We posted a strong revenue growth of 39% in Q2, and also a very good we believe very strong organic growth. We had some strong, really strong organic growth last year, but it slightly went down a little bit in Q1, but picked up here again a little bit in Q2. That's a strong sign from us that we think that the organic growth is keeping up at a good pace. Then we added some 24% of the revenue growth was coming from acquisitions, and then we have a positive currency effect of 4% as well.
The quarter has been good for us, but we have also done very good, I think, very good proactive management with a lot of price adjustments still, even though a little slightly less than before, I would say. Still, we have been able to keep our margins at a good level and have some pricing power in where we work with the very specialized companies we have in many instances. We have been dealing with increased raw material cost increases still. We're also seeing some companies, especially within the Control division, still struggling with component shortages and long lead times from Far East, especially suppliers.
Generally, I think we conclude that we have had some good delivery capacity looking from a broader perspective, but some companies are still affected by the difficulties in the supply chain. Of course, the increased macroeconomic uncertainty due to everything that is happening in the world with the geopolitical turbulence and the risk of a downturn in the business cycle, where high inflation rates and interest rates and stuff like that. Of course, we are very observant looking into that and being very sort of prepared to take measures if we feel that things would go sort of if we would enter worse times. So far so good. I think we concluded a good quarter, and we will work from here.
If things would deteriorate, we are very well prepared with having some preparations, some resilience plans the plan B, as we call them here internally, and that we will work with along the way if necessary. That was the Q2 sort of overall. Looking a little bit more specific, it's the numbers on page five. You can see the net revenues in the quarter grew by 39%, and organic growth was then 11%. A very good number for us looking from a long-term perspective. The EBITA grew by 43% to SEK 275, and the EBITA margin improved a little bit to 16.5%, as opposed to the 16% with the corresponding quarter last year.
A very good level and something we've been striving for many years and now we're there and it feels very good to have a very strong EBITA margin when we move ahead. It gives us room, profitability gives us room for good investments also into the future. The profit after financial items then increased by 37% to SEK 214, and the profit after tax increased by 45%. The cash flows was better in Q2 to SEK 211 as opposed to SEK 113 last year. A good cash flows also in the quarter, especially from improved profits but also some better development on working capital, even though we're not satisfied or done with that yet.
We have more to do there, but still, in a positive way as opposed to previous quarters. The return on equity was at an all-time high of 32%. There we've never been before. For those of you that have been with us for many years, you know that we've been in the neighborhood of 25% for quite some years. We have been acquisitive, and we've done some good work also with the companies we have. The return on equity at 32% is an all-time high, and as opposed to the 28%, which was last year, and sort of long term, our average of 25%. The equity ratio was at 30%, as opposed to 34%.
We still have, I think, good room for more acquisitions, even though we've been quite acquisitive now for a while. So, I don't think we will have fully the pace we've had here in the last quarter or so, looking forward. I'll come back to that. So to conclude the period of the six months, you know, the first six months of the fiscal year, net revenues grew by 30%, and organic growth for the full six months was 10%. It was 9% in the first quarter and 11% in the second quarter, so posting 10% for the full six months then.
EBITA increased by 34% to SEK 540 million in profits as opposed to SEK 404 million a year ago, so a very strong EBITA growth. The EBITA margin was also for the six months 16.5%. Yeah, looking also a little bit of the other things we can look at here, the 5 acquisitions. We concluded five acquisitions here during the six months. The PCP in Denmark we concluded in June. The other four we concluded here in the second quarter. It's been in August and September, really, where we've concluded. July, August, and September, we concluded the other four. We've been quite active in that market. We feel that it's been a good market.
We feel that there are plenty of companies, good companies to look at, and we also feel that the room for sort of concluding good deals is good at the moment. The earnings per share, they have hit an all-time high as well at SEK 3.25 on a moving 12-month basis as opposed to SEK 2.8, to be compared to SEK 2.8, which was for the fiscal year last year. That's a difference for six months, the change in the six months really. The return on equity I already talked about the 32%, so we'll move on from there. Looking at the divisions on a divisional level, I think we see that we have five really strong divisions.
We have three of them are really becoming big for us, that is the Electrify, the TecSec, and the Niche Products division. The International division did a really good pickup here in the quarter, and it reached an all-time high of 16.5% in terms of EBIT, EBITA margin. That's the highest they've ever had and very good quarter for them. The Control division have a seasonality in their numbers, but they also have some companies more struggling with supply chain issues and those type of things, and a couple of companies that really fully reached their full potential. The Control division posted a profit, the same level of last year.
Given that the top line was slightly higher, then the margin came down a little bit. We are not worried about the Control division. I think they will pick up again, but they need to fix a few things and also, as they deal with their supply chain, things will probably pick up in the Control division. They're also entering the stronger season now with especially the radar measurement business, which has a very strong winter period. That you can see if you look at the numbers quarter by quarter in the Control division. We also on page eight have some comments by division. To move to them.
Within the Electrify, we saw that the electrification of society is still driving demand for the larger companies. We see, for instance, Elpress, Elkapsling, and Norwesco having a good trend there. Even though we also see some changes in the structure, especially looking at wind, for instance, in China, we see sort of more of local production there. But Elpress is picking up very nicely in Europe and in the Nordics, related to the electrification. Not only wind or renewable energy, but also in building transformers and building electricity grid. This is a strong customer segment for both Elpress, Elkapsling, and Norwesco. The harnesses businesses continue to perform very well.
Especially Cue Dee has had a very strong year here with their installation materials for deployment of 5G telecom infrastructure. They are the brackets, the antenna brackets is their main product. They posted another strong quarter with some project deliveries of approximately SEK 30 million, which is affecting the numbers here in the quarter as well as more of a temporary thing, even though it is a lumpy business, the Cue Dee. There have been lumps over the years, and there will be more lumps in the future. The Cue Dee had a strong quarter here. The Control division was the slight disappointment then.
The revenues grew by 24%, but the EBITA stood at SEK 17, which is just the same as last year. The EBITA margin was at 10.4% then as opposed to 12.9% last year. And we saw some good growth for some of the companies. The Radonova, Direktronik, and Precimeter continue to do it very well, while others on the top line, while other companies struggle more with component shortages and long lead times. Recent acquisitions, the Geonor, which we acquired in December last year, and the Stegborgs in July, and they delivered according to plan, but those companies are fairly small, so they're not really affecting the total very much.
They have plans for growth in the future, and therefore we feel they're good acquisitions still. The TecSec division, on the other hand, had a very strong quarter and a very strong first six months here, with revenues growing 117% and EBITA 118%. They kept up the good margins, moving the EBITA to SEK 74 million as opposed to SEK 34 million of last year, and an EBITA margin of 17.3%. Very strong Q2 with especially coming from acquisitions, although that 14% was also organic sales growth.
We see within TecSec the larger units, the CW Lundberg, the Arcon, IC Nordic, and Frictape that reported very strong sales growth, while a few of them are struggling to fully compensate for higher raw material costs and that is negatively affecting margins in a couple of those companies. On the other hand, we saw that the recent acquisition of PCP and Door & Joinery Solutions Limited was good contributors to earnings in the quarter. Since we have made the biggest acquisition ever in the PCP, we decided also to release a little bit more numbers there.
They have delivered DKK 24 million with an EBITA margin of 15.6% during the first four months as part of the Lagercrantz, which we think is a very strong start in the group. PCP will be an important part of TecSec and also for Lagercrantz going forward. They have some seasonality towards the summer, but we also have, I think we're getting a good grip of the company, and we're also sort of planning for improving the margins along the way, sort of having the system sustainably above 15%. They got off to a good start and we plan to move on from there really. Looking at page number nine, we see another few comments on the Niche Products division.
A couple of more to cover here. The business situation within these products remain positive and had a strong 16% organic sales growth. We saw improvements in earnings across most businesses really, particularly the Tormek had an all-time high quarter, especially in the US. They've continued to do very well. The Profsafe and Kondator, Asept also provided very strong quarters. The Westmatic, which was acquired in 2022, in January of 2022, reported strong order intake, particularly in North America. They are doing it very well for us and are picking up and having new sort of offerings, especially in the US that is starting to sort of bring in orders, and that's very good to see.
Within Niche Products division, we also had the Waterproof Diving acquisition here in September. Even though it's only a month, they still got off to a good start in the group. Last but not least, is then the international division. They grew revenues by 16%. We see a strong EBITA margin of 16.6%, which is a record high for them. Seven percent organic sales growth is also a good number, looking back.
Strong development across the board, really, and especially the marine businesses, which is becoming a cluster for us in the international division with the Libra-Plast in Norway, with the ISIC Group, a couple of companies under the ISIC umbrella in Denmark, and also now the Tebul as a new acquisition in Finland. It's providing, it's building the marine cluster business, or businesses within the international division. Also, Schmitz Technik in Germany and the Acta companies, as well as the NST DK in Denmark, all contributed also with good earnings improvements. As I go over all of this, you can see that we provided a very strong quarter, and it was very broad-based as it's been with us for a while.
I think the quality of our portfolio is increasing over time, and this quarter was really no exception. Strong performances from many places, really. That was the quarterly figures. Let's look at a little bit touch back on what we've communicated earlier and where we feel we are with the group. We are still looking then at page number 10. We have the Lagercrantz towards one billion, which was our strategy program, which we released here a year and a half ago, where we sort of concluded that we had SEK 500 million in terms of earnings before tax, and we wanted to double that. Now we are at SEK 851 million, right, isn't it?
Yes.
851 here after 18 months. We have really been pushing and done it very well here. We had the ambition when we started out to do this within five years, and now we've been doing it and gone more than halfway here in just 18 months. I think that's well before schedule then, really. That's great. What we have as the key themes within the Lagercrantz towards one billion program is really to clarify some strategies of financial growth, to reorganize into the divisions where we see better underlying growth, more sustainable and also some structure underlying growth in the market segment and customer segments we would like to address. That has been clarified and it's been working very well for us.
We're also increasing capacity within M&A, and we are also putting a focus to the sustainability, with some clear sustainability goals and things like that, which we have communicated along the way here. To touch a bit, little bit on those, the, I mean, what we are aiming for is really to build a very strong portfolio of companies. We see the sort of ambition here on page 11 with the vision, which is that we should be a sustainable supplier of value-adding technologies with market-leading positions in several expansive niches. That's our vision statement.
We would like to build a very strong portfolio, very sort of high value-adding companies, and do it very well for our customers, and by that, creating some market-leading positions in all the niches that we're working. We would like to do that by also then providing a good growth in terms of EBT, earning profit growth of more than 15% per year, meaning we should double our profits once every five years, really, to be seen over a business cycle. We also stated then that at least one-third of that should come organically, and the rest through five to eight acquisitions per year. We should do this in a very profitable manner, so we should have return on equity of more than 25%.
Currently, we are exceeding both of these financial targets, well above really with some EBT growth well above 15%, the return on equity at 32%. Let's see what happens, but let's try to keep it at these good levels. That's our ambition going forward. We'll see what happens along the way here if things start to deteriorate. The five divisions, I won't go over this. I think you've heard it many times around our five divisions.
The ambition here with having a new reorganizing the whole thing was to sort of focus more on areas where we see some underlying growth, where we see a clear connection to sustainability, and where we could also provide some good sustainable solutions for customers and thereby creating good growth, good things, and also good growth for ourselves and our shareholders. You can see also that we have revenues in all these, and you can see that they're picking up the revenues along the way here as well. To have a little bit on that, I also put in an extra slide here on page 13. I think it is important to really analyze where we are with all things.
I mean, we are currently, as we are saying here, so far, so good. We feel that things are going well for us so far. We don't really see any. The order book is also strong, and we also see some good orders coming in still. That, but of course, we also read the newspapers. We are preparing ourselves for some worse times. We are preparing with some contingency planning. We haven't done very much of it still because we haven't felt the need for it. We are planning and having some plan Bs being sort of put together in some of our subsidiaries along the way.
That's where we are with those type of things. Looking at where we have our sales as well, I put in the net sales per market segment on page 13 here. You can see where we have our dependencies. I must say there are a number of things to take out of this one. I mean, we have a very broad customer base. No customer stands for more than 5%. The main customers we have in the group are related to power and electrics. Renewable energy is a big and especially wind turbine manufacturers are a big customer group of ours.
Companies making power transformers and also building electricity grids, working quite a lot through the wholesalers, especially in the Nordics. We have quite a lot of big customers in that section. We have over the years also grown in these segments with power and electrics and also infrastructure, as opposed to when looking back five or six years, we had or even 10 years really, we were quite more dependent upon electronics, telecom, and security. Those segments are still in here, but it's very much smaller than it used to be. I think we have a stronger customer base and more broad base than before. What is also worth mentioning, I think, is the other, which is the 17%.
That is really broad-based and very scattered in many different sort of customer segments and also different geographies. I think we are much more broad-based. It's also important to point out that I mean we have also a strong portfolio of companies. We have some 70 subsidiaries, and the EBIT margin in total is around 16% or 16.5% EBITA margin. Where we in the latest downturn in 2010, we were at some 5-6%. The EBITA margin is quite a lot stronger nowadays than it used to be.
We also see that some 50 out of our 70 companies in the group, or 48 to be more exact, have an EBIT margin of more than 10%, meaning that we also have a very broad-based sort of profitability in the group. Of course, these are all strong points, I would say. If things start to deteriorate, we will definitely work with that and put som e plan B in effect. I think the group also is providing some resilience and some strength at this point, really. Just to highlight a few things there. Moving over to page 14, we are still working with the aim of 75% proprietary products.
You can see the way it was back in 2008 and 2009; we had some 18% of proprietary products. That's also, I think, providing some resilience. We are strong believers that having our own products, which means that we also have a definite place in the market, and we have a stronger position when negotiating with customers and providing good solutions for customers. Thereby, by having more proprietary products, we can both see that gross margins are higher and also, we see greater opportunities for growth by having that since we can go more for exports as a good example. Higher margins also means that you can invest more in your product portfolio along the way as well.
It's more room, more headroom, which is good. Proprietary products is very important for us, and we have the aim of 75%. As you can see from here, we are basically about to reach that goal as well here along the way. Looking at page 15, we move over to the acquisition part of things. It's great to see that we have picked up some five acquisitions here in the last four months. It's been five very good acquisitions, we believe, fine companies that have been joining the group. This has been a strong ambition of ours. We would like to also build a more of a stronger foothold in new geographies. We will also.
We've added some new resources to the group as well to be more acquisitive along the way. Now we've been quite acquisitive here in the last quarter or so, and we have the ambition to conclude some five to eight deals per year. It's good to see that the engine is working for us, and we also see some good opportunities along the way as well in this aspect. Looking a little bit on what we have acquired here lately, I put together a fact sheet that we use to put together a fact sheet on all the companies we acquire, and to just run them through quickly here.
The Door and Joinery on page sixteen is a provider of high quality and customized fire-resistant doors, screens, and frames. A company in the Midlands of the U.K., they're providing these types of solutions . Fire security and fire-resistant doors had a very good market in the last few years, and it's picking up. New rules and regulations have been driving the demand here, and that's been good for this company, and we see some good growth here in the company as well.
You can see that this is sort of more of a traditional low-tech company with not very sizable, but still on a good level, but nevertheless very profitable and a good addition to the tech division coming in from July in 2022. Good to see to have a first good acquisition made in the UK, and we expect more to come there. The second acquisition was also in July, which was the Stegborgs Elevator. They're a provider of hardware and control system for renovation of elevators.
They're very strong in the middle of Sweden, and especially connected to Stockholm and that market area, with some annual revenues from SEK 60 million, with good profitability as you can see down to the right there. Coming into the control division as of July 2022. The third one is the Waterproof Diving International AB. This is our most. No, this is the one we made in September. This is within the Niche Products division. A company in Gothenburg, which is providing different types of innovative dry and wet diving suits, for professional and premium recreational divers. You might view this as a B2B, which we very rarely do, but I think you should view it more as a B.
Sort of B, not a B2C, but rather a B2B company, because we are also addressing other customer segments with the marine forces and the military and those type of. Also, professional divers doing photography in the very sort of rough environments and doing it very well and providing good margins as you can see down from the figures down to the right there as well. Also, a very good strong company that we are adding to the group. The fourth one is the Tebul. The Tebul company is the company with our most recent acquisition in Finland, adding to the marine cluster, which we are building within the international division. They're providing these electrical sliding doors for ships.
You can see down there to the right, they've also been doing it very well for many years and will be a good addition for the international division. Those were the four that we concluded here during this quarter. The fifth one here on page 20 is the PcP Corporation A/S. PcP we acquired in July, and this is the group's biggest acquisition ever really. They've come in with, as stated in the report, some good four months of the group with some good EBITA and a good EBITA margin. They're adding to the group.
Here we have starting up the work with sort of integrating to some extent with reporting systems and that type of thing but also setting some clear targets in terms of the EBITA margin going forward and doing some improvement work around that in order to ensure that the margins are at the right level here. This is a big company for us and here it's important that we conclude this in or bring this in in a good level. It looks very good for us, and it's been great to work with John and the team at PCP, moving that company to new heights, really. Yeah, that was my last slide.
I have one more really, which is the financial overview on page 21. You can see that we concluded yet another good quarter. So far so good, and as we're stating in the report, we're so far so good, but we are prepared if things would deteriorate or go for the worse, as many are expecting. We haven't seen that yet, but if that would happen, then I think we are well prepared. You can see here that we have the net sales above SEK 6 billion now, and we have an EBITA above SEK 1 billion. You can see the EBIT growth at a very good level over many years. We can see the return on equity, where we have the goal of 25%.
You can see that we hit an all-time high there of 32%. The earnings per share growth was at 35% on an annual basis here. A good quarter for us. Thank you. With that, we open up for questions. To ask a question, you have to press star and then six.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Hello?
Yeah.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you. Please go ahead and ask your question. We can hear you.
Okay. Viktor Gancarz here, Nordea, Equity Research. Hi again, Jörgen. First question here, what was the margin effect in TecSec not being able to fully compensate for the direct material price increase?
Sorry, once again. Come again.
Yeah. The margin effect in TecSec for not being able to fully compensate for the direct material price increases that you mentioned.
Well, on a divisional level, I think there's a couple of companies struggling with it,and I think its around and it's significant for a couple of companies, but on a divisional level, I don't think it is significant. It's maybe a percentage point or so, two maybe on a divisional level.
Yeah, that's helpful. And then I'm wondering here on PCP, you mentioned it a little bit, but how did PCP manage to increase its margin so significant? It's already above its target here in the first four months.
Yeah. I think there are two things going into that. They have been working with pricing and doing some segmentation of the market and are addressing that by working with their prices. They are sort of looking at prices, especially in the part of their business, which is the customization and also where they're more unique and having a stronger market position. They are driving prices more than in other parts of the business. It's also important, I think, to realize that they also have somewhat of a seasonality effect where we haven't been in sort of part of that just for a long time yet.
Of course, I think that you all realize that those types of installations are done more in the summer or at least in the warmer part of the year rather than in the midwinter, right? I think they will also see some seasonality effect to what we expect from that company. I think they got into a very good start, and they are above their target. That's right. Let's see as we move along here if that is fully sustainable on this level. We definitely have the ambition to have it about 15% on an annual basis.
Okay, sounds good. Final question on my side, this is on the component shortages. Is it mainly the Control Division that's impacted here, or how should we see this?
I think we see it a little bit in especially in the old electronics business, where we also have some of that within the international division. They have been coping better with it, and we see some improvements in some areas as well. Still on a very sort of low level or a bad level as opposed to looking long term. Looking at the last year or so, it has been stabilizing and then in some parts improving as well. In the control division, we have a couple or three companies that are more struggling with getting supplies from customers and sort of from suppliers, and struggling with that and have been very creative, but still not to the level we wanted to and thereby hitting the numbers a bit.
Thank you.
Yeah. Do we have some more questions from anyone?
Yes, I can hear you.
You. Yeah, I heard you.
Yeah, perfect.
Would you like to start?
Yeah. No, it's Herman here from Danske Bank. Can you hear me?
Okay, good.
Yeah.
Come on, Herman.
Yeah, perfect. Yeah. I was just wondering if you can say anything about the book-to-bill in the quarter?
I think we concluded In the last few quarters, we have concluded that we have a strong order book. I think the strong order book remains strong, but it's not like it's building very much or not deteriorating either.
Okay.
Which would indicate the book-to-bill close to one, right?
Yeah. Okay, good.
Then again, when we also see organic growth, of course, that is also picking up. The book-to-bill is probably a little bit stronger.
Yeah. Okay, perfect. Yes, I was wondering, Tormek had a quite rough start to the first quarter, and now it's having a record quarter. I was just wondering what is driving this change, and do you expect that we will see the same strong performance in Q3 as well?
We are approaching some new markets with some new products within Tormek. We have a new T1, right, with a more of a B2C type product, really. And that is affecting the numbers in a positive way. We also saw some good order volumes coming in related, as we believe, to the Black Friday campaigns that you basically have a lot of in the US especially. That we had last year as well. It's not like it's a new thing or anything, but it's been very strong here, and that was behind some of the numbers here.
Okay, good. Yes, you said that you have some company portfolios, some companies where you have a plan B ready. Is this in any specific market segment or is it just broad-based?
We would like to look at it, I mean, we are pushing it more in a handful of companies between five and 10 really companies we're pushing in more than the others. We see that normally we put a plan together in the springtime, and once we now entering the fall, we see that who's behind the targets, and that is usually initiating some type of action being taken. In some cases, it's more related maybe to the business cycle and others it's not. We're pushing in some plan B's here in a handful or yeah, up to 10 companies really.
I think the planning is more broader than that, but where we see there is necessary to put them in effect is maybe a handful of companies.
Okay, perfect. That's all for me. Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Hello, Johan Wennborg from Entech. Can you hear me?
Yes, we hear you. Welcome.
Super. I wonder how much sales do you have nowadays to Svenska Kraftnät and similar customers?
Sorry, I didn't hear you. How much sales do we have related to?
To Svenska Kraftnät and similar grid companies outside Sweden.
How much business we have with them?
Yes.
Yeah, usually, yeah, that's a tricky question. I think the sector we are quite dependent upon, but we are working more with it in Elpress and those companies, we're working more with the distribution part of the distribution network rather than the transfer network. We are more into the mid voltage rather than the high voltage. We have some products and companies that are more into the 300-kilovolt part of the network, while the most of what we have in the mid-range. When you say Svenska Kraftnät, they're high voltage, right? But the sector is definitely changing and pushing for more volumes.
It's a lot of, as we have pointed out earlier, there are also a lot of sort of approvals to be made and things like that that usually those type of projects take a long time. It is picking up, and especially the Electrify is highly dependent upon what is happening in that sector, both in the mid-voltage and the high-voltage.
If we take Electrify in general, is it very much exposed to the improvements that need to be done in the grid generally?
Yes. The electricity, building electricity grids and improving that is definitely one. They also are doing some, especially within Elpress, they also have some global segments, and one is renewable energy. The wind turbine manufacturers are important customer of theirs. Also the transformer companies making transformers, Hitachi and those guys. Those are also very important when providing different type of cable lugs and making different sizes transformers.
Okay. Also on your sales distribution, is it possible to just make some kind of rough estimate of how big a portion of your business where you are very certain that you will have growth coming in the coming year, even if the overall economy will go down severely?
Yeah.
Did you understand the question?
Yeah. What I tried to make a point out of earlier was really that we believe that we have a very resilient portfolio, I mean, the main segment we have is the power and electrics, right? Most of what we do within construction is related to infrastructure, and that is 50%. Those two are roughly 50% of our business. We have the other, which is another 17% of our business. You have this on slide 13 of the-
Mm-hmm.
Of the 0.2, the other is 17%, and that is broad-based. That is rate of measurement. That is sort of providing things for a number of different customers in different segments. The Asept with the dispensing systems, that type of thing. So they're very broadly based. It's this difficult really. We don't really see. What we have is very little really or much less than it used to be, OEM components going into different type of OEM customers that we have less of along the way. We are more dependent upon power and electric building, electricity grids or infrastructure with the 5G networks or sort of OEM, sort of yeah, Asept or Radonova and that type of thing.
Okey the exposure now really is probably much more resilient than how Lagercrantz looked around 2007, 2008, heading into the financial crisis.
Yes. Definitely.
Good. Another question on a different topic. Your cash flow improved a lot versus the previous quarter. Are you happy with the development in this quarter or is it still a lot of room for improvement?
Yeah. We are happy in the sense that it was a step in the right direction this quarter, and definitely was a lot better than it has been. Still we feel that we have too much tied up in stock and the working capital is not at the level we would like to be. There are definitely more to do there. That is a high priority of ours as well now. Both when we talk about customer credits, but also in terms of inventory.
My final question. Last year, you grew earnings almost 50%, and now you're at the run rate 33%. Your margin has really taken a leap up. Should one be concerned with really tough comparables now when you go into the coming year? Because maybe some of the companies have had a lot of tailwind that might turn into headwind or is it just an effect of executing better by good companies and one shouldn't be overly concerned about that.
I think so far so good, and we are not overly concerned. We are not that concerned. I think we have a much stronger group. It's much more broad-based. We have a higher EBITA margin, so we have more of sort of headroom towards when it really could start hurting us. A number of really strong companies in the portfolio. That, I think, makes us resilient. Just by reading the newspaper and listening to you guys at the stock market might tend to make anyone sort of worry. I think we should to some extent be a little bit worried, but we will. We have plans, and we will, as we always do, take action if needed. So far, we don't see that. We still feel that the market is good for us, and it's picking up quite nicely in many parts of the business.
Okay, you haven't had any abnormal tailwinds from, for example, a lot of other companies perhaps having problem with deliveries and your companies being able to deliver and profit from that by raising prices more than normal or any other broad-based effects from the last, well, post-COVID period here or during COVID where conditions have been not normal, so to speak.
No, I really don't see. Of course, we have managed to sort of deliver to our customers when our competitors didn't. I think the vice versa is also true, right? That's usually what happens when there are shortages, generally speaking, in the market. I don't think we've had a sort of unsustainable tailwind here. It has been a lot of things going in both directions with the lead times and shortages and the COVID thing going different ways. I think we have a stronger portfolio along the way, and that is sort of bringing us to this sort of level where we are at the moment. We've had some. We had some project-related businesses within the Electrify. That was maybe more of a temporary thing. All in all, that's not a big thing.
All right. That's good to hear. Thank you. Those were my questions. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you.
Hi. Adela Dashian from Handelsbanken.
Yeah. Hello. Welcome.
Yes. Thank you. I have two questions. The improvements in the margins in the International division, do you think they're on sustainable levels going forward? Can you also explain a little bit on what the company has done to increase the margins?
Sorry, I didn't hear the last part. Come again.
What the company think the International division has done to increase the margins, and if you think they're on sustainable levels?
I think we've been struggling with the old electronics business, which is still a fairly big part of the international division currently. Along the way, we have acquired a few companies that is really adding to the margins, improving the margins. The Schmitz Technik we acquired in Germany is one part of it. The ISIC is doing it quite a lot better. The Libra-Plast in Norway is also adding very much to the margin level that we see here going forward. I think that we reached an all-time high, and whether that is sustainable or not, well, let's see that for another couple of quarters. I think they are sustainably at a higher level than we used to be. That's my-
You're saying it's rather an acquired EBITDA margin growth in the International division?
Yeah. Well,
Yeah.
Yes, yes and no. That is definitely a part of it. But we've also fixed a number of acquired companies which we have had problems in. We have reorganized. That had also sort of been discussing with you guys along the way. It's we've had companies in the UK. We've had a company in Poland. We had one in Germany, which we have been reorganizing and making structural changes to, and those companies are also performing a lot better for us now. So it's part of the organization and some sort of structural changes that we've done in some parts of the business, but then also adding some acquisitions. So it's really both. It's both organic and through acquisitions.
Super. Thank you. That was all for me.
Mm-hmm.
Can you hear me? I have another question.
Yeah. Come on.
Yeah.
No problem.
Viktor Gancarz, Nordea.
Yeah.
I'm wondering if you could tell us about your wind energy market exposure, and maybe if you could provide a rough percentage of sales and also if it's mainly your sales here related to the Nordics or Europe, or if you have anything related to the Chinese wind market. Thank you.
The wind market is maybe the most important customer segment of ours all in all, but it's still fairly small since we're so broad-based. It's Elpress, it might be. Let's give a rough estimate. That's a guesstimate from me, it's really a rough, but say it's SEK 150 million or so of sales.
Yeah. Okay. That's about 2.5% of sales, something like that.
Something like that.
Yeah. Okay. Is it only Nordics or Europe or anything related to China?
Yeah, it is. Some of it is related to China, but it used to be more a year or two ago, but it's been picking up in the US instead. Especially here in the Nordics and in Europe, it's been picking up as well. It's picking up in Europe and in the US, but while it's been going down a bit in China in the last year.
Okay. Understood. Maybe if I can do a follow-up, do you expect to have anything related to offshore energy, wind energy, or only onshore? Can you use your products offshore as well?
I think we provide different types of OEM things that goes into the wind turbines and it's both onshore and offshore. But I think it's more onshore, if I remember correctly.
Yeah. That makes sense. Thank you, Jörgen.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Hi. It's Karl Bokvist here at ABG. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you. Welcome.
Perfect. Thank you. Good morning. My first question just on some comments you made in the report with price versus cost. I think one quarter ago you said that some businesses were still lagging a bit. Now it's down to a few. I'm just wondering, you know, is it this improvement in, I guess, the number of companies? Do you expect this to continue also into the next quarter?
It's a lot of things that goes into that equation, so it's difficult to make sort of that type of, and we don't do prognoses either. I think that we have been good and improving ourselves in terms of sort of transferring price increases from suppliers over to customers. In the last six months, we've seen some improvements in some of the companies. We still have a couple lagging behind, and especially within the TecSec division as pointed out in the report. So, we are still not entirely satisfied, but to predict the future there, I think it's very difficult because we have currency rates, we have sales mix and a lot of different things that goes into that.
So, it's w e would like to improve and work with our gross margins. We have been doing a good job over many years doing that, and I think we are also very sort of observant when it comes to looking at gross margins in our different companies and driving those things when we see things going the wrong way. We set targets and we make sure that the companies are on the right level when we talk about gross margins. Whether we expect them to improve further. Well, that's a lot of things that goes into that and I prefer not to predict that. We will do our best and drive our margins.
All right. Understood. My second to last question is just you highlighted the marine cluster or put the buildup of a cluster here. How big is that now of the group? And the marine sector is naturally quite cyclical, so just would be interesting to hear your strategy here, whether it's a lot of, you know, service and aftermarket or how you intend to plan for the inherent volatility in this industry on the equipment side.
Yeah. I think we are quite broad-based when it comes about different products and we are providing some antennas in one company. We are providing some ship bridge infrastructure in one company. The ISIC with the monitors and the pieces going into ship bridges is what they're doing. Then we have the Libra providing different types of doors for and they're looking at a very good market at the moment, and they're also expanding geographically, that company. Libra is doing very well. Then we also now acquired the Tebul, which is doing the sliding doors, also addressing some ship builders. The shipyards are, as we read it, fully booked for many years ahead.
Therefore, we are not really worried about orders deteriorating or coming down here unless we see a severe hit in the market with cancellations and that type of thing. That we haven't seen, and therefore we see that the shipyards are fully booked for three to five years going forward. Thereby we view that the market is still very good for those investments. I think many of the doors and the things we're working with is not going really to the really big ships either. It's either big investments or more sort of mid-sized. Thereby also sort of more sort of dependent upon many customers in many parts of the world really.
Understood. My final one is just, in general, it seems like a lot of businesses are still performing very well this quarter. Did you notice any businesses that performed relatively worse now compared to three or six months ago?
We always have companies that perform better or worse along the way, right? We are currently looking at the order intake for the first six months of the company, and they're far behind. Of course, we always have 10 or 15 companies that are behind their target's measures. To sort of relate that to the business sort of expected business cycle downturn that we haven't seen, and that's why we really. We haven't seen that. In this couple of instances, yes, maybe a handful of instances, we've seen some of that. Generally speaking, we believe that the market is still there, and it's treating us fairly well.
Understood. That is all for me. Thank you.
Thank you. Someone more? Okay. I think we had a lot of good Q&A today. Thank you very much for that. Me and Peter are available over the phone here, as always. If you would like to follow up on any additional questions, please don't hesitate to call us. Thank you all for listening in and thank you for participating. Have a good day, everyone.