areas. Scandinavia, again, quite okay as a market. Sweden is growing, albeit from low levels, but certainly the government incentive schemes, the ROT-avdrag, and a lower interest rate have had and are having a positive impact on households overall. Although the ROT-avdrag will most likely disappear in its current form at the end of this year, which is a bit of a surprise to me that the government is taking that measure, but that's my personal opinion. The market will still benefit from easing up of mortgage, yeah, the mortgage rules and regulations, hopefully also giving a positive push to the real estate market, which is an important KPI and an important trigger for Inwido and our window and door business. Continuing on Scandinavia, Denmark, quite solid.
It has, I mean, consumer confidence has taken a bit of a hit this year over the last few months, linked very much to the Novo Nordisk volatility, which has had a big impact on the country as such. But overall, we remain positive about Denmark, and we see the current turbulence, if you like, as more of a one-off that will soon disappear. Norway is not deteriorating any longer. It has bottomed out, we think, and hope, and we are doing quite well in Norway given the circumstances. Moving on to Eastern Europe, I mentioned it a couple of times already. I will mention it even more times later on. It is challenging. Finland surprised us on the negative side across the whole line, with consumer demand being very soft, same pattern in Poland.
I do think that we in Sweden sometimes underestimate the negative impact that the whole Russia-Ukraine situation is having on these countries. I visited both of them recently, and it's just a wet blanket that is over the entire economy. Unfortunately, in Finland, we're not really seeing the same government discussions about supporting the construction industry one way or another that we are, for example, seeing in Sweden, and where it is in Sweden has had a positive impact. We're not really seeing the same in Finland, meaning that it will most likely be tough for some time still. E-commerce is also still in a bit of a waiting mode. Sweden is one positive exception, though. In fact, e-commerce in Sweden in August was the best August ever, and that has, of course, had a positive impact on us as well.
Last but not least, Western Europe, a bit of a mixed bag. Ireland remains solid for us and solid as a country and market. U.K., much more difficult, particularly England, with low consumer confidence, structural issues, high inflation, high unemployment, and hopefully the Labour Government can turn things around. That's very much needed. So generally, we see that plenty of our smaller peers are struggling in the current marketplace. We have gained share. Sweden and Elite Firms is only one example. We are perceived as a flight to safety, partly because we also have a strong balance sheet, but also they very much appreciate our high on-time and full delivery precision. A few words about mergers and acquisitions. We've closed two acquisitions over the last month, which is very pleasing, two nice ones.
Since there is, of course, much less organic tailwind than we had expected from the market, more acquisitions are needed, relatively speaking, for Inwido to meet its long-term growth targets. And again, thankfully, our hard efforts are starting to pay off. We work in a very structured fashion. We have added resources. We're also working with external advisors on a larger scale. And I think these two deals exemplify very much what we are looking for in terms of features. They meet our design criteria and our culture very well. But they have been lengthy processes. Just as an example, Adams Snickerier in Sweden took us nine months to complete from start to finish. It was a structured auction process that we won. Very nice business, complementary to our Sweden offering with its premium Almoge products.
FastFrame in the UK is also an important add-on to our Dekko business unit in the U.K., with lots of potential for sales and cost synergies. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a string of pearls that we've been talking about and working on. The pipeline looks promising, and it's a good mix, again, of existing and new markets, but also of medium-sized to larger ones. We are, of course, happy with the two ones that we have done now, but we need to do bigger deals as well, and that's thankfully something that we have in our funnel. I want to mention already now that we were involved in one larger process, actually started early in 2025, where it was a structured auction process.
It was actually in a, would have been for us, a totally new geographic market, more into Central Europe, a sizable deal where we won the auction. But it was a very problematic process because of the sell side. And in the very, very last minute, early in September, if I recall correctly, the seller, for emotional reasons, decided to pull the process. We were about to sign, and at the very last minute, we got a negative message. Painful, but it goes to show that the market sentiment is, first of all, having also a negative impact on M&A in that sense. It's more complex. It takes longer time than expected. But even more importantly, the emotional dimension of parting with your business, one cannot really underestimate. And that's always really tricky for us to manage.
We are sympathetic about it, but it's sometimes quite painful when something like this happens, where we were just about to put ink on paper. So you will see a note about this in the financial report where we're taking a hit on our EPS, for example, due to M&A transaction costs. Thankfully, we have others that we are working on that also look very promising. And on this one that I just mentioned, we have not closed any doors. It may well be that that one bounces back at some stage, but whether that would happen in one month's time or in three years' time, I cannot say, of course. Moving on to sustainability. I keep saying it every quarter, but I'm very happy to do so. I'm genuinely impressed and proud of our efforts within this field.
It is important not only for Inwido and its shareholders, but also for the stakeholders around us and very much appreciated by our customers. It's a natural part of our DNA. It's a multifaceted approach going all the way from energy efficiency to health and safety to R&D, very much exemplified by the pictures and the messages on this slide. We're getting a lot of credit for this from external business partners, where they really perceive us as best in class. Worth mentioning is, of course, also Elitfönster that got an award last week in Sweden by Optimera as the best supplier of the year, partly because of their groundbreaking work within the field of sustainability. So it was yet another quarter of really strong KPI development across the whole board, I would say. Pleasing to see.
Now, for more flavor on Inwido's consolidated Q3 financials, I will hand over to you, Peter. Please.
Thank you so much, Fredrik. Starting with this page, the income statement. To the left, you can see the Q3. In the middle, you can see the development year-to-date this year, as well as last year. And to the right, you can see the rolling 12 months, as well as full year of 2024. Starting with the quarter, sales was down by 2% compared to last year. The organic sales growth was +0.2% or SEK + 5 million compared to last year, so slightly growth when it comes to organic sales. The gross margin declined from 27.1% - 25.9%, mainly due to the mix that Fredrik was talking about. Consumer sales was down by 5% in a quarter, whereas product sales was up by 2%.
We also had different months within a quarter, where the slow start in July and August and then September was improved compared to last year. Due to the lower gross margins and due to the mix in the quarter, those operating EBITA margin declined from 13.4% - 12%, and the operating EBITA declined from SEK 304 million to SEK 268 million. In the quarter, we had restructuring costs, mainly acquisition costs of SEK 60 million, and we also had a negative FX impact of SEK 8 million in the quarter when comparing the currency to last year. Further on income statements, we can see that profit after tax was down by 18%, as well as earnings per share was also down by 18% from 323 - 265. Looking at the year-to-date, January to September, sales is plus 2%.
Organically is plus 4% compared to last year due to the higher sales growth in the beginning of the year. The gross margin now declined from 25.3% to 24.9% due to development in Q3, and the operating EBITA margin also declined from 10.2% to 9.8%. The profit after tax, as well as earnings per share, is slightly down compared to last year, minus 2%, meaning the earnings per share has declined from SEK 6.12 - SEK 6 . Rolling 12 months, Inwido has sales just below 9 billion, SEK 8 billion 985 million, with an operating EBITA margin of 10.4% and an earnings per share of SEK 9.16. This page is showing the sales development to the left and operating EBITA development to the right in Q3, Q3 last year to Q3 this year. You can see the development per business area.
In general, most of our business units, as well as our production units, have planned for higher sales growth in the quarter compared to last year, especially within the consumer markets. Due to, we had a high growth in or good growth end of last year when it comes to order intake and also beginning of this year, and then came Q2 with a low order intake, and that impacted the sales and the performance in July and August. We had taken actions, and thereby September was on the same level as last year. The consumer market is mainly declining within Eastern Europe due to Finland. In Eastern Europe, the sales of consumers was down by 70% in the quarter, and Western Europe due to U.K., where sales was down by 21% compared to last year.
We see a growth in Sweden, and we see growth in Ireland when it comes to consumer sales. E-commerce has made cost savings, and even though the sales declined in the quarter, the operating EBITA was slightly improved due to cost savings taking the beginning of this year and also focus on pricing. So they have improved their gross margin in the quarter compared to last year. This page is showing sales, as well as operating EBITA margin in the third quarter from 2019 until 2025. And as you can see, we have lower margins this year compared to previous years due to the mix and also due to the lower volumes, especially in July and August, where then September was on the same level as last year. And we have a mixed impact of 5% in the second quarter when it comes to consumer sales.
When it comes to cash flows, the cash flow has also declined. The cash flows before financial activities, excluding financial assets and acquisitions of subsidiaries, was down by SEK 60 million compared to last year due to lower cash flows from operating activities. That was down by SEK 85 million compared to last year, mainly due to lower Operating EBITA and also due to acquisition costs, as well as tax payments. The tax payments was higher this year in Q3 compared to last year, was SEK 58 million this year compared to SEK 11 million last year. And we have a timing issue. Year-to-date, the tax payment is more or less on the same level as last year. Working capital is stable. Minor changes when it comes to working capital.
And then when it comes to CapEx, we have lower CapEx this year compared to last year, but that will increase in the coming periods, but still a positive cash flow generation, and looking at the cash flow generation and then looking at our net debt, this page is showing the net debt, as well as net debt in relation to operating EBITDA, excluding as well as including IFRS 16, and as you can see, we have a seasonality when it comes to our cash flows and the net debt. The net debt is always the lowest point in Q4 because then we have lower activities, and working capital is a lower level, then in Q1, the market started to increase, and we increased the working capital, and in Q2, we pay out the dividends, so the net debt always increases in Q1 and Q2.
And then in Q3 and Q4, the net debt declines because we had generated cash flows in the second half of the year. Same pattern as this year. The Q3, we had a positive cash flow generations, and the net debt declined by SEK 225 million in the quarter compared to end of July. And we have a lower net debt of SEK 247 million compared to September last year. And we also have right now a lower net debt compared to December of 2024. The net debt per end of September is SEK 1 billion, 272 million. And that includes IFRS 16 loan of SEK 466 million, as well as acquisition debts of SEK 387 million, meaning the net debt related to bank loans minus the cash is now down to SEK 419 million. Looking at net debt versus EBITDA, we are today on 1.0, including IFRS 16 was 1 .2 September last year.
And excluding IFRS 16 is 0.7 compared to 0.9 last year. So Inwido has good headroom for further growth, and we had reduced the gearing. Another financial target of Inwido is return on operating capital. Return on operating capital is defined as average operating capital in relation, sorry, EBITDA in relation to average operating capital. And EBITDA declined in the quarter due to low operating EBITA and also due to acquisition costs. And thereby, the return on operating capital declined in the quarter to 12.7, even though the operating capital also declined. So we have a negative development in the quarter due to lower operating EBITA and also due to the acquisition costs. And this page is then showing the order backlog development to the left, and we're also showing the order intake to the right. The order backlog is plus 5% compared to September of last year.
Product is plus 9%, whereas consumer is minus 3%, indicating a negative mix the coming periods. Looking at the order intake, the total order intake, organic order intake was plus 1% compared to last year, where we have a positive project growth of 6% compared to last year, mainly driven by Scotland. We have taken some large orders in Scotland, whereas the consumer market declined also in Q3, minus 2%. We see a decline in the U.K., and we see a decline in a continued decline in Finland. We have a positive growth in Scandinavia due to Sweden, and the e-commerce is slightly lower compared to last year, where then we also focused on profitability. And now, Heno, back to Fredrik.
Thank you very much, Peter. We will now look into our four business areas in more detail, and we will start with Scandinavia.
As mentioned before, Sweden is at last improving, primarily on the consumer side, and as mentioned, Elite Firms, their larger entity, has gained share. Denmark remains solid. It's been a little bit turbulent over the last few months, but we remain positive on Denmark also in the near to medium to long term, and Norway has turned corner. Sales are up a bit overall, and the order intake is flattish. Ironically, the flip side of Sweden improving is that the mixed impact is negative on the BA as such. We still suffer from unabsorbed costs also in this BA. Overall, we've lost 20%-30% of volume since 2019, and that's painful. Having said that, we have invested quite a lot into this BA and into the group overall with capital expenditures, etc., and so we are in a nice position when volumes do return.
And here again, we've had an excellent add-on now in the form of Adams Snickerier that will add value to Inwido as from Q4. Moving on to Eastern Europe, we stated in Q2, as I mentioned, that it had bottom out in Finland. That did not hold true, contrary to our expectations. It declined sharply in July. It improved a little bit later on, but July was really, really soft and caught us by surprise, meaning that Finland overall is at an all-time low, and we are once again forced to take additional cost alignment measures, literally taking people out, which is painful. Here we've lost some 20% volume since 2019, but we do have entities that have lost 50%-60% of their volume. They're down to the bone chewing. We have still done better than the market.
We may have lost some share lately because we go for profitability before volume. And we've had an adverse mix, again, consumer being lower, which is quite painful, of course. I will not exclude additional restructuring here. We are, of course, looking at the portfolio across all of Inwido as we know, and Eastern Europe is not an exception. E-commerce, I'm quite proud of their performance in the quarter. They lost volume. And as you recall, they had a tough start to the year already in Q1, forcing them to take some corrective measures. Those have had an impact, and there's added to that additional very solid cost control and value-based pricing that has improved the margin for BA e-commerce throughout the quarter. E-Trade, as such, though, is still quite at a low level and rather flattish in development. Sweden is a positive exception.
So it's really purely a volume game. We do have a solid order backlog that gives us comfort, and we are now in a more lean operational setup, which is also improving profitability here. And I want to remind everyone that all of our peers in this field were loss-making last year, and I'm sure that situation has not improved this year. Last but not least, Western Europe, the macro reading in England is not improving. Households are rather depressed, and we hope and think that additional measures from the government will be taken to improve conditions over there, but it's really, really tough. Sales are affected for us, and there's a lot of margin pressure. We are, however, probably walking away from silly pricing. We take the long-term perspective, and we are further adjusting our unabsorbed fixed costs here. There's a difference, of course, between Scotland and England.
Scotland, where we have our Sidey Group performing still well, and the product business is doing better, and Sidey Group has continued to boost our overall order intake and backlog also in this quarter. Ireland remains stable and quite buoyant, where we have a very fine entity called Carlson, and they celebrated recently their 30-year anniversary. We're seeing in England that more and more businesses do come up for sale. A lot of them are in financial distress, but there are, as seen by our FastFrame acquisition, certain gems out there as well. And thankfully, they are attracted by the Inwido model. And I think the FastFrame transaction set a good example for what we want to do. So let's wrap up our key messages from today's Q3 report.
Yeah, recovery is slower than anticipated, but we finished Q3 on a positive note, with Sweden in particular improving together with Ireland. There are lots of variations across our markets and across our segments, highlighting the importance of local presence, highlighting the importance of broad coverage. And this is, of course, exactly what Inwido is all about. So volume and mix FX were hampering our profitability. We are adjusting costs where needed. We are prioritizing profit. And above all, we are very, very active in the M&A field, and the outlook is rather promising here, I would say. Again, the fundamentals of the business remain strong. There's lots of pent-up demand, and energy efficiency is definitely getting there. And the tide can turn quite quickly in this business. Inwido is standing firm. We get comfort from our backlog. We get comfort from our leading positions in the marketplace.
And above all, we get comfort from our strong balance sheet. And last but not least, to further boost our strategy execution overall, Ulrika just joined my management team, making it even stronger. So welcome, Ulrika, to Inwido. As usual, do pencil in these dates into your calendars already now, and particularly don't miss our Capital Markets Day here in Stockholm later in December. Now, Peter and I would be delighted to answer any of the questions that you may have, so please go ahead.
Thank you so much for the presentation here. And as I mentioned earlier, if you want to ask a question and have dialed in, press star nine to raise your hand, and then star six to unmute yourself and have the word. And the first questioner here is the cell phone number that ends with 690. You have the word.
Hi.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, we hear you.
Yes, hi. It's Johan from SEB. Good morning, Fredrik and Peter. I have a couple of questions, starting with demand and outlook. I think you mentioned stronger sales and order intake here in September. But I also think you had similar reasoning in your Q2 with a stronger end to the quarter as well. Can you elaborate here a little bit more what happened? And the stronger September you mentioned, is it mainly the consumer sales that drove that higher momentum? That's my first question.
So what happened in Q3 was that we had a positive end of Q2 with the order intake. Still, the backlog was a little slightly down. And then the order intake started to decline in July and August.
And then it was a little bit positive in September, not fully compensating the July and August. And then especially related to England as well as Finland. When it comes to September this year, so yes, the order intake was improved in September compared to last year. We had a positive growth in Sweden. We also had positive growth in Denmark. With Denmark, we had a decline in July and August, but then we had a little bit of catch-up in September. And Sweden, we had small growth in July and could continue in August and also continue in September. But still, negative development when it comes to Finland and the U.K.
Okay, okay. But given the current trajectory that you're on now, is it fair to assume that positive organic growth can continue here in coming quarters?
It's very hard to say because we thought that when we came out of June, starting July, that now we see a positive trend because the Q2 started weak and was improved in the quarter, and then July and August came a little bit of a surprise for us, so we thought we could read the cards in the end of June, beginning of July, and then the cards changed again in July and August, so it's a little bit hard to say, but we can say that the order backlog end of September is we have a slightly negative mix impact. We have a lower order backlog of consumers and a higher backlog of projects, and that indicates that Q4 will have also a negative mix impact when comparing to Q4 last year.
We should also remember that Q4 of last year was quite okay, especially when it came to consumer sales. The consumer market started to recover already in Q2 2024, and then we had a positive growth within the consumer markets, also in the U.K., also in Finland, up until November, and then in November, the UK market started to decline, and we had continued positive growth when it comes to order intake in Sweden, Denmark, and in Finland up until February, March, April, and then the Finnish market started to decline in March, April, so we had a good order intake in Q4 on most markets. It was only England that had a decline starting in November, so we are also comparing to a good Q4 in that sense, so it's a little bit hard to say exactly if it's going to have continued growth or not continued growth.
It depends on consumer climate and what's going to happen now during the next coming weeks.
Okay, I will see. But I mean, I think you mentioned somewhat the growth in Denmark in September. So I mean, given that.
Yes, it's.
I assume that the consumer is coming up a little bit. So I mean, the macro headwind can be less of a magnitude in Q4, although it's still there year on year.
Yeah, so Denmark had a growth. The consumer market had a growth in September. July and August was below last year. And in total, the total Q3 Denmark was more or less on the same level as last year. The order intake. Okay, yeah.
Yeah, okay. And then moving on to CapEx, I have a quick question there. I think you said that CapEx is going to come up here in the coming period and quarters.
And given that Vietnam, the factory is almost done now, what is driving this, would you say?
We're taking quite large initiatives when it comes to both capacity improvements, but also efficiency improvements within several factories. So we're taking quite large decisions during the last months, quarters, and that will have an impact in Q4. When it comes to CapEx, most of the CapEx or most of the larger machinery installations, they are done in Q4 in November, December when we are entering low season and as well as January and February. So we normally push that to the winter season. There was less work in the factories just to reduce the risks. So our CapEx level is always the highest in the end of the year and beginning of the year. And we have taken quite large decisions, both when it comes to Denmark, we're taking some decisions.
We've also taken some decisions when it comes to some factories in Sweden when it comes to Lenhovda that will be implemented starting this year. As well as in Finland, we also took a decision last year, which is a quite feasible investment, so we are continuing to make investments, and looking at our investments, in the past, we have been running on about 3% of sales, then during the COVID, it was reduced, and what I'm saying is that we have to compensate the lower levels during COVID, so we should calculate between 3.5% and 4% in the next coming years.
Okay, but given your efficiency investment to take it, when can we expect to see the gains from that, would you say?
That will then be second half of 2016.
Okay. Okay, we'll see, and then the final from my side on the M&A.
I mean, we're obviously, again, a little bit of a larger M&A-related cost here on the transaction side that was canceled in the quarter, and I believe you had similar effect in Q1, so I suppose this is the second transaction that was canceled within the two quarters you had. I mean, what does this mean for your M&A opportunities going forward, would you say? Have you lost momentum given that you spent a lot of resources and time on this, or are you still optimistic that you can close maybe some larger deals here in the coming six to twelve months?
Yeah, it was, as I said earlier, a bit painful once again to be a bit unlucky in the very last minute, and it's costing us a bucket or two as well.
The good news is that we are, of course, not standing and falling with one deal only. We are working on a number of transactions in parallel. We have to. And again, the mix of them and the features of these transactions and discussions, they're overall very positive, I would say. And I have to say, over the last month or so, we've seen an uptick in activity overall, where quite a few new discussions have also popped up. Not everything coming our way is of interest, but quite a few are. So we have ramped up resources. We did that earlier in the year. We're also working even more closely with some external advisors to help us out, particularly in totally new geographic markets, more into Central Europe. But these processes are complex.
They are a bit more lengthy than usual because of the nature of the market conditions at the moment and because of the, I'd say, above all, the emotional dimension of these discussions. Again, the one that we lost in the very last minute was a good example of that. But again, the door is not closed. It may well come back at some stage. And it was really not due to Inwido in any way, not due to price or us running the process in a bad way. On the contrary, it was really just "emotions." The founder, 70 years old, no obvious successor, but in the very last minute, thinking that, yeah, maybe I'll just continue with this for another while and see what happens, sort of. And there's nothing really we can do about that.
We just have to take it on the chin and move on and work on the other ones. And again, I'm quite optimistic about what we're seeing here. We are, above all, working in a structured way. We have a war chest that is rather impressive. I mean, we could, as we said in previous quarters already, we could acquire the equivalent turnover of, say, four billion SEK with our existing loan facilities without having to ask the capital markets for more money or without breaking covenants or anything like that. So that puts us in a very neat position. We are still quite picky. We're monitoring a lot of the markets out in Europe quite closely, also now with the EPBD directive being implemented to see what markets we prefer and not prefer.
But yeah, we've been a bit unlucky so far this year, but that can, of course, quickly change as well. Okay, but would you say that within the six and 12 months here coming forward, I mean, could you still, is it fair to say that you're still optimistic that you can close a little bit, one or two larger deals here as well? Absolutely. I would definitely echo that. And I mean, I'm not stupid. I understand that doing deals in the 70 million SEK turnover category won't take us that much faster to the 2030 target. So thankfully, we have other cases in the pipeline as well. Having said that, these two add-ons were really, really neat. Strong brand names, excellent performance, excellent management team, and with a profitability well above the Inwido average. So we like to do those as well.
Yeah, okay, clear.
We will follow up on that. But that was all for me. Thank you very much.
Thanks a lot, Jhonny. Good questions.
Thanks so much for the questions, dear. We will now go in and let the next caller in here. And it's the person that has the cell phone number that ends with 497. You're welcome. You have the floor.
Hello, hi. Hi, good morning. Sorry, yeah. I didn't know it was me. It's Linus from Nordea here. Hi, just a quick couple of questions here from me. You mentioned underabsorbed cost here from the expected stronger recovery in Finland, U.K. I was just wondering, have you now right-sized the cost base here ahead of Q4?
Yeah, again, we were taken by surprise already in July.
So we were geared up for a bit of an uptick early in Q3, given where we came out at the end of Q2. Unfortunately, that didn't really happen. And so we've been quite negatively affected across all of Finland, all of our Finnish entities, some worse than others, meaning that we went back to the Inwido model and the experience that we have to just pull the reins and take measures, painful as it may be, but everyone knows the drill. And it takes a while before that gets into full impact. So impact, of course, started to get in towards the end of the quarter. Is that enough? No, probably not. But we're in a much better position, of course, now early in Q4 than we were just a few months ago.
But as I said earlier, we will need to revisit the overall portfolio that we have in Eastern Europe. We're doing that at the moment. And let's see, there may be additional restructuring required, similar to what we did in the U.K. late last year. At the same time, I have full faith in the team that we have on the ground, and they're doing a great job given the circumstances. There are certainly other peers out there that are facing a much tougher time than we are. But yeah, I wouldn't exclude additional cost-correcting measures to be taken.
Okay, super. And just a question here on the gross margin decline, maybe particular here in Scandinavia, where it was driven by the geographical mix tilted more towards Sweden. Do you see any changes to this mix in the last pickup period here of the quarter?
And what's expected in Q4 given the current order mix?
So looking at the order intake within Scandinavia, Sweden is positive, and Norway is declining, and Denmark is stable compared to last year. So in that sense, and also look at same when it comes to order backlog, that we have a higher backlog comes to Sweden, Denmark is stable. That will then mean that we then go into Q4 with a negative mix when it comes to the different markets. So we have higher margins and higher gross profit or gross margin within Denmark compared to Sweden.
Okay, super, super. And just one last question here on the 2030 target. Given limited organic growth tailwinds here, what do you expect the split to be here in the coming years to hit that target between M&A and organic growth?
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I mean, it's a relevant question. Counting our way backwards from that target in 2030, we need to grow by a CAGR of, say, 15% from now on. That's a sizable number. When you asked me a year ago, I'd say the split was supposed to be right then and there, roughly 50/50 organic vis-à-vis acquisitive growth. Today, of course, relatively speaking, we need more M&A, and we need it sooner rather than later. We need more sizable M&A. And all of that is exactly what we're working on. So it's difficult to say a number, but in the near term, out of the 15% CAGR, 10 plus will have to come from M&A. And thankfully, we have discussions and targets in the pipeline funnel that are everything from 300 million SEK to 2 billion SEK in turnover.
So I remain quite optimistic about M&A in the near to medium term, and I still fundamentally believe in the 2030 target.
Okay, that's interesting. Can you give any number on the size of the failed acquisition, the size?
That was roughly in the EUR 50 million turnover bracket.
Okay, super. Thanks. That's all for me.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for the questions, dear. We will now carry on with some questions that had been sent to us. Could you elaborate on costing Q4 related to the layoffs in Finland?
In Finland, we are more short-term working with the temporary layoffs. So we are running the factories on less production days. Actually, one factory was more or less only running instead of five working days. We're running the factories on two days and the whole months on seven days.
So it's more that we're working with temporary layoffs in Finland. And then we have taken some other cost initiatives when it comes to Finland. We have taken down some other costs, not so much when it comes to layoffs.
Thank you. I know you have talked a little bit about it already, but what was spent on M&A in Q3?
The total restructuring in Q3 was SEK 16 million, whereof about SEK 14 million, SEK 13 million was connected to acquisition costs. And the main part of that acquisition cost was the acquisition that was not taking place, as Fredrik was mentioning about.
Thank you. And the last question here, is there more one-off coming in Q4?
Well, I guess the nature of one-offs is that you don't really know when they're coming. So that's charming anyway. I would hope that we have more transaction costs, of course, also in Q4.
Let's see the magnitude of those, but we are working on M&A, of course, so there should be and will be some costs related to it. Apart from that, it would be more extraordinary in the form of restructuring in one shape or another, and I can't really comment on that at this stage. We are reviewing entity by entity. Some are doing really well. Some are having a tougher time. That's the nature of Inwido's portfolio, where we de facto now have 36 window and door companies. Not all stars will be aligned at the same time, so we've had a reason and have a reason to look into restructuring in a closer fashion, and that would be the only thing that I can sort of foresee at this stage, but I cannot be, unfortunately, more concrete than that at this stage.
Thank you so much.
Those are all the questions we had. So I now want to hand over to you guys for some closing remarks.
Okay, thank you very much. And thank you, Peter. Thanks, everyone out there for attending this webcast. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our Inwido employees and business partners for a job really well done. Together, we are weathering this storm in a very good way. Thank you very much, and a great day, everyone.