Good morning, everyone. Speaking is Jörgen Wigh. Welcome to the Lagercrantz quarterly call based on that we released our numbers here this morning for our fiscal year Q2 then ending end of September. Welcome everyone. We will be quite a lot of people here, so we will put you all on mute and start the presentation here in just a while. The presentation is available on our webpage. That's how we normally do it. We put it on our webpage. That makes it easy for everyone to access it. It's on lagercrantz.com then. We will plan to go over the materials, and I will try to page along the way. We will mute everyone, and that is that, right? Together with me here, also our CFO, Kristina. Welcome to you as well.
Hi.
We will try to mute everyone, but I'm not sure everyone muted.
We will open up for questions in the back end of the meeting. We usually have this meeting, it usually takes around 45 minutes or so to go over the materials. The presentation of today is put up in a couple of different chapters. First of all, I'd like to give an introduction to the group. After that, we will dig right into the Q2 numbers and go over that and the report we presented this morning. After that, we will also highlight what we feel is important going forward at the end, and then we will open up for Q&A at the end of the meeting. Mute everyone again. We'll see if that works. Yeah. I did that already, but okay, good. Let's get going. Let's turn to page two of the presentation to give you an introduction to the Lagercrantz Group.
We have been around on the Stockholm Stock Exchange since 2001, hopefully, there are also some new listeners to us, to our story. Therefore, we also start with an introduction. We are a tech group with some 60 subsidiaries, all doing business-to-business technologies in different niches. We build the group both through organic growth, also to a great extent, through M&A, carrying out some 5 - 10 acquisitions per year or so, adding new companies to the group. We have some revenues of SEK 4.5 billion and some 1,800 employees within the group. Over to the right, you can see where we have our needles, where we are operating.
All the way over to the right, you can also see that we have some footholds also in other parts of the world with some sales companies in China, with sales companies in the U.S., and also in India, where we're also present. The main proportion of what we're doing is in the Nordics and in Northern Europe, as you can see from the map there on the right. What is important to know about us is that we are very keen on driving things in a very decentralized manner. Our companies are autonomous, working in their specific niche and addressing a specific market under their own brand name or company name, addressing a specific niche. We try to be a very good owner of these companies, challenge them, grow the companies, and perform better along the way.
Through acquisitions, add volume and profits to the group along the way. We've been listed since 2001 on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. That's an introduction to the group. You can also see over in the top there where we have organized the different profit centers in five divisions, the Electrify, Control, TecSec, Niche Products, and International divisions. You can see how many companies or profit centers we have within each division. I will comment on them along the way here. Turn to page three, where we can see the latest numbers and how we have evolved number wise. You can see that we started out many years ago in 2005/2006 with some low margins and were struggling back then.
Since we have changed the direction of the Group, we've had a very strong earnings performance and also margin performance. As you can see, the line is above the bars as the scales are proportionate on this one. You can see that we are now at an all-time high in terms of profit of the financial items on a moving 12 months. Some really good growth here in the last few quarters, as you can see all the way to the right with the line there. We have been growing through acquisitions of proprietary products type companies with high margins, and also then in the last time or so, we've also had a better organic growth that has helped us in moving the needle here in our performance. That's been very good to see. Again, we had a very strong quarter here.
Our Q1 was also very strong, but we continued our path here in Q2, which we are very satisfied with. It seems like the market is with us, and we've had broad-based improvements in many of our companies. We've also had the newcomers, the last few acquisitions have been performing well for us during the last few quarters here. We made a couple of bigger ones, acquisitions here this spring, and both of the Libra-Plast and the CW Lundberg has been adding both volumes and profits in a very nice way to the group. That's also behind these numbers, the strong numbers that we presented this morning. Turning to page four, we have some comments on the business conditions.
It's important to understand that we have implemented a new structure within the Group as of 1st of April, where we have regrouped our companies into the five divisions. We were earlier on four divisions, focusing more on attractive growth segments, which we feel are important to highlight where we would like to go and where we are, and we would like to go even further and focus on. That is important both internally and externally towards both our personnel and where we would like to head, but also for you guys on the stock market and in the M&A markets to understand what we're all about and where we would like to go. Talking about business conditions, then, well, we had a strong revenue growth in Q2. Another strong quarter with the 31% revenue growth, and the organic underlying and organic growth was now 13%.
For those of you who remember that, it was 18% in the first quarter, but we also had a comment that that was based on some softer comparables for last year. I think this quarter was stronger last year as well. All in all, I think we continued on a good path of growth here, organically also, during this last quarter. We saw some good improvements in our main markets, and we are also talking quite a lot internally here about it's been broad-based. It's a lot of companies doing it a lot better or slightly better than before. If we look down in the numbers, you'll also see that it's basically in all divisions, in most businesses that we've seen improvements. We also commented that the order intake remains at a good level. That is also a positive sign along the way here.
We've also discussed quite a lot here lately over the last few months around the changes in the supply chain with the rise of freight prices, shortages of components, and in raw materials. That has been a very important thing for us to deal with during these last three to six months, and continue to be that, really. We also see some really good work being done with that in our companies. We see very little of it on our group figures, really, but it's a lot of things going on in the different companies where we see some drastic price adjustments in some areas. We've also been dealing very well, I think, in the companies with finding new delivery routes or even alternative suppliers in some instances to manage to deliver to our customers, which has been very important during this period.
We also highlighted that we, in the last six months, have then concluded three acquisitions. The CW Lundberg and the Libra-Plast are of the bigger size, while AC Antennas is a smaller one. That is a very high-performing company, but will be integrated into the ISIC, which is in the International division. That will also be some improvement to the margins, basically in the ISIC business and the International business. That's some comments on the business conditions. Looking at page five, we look straight to the numbers. The Q2 then, as already mentioned, we grew revenues by 31% to SEK 1.2 billion. We had an organic growth of 13%. The EBITDA was up then 45% to SEK 192 million. The EBITDA margin was at 16%, as opposed to 14.4% for last year. A margin improvement and also a good growth in EBITDA.
The profit after financial items was even stronger with a 50% growth and amounted then to SEK 156 million. Profit after tax, you see the number there is SEK 116 million as opposed to SEK 81 million last year. The earnings per share on a moving 12 months basis then stands at SEK 2.41 as opposed to SEK 1.91, which was the number for the last fiscal year ending March 2021 then. Good to see is also that the return on equity reached an all-time high here. I commented on that also in my comment at the 28%. That's a level we've never been to. We have been struggling and again, being around the 25% for quite some time.
Now with also adding some more acquisitions and increasing the leverage a little bit, we managed to get to the 28%, which I think is a very good positive sign. The equity ratio is still at a very good level of 34%. It's been increasing a little bit since last year, due mainly to the acquisitions we made, the slightly bigger ones we made here this spring. Cash flow operations was strong at SEK 113 million for the quarter. I think what we see is when the underlying organic growth is a little bit stronger, we also tend to build a little bit more of working capital. Therefore, the SEK 113 million, I think is a good number given that fact, really. We also commented here on the operational net debt at SEK 1.5 billion, and that was largely affected by the acquisitions and dividends paid here during the period.
Given the acquisition we made, it's been a strong underlying cash flow as well. Looking at page six, we have the six months figures, which is basically adding up the two quarters then. You can see here that, I won't comment on all of these, but it's good to see that the profit after financial items then grew by 71% during these six months as opposed to the same period last year. A very strong EBITDA margin at the 16.1% as opposed to the 13.5% last year. We conclude, as already said, then the three acquisitions during the period with the one mentioned there. We had a cash flow then of SEK 254 million. Looking a little bit on the different divisions. We turn to page seven.
We could see really that we have now five divisions that are all performing very well. We see also if you compare them to last year, they're all growing nicely, and they also are pushing their margins and growing their profits as well. We can see down to the bottom there that we have the margins, which is evenly distributed among the different divisions. The really strong ones are the Niche Products, above 20%. The TecSec is very strong also at 17.3%. Good to know there is that the CW Lundberg is coming in as a big part there, and that is also then affecting the numbers in a positive way without sort of affecting the margins too much. That's really good to see as well. We also know that within the Control division, we have the seasonality.
You can see that the Q3 and Q4 is normally the stronger quarters in the Control division due to the fact that we are doing the radon measurement to a huge part in the winter. That is also seasonality in that figure in the Control division. The Electrify continues to do it very well. We have the International, where we did the restructuring a year back or so, a little bit more than a year back. You can see that has had a good effect. The Libra-Plast is coming in there as well, the new company there, bringing the numbers to the 13.3%, which I think is a very good number for the International division, given what type of businesses that we have in that division. We have some comments by division, and we go page eight.
While it's good to see that all divisions really had good revenue growth, you can see that we put up the number here. The revenues grew by 20% in Electrify, 11% in Control. TecSec 48%, Niche Products 41%, and International 36%. You can also see the EBITDA growing quite nicely in all the divisions. To give a few comments on each division. While in Electrify, Elpress, our biggest subsidiary continue to do it very well. They are very export-oriented and selling basically all over the world, but especially in China and in the U.S., they have volumes that has been picking up and doing very nicely during the period. We also have the newcomer, Esari, which in Finland, which is doing it nicely during the quarter and also Norwesco. Important to highlight here is also the Cue Dee.
Cue Dee has been a company that we've been struggling to some extent with, but they're doing it quite a lot better now due to the fact that the rollout of the 5G, which is their customer base, is starting to happen in Sweden and in Europe. They also have some project-related transactions to other customers within the telecom industry, which is affecting the numbers here in this period. That's also improving the numbers slightly here during the quarter. They also have an underlying better business in other sort of more bread-and-butter type business in that company as well along the way. Within the Control division, I think it's to a large extent broad-based, the improvements.
We see that, especially then Precimeter and Excidor has been doing it very well during the quarter, that is a very good organic improvement in both sales and profits in that division. They don't have any acquisitions to feed their growth with during this period. This improvement is organically all of it. Within the TecSec division, it's also looking quite nicely with ARAS. The main company is really ISG Nordic and ARAS, and is doing it very well. Then the CW Lundberg is coming in very nicely. Had a very good start within the group, acquired here in April, as we'll look into that a little bit later here. We have the Niche Products division, continue to do it very well.
Here we have some companies also to point out, which is the Wapro, which have a good success in the U.S., but also other Dorotea Mekaniska with their vehicles are doing it quite nicely. A couple of other companies. Asept is coming back, was affected by the COVID quite a lot last year, but it's coming back quite nicely this year. That's also a positive effect from these products. Last but not least is the International division, where we also have some good growth, also broad-based and also then doing it very well with also the restructuring that took place here a year or so back had a good effect. They also had a strong demand, especially in Germany, for some of the companies down there, which was good for us.
Broad-based and a few highlights there also, companies doing quite well on page nine of the presentation. That was basically what I intended to say around the quarterly report. I'd like to also touch a little bit on the program, and discuss a little bit what we feel is of importance going forward. Here we have the Lagercrantz towards one billion, which is the program that we launched here this spring. This has been very successful for us. I think is highlighting where we would like to go, what type of areas we would like to be in, where we would like to focus. That I think is a benefit to all of us really within the organization, but also to the outside world with both the stock market and the M&A market.
We launched this in March, April, since then we are now sort of filling the gaps and filling the sort of restructuring and filling a few new positions that we put in, and building this in this direction. The key themes here was to clarify the strategies and financial goals. We did the reorganization that I already touched upon with the five divisions, to highlight the growth ambitions. We also have some increased capacity with the M&A, which I think is a very important part of this program. Then we also put in some increased focus to the sustainability issue. I will touch about that a little bit here later as well. To highlight on these key themes, on page 11, you can see that our vision and financial goals is very clear, I think, for us all.
We would like to build a group of a number of very strong companies highlighted by this cougar of sharp arrows there to the right, and really create a strong group of companies with all doing business-to-business tech with market leading positions in several expansive niches, is what we've said as a vision statement. We would like to annually grow our profits by more than 15%, and that means that we should double the group in every five years, really. The way it's looking right now, we have a pace that is higher than that, so it looks quite nice. We've also now highlighted that at least 1/3 of that should come organically and the rest through five to eight acquisitions per year.
That's the sort of setup. You could argue you could grow faster than that, but we feel it's a good way to sort of take care of the companies that's also coming into the group and you really give them a good opportunity to set up some clear ambitions and some clear goals and some growth strategies in the companies that we acquire. We feel that's an important part of how we would like to build the group, both organically and through acquisitions. We would like to do this in a very profitable way by having a return on equity exceeding 25%. As already pointed out, we currently are at the 28%. We are basically delivering on these financial goals currently at present.
Looking at a few other priorities here is then how we would like to build the group is the aim, working with the proprietary products. I think it's a very important part for our success. You can see here the gray part on page 12, the gray part of how that's evolved over time. We started out with the Elpress acquisition in 2006. That brought us to the 13% you can see over there. Since then, we have steadily and nicely been growing the share of proprietary products of the full group. That means that the gross margins are higher and also that we have better opportunities for growth, especially on exports, where we can basically address customers all over the world with the proprietary products that we have the IP rights for within the group.
That I think is still a very important part of how to grow Lagercrantz going forward. Therefore we set up the goal of the 75% proprietaries within the group that we should soon reach. Looking at page 13, you can also see how the gross margin and the value add that we bring to our customers has evolved over time. That I think is a good example of how we would like to work with also pushing the proprietary products is part of this. Also other things that we'd like to do in order to push the value add that we bring to our customers. Here you can see the 38.6%. It's been a very nice sort of good improvement here along the way.
Here in the last quarter, we saw a slight pressure on gross margins due to the supply shortages and the stuff I already mentioned. I think we then with it very well. We still have some time lags around that, and we still need to deal with it in the coming months or so. I think we are well on the way to bring our gross margins to a higher level than we had before. I think we should be very satisfied with having it at the same level as last year here, given what's happening in the supply chain in many companies of ours. That's a few comments on that. On page 14, you can also see the reorganization into the five divisions. I think I've discussed this quite a lot with you guys during the last six months.
I won't dig into it very much here. It's good to see that this has really been sort of an injection and for inspiration in the organization. I think we are well on the way in implementing this and getting it to work with the five strong divisions being developed here. We see some good M&A activities going on in many cases here now in the different divisions. Looking at page 15, part of the Lagercrantz towards SEK 1 billion is also then the increased focus on the sustainability. Here we are really dealing with some group initiatives that goes hand-in-hand with the UN global goals and compliance with those and working with that from a group perspective. What we've also done is we put in some 50+ local initiatives in our companies.
We would like this to be part of what we do on a daily basis in all our companies, and therefore we would like to implement it down in the different companies rather than have it as a central initiative. Therefore, we put together the 50 + local initiatives this year. We did this spring, and now we are following up on what's happened and how that's evolved, and we will have that part of our sustainability report here for the spring. I think that's very promising. We feel that this is very important, and we would like to highlight that we are working with this. We are in it for long term and need to work sustainably in many aspects in order to get there, really. That's what we're doing in that area. Last but not least is the acquisitions part.
That's, as mentioned already, a very important part of the group on what we're doing. At page 16, you can see the 59 acquisitions we've done since 2006, and you can see that in the last 12 months, we've added some 10 acquisitions with some approximate sales volume of SEK 700 million. That feels very nice. We feel that the acquisition arena is still very attractive, and we are looking into many opportunities in that area. We'll continue with that and release along the way more acquisitions as we go along. Looking at the more recent ones, I think it's important to highlight that some are a little bit bigger, and on page 17, we could look at the CW Lundberg, which is the company we acquired here in April. That has come in very nicely, and it is over-performing really to what they did last year.
They have been managing supply chain and issues around raw material prices and freight prices and that type of thing in a very good way, and is growing that part of the TecSec division in a very nice way. You can see when we acquire companies, we try to put together a fact sheet on what we have bought, and you can see that over down to the right there. We don't update those numbers, but that is where we were when we acquired the company. Along the way, we will look into to perform at least on these levels that you see down there. To have the 18% EBITDA margin is very nice for this type of company.
They have started this year in a very good fashion and looks very promising for the future as to be a very strong group, very strong company within the group, part of the TecSec division from April. Another good start we had with the Libra company, which is on page 18. That is a Norwegian company that is a market leader within delivering premium quality doors, hatches, and storage units to the marine industry. A very attractive company. I was there just a few weeks ago, and it looks very promising for the future. They have a very niche position, a very strong position in their part of the market. As you can see down to the right there, I also have some strong numbers and have continued to deliver on those also to huge part here coming into the group.
The last acquisition is then on page 19, which is the AC Antennas, which is a Danish company. They are making all these type of antennas, and on each marine vessel or ship, you normally have very many of these. They are a very niche-oriented company delivering these type of antennas based on a specific production process, doing it very nicely. It is not a very big company, so it will be added to the ISIC Group that we already have within Denmark. As you can see down to the right, they have very nice margins and are performing very well, and it looks very promising to have that come into the ISIC Group. We are building both through platform acquisitions, but also through add-on acquisitions, adding to what we already had within the group. We are on page 20 then.
You could see the financial overview. I think we are continuing with Lagercrantz on a very good path. You can see all the way since 2012, 2013 here, how the numbers have evolved. It's great to see that we have a very strong growth at the moment, with the EBIT growing 42%, with the EBITDA margin at 16.3%, which is the highest we have here. We can also see the return on equity at an all-time high. It seems like we are doing many of the right things, and we will continue doing that going forward. That's to round off my presentation. I will now open up for some Q&A. Let's see now. Now we should be all unmuted. Do we have some questions for me and Kristina? No, Kristina. No, you didn't. Are you with me? Are you with us? Okay.
Anyone would like to start with some Q&A? Do we have some technical issues here? Yeah. If you would like to unmute yourself, try to star six. Okay. Well, I'm not sure whether it's technical issues or whether you don't have any questions. That could be either or. Let's do it this way. Both me and Kristina are available here at the office, so if you would like to have some one-on-ones or have some additional questions to us, please don't hesitate to call us. There, I heard someone. Anyone would have had a question, or? Okay. I think we'll round off then. Thank you very much for listening in. Have a nice day, look forward to talking to you soon again. Again, if you have some questions, please don't hesitate to call me or Kristina at the number given on our webpage.
Thank you very much for listening in, and have a good day.