Welcome to Lagercrantz Group Q2 report 2024/2025. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions- and- answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to CEO Jörgen Wigh and CFO Peter Thysell. Please go ahead. This call is being recorded. Your line is muted. Welcome to Lagercrantz Group Q2 report 2024/2025 .
For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions- and- answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to CEO Jörgen Wigh and CFO Peter Thysell. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, welcome to Lagercrantz presentation of our Q2 report. Speaking here is Jörgen Wigh, CEO of the group, and together with me here, I have Peter Thysell, right beside me. We're maybe a minute early here, so we will just hang on a little bit before we get started so that we don't miss anyone. We start at 10 A.M., and according to my watch, it's another minute or so, so we will just wait. Hope everyone is doing well, and that you're all enthusiastic about listening to us here this morning. There we are, right? 10 A.M. Welcome again, everyone, to the Lagercrantz interim report. We normally, as you know, we have a year ending end of March, meaning that we today have released our numbers for Q2, ending the end of September.
So it's our six-month report that was released this morning, and we normally have this conference call just a couple of hours afterwards to give you a heads up, give you some information around those comments around it, and also end up with a Q&A at the end of the session. It's me here and Jörgen Wigh, and Peter Thysell, also beside me here, the CFO. We normally have this presentation in a slightly three parts, really, where we start with a short introduction for all those that are new to the group, but then we get right into the numbers, and then we end up with some sort of highlights for the future and also some...
Where we are, where we think we are with our strategy work within the group, of where we are with our ambitions and stuff. So let's get started with giving you an introduction for those that are new to the group. I mean, Lagercrantz is a tech group. It's been on the stock exchange since 2001. Was formerly part of the Bergman & Beving Group. We are building a group based on our subsidiaries, where we have some 80 or so at present, building quite a lot through an M&A with some five to eight to 12 acquisitions per year. And building leading position in expanding niches with all the companies that we have.
You can see here that we have split the companies into the five divisions that we're working with, where we have all the companies. And you can also see over to the right on the map there, where we have our pins and where we are located with our companies. This is highlighting Northern Europe, but we also have, as you see, some footholds for exports over to all the way to the right here, where we're also present in the U.S. We're also present in India and in China with some, say, mostly sales companies in those markets. We have a total revenue in the group exceeding some SEK 8.5 billion and approximately 2,900 employees at present.
We are very fond or keen on driving things the way we like it in a very decentralized fashion. So all companies have their own name, working under their own brand name, dedicated to serving their customers in their specific market, which we feel is a great way of running the group. And again, acquisitions is a central part of the business model. That was a short introduction to the group. Let's dig into the numbers then. I mean, I think we closed another very solid quarter. It sounds like. It seems like we are, yeah, continuing on our path, and you can see our trajectory here when it comes to our sales and our earnings or profit after financial items here on this slide.
You can see that we have been on an upward trend for quite some time now, and building both organically and through acquisitions. Some years back, we decided when we surpassed the SEK 500 million in terms of profits. You can see also that we set the bar towards the SEK 1 billion, and we surpassed that last year. So currently, we're at SEK 1,176 million or whatever it is towards the SEK 2 billion. So we have raised the bar once again here towards the SEK 2 billion, which was basically one year ago that we communicated that. So it's been a strong performance over a long period of time, and that has continued for another quarter here.
Looking at the business conditions, and a few comments on that, we feel that the market situation on an overall level has been stable also for this quarter, and that goes for most of our businesses. We feel that we have a number of very strong performers in the group, and they have continued to do it very well, both in terms of sales and also in terms of profits. We have some really strong companies, companies like Elpress and Tormek, and a few others that continue to do it very well for us.
However, we also feel that we have been waiting for the recovery, and it's been delayed a little bit, and people are, like, you've heard from most companies also, that it's been pushed a little bit into 2025 . We had expected some stronger underlying growth here in this quarter, but at least we concluded a positive 1% here for the quarter. So it has been a bit of a recovery, but not to the extent that we expected here. We remain cautiously optimistic for the future, and we feel that it's the interest rates and things are sort of encouraging people to do more investment.
And we see that happening in some areas, but not to the extent that we maybe expected here earlier on, but it is happening, but a bit delayed. We feel that especially demand was strongest within the Electrify and the Niche Products divisions, and we see the infrastructure and electrification continue to do it, sort of recovering and growing. And we also see some of the Niche Products division companies and the segments that we're working there. We'll come back to that, but that is also growing for us. While we see some still struggling in the Construction sector and some companies that are also within the Industry sector, which is the Control and TecSec divisions mostly.
So we also from a geographic perspective, we feel that we are our strongest and our largest markets in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the U.K. are showing some recovery, while we feel that the market is still sluggish in Germany and in Finland, especially. So that is sort of there we have more to struggle with. But in total, we feel that the order intake for comparable units were in line with the invoiced sales. So we basically had the book-to-bill of one here in the quarter, which is also encouraging. And that is, it's stable underlying, an underlying stability in what we're doing.
We can see down there is also that we see that our ambition to grow the proprietary products is continuing, so the 77% currently on a moving twelve months basis. And we also see that we are becoming, over to the right, that you can see that we're becoming more international along the way, and we see that especially United Kingdom has picked up here to 7%. You can see that part of the bar there is increasing over the years. And we also see that we are becoming more Northern Europe and more international along the way, which is... We feel it's also a bit of an ambition for us along the way. So that was the comments on the business conditions.
Peter, maybe you should hand over, and we can talk about the hard facts and the numbers here.
Thank you, Jörgen. So to start, overall, we're quite happy with the result in the second quarter, where we met the moderately tough comparables from the previous year. The net sales increased by some 16%, mainly due to acquisitions, which grew by 17%. The organic growth turned positive with 1%, and then we had slightly a negative currency effects of 2%. The EBITDA increased by 16%, where the EBITDA margin was stable at a good level of 17.8% in the quarter. The profits after financial items increased by a good 14%, and this is as you may know, a little bit below our 15% target for the year, but still on a good level.
The cash flow was probably the area where we were not entirely happy in this quarter. It's on a good level, but we have high ambitions with cash flow. In July, we completed two acquisitions with a total annual revenue of about SEK 280 million. And then adding for the rolling twelve month, we're now at a little bit more than SEK 1.1 billion, which is some 15% compared to the annual revenue a year ago. So we have kept the relatively high rate of acquisitions. And during September, we also signed an agreement for the acquisition of Mastsystem in Finland, which has an annual revenue of about SEK 170 million.
And this is still under regulatory approval process, but we estimate that this will come in and be closed during November and December this year. About the first half year, we note that net revenues has increased by 13%, mainly due to acquisitions, which grew net sales by 15%. The organic growth was slightly negative, and currency effects were also slightly negative, with 1%. The EBITDA increased 12%, and the EBITDA margin was at a good level, 17.4%.
For the first half year, the profits after financial items grew by some 11%, which means that we are a little bit behind our 15% target, but we have great hope of achieving that in the second half. The return on equity was 28%, and the equity ratio was 34%. The earnings per share increased to SEK 4.41 compared to SEK 4.25 in the last financial year. Looking at the result per division, we can note that the positive development was quite broad-based, where four out of five divisions increased their EBITDA.
The only exception was the TecSec division, which had some challenges in the businesses related to the Construction businesses. But looking at the EBITDA margins, we had the most positive development in Niche Products, which is now above 22% EBITDA margin on a rolling twelve-month basis. And also, the International division, which has had a positive development for quite some time now, and they are above 17.5% on a rolling twelve-month basis. On the more challenging side, we can see Control and the TecSec division, as said, mainly due to challenges in businesses related to the Construction sector. Then maybe back to you, Jörgen, about comments by division.
Yeah, we have a few comments by division as well on the coming slides here. So let's start with the Electrify division. I think they had a good revenue growth of 26%, but most of it came from acquisitions with 29%. Organically, it was actually down 2%, even in the quarter here. But as we've seen here, what we're doing is that we are compensating a slower growth in the organic organically with more acquisitions, and that is a sort of something that holds true for most of what we're doing at Lagercrantz at the moment.
The EBITDA was about up 25% to SEK 100 million, and the EBITDA margin continued to be very well at the 18.8%. So strong performance from Electrify, even though the organic growth was slightly negative. The strong quarter then came to some ex- to a large extent from the no- new newly acquired Nordic Road Safety Company that we acquired here this spring, but also other several units within the electrification, addressing the electrification, was also noted a favorable development. For example, Elpress are very strong performer over many years. Also, Elkapsling is doing it very well. VP Metall and EFC in Finland is also did it very well here in the quarter.
Also good to know is that in September, which has not affected the numbers at all yet then, is that we concluded or signed an agreement for the Mastsystem. I'll come back to that company later on, but that's an important investment and an important acquisition for the Electrify for Lagercrantz as a whole. Looking at the Control division, the revenues were, that is the division we have been struggling with. I think we see some positive signs along the way here now. We see that revenues here for the quarter was up 28%. And the acquisitions then stood for 27 of those. But organically, we also grew with some 4%. The FX there is the difference.
But the EBITDA then grew by 26%. So we're seeing some positive signs within the control division, even though the EBITDA margin is not at a satisfactory level at the moment, with a 12.1%, that we have higher ambitions than that within the division. We see that several businesses still note some challenging market situation, especially the ones addressing more of the Construction sector with the Vanpee and the Danish and the Norwegian, and Stig was also in Sweden, was impacted there. While we also then have an acquisition adding to the numbers here, which is the CP Cases that was acquired in the U.K., which is just a leading manufacturer of protective cases. I'll come back to that as well later on.
But that is also important for the Control performance and what they've achieved so far within the division. Looking at TecSec, that was the slight disappointment, I think, with revenues growing only 6%, and we see the acquisition stood for + 13%, and organically was actually 9% down some 5%. But EBITDA held up fairly well still to SEK 87 million versus SEK 89 million, but this was slightly down from last year, but an EBITDA margin still at the 17%. Here we see a number of companies still doing it very well and seeing some recovery in the market, which is especially in Denmark, but also in the U.K., with the ARAS, Fireco, and PcP.
The newly acquired one, the Sähkölehto in Finland also did it very well and contributed positively to the result in the quarter, but we also, along the way, see that the more construction-related operations, especially with the bigger companies, a couple of the bigger ones, which is the CW Lundberg and the R-Con, continued to be affected by the weak construction market, and so showed some and struggled in the quarter, really, and in July, then, the Principal Doorsets was acquired, so I also have an acquisition here within that division. I'll come back to that as well. That also came in very well here during the quarter. Looking at Niche Products division, and a couple of comments there.
That is the division that stood out the most positive, which grew in revenues by 21%, and there we see 16% through acquisitions and organically + 7%. So a strong performance both through acquisitions and organically in that division. And we see the EBITDA growing by 21%, and then the EBITDA margin then at an, I think it's an all-time high at 22.9% in that, in that division as well. So very strong performance here. And we see a number of companies, so it was broad-based with the ASEPT, the Wapro, the Tormek, the SIB, the Sajos and Vendig companies. Did it very well in the quarter.
At the same time, we still have things to work with within the Niche Products division, and we, for instance, see the Westmatic and Waterproof Diving noted some more challenging market situations, and there we have to get those companies to the right level is something to work with within that company, within that division. In the Prido company, which is a leading manufacturer of the high-quality folding-type industrial doors, that we acquired here this spring, also contributed well to the result here, according to plan, within that division. Last but not least, is the International division then. Their revenues grew by 4%, where 5% was through acquisitions and organically + 2%.
The EBITDA grew by 10% in the quarter, and the EBITDA margin at 17.6%, which is a very good number for that division. It used to be much lower some years back, picked up to the average of the group almost. So it's good to see that performance over a long period of time, especially we have a couple of new companies that have come in in the last few years here, and especially the Libra has continued to do it well here during the last few years and also during the quarter here. And we also have some new companies that in Denmark with and also in the U.K., that deliver good earnings here as part of the Lagercrantz Group.
While we're still struggling with it, with some of the companies that we have in Germany, and Poland as well here within the International division. So a few comments there on what we see in the different markets. With that, we'll look a little bit ahead. I mean, I think it was another strong, solid quarter from us. I think it's, we feel that we are struggling with the market. We see a bit of recovery along the way, but it's also taking some time to see it really come through for us in the market, and I think that is what I hear from most of other businesses in the Nordics at the moment. So I think we are on par with most other companies there.
I think we have the ambition to have the opportunity in our business model to compensate a lower organic growth for some time with also the more acquisitions instead. And that's what we've done. So that acquisition pace has been very important to us. But our aim is, as it has been, to grow the group with some annual profit growth of some 15% per year and do it with a return on equity of at least 25%. And you will see the numbers later on here. So we will continue on the path that we're where we are, and we will continue building our five divisions on the next slide here.
This is a reorganization and a setup that we did almost two and a half years ago now, and it's been working very well for us. We are building the divisional sort of teams, and we are doing it in sectors where we see some underlying structural growth based on also a lot of sustainability, where we see good business opportunities with the green transition and the electrification on things in some parts, but also in IoT and the Control division, and safety and security products in the TecSec, and also the other ones in Niche Products in International.
I think we're very well positioned within our different, in our different divisions to grow the group for the future, and the setup we did, that we did two and a half years ago has really been working well out well for us. Last but not least, is then the acquisitions. And here we can conclude that we have closed some seven acquisitions in the last 12 months. We are more broad-based than we are. We're growing through our divisions more than before. We have the ambition to have eight to 12, but then adding some 10% of ourselves, and this is, as Peter already suggested, some 15% of ourselves in the 11, 45 there.
So we are ahead of plan, really, and that means that we have concluded some somewhat larger acquisitions lately with the Prido and the Nordic Road Safety and are the main ones among the seven there. And then we also here now have signed the Mastsystem acquisition, which is not in the numbers yet then that we hope to close here in November or December based on regulatory. So just to give you an idea on what we're acquiring, I think we will look at the, yeah, the previous one, please. Which is the Principal Doorsets is the company we acquired here during the quarter. And that is a company providing different types of bespoke fire doors in the U.K.
We have a similar company already within the U.K., so this is another one adding to that cluster of companies, and it's a very well-run company. You can see down to the right there; we'll be putting down some numbers on how they're doing, and a great company that's adding to the TecSec division here in the quarter and for the future. Acquisition we closed here during the quarter in July. The next one is the CP Cases. I'd like to highlight; it was also during the quarter. Here we are talking about protective cases and high-performance protective cases and racks used for mission-critical equipment for commercial and military applications. So all kinds of different types of protective cases and racks.
With some annual revenues of approximately GBP 12 million, with good profitability and also addressing the U.S. market, so they have a subsidiary in the U.S. as well here, in Delaware, and here we acquired some 87% of the company and management keeping 13%. So this will be a good collaboration with the management there in building this company for the future, and some good numbers down there to the right. I would expect that to pick up a little bit along the way, and that's our ambition at least, but still on a good level with a 16% EBITDA margin there. The next one is something that we already communicated. That was the Prido case that we did here this spring.
I think I just highlight that we are trying to make a bit of a fact sheet for all the acquisitions we're making. And the Prido was a somewhat bigger one here this spring, and it's been coming in very well for us, having had a very good start to the year in the first six months of the year within the group, delivering on what they have promised along the way. So that's a good company to also have in the. The next one is the other bigger ones that we also have communicated earlier, is the Nordic Road Safety that we also did this spring.
They, as we point out, have a bit of seasonality to their business, so they are actually in their high season right now here, about to close this year's high season here in the coming months or so. But doing it very well for us and had a good start as well. The last one I'd like to bring up is the Mastsystem, which is the one that we have again signed but not closed, i.e., the numbers are not with us yet. This is a very high-performing company, as you can see down to the right there, with EUR 50 million almost in sales and some EUR 6 million in profits.
When we communicate these bigger deals, we also like to give some additional information around what we have closed these deals at or, yeah, signed in this case then. So this is an EV/EBIT of around 7x . Mastsystem, we think is a very sort of interesting company delivering some high-performance telescopic masts located in the midst of Finland, or in Joensuu, in Finland. And hopefully will be part of the group here, and we plan to have it part of the group here as of mid of November or so, or early December. So with that, I think we should round off and open up for questions. I'd like to just highlight that we'll look at the financial overview.
I think we posted another strong, solid quarter, and we're looking very cautiously optimistic into the future and delivering along our trajectory. Here is our ambition. S o with that, I think we should open up to questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Gustav Berneblad from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. It's Gustav here from Nordea. Maybe just to start off here, when it comes to you acquiring companies, I guess you have a complete sort of different way of working with price management, than what the companies you're acquiring have before you acquire them. So I guess my question is that, now when you have increased the M&A pace in the last couple of years, and we have had a period of very high cost inflation, would you say that we are seeing an increased positive price component in the group's growth here?
It depends on what period you're comparing with. I think that what we've seen. I think when the war started in Ukraine, then I think for a period there, we had quite a lot of inflation and quite a lot of price purchasing prices going up. And then we had quite a lot of compensation, and we did quite a lot of price raises back then. I think that period is behind us. I think that we have here in the last year or so, the price component has not been that significant. I think we are more sort of, yeah, coming down to more of normal levels of price increases along the way, and you can see that also from the inflation rates gone coming down, right?
I think that was true for a while, but not lately, no.
Yeah, okay. No, I was just thinking about the, maybe this last year that we have had companies that you acquired today that hasn't really raised their prices and that you're seeing a potential now when you acquire them, sort of implement or sort of impacting the numbers right now. But okay, that sounds like that's not the case, right?
Yeah. Well, we are pushing price and looking at price initiatives in many of the companies that we acquire. And I think that has been... Yeah, I know a couple of quick cases in the U.K. where we have reorganized and restructured their pricing policies and working with that as a clear ambition as opposed post-acquisition sort of post-acquisition project or ambition that we have in a couple of companies. Yes, it's part of our playbook, definitely.
Yeah, okay. Got it. And then, if we move over to the tax rate, we discussed it in the last quarter, and as I interpreted it, we should expect a higher tax rate in Q1 generally, for you. It still looks quite high this quarter. So just once again, if you can comment on how we should think forward here.
I think that might be a question to me. Yeah, we will see marginally higher taxes as we expand, for example, into the U.K. and also in the U.S., where they have higher tax rates. In Q1, we had a few extraordinary items that increased the tax rate in that particular quarter. But, as we... In the coming quarter, I think we'll see more of the normal, so we will probably be some 23% or something like that, for the full financial year. And, one of the extraordinary items we had in Q1, for example, was the tax on dividend from Latvia.
Yeah, okay. Perfect. Thank you very much. I'll get back in line.
The next question comes from Zino Engdalen Ricciuti from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello, and thanks for taking our questions. I would like to start off in the control segment. You mentioned that you are not happy, of course, with the margin in that segment. Do you feel that you need to wait that out for a recovering market in some of the companies, or are there initiatives which you hope to see some effect there?
I usually, how we view it is that, yes, we are working quite hard for some companies to come back, and that has sometimes that has to do with the Construction sector or sort of that volumes are temporarily down, and that we might wait out. We are also then working with other companies, we're working more with the restructuring sort of thing, and that then we are sort of driving that hard and maybe sort of reorganizing or restructuring companies. On top of that, we also, the third lever is then to work with also making high-margin acquisitions to bring to that division, and that we're also looking into. So we have a number of levers that we're working with.
I mean, our ambition is to have the group well above 15% EBITDA margin, and that goes for all the divisions as well. When you're there at 12-point-something, then we definitely have the ambition to get them well above 15% as the other divisions are.
Understood. And just over to TecSec on a bit of similar notes, but on the weakening there in the margin, do you feel that is so to say that correctly reflects the business environment in that segment when we're looking ahead?
Yeah. Yeah, it's market related. Definitely, yes, it is. We have a couple of small companies that we're working with and struggling with there as well, but the main ones are really Construction related, Construction sector related, which is the R-Con and the CW Lundberg, which are definitely in that sector. And they are down from last year and previously, but we expect them to come back once the market turns for the better.
Understood. And just lastly from me, of course, September is an important month in the quarter, but when you're comparing with the usual trend or the trend you had expected, would you say that it finished off in a better or worse way, or was it muted throughout, so to say? And if you see any so-called green shoots, which might not have been converted to orders yet.
Yeah, I think we are looking at good sort of a good project pipeline, and we're looking at good inquiries from our customers, so we are, as we said, cautiously optimistic for the future, so I think we have some positives there as well. I think from sort of looking at September separately, it didn't stand out as sort of that we had a really stronger trend in September versus the other couple of months. It was fairly even over the quarter compared to last year.
Understood. Thank you. I'll get back in line.
The next question comes from Karl Bokvist from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. The first one is on the M&A side, where you had a good pace and you reiterate the ambition of eight to 12 here. What I do note, you have talked about this before, of course, but you made some really interesting larger acquisitions this year. How do you think about the size of the acquisition compared to the number of acquisitions now, if we look, let's say, ahead into the next six to 12 months?
I think I have that. I think generally speaking, what we - our overarching ambition is to grow 15% per year, EBT, right? 15% per year. And when we think about that, we think that one third of that should come organically over a longer period of time, and then two thirds should come from acquisitions. So I think that 10% of ourselves, we should buy 10% of ourselves every year, and as long as we do that, then I think it's good that we can see that we both will do some more acquisitions, the number of acquisitions will pick up, but also the size of the acquisitions. However, we will stay disciplined.
When we are looking at larger acquisitions, we're bidding for a few larger acquisitions. We're very occupied with the price tags and that we are sticking to our staying disciplined in terms of the multiples and the price tags we're paying for the companies. So I think that to give you an idea, we have highlighted that it might sort of, or it looks like if we're gonna close some eight to 12 acquisitions per year, but if we can sort of compensate a lower number with somewhat larger acquisition, I think we will even prefer doing that if we can stay disciplined in terms of the price tags we're paying. I think we have concluded some...
In the last couple of three years, we have concluded some bigger acquisitions as well, and, and those have been really good for us. The CW Lundberg is one example, the PcP is another one, the Prido, the NRS, and now also Mastsystem.
Libra.
Libra, of course, yes, is also another one. So I think we have been able to do good acquisitions, even though they've been slightly bigger.
And then when we think about the current group, and you have, you know, a lot of, for example, Niche Products, of course, with a lot of diversified niches, but you've also been able to now acquire, throughout the years, companies that are operating within fairly similar end markets. So how are you thinking about, you know, forming, creating informal clusters in order to promote collaboration and so on?
I think we're doing that quite a lot, but we're doing it from a sort of a business and logical perspective, and also staying with our decentralized model. People are meeting quite a lot in between the companies. I think that also has to do with our size, that we are not that big, so people can interact and collaborate between the companies. We have our MD conference every year, where people are meeting on a broad base. We have also divisional sort of conferences here in the wintertime, where they meet within the divisions and have meetings around different subjects. We're collaborating quite a lot around sustainability issues.
We're collaborating around innovation and product development issues in some parts of the group. We are collaborating around ERP systems as well. Not that everyone has the same ERP systems, but they're collaborating and sharing experiences, what they like and don't like about different systems, and thereby collaborating and sharing experiences from different things.
My final one-
Yeah, sorry. I should remember the business side is also very important. They are sometimes collaborating, putting together products or system integration solutions for specific customers and interacting in that way between the companies.
Understood. My final one is just on the Electrification there. When you, if I didn't misinterpret you, you said that you saw a bit of recovery here. Any certain niches that are driving this improvement in Electrification or and/or Electrified division overall?
I think that we are about to start investing more in electricity grid, and that has been held up for... We have been expecting that for some years, but the approval processes have been taking time. I think that has. It's at a better place now. They're approving more, and things are getting going there in a way that hasn't happened before. Now, I think they're struggling more with finding the right sort of installers and having that happening in some areas. But we see, for instance, for Elpress, that the where we see that they're building electricity grid, those end markets are picking up at the moment.
Okay. That's all from my side. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Niklas Sävås from Redeye. Please go ahead.
Hi, Jörgen and Peter. I have a question on the control division. I have a question on the control division. I mean, we're now going into the high season for that division, but I just wonder if you could elaborate a bit on, I mean, you moved a few businesses into that division recently. So, I mean, should we expect some differences in terms of the normal seasonality for the business area?
No, I think as the division looks now, I think the seasonality remains, but I think that the seasonality is very well, very, very connected to the Radanova business. And as the Radanova business will do, the Radanova business is growing, so it has good organic growth. But still, as we make more acquisition and build the division on a large scale, I think that it will, that sort of effect will be diluted to some extent along the way. But we are definitely expecting now the high season to pick up and that we will see improvements in terms of margins and profits in that division as we have had in the last few years in the coming quarters for the Control division.
Perfect. And then I have one question on the climate for acquisitions. I mean, have you seen any sort of differences in terms of the competitive landscape across the geographies?
Across the geography? Or you mean-
I just mean, are the multiples going up or down, sort of in the Nordics and the U.K. and so on?
Okay. No, I think it's actually been quite stable over the last couple of years. We saw before the Ukraine war higher multiples, but since then, after that, they came down quite significantly. But we have been doing our acquisitions at a very, very stable, sort of, EV/EBIT multiple here for the last couple of years. And that, I think, remains stable, and we don't see any significant differences between the countries either.
What I'm also getting at is, I mean, you've managed to do a few quite large acquisitions, I mean, still at good multiples. So does that mean that, I mean, do you saw other competitors for those type of acquisitions before, and are they now gone, or how do you see that?
Yeah. It's a bit puzzling for us as well, but I think we have been managing. We have managed to close a couple of very interesting deals of the larger size. I think there might be a that some of the risk capitalists or PE funds have been very reluctant to make these smaller deals, in their world, smaller deals that are bigger for us, right? For a period of time. Now with things, if stability comes back and interest rates come down, I think we will see them more in the market, in the coming years than we have in the couple of last two years. So that might be an effect that we might see some of.
But we will still continue doing what we've been doing, which is that we're bidding for those companies as well. And as we feel that our discipline, with our discipline, we hope to continue to close also some bigger deals. And I think we have quite a number of them to look at at the moment as well. So I don't see that change happening here in the near term, no, but maybe in a couple of years' time.
Perfect. Thanks for the added color.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad.
Do we have any questions in the chat there?
No, no, not as I can see, but we can give them a few seconds.
Okay. Anyone that would like to add a final question?
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Okay. Thank you very much for listening in. I think we are well on the way with building Lagercrantz for the future, and we've posted another strong quarter. I think that's very happy with that. And looking forward to talking to you guys along the way. And Peter and I are, of course, available here during the day if you have some additional questions you'd like to put to us in a phone call or so. So thank you very much for listening in, and have a good day.