Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Investment AB Latour's interim report Q2. Today, I am pleased to present Johan Hjertonsson, President and CEO, and Anders Mörck, CFO. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Afterwards there will be a question and answer session. I will now hand you over to Johan Hjertonsson. Please begin.
Thank you. Welcome to this conference call presenting the second quarter 2020 for Investment AB Latour. This quarter has been characterized by the ongoing pandemic and the turbulence it has caused in major parts of the world. Our holdings acted rapidly at the outbreak with the employees' safety as the first priority, but also to adapt our businesses to the new circumstances. We'll tell you more about this later on in the presentation.
Our overall group structure is unchanged from last quarter. We have two major business lines, a wholly owned industrial operation consisting of five business areas, and a long-term investment portfolio consisting of nine listed holdings where we are the main shareholder, or in some cases, the main shareholder together with a partner. We go to the next slide. We have made a few transactions in the listed portfolio during the quarter.
In May, we divested 7.8 million shares in TOMRA, corresponding to 5.3% of the outstanding shares in TOMRA. The divestment realized financial resources for new investments, but it's important to emphasize that we have continued full support of TOMRA's long-term strategy in the same way as before, and Latour remains as the main shareholder in the company.
In addition to the TOMRA transaction, we have continued to increase our investment in Fagerhult and in Alimak. The value development of our investment portfolio reflects the overall stock market and decreased by 4.7% since the end of December compared to the SIXRX, which decreased with 4.1%. We are very pleased with our holdings' underlying development during the quarter, not least given the circumstances with COVID-19.
All of the holdings have reported now for the second quarter and are all more or less affected by the pandemic with a negative organic growth, but have shown great resistance and have protected the profits very well. Until yesterday, the portfolio value has increased to almost SEK 68 billion, which means that the total return amounts to 7.7% so far this year compared to the SIX RX development of 4%. We go to the next slide.
During this quarter, our wholly owned operations have primarily focused on keeping all employees safe and adapt the businesses to the fast-changing environment. The management teams have also put a lot of energy on trying to understand where the impact on the pandemic would hit the most. All of our businesses have been affected by the pandemic, but it's a mixed picture depending on market exposure and type of business.
Our portfolio is well diversified, both in terms of geography and in terms of product and customer, which has mitigated the negative effects. It has been a challenging quarter, but the profit development is proof that we own very well-run companies with good management and dedicated employees. We had a 15% negative organic growth in orders in the quarter and an organic decline of net sales by 13%.
The operating profit for the period decreased by 8% to SEK 474 million, corresponding to an EBIT margin of 13.4%. Also keep in mind that the comparison year's quarter was a record quarter. All in all, we are very proud of our development during Q2 with a full pandemic in play.
The big question mark going forward is how the overall market will develop, both in the short and long term, and how our businesses can make the most out of it. We continue to invest in our holdings with product development, sales, and marketing in our business areas to drive sustainable growth and further strengthen the positions of our operations.
We turn the page again. At the end of the first quarter, we temporarily shifted focus from acquisitions into handling the ongoing crisis. No acquisitions was made during the second quarter. Our business development team has nevertheless continued its analytical work during this time, and the pipeline of potential acquisitions is strong. We are looking forward to hopefully be able to report about interesting transactions finalizing during the second half of this year. Having said that, I'll hand over to you, Anders.
Thank you so much.
to take us through the business areas as a whole.
Yeah. We start with the first business area on the next picture, which would be Caljan. As you know, Caljan is to some extent a project-oriented business, and for Caljan, the demand decreased somewhat during the quarter, but from a high level, and the order backlog is still very high. The e-commerce sector, which is an important customer sector, is in good momentum, and we see a positive trend going forward.
Caljan is mainly affected by the pandemic through postponed projects, which is the reason why net sales decreased by 23% in the quarter when a number of projects were postponed to the third quarter. It's important to say that they were postponed, not canceled. The operating profit for Caljan amounts to EUR 3 million during the quarter with an operating margin of 12.5%.
We go to the next page, and there we see Hultafors Group that had a weak start of the quarter due to the pandemic, but recovered very strongly from the end of April when net sales gradually increased again. Both product areas report good sales, thanks to the strong finish of the period, which resulted then in an organic decline with only, we can say, 3%, which is very impressive.
Cost control combined with relatively strong net sales development contributes to an increased operating result of SEK 114 million, and that's an increase of 27%, and an operating margin of 13.6%. Very good. As before, Hultafors Group is still keeping high focus on the development of the sales organization and marketing on product development and on digitization.
We shall also mention that Ole Kristian Jødahl, the former business area manager of Hultafors Group, has been appointed as the CEO for our listed holding Alimak Group. Ole has been with Hultafors since 2017, and we are very happy to see him grow within the group so we can keep him and wish him, of course, the best of luck.
A new CEO has been recruited to Hultafors, but the name has not been announced yet. We turn to the next picture, which is Latour Industries. Latour Industries is maybe the business area that is most affected by the pandemic with a large presence in Southern Europe. Some parts of the Latour Industries businesses have been severely affected, but anyway, in total, the business area is very resilient. Negative effects are also mitigated by the business area's diverse business units.
For example, building automation is the least affected and shows a very positive development during the quarter. Also all business units finished the period in a strong way. Net sales anyway declined then organically by 10%, which is quite much, but the operating profit anyway amounted to SEK 48 million, which is strong for Latour Industries, the operating margin being 7.9%, a little bit lower than before.
We still expect, and we still believe that this business area will continue to improve its operational performance as we have communicated now for several quarters. This trend was, however, broke in this quarter because of the pandemic, and it's fully understandable. We'll come back. We turn page to the next picture, and we go to Nord-Lock.
For Nord-Lock, the overall business is decreasing, but the negative effects are once again then mitigated through the business areas' well-prepared exposure on different markets. While demand was decreasing during the quarter in Europe and Americas, it was balanced by recovered markets in Asia Pacific. Net sales decreased by 18%, and the operating profit amounted to SEK 84 million, with an operating margin of 25.8%, which is very strong under these circumstances.
Let's go to the next picture where we find Swegon. Also Swegon's growth is clearly affected by COVID-19. Like the other programs, we have a mixed picture. In the Nordics, we have had a very strong development, though the pandemic, while Southern Europe and U.K. were hit very hard by closed construction sites. Also good to say that North America developed very positively during the period. Net sales decreased organically by 12% in the quarter.
Good cost control supported the result, which gave an operating result then of SEK 201 million with a strong operating margin at the same level as last year, 13.7% as opposed to 13.8%. Here we have a message then that the business area manager, Hannu Saastamoinen , has decided to step aside after eight successful years.
He is replaced on September 1st by Andreas Örje Wellstam, who has been within Latour and Swegon since 2010. Of course, we want to thank Hannu for all his efforts and great success during these years and wish Andreas also welcome in his new role, which we think is very good. It's also great to have been able to give an internal candidate the opportunity to pursue a career within Latour in competition with external candidates. We go to the next picture, and that is about the net asset value.
Compared to the beginning of the year, our net asset value has decreased by 5.5% to SEK 107.27 per share at the end of June. At the same time, SIXRX decreased by 4.1%. Maybe we should say that, please bear in mind that our valuation of unlisted assets are just an indication of a prudent view of the value. In a very difficult market climate where quality companies actually now on the stock markets are rewarded with very high multiples.
These very high multiples are not reflected in our indicative valuation. As Johan mentioned before, we like to think at least that our companies are quality companies. Hope that comment is taken well. Our share price at the end of June was SEK 169 per share, which corresponds to a premium to our net asset value of 33%, compared to our indicating net asset value.
Yesterday on August 19th, the net asset value had increased to SEK 140 per share, the share price on the same day closed at SEK 193.90, which gives a premium in the same way to value the assets then of 38%. Latour's consolidated net debt decreased during the quarter from SEK 8.6 billion to SEK 6.3 billion, due to the sale of TOMRA's biggest and most important explanation. The net debt corresponds to 7% now of the total market value of our investments. Johan, back to you.
Thank you, Anders. Next page on our financial targets. This picture summarizes our financial targets. During the last 12 months, we have had a growth of 10.3%, EBIT margin of 13%, and return on operating capital of 14.1%. We have met all three criteria during a long string of consecutive quarters now, this quarter we fell just below on the return on operating capital target due to the decreased results in combination with high acquisition activity last year.
We turn to the last page. We are not changing the long-term ambition for Latour, which is to grow our operations both organically and through acquisitions. Latour's financial strength enabled us to continue doing this even during a pandemic, which is affecting the world right now.
We believe that we can come out of this crisis even stronger, and to do so, we continue with all strategic initiatives in our company as before. That concludes the presentation from Anders and my side. Thank you all, then we open up for Q&A.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. If you wish to withdraw a question, you may do so by pressing zero two to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Joachim Gunell from DNB Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thank you, and good day, Johan and Anders. On the business momentum for each of your business areas, can you talk a bit more of what you're seeing going into Q3? I mean, we're almost halfway through the quarter.
I mean, obviously in general, please add Anders, to start with Q2, obviously in the beginning of the quarter, it was a very negative dark development, and that eased up at the end of Q2 with actually pretty good momentum in June, and that has also continued into Q3. Having said that, it is unclear as we write in the report, it is unclear how the pandemic will play out in the autumn.
I think the classic saying, hope for the best and plan for the worst is really how we operate right now. It's impossible to say how this will play out. So far, the positive trend at the end of Q2 has continued into the early quarter of Q3. Having said that, it's not an indication of how this will play out in the second half, because we just don't know. For Anders.
It's very difficult and a big question mark across for 2021. We hope for the best there as well.
That's clear. A question then for perhaps Anders more particularly. Can you quantify the effect from utilizing government schemes and what effect that has had on the industrial operations EBIT? Perhaps what holdings have utilized such aid?
Yes. If you want the exact amount, in total Q2 was affected by SEK 50 million. Whereof SEK 10 million was in Sweden. It's actually in the report, but it's on the back side. You haven't read the last pages yet, Joachim, but that's fully understandable.
I'll make sure to delve into those details later, Anders. Coming back to what you said, Johan, also, I assume there's still some SEK 3 billion left within your MTN program, right? You talked about this during the first half of the year, have sellers and buyers' expectations started to come back, they're converging a bit more as visibility returns?
Yes, to some extent, but I wouldn't say the M&A market, so to speak, has fully normalized. It's quite turbulent out there, and it's not always that sellers and buyers' expectations are on the same level right now. I would say the discrepancy is slightly lower than normal. It's much better today than it was two months ago.
Just a final question from me . Being on the board, we are holding in the investment portfolio, and the opportunity for a second dividend installment from you later this year, can you talk a bit about what are the moving parts here and what different kinds of scenarios do you see?
It's each different company, of course, who has made the decision to do that. We haven't communicated that we plan to come back this fall. We will come back with ordinary dividend next spring, and we will wait to see how this plays out during the fall. I think that's what I can comment at the moment. Right, Anders ?
Yeah. It's up to each board.
Yeah.
Okay, then, that's all from me. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Joachim. Great questions.
Thank you. Just as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. We have a follow-up from Joachim Gunell from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you. You're stuck with me, guys. Since there are no other questions, I'd like to take the opportunity to ask. On the TOMRA investment, like most of yours, it's been very value creative. The divestment in May, it could signal to some extent that you're a bit concerned about valuations in the market. With that in mind, what is your take on using your own valuation to potentially raise equity?
We have no such plans.
Very clear. Thank you.
I think I stopped it.
Thank you. As there are no further questions registered at the moment, I will hand over back to our speakers for the final comments. Please go ahead.
I think that's fine. Good questions from Joachim. I think we've presented well in a condensed format the report. Having said that, I think we're finished, Anders. Hope to see you, so to speak, again on the Q3 report.
This now concludes today's webcast. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.