Welcome everybody to this conference call. I will give some comments to the report. As most of you have heard me present the company before, I will actually start further back in the presentation at page 7, where you can see the overall numbers in the quarters. As you can read, sales was up 18%, EBITA 40%, EBITA margin up 2.5%, profit before tax, and profit after tax, 37%. We had a good quarter, and we are affected by the fact that we have had more working days in 2017 in the first quarter than in 2016. Especially dental was positively affected because dentists normally take a lot of holidays around Easter. Now they did not take any holidays in March; they took their holidays in April. I just want to say that we had a positive effect of Easter.
If you look at the cash flow, we had a negative effect because we had a lot of deliveries last week of March. Receivables went up by SEK 180 million. If we turn to page 8, we had a good profit increase in all business areas. I think dental was affected by acquisitions and the Easter effect. Demolition and tools, generally, it's a good market. We had some acquisitions, generally, it's good organic growth, and the margins are up. We've seen in demolition and tools that from quarter- to- quarter, the margins go up a little bit and go up and down a little bit depending on what we sell. System solutions, most of the acquisitions we do, they end up in system solutions. Automatically, we will have a good profit increase in system solutions, and this time it was 83%.
The margins also improved. That is because we want to acquire companies which won't dilute our overall margin of 15%. We try to acquire companies with good margins. If you turn to page 9, we invested SEK 516 million in new entities. Even though we made these investments, our net debt to EBITDA ratio is still 2.1. We have a lot of room for further investments. You can see on the account receivables that they increased a lot this quarter, and that's the bad cash flow. We turn after that to page 11, and then we have the three companies we have acquired so far this year. Haglöf Sweden is a very stable company making forest inventory instruments. Hultdins, they make tools for forest machines. Their turnover goes up and down a little bit more with the cycle. Then we have Silvent, which makes yeah.
Silvent, the tools are good for working environment. They reduce the noise levels for air pistols and so on, and nozzles. This is a company with a high potential, very high gross margin. If you can get some turnover increase, profits will explode. If you get a turnover decrease, of course, profits will go down. A high potential company. Turning to page 12, we see that we continue increasing the EBITDA margin. It is organic and also due to the fact that we acquire profitable companies with good margins. We also see that our return on capital employed, excluding goodwill, is increasing all the time. This is due to the fact that we are acquiring light businesses with not much, with a light asset base. If you have a light asset base, normally if your turnover grows, you get a good cash flow.
The return on total capital employed, including goodwill, is pretty stable. That implies that we're not paying too much for the companies we acquire. Turning to page 13, you can see on the cash flows side that we are increasing our cash flow every year as we grow. It's due to the fact that we buy asset-light businesses. If you look at the CapEx, the CapEx is compared to turnover, that's 1.3%. It's a little bit higher than the depreciations. It's because we invest into future growth in the businesses we acquire. If you turn to page 14, we have the same financial targets everywhere. We want to grow organically a little bit better than the economy as a whole and add the growth through acquisitions. We want to buy asset-light businesses where the EBITDA to capital employed has to be above 50%.
People like to stay within the range of two to three times net EBITDA ratio. We would like to distribute 30-50% of our net profit. That was all. Thank you very much. Now we can open up for questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do need to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. If you want to ignore your question, you can do so by pressing zero two to cancel. We have a brief pause while questions are being registered. We have our first question from the line of Jorn Hultner from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Can you hear me?
Yes. Super. First, some detailed questions. On the working capital build-up in the quarter, do you expect all that to reverse in Q2?
If you just would like, if you look at the first half year, cash flow will be normal, so to say. We will, of course, get a good cash flow in Q2 2017 compared to Q2 2016.
Because when I read it, it just looks like a timing effect due to the Easter and some big orders that you have not really gotten and collect, and you will most likely collect them in Q2.
Yeah.
Good. On the gross margin, it was much stronger than I had expected. Of course, seasonality is not always easy to interpret in your case. If you look at the gross margin on the group, is this due to some acquired units improving, or has anything happened in your company that makes the gross margin a bit higher than before?
I think demolition and tools was strong. We sold more valuable products again this quarter compared to last year's gross margin. We turned around. We had a problem with the Proline relining business, which we turned around. That's organic. These are the organic effects. Of course, when we acquire companies, we do not want to acquire companies with an EBITDA margin less than 15%. They are plus 15% EBITDA margin. If you have plus 15% EBITDA margin, you have good gross margin, good gross margins from a company acquired.
Has there been any push from your side to maybe do extra much on price increases that might have supported the margin in the quarter, or has it been more or less business as usual?
It's more or less business as usual. When I think about it, there's another organic effect. It's the compressor, marine compressor company we have. There, the ratio of spare part sales is increasing as there are less and less new sales of compressors because the shipbuilding activity is very low. They also have a margin increase automatically as we sell more spare parts.
Which of your companies is this?
TMC, the marine compressor company.
Okay. Thanks. Just on your financial net, is that a clean financial net, or is there any revaluation effects or anything in it?
It's clean.
It's clean, yes.
It's clean. Great. My final question is on demand. Your comments in the report are fairly similar to what you stated before, but could you say anything if you think demand is improving versus where it was in Q4 and Q3?
It's very difficult to say. I think the last years it's been almost the same. You have some months it's very good, and then one month it's a little bit worse, and it goes up. In general, I think on average, there's somewhat positive trends been going on for a couple of years, I think.
Okay. Great. That was all for me. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Johan Dahl from SEB. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes. Hi there. Just a question on your acquisitions. We've gone from valuation level of, I think, was it just below 4 two years ago, or just below 5 two years ago, was up to 8 last year. Just looking from the deals you've announced so far this year, it appears to be slightly above 10. I was just wondering, also taking into account the latest acquisition of Silvent, it clearly appears to be high-quality businesses. To what extent do you think about this, and what is it? What's the implications for the long-term development of the group?
Yes. We are saying that we want to acquire long-term around 8 times EBITDA. In a single year, we can acquire for a little bit more expensively, but maybe it can fluctuate plus minus 20% or something, what we pay. Of course, the market now is really tough to make acquisitions, especially in these controlled processes like Haglöf and Silvent. We bought both in a controlled process, and we had all the private equity people in and so on. The only reason we can acquire these companies at reasonable multiples is that the owner wants to save long-term safe haven for his company and does not want to sell to private equity.
Right. If I interpret you correctly, is it that this is around 8, and in the first quarter was a slight deviation, but no long-term sort of trend impact?
No, no, no. We have our objective, and we're working hard on that. We know that if we buy too many companies too expensively, our net debt to EBITDA ratio will go up.
Oh, for sure.
We will have less money to buy companies. You can achieve more growth with a lower multiple than with a high multiple.
Yeah. Just a follow-up on the topic that a lot of sort of a lot of acquisition funds are going out to acquire at a bit higher valuations and high-margin businesses. Could you put into perspective what the sort of organic EBITDA increase is in the group during last year or during the first quarter?
We do not communicate. Even I do not know. I have not calculated it, so. If you look at our long-term growth of 16% EBITDA growth, it is maybe half as organic, half as from acquisition. We have to achieve some EBITDA growth as well to say a growth of 16%, what we have in the business. We cannot do that just through acquisitions.
No. No. On dental, I heard what you said about going on vacations, etc., and we can do the math on the working days. How much was, if at all, how much was organic growth adjusted for that calendar?
It's difficult to say exactly how big the Easter effect is, but it's more than the working days because especially in the Nordic region, the dentists also take normally vacation around that period. The dentists, if they're not in the office, in the dental office, there's no business for us. It's actually a little bit slightly more than working day effect, if you understand what I mean. If you compare to the industrial side, the industrial production still runs, even if it's sort of Easter week, not on the holidays, but on the normal working days. On the dental side, there's more effect on that because they take holidays also.
Yeah. In your mind, was it positive at all, Per, or?
You mean the organic adjusted for Easter?
Organic, organic.
Organic. I would say it's like the same trend we've seen in the last couple of years. It's a very slow growth.
Thank you. Final question on recurring CapEx. Is that going up? It was high in this quarter, or is that back to normal levels, sort of 1-1.2%?
Yeah. We can say that we have one in the company we acquired in 2005 rapidly. This year, we have to make a major investment in the production. I think it was—this year, we probably have a little bit higher. It could be that we have a little bit higher CapEx than normal years due to this.
Thanks.
The next question comes from the line of Robert Redin from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Hi, Robert from Carnegie here. Can I ask you, in the margins, if demolition and tools have been sort of—or unheard about margin trends in the last one or two, maybe three quarters? Are you now out of the woods with this comment, do you think? I probably need to correct it.
As I say, it's that if you get—we got some very good deals now again. First of all, you have a volume effect. If you reach a good volume, of course, you have the fixed cost, and then the margin improves automatically with good volumes. You also have sometimes you have special projects where you maybe sell for EUR 1 million, EUR 2 million at very high multiples, and that affects, of course, one or two projects like that in a quarter affects the margin on total as well. Hello?
Okay. So.
Therefore, it will fluctuate, depending if you have these or not. You never can plan them because normally they are nuclear-related, and it is like government funds if the money is released or not. You can sign an order three years ago, and suddenly the money is released. It is very stochastic. The business is extremely stochastic. You cannot plan it.
I see. I think in prior conference calls you were to do, it didn't happen, but your own as well. You were happy with that now.
Yeah. Now we're happy. We had the problem last year because we somewhat depend on the English market. It's not the volume. It took a long time to compensate for the currency as the pound declined, the currency effect.
Okay.
We also had some other margin issues where the management, I think they were too slow to get the margins corrected with the prices for some other things as well. Now the margins look much better.
Very good. We are out of the woods on that. In terms of system solutions, of course, the higher margin acquisitions, they work to your favor. Still, the underlying business, the business you had a year ago, I think improved this result much in the quarter as well.
You had the Proline business. The line business is what basically hardly making any money loss and always making decent returns. That helps. We have this TMC business where we have the full quarter in now this year, and we improved the margins because we sell more spare parts. That helps. We have the new businesses as well, the Haglöf Sweden and so on. They are all good. All the new businesses and system solutions are the good margins we acquired.
Proline is the only sort of major shift in performance in the business we had a year ago.
Yes. We have a weakness in our Estonian company, Hekotek, compared to last year.
All right. Question. Oh, sorry. Can I follow up on the acquisitions? The 500 or so million of CapEx and acquisitions in the first quarter, those are the three companies.
No, it's only Hultdins and Haglöf .
Okay. It's only those two.
Minutes.
All right. That's all for me. Thanks.
Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from the line of Jorn Hult ner from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Thank you. My first follow-up is on the forest business, where you comment in the report that you have some problems with individual projects. Could you go in a bit more on what those problems were and when you think they will be solved?
Yes. First of all, we went into a new business area in Finland in a company called Heinola, and they did dryers in sawmills. They are now the market leader in Finland in dryers. It's very good. The only problem is we don't make any money with them. It doesn't have to be market leader if you don't make money. What we're going to do with that dryer business, we're going to shift it out of Heinola and create a separate company called Heinola Dryer and have one person responsible with clear profit and loss responsibility and balance sheet responsibility. The position is that we get some profits out. Now we have the market position. Now we have to get the profits as well. That's one thing we have to fix. The second thing is Hekotek. It's an Estonian company.
When they make money with the Russians, when they make business with the Russians, it works well because in Russia, you make a handshake with an individual. This is no government business. It is a private owner owning the sawmill. You make a handshake with a private owner. There is some honor, and if they say and they work together to make the project work, normally they do not have any problems in those Russian projects. They have to sell to Western Europe as well. You have to stand on a good technological level. There they take some risks because maybe they are not at the technological level required to take some technological risks in projects. There you have this kind of professional purchasing organization, so you have to try to kill the suppliers. These people at Hekotek cannot really use that.
We have some problems with the project in Sweden, actually. We hope we have an agreement with them. If we meet some test levels in June, the projects will be ended in June.
System Solutions still had a very good margin in the quarter. You mentioned it in the report, but did it have a major impact, or how should one look at this? The problem you had.
If you took the sawmill equipment out, the margin would be even better, of course. We are getting really good margins in the System Solutions business. If you took away the sawmill equipment, it would be really good. It's difficult with project business.
My last question. You don't disclose EBITDA for the acquired units on each quarter, but could you say anything about the margin level if they're higher or lower than group average in what came in into the quarter?
I think you can look in Aktiebolag , the Swedish site, for Hultdins, Haglöf , and Silvent to get the feeling. The thing is that if you look in there, you won't get the whole picture because normally these family businesses, they have side companies. Actually, all these three companies are more profitable than you see in the official numbers. Also, the official numbers, you see that the companies are all very profitable companies.
Now, thinking about what's still affecting the numbers, I think it's going all back to Norwegian Nordesign and Parcel, Design Dental, and all those are still, if you sum those up, do you think margins of those companies are higher or lower than group average?
I can't say that our objective is not to lower the group margin of 15%. We don't want to acquire a business with a lower margin potential than 15%.
I get it. I just tried to make some type of an EBIT report with what you've acquired and FX.
Yeah. I understand that.
I'm just trying to get to that.
Yeah. I understand that, but we do not disclose those. The problem is the first year when you have a business, you really do not know until it is a little bit when you buy a business, you buy a lot of uncertainty in the beginning. After a year, you basically know what you bought as you get them into your own systems.
Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. That's all for me.
Yes. You're welcome.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. There appears to be no further questions. I'll hand the conference back to the speakers for closing comments.
Okay. Thank you, everyone, for listening and being interested in our company. I think that was all. Thank you very much. Bye.