Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Me speaking is Jorgen Wigg, CEO of the group. And together with me here this morning is Peter Thistle, our CFO. We will, as normally, we have released our numbers this morning.
And here in we we, in the morning here, try to, yeah, open up for some questions, give a presentation of the what we released, open up for some questions, and and have a session of, yeah, forty, forty five minutes, maybe up to an hour with questions. So, welcome, everyone. We will, as normal, have a short introduction. We will go over the numbers and then then look a little bit ahead of what's going on in the group and what we how we see things. So that's the sort of the the three different sesh parts of the session.
We will open up for questions at at the end. So to get an a short introduction, I mean, Lagercranes is the is a tech group with the leading positioning in expansive niches. And you can see over to the right here on this slide where we are located. We have our companies both in in Northern Europe, most of them, but we also have some footholds as many of our companies are nowadays exporting to a larger extent along the way. You can see all over to the right where we also have some footholds and ex and export activities going on in North America, in in China, and in India as well.
We have organized ourselves into these five divisions, and we'll all conduct in the what we call serial acquiring without an exit horizon, where we are acquiring and building a a group around sort of having a buy and build sort of strategy where we buy companies that have strong cash flows and use those cash flows to develop the businesses, but also to acquire more businesses and through that building an earnings per share along the way. We currently have sort of been growing for many years. And currently, we have revenues exceeding some SEK 9,600,000,000.0 and currently some 3,300 employees. We are firm believers in decentralization and having all the companies autonomously run. So currently, we have some 85 profit centers organized into these five divisions.
M and A is, of course, then a very central part of our business model, and you could see we will talk about that later on. We have been on the Stock Exchange since 02/2001, and before that, we were part of the Bergmann and Bimin Group, but have been under our own name and separately listed since 02/2001. So that was an introduction. Yeah. We released our numbers here this morning.
And here you can see our trajectory of our revenues and profits over some many years, some twenty years or so. And you can see that we have now posted yet another solid quarter with good earnings growth and revenue growth as well along the way. We have, along the way, put our sort of goals for the time being. We have an ambition of growing with some 15% per year, I. E, doubling every five years.
That is our overarching goal. But along the way, we have sort of translated that where we are. And when we were at the 500,000,000 here in profits, we set a target for SEK 1,000,000,000, and we surpassed that here one years point ago or two years ago. And then we have been now moving towards the SEK 2,000,000,000. And we could see that this new quarter was also well in line with those ambitions.
So a solid good quarter as we see it. We our commentary on the business conditions. Well, we have seen a recovery in the market over some period now. We have had now some four, five quarters of positive organic growth. And here in the quarter, it was some 3% or so organic growth.
But the recovery has been we view the market as generally stable and improving a little bit along the way, but it is from it is slowly recovering. So the hesitation remains in the market, but that's still on the sort of the positive side. And we see that demand continue to vary across companies and segments. We saw especially within the electrification and also within infrastructure segments. Within electrified, there, we had some strongest growth, but also some parts of the niche products division with the special companies there that had posted some good growth along the way.
But we also see demand more hesitant and the construction related businesses still struggling, where the market remains sluggish during the quarter. All in all, we still think it's quite positive in terms of that order intake for comparable units was in line with or slightly above invoiced sales. So the book to bill was slightly positive, which was good. But of course, we are also very occupied by looking at the market and see how geopolitical sort of uncertainty develops. And that, I think, is bringing some hesitation to the market, which we've seen from others that are importing as well.
So I think we are well in line with what's happening in the market. And our exposure then to The U. S. Is limited. We also commented on here to U.
S. With amounted to less than 4% of group sales. So it's small, but still, of course, sort of affecting different parts of the market as well. But from still on an improvement track, but slowly slow improvement is what we see in the market with the exception of the construction sector, where we see some that the market has remained sluggish. We have, you can see down here that we also have some, some, sort of key metrics we'll follow.
The proprietary products were at 78 percent now for the for the moving twelve months. It was 79, I think, is in in the quarter. But, still, that that is a a key sort of strategic ambition for for us. And we also see that we are growing the business, sort of becoming more and more international, and you can see their net revenue by geographic market down there to the right. And you could see that the Nordic and and businesses outside business outside the Nordics is gradually sort of growing faster than the than the group average.
So it's, that's also something that we have, are keen on seeing happening along the way. Peter, could you maybe take us through some of the numbers, please?
Sure. I'd like to start by summary the quarter. It's solid start to the financial year where we have positive organic growth and also positive contributions from acquisitions. We can see that net revenues increased by some 10% and acquisitions contributed with 10% and the organic growth was 3% and equal numbers with currencies. The EBITDA increased 12% and the EBITDA margin improved to 17.5%.
The cash flow was relatively strong, up 23% from the previous year. And the earnings before tax increased by some 14%, a little bit below our target of 15%, but still stronger than the previous year. And the profit after tax increased a little bit more 18%, but that was mainly due to higher taxes last year. The earnings per share increased to SEK 5.14. And as you know, the board has proposed a dividend of SEK 2.2 per share.
We have completed some 11 acquisitions in the past year or more exactly from the 07/01/2024 until today. And this corresponds to some 15% of net revenues of of the net revenues for last year. And and this is is the pace we have kept for almost three years now. And I think you would see that since some of these acquisitions came in rather late in the quarter and and also on the July 1 after the the quarter end. If we take a look by division, you can note that the strongest divisions are this quarter Electrify and the Control divisions where where we have noted very good earnings improvements, also followed by the niche products, but with some, weaker performance particularly in, the tech sec division, but also to some extent in in international.
But if you look at the bottom, for the EBITDA margin, we are quite happy to see that almost all divisions contribute to, the margin improvement. So maybe, Juergen, you will comment a little bit more details by division.
Yeah. A little bit on the divisions. And and Electrify was then the first division and was the strongest performer here. We saw revenues grow by 20% and organically 13%, so very good on organic. And that we sort of see coming from the electrification, the infrastructure investments being done And those companies with that type of addressing that segment had generally a good quarter.
So we saw some good performance coming in from Nordic Road Safety, E. L. Capslings, Wedwire, E. L. Press, E.
L. FAC and EFC and all those company have that in common. A very strong sort of performance from the Electrify division. And indeed, a strong EBITDA margin as well of 18.3%, which is up from 16% last year. So a very strong and good performance from the Electrify division.
Within the Control division, which was also very good, revenues grew by 21%. And but organically, it was somewhat weak with minus 2% and also some FX effects of minus 4%. But EBITDA grew then by 46%, driven by driven mostly by M and A. And also, the EBITDA margin picked up to 16%, also driven by M and A within the division. Generally, we saw they saw a stable market situation, combined with the successful acquisitions contributed to a good improvement in earnings and margins during the quarter.
And some companies stood out. The CPK's acquisitions we made last summer has had a positive development, while others sort of more of our legacy business with the Lia thing. MH modules is fairly new, but also Pressymeter is more of a been with us for many years, showed Goring's earnings improvements in the quarter. While we are struggling with some of the smaller businesses within the division. And here also the He Man, the company we acquired here last earlier this spring, had a promising start within Lagercrans.
And also good to see is that they posted another acquisition of the Orax here in the in just here during the summer. I'll come back to that one. So Control, a strong performance. The the one lagging behind a little bit and not not performing, living up to expectations is the TechSec divisions. TechSec division, here, we saw revenues decline by some 2%, and organically, was minus 5%.
A couple of companies here addressing more of the construction sector, and here, we see that sort of coming through. But EBITDA amounted to 84 percent and still a good EBITDA margin, generally speaking, of 16%, even though it was down a little bit from last year of 18.2%. So but the more constructor related businesses with the Arkon, door and joinery started out very strong within the group, had a fairly good performance, but still not living up to last year. And Principal Dorsets and CW Landberg remained affected by the weak market situation within the construction sector. And also, the division's largest business, the PCP in Denmark and Northern Europe, noted a stable demand but reported a slightly weaker start to the year.
So TechSec is the one a little bit struggling. Niche Products division, there we saw revenues pick up by 15%. And organically, it was plus 1%, so okay, but still a little bit on the low side. EBITA then picked up 14%, so that was good, and EBITA margin of 20%. This has been our high performance in terms of EBITA margin, and they continue to be so here during the quarter as well.
A stable quarter. And I've also seen some companies stand out a bit. The Prideaux with the folding doors had a very strong performance. And also the newly acquired Vanleuven in The Netherlands, the VLT company came in with a very good start within the Lauvekrans. But also other more legacy type businesses, the Sajas, the Profisafe and Vendig also delivered clear earnings improvements, while also some of the bigger ones, the Thulmek, Asept and Vopro performed in line with previous years.
So a good strong performance within the niche products division. And they also posted a smaller acquisition and add on company for the Vopra business here. I'll come back to that later on as well, also sort of building the division for the future. The last division then, last but not least, is the International. They posted a decline a little bit in revenues of minus 2%, but organically, it was up 3%, but were more affected by the FX of minus five percent.
So EBITA picked up with only 1%, but still the EBITA margin up to zero five percentage point to 18%, so still a good performance. As for those of you that have been with us for a long period of time, International was the one struggling a bit with the EBITA margin, but they have since now in a couple of years, two, three, four years, they've been well in line with the rest of the group. So they've improved their performance and show that, that's been structurally sustainable terms of living up to that expectation. Especially the Marine business in Libra and the DPCs in The UK continue to develop strongly. And other companies also did very well.
And here, it's also good to point out that International now have posted two sort of slightly bigger acquisitions with their Polk in Denmark and also Frigarokers in Sweden. And those are now being sort of consolidated within the group from July 1. So they are not really within the numbers just yet in terms of P and L numbers. So that's also ahead of us, so to speak. So that was the comments by division.
And that will sort of we move then into the next section. I mean, we are then continuing building our group, and we are aiming then for the larger grants towards the SEK 2,000,000,000. And I think we have the trajectory, and this was just another quarter where we see that we are well in line with that ambition in terms of timing and the sort of route to get there. I mean, what we're trying to build within Lagercrans is this strong portfolio of companies with and really having companies that are working in building market leading position in niches. And our financial goal since then to grow the EBT by 15%, where at least onethree should come organically and the rest through eight to 12 acquisitions per year.
And we have now for a couple of two, three, four years really been living up to this. As the base grows, of course, we need to increase the number of acquisitions. And the current pace of eight to 12 or some 10% of ourselves every year is something that we're living up to. And you noted maybe that Peter reported that it was 15% here last rolling twelve months coming from acquisitions. And that's good to see, well ahead sort of 10% that we have as a general benchmark.
So the annual profit growth of 15% is where we aim to be, and I. E, doubling the group every five years and reaching then the SEK 2,000,000,000 along the way, well, on time or ahead of time. Return on equity then, we should do this in a very profitable way by having a return on equity of at least 25%. And we were currently at the 28%, as you saw maybe from the report. So we have also been delivering on that financial goal for us.
So we continue building the group with the five divisions. We have, in the last few years, been putting increased emphasis on the divisional level, building some resources and really get going with making investments and finding acquisitions for us. And we could see that the pipeline of acquisitions are strong is strong, and we have basically more people working with this along the way a little bit. We are some 20 people or so, 23 or whatever we are in the overhead here now, And that includes the people working on the divisional level. So still sort of mean and lean, but very dedicated to building these divisions along the way.
And we also see that we have, since now four years, I think it is, been addressing different segments in each of these divisions. And that has also been very key for our sort of last few years' good performance when we see that we are addressing specific segments and markets with our different divisions. You could see there the focus area on the different divisions here. And you could see that we have a number of units, a number of profit centers within the different divisions, but this is where we put emphasis to building this and building capabilities and resources and get going with building these divisions. Building positions in sustainable segments with underlying structural growth is the sort of key theme here when we're building the different divisions, and we continue doing so over time.
Another key sort of strategic ambition for us is to build the proprietary products. You can see that this is where we're coming from. You could see how it's been developing. That is the sort of brown part of the slide here. Or and you could see that we have been growing that, and we had the ambition of getting to the 75% for quite some time.
But then lately, we have now put up the ambition for 85 in this sort of time sort of moving to the SEK 2,000,000,000 goal. And we are currently at SEK 78,000,000,000 or in the last quarter, as you can see, 79% from the report. Here, it's a moving twelve months figure of 78%. So that is also working in the right direction for us. We see within the Proprietary Products, we see higher margins, and we also see greater sort of opportunities for exports, meaning that also the organic growth sort of ambition is easier to deliver on when we see broader market for our companies.
And that that is also been a key thing for us when we have looked at finding more proprietary products to bring to the group. So that that's been good for us as well. Last but not least, I will talk a little bit about the acquisitions. Well, to grow a serial acquirer by 15% per year over a long period of time, we also need to then both produce some organic growth but also do quite a lot of M and A. And that is, of course, a key thing for us.
And in the last sort of set of goals, we have ambition of growing some 10% of ourselves, I. E, some eight to 12 companies per year is how we translated that. I think we're well underway here with 11 acquisitions that we posted here since July 2024, adding some thirteen eighty two in annual business volume, I. E, 15 roughly 15 or percent of ourselves really in that period. And you could see that we have some posted some 85 acquisitions since 02/2006.
And here, we had yet another good sort of time period of more acquisitions. And just to highlight what we're acquiring, we're both doing we move to the next one, please. What we're both acquiring sort of smaller companies that are bolt ons to companies that we already have. And within the niche products division, we are building a water sort of cluster of companies. And here, we found another company adding to that cluster, the Vopro cluster within.
It's not very big, this company, but still a good add on for and important for the Vopro business. And you can see down to the right here that it's been performing well and will be a good add on to that company, to the Wapro sort of area. The next acquisition I'd like to highlight is then a more of a stand alone acquisition. This is a very strong player and a leading player within Sweden in terms of products handling and maintenance for funeral and cemetery sectors. So a lot of things that goes into sort of cemetery and that market.
Also a very good well run company with some SEK 50,000,000 in terms of sort of turnover and some EBIT of around SEK 9,000,000, as you can see there. And you can also see the EBIT margin down at 17% to 20% or so, a good add on and a company that could sort of develop very well within the Lagercrans sort of framework, Swedish company, part of the Control division. Then we I would like to highlight a couple of bigger acquisitions. Here in Denmark, we acquired here in June the Epoch company, which is a leading manufacturer of equipment for winter road maintenance and road safety, especially for spreading sand and salt. And you can see this is slightly bigger.
This is Danish millions as well. So it's going to be a good and important add on for the international division, just newly acquired. Based in Weyen in Jotland in Denmark, but also have some subsidiary in Germany and with their production facility in Denmark. So a very good and important add on on a new company within the international division. And related somewhat to that is also then the Swedish company, Frigerokke, which is also making the sand and salt spreaders under the Swedish name that many of you might recognize, which is the Pfalzshopping brand, well known in Sweden, a very well run Swedish company with some €100 120,000,000 €130,000,000 in terms of sales in Sweden and an EBITDA of some yes, EBITDA margin of 20%, 25%, as you can see down there.
This company we acquired here in the July 1, so this will be sort of consolidated here from the July 1 as well. So that was not in the numbers here that we reported. And an important company also for the International division and similar or related to also the Polk business. So to round off, I think we posted a good solid quarter. And you can see here that our good trajectory in terms of the financial figures continued in the quarter.
We had a good net sales improvement and a good EBITDA improvement and the EBT. And the EBT growth is currently now at the 17% on the sort of rolling twelve months sort of basis as opposed to the to be compared with the target then of the 15%. And the return on equity there, the financial goal is 25%, and we're currently running at 28%. That is also very good. And the earnings per share growth was 19% compared to then to the goal of 15%.
So a good strong quarter and continued sort of on our trajectory here. So that was good to see. And with that, I think we will open up for some questions. Moving to the questions Q and A session.
The next question comes from Max Baco from SEB. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning, Jurgen and Petr. Well done in the quarter. Solid one indeed. Just one question from my side. We have heard from one of your bigger peers there during the the the reporting system that they have postponed some m and a transactions due to the geopolitical unrest and and low visibility, but you you seem to do the the opposite, take advantage of the slightly slower market and, I guess, also lower competition for quality companies.
So basically, the question is then what are your thoughts on doing acquisitions in the current market environment with which is perhaps characterized by by uncertainty? Any thoughts on that would be interesting.
Well, I think we have more or less been doing what we've always been doing. We are looking at good companies. And since we haven't we don't have an exit horizon, we are very, very long term, I don't think that we should sort of stop or sort of adjust very much for a geopolitical situation that might be sort of in some parts of the world or so. Of course, we are sort of observant to what's going on in a specific acquisition. So looking at the acquisitions, you just I just presented, most of them are very addressing markets and customers in Europe or even in Sweden in some instances.
So I don't think they will be very affected by the geopolitical situation in sort of North America or so. Of course, if there is an bigger things happening with sort of whatever that might be, but if that's happening. But we are looking at it case by case. And if we feel that they're sort of they're addressing a market in Northern Europe or so, I think we are still very sort of, keen on on continuing our our our m and a sort of, yeah, our m and a activities. So we we have not stopped or adjusted very much. No. That's true.
The next question comes from Christian Binder from Redeye. Please go ahead.
Hi, and thanks so much for taking my questions. First one regarding organic growth. If I remember correctly, in q four twenty twenty three, 'twenty four, you noted that the timing of Easter kind of had a negative effect of three percentage points on organic growth in that quarter. Can we assume there was, like, a similar effect in this q one when comparing it to last year's Q1?
Yes. I think there was a slight sort of yes, the organic growth was slightly stronger in the previous quarter with some 5%, I think, we posted in the last quarter. And this quarter, we posted 3%. And some of that effect was really sort of coming from the calendar effect. That's true.
But I don't think we should make that a key point here. I think that we are in our companies, we see quite a sort of a different sort of landscape in terms of organic growth, as you could see when we went through it from the divisional side. I'm not sure that, that's sort of to be expected here going forward. The market is improving but slowly, as pointed out earlier.
Okay. Perfect. Got it. And then one question regarding Epoch. Looking at the last ten years of consolidated financials for the company, it seems like sales haven't changed too much, but EBIT margin has improved a lot.
Can you just give a little bit more color on what kind of has changed in the business?
Yes. I think they've been going through some improvement programs and some cutout of costs as well in within the business. But I also know that they have been addressing more of the aftermarket and been much better at addressing the aftermarket than they used to be. And that has been all those things have added up to some better improvements better better performance in that company in in recent more recent years. And that we see as sustainable going forward.
Perfect. That was all from my side. Thank you so much.
Mhmm. Thank you.
The next question comes from Patrick Schwartz from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Jordan and Pieta. Congrats on another solid quarter. I have a couple of questions here. First, on Electrify. Obviously, we had some really strong organic growth here in the couple of the last couple of quarters, although admittedly, again, perhaps some easier comparatives.
Looking forward, I think it's it's getting a bit more difficult now. What is the feeling here on on organic growth? Should we expect it to to obviously, mean, 10%, 11% is perhaps not too sustainable, but what do we think going forward?
Yes. Well, that's a very difficult question. I think the key engine the engine within the electrification has been our ILPRESS. And our ILPRESS has been performing very well for many, many years. And they have been had a growth pace, so maybe 8% to 10% for some years.
But now in the last couple of years, it's been a little bit above 10%, so 10%, 12%, 12%, 15%, somewhere there. So Ilpress but they are also meeting a better market. We see that in sort of investments in electrical infrastructure and cable logs and electrical grid is improving and picking up along the way. And I probably see that continue for a number of years going forward. But whether we should translate that to strong organic growth for ILPress and the other of our companies, well, I think it will be fairly strong.
But whether it will be this strong, it's really hard to tell. Yes, we will be able to come back to that. We'll see what happens. In the neighborhood or slightly in the neighborhood, we should probably be, yes.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. And then since you mentioned Ilprat here, also we have had some announced tariffs here on on copper prices. I know that The US exposure here is is quite limited, but but ELPress is 70% copper products.
Do you see any impact here on on demand and and then on profitability?
Not really. I think that most of what Ilpress is doing is quite sort of competitive. It's I think they've been doing very well, and The U. S. Is a very small market to them.
I think from my knowledge as well, some of the products were also accepted from the tariffs early on. I don't know whether that has changed here or whether that is about to change, but it's nothing that we have seen so far.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. And then here, a final question here on Epoche.
How should we think about seasonality going forward? Is it strong q three, strong sorry, strong Q4 to strong Q1 and then soft Q2, Q3? Or
Yes. Yes, that's good spotted. There is a seasonality to both the Polk and Flieger Orkus that is related to the after summer and winter sort of. Those are the strong seasons and slower in the beginning of the year or, yes, springtime. Spring to summer.
Kind of the opposite of Nordic road safety.
Right. Yes.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'll get back in line.
Back to the speakers for written questions or any closing comments.
Thank you. And from what I can see, we have no written comments. So I think we'll round off there. Thank you for listening in, posting yet another good quarter and since very sounds very feels very satisfying to be doing that here just ahead of summer. So, and Peter and I are available here, if you would like to contact us individually.
But otherwise, have a good summer, everyone, and speak to you soon as as we get back from vacation. Thank you very much.