Welcome to the Lifco Q3 Report 2023. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to CEO Per Waldemarson and CFO Therése Hoffman. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. This is Per Waldemarson, CEO of Lifco, and we will jump directly into slide number two in our investor presentation and go through the numbers, the high-level numbers for the whole group for the third quarter. If we start by looking at the sales numbers, we have a growth of about 17% in the quarter, and that is built up by acquisition growth of 11%. We have a positive effect of foreign exchange, about 6%, and we have a slight negative organic development of just below 0% or negative area.
If we then go further, look at the EBITDA, we have a solid development of 23% growth and also very strong margin development, actually ending up with 1.2% points despite higher than last year. We also, despite higher interest rates cost, as you all are aware of, we are still able to grow our profit before tax with 14%. If we go a bit further down in the table, you can also see here on this page that operating cash flow was very strong in the quarter, which has to do with a very solid cash flow quarter, but also has to do with the previous year's numbers being a bit lower than normal due to the working capital buildup in 2022.
If we then also just comment briefly on the nine-month period accumulated number for this year, we have a sales growth of 16% year- to- date with 2% positive organic development for a nine-month period, 10% acquisition growth, and 5% coming from currency effects. The EBITDA growth year- to- date is then at 25%, and also the EBITDA margin is increasing for the nine-month period, and these numbers are all for the entire group of Lifco. If we then go to page number three, we can look into the different business areas a little bit. If we start with Dental, we can just conclude that this quarter was a normal, solid, good quarter for Dental part of Lifco.
The growth of 16% and in sales and 30% in EBITDA has partly to do with the slightly weaker development we had in last year, where we had some issues with our highly profitable prosthetics business that, due to the China situation in the beginning of last year, had some problems with the market deliveries, and that basically came back in the last quarter of last year. From here on, we will sort of meet normal numbers also in the comparison figures. If we then go into our Demolition Tools area, we have a growth of 9% in sales and 12% in EBITDA.
As we already pointed out in our report, here we see in some areas, especially in the more construction-related areas, we see some weaker market conditions. We have also commented in previous calls that we don't report the order intake, but if you would look at the indicative data that we do gather from some companies, the order intake during last year and 2021 was extremely high, due especially in the areas where we have distributors and OEMs in between us and end users. We have seen on the reversal of trends. Now we're sitting on more normal, what you call order books, with quite low visibility. Even with that, we see a big picture.
Some parts of this business areas is holding up well, especially in the more infrastructure or industrial segments, whereas more of the construction-related markets in parts of Europe are seeing a weakening now for some time. The reason we are, despite some lower organic development, increasing our margins here is that we have a positive product mix, basically meaning that our more profitable products are holding up better, and the sort of slightly lower product areas are then the ones that are more affected by the slightly weaker market conditions. Also, I'd like to comment here on Demolition Tools that we have some acquisitions that have some margin positive impact also on the margin this year.
If we go down to our third business area, Systems Solutions, we report here very strong numbers, 22% sales growth and 27% EBITDA growth. Overall, a very good quarter. Also here, of course, supported by acquisition growth as well as organic development. However, I think it's worthwhile pointing out in a division or a business area like this, with very diverse end market exposure, there is, of course, as always, a lot of differences about how the different market characteristics is. On the total, it's very good development in this area. If we then go to the next page, number four, we actually only update these numbers when we talk about the EBITDA growth in the different years, splitted by organic and acquisitions.
We will do that in next quarter, but on the high level, we can now look at the first nine months and conclude that we are growing EBITDA with 25%. That's, of course, in this nine-month period, supported by some very, very solid organic development in EBITDA for the nine-month period. Also, some positive foreign exchange, and as you can understand, those acquisitions are contributing. We will give you the exact numbers once a year is finalized. So far, 25% is actually higher than our average for the period since we listed in 2014. We can go over to page number six and just briefly look at the balance sheet positions.
We will not go into each position, but we can basically look at the net debt, the development. As you can see from the black line in the graph, we've been now for quite some time on a stable level. In the graph here, we list the total net debt, including all the leasing positions in IFRS 16, and also the option debt for future payouts of all the minorities. If we look at the maybe most relevant area, the interest-bearing , net debt, EBITDA, we sit now at 1.1x net debt, EBITDA, which is actually lower than one year ago, where we had 1.3.
We have a, you know, a very stable situation when it comes to our financial position, and obviously totally room for further acquisitions going further forward. I can also hear a comment that, as we said in the beginning of this presentation, we had very strong cash flow in the last quarter and good momentum. If we go in then to the next slide, page number seven, which is a very long-term looking graph, which I think is important to have also in this type of calls. We are continuing to improve Lifco step by step, and we do that over the years by very good work organically in our subsidiaries.
Most of our subsidiaries, or the vast majority of subsidiaries, are increasing the margin step by step by working on becoming even more differentiated, even more specialized in their niches, which basically means focusing on the areas where we can be very, very specialized and profitable for the future. Then we complement that with acquisitions, and over time, as you all know, we have, you know, our appetite for very specialized high-margin companies is sort of increasing as well. That has also led to effect on that. If you look at the bottom of this graph, you can see that our margin is now also in this year on a rolling 12-month basis, close to 23%, which is a record high and basically in line with what we try to achieve.
If we then go to page number eight, just a few comments. We are then one of the reason we can continue to be a successful acquisition company is that we have very strong cash conversion or operations. If you look on the right-hand side, we have, you know, quite asset-light business. Now, after some time of building up inventory and the supply chain issues the last two-three years, we're now seeing the momentum change upwards in better return on capital also in our portfolio, step by step. We can go all the way down to page 31 and just look at what we have done so far. Page 31 actually lists down all the acquisitions we have announced in this year. In total, we have announced 15 acquisitions.
It's been a very active year for us, and we have been acquiring companies in all business areas. We have geographical spread around Europe. Yes, I probably will get questions here soon enough about how is the market condition for acquisition. We think it's very similar to what it's been in previous year. We work very hard and very actively try to find great companies around Europe to acquire. Obviously, as I always mention, the timing and the, you know, exactly when acquisition will happen is always difficult to predict, but I can only show you that it's a very important area for us, and we are working very hard to continue developing Lifco step by step.
These were all the comments I had from my side, and with that, I'd like to open up for any questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Carl Ragnerstam from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Good morning, it's Carl here from Nordea. A few questions. Firstly, I mean, just on a high level, could you give any flavor whether you saw any particular development in the organic growth or volatility month- by- month during Q3? I guess you're not willing to shed any light on October, as per usual, I guess.
Well, October, we only roughly half into October, so I think it's too early. Even if I would share that information, it's early to make a strong conclusion around that. Well, your question is related to if we saw a difference between July and September markets? In the demand situation, yes. Well, I think it's difficult to do a month-by-month comparison. I think the trend that we've been in now for quite some time is that, and I think you're referring to Demolition Tools mainly here, I guess, and that area.
All segments, but of course, that as well, yeah.
Say again, sorry?
All segments, but also, of course, demolition.
Yeah, but I mean, if you take Dental, it's very stable, and I think my comment there is that it's back to normal now, since roughly one year ago, so it's a stable development. Within Demolition Tools, as I tried to mention briefly here before, is that we see obviously a situation now after extreme development of demand and the supply chain issues in 2021 and basically 2021 and parts of 2022. We had in some of the business, you know, very high demand, and then orders were flowing in to the extent especially from the OEMs and distributors that don't really have the end user demand directly correlated with their order efficiency.
We saw that reversing step by step from about, you know, spring, summer of 2022, up until an area where we're now on a lower level. Now we are, of course, more depending on what happens, you know, month- by- month, quarter- by- quarter, going forward. If you look at the situation then on the last quarter, I think it's been on the similar level throughout the quarter, basically.
Okay, very good. Also on Demolition, you said you had a favorable mix effect, more profitable subsegments holding up better. Would you say that this is a sustainable mix effect, or would you say that it was unusually favorable during the quarter? I guess, would you also perhaps shed some light on the magnitude of the order intake drop in the quarter for Demolition?
We don't comment on specific order intake, and one of the reasons is that our order intake collection of data in a diverse group of 200 companies is not, we don't have the same follow-up as we have on the rest of the financial numbers. That's one of the reasons. If we go specifically into the Q3 reported numbers, and why are we seeing a positive mix effect in Demolition & Tools? Well, the reason is basically related to the products and things we offer for maybe more infrastructure, more industrial application, more special applications are holding up better, and they tend to have high margins.
This quarter is not related to one specific project in our demolition robot business, and it's more the mix effect between different parts of the companies we have in that area. We can basically conclude that we see a weaker sales development in the areas with slightly lower margin, which basically then have to do mainly with the construction equipment market in Europe.
Okay, sounds fair. Looking at the gross margin, 44.7%, I mean, it's seemingly an all-time high for an individual quarter. How sustainable would you say that is? I mean, also, I mean, looking at Q3, it's on average over the past 10 years, been a tad lower than Q2. Obviously, acquisitions come into play here, but how should we look at the current gross margin level also? I mean, maybe seasonality-wise, entering Q4, and also we've seen SG&A as a % of sales continuing to rise a bit here, so yeah.
I think part of, part of that effect is also acquisition-related, but not the whole effect, obviously. There is some, some effect of, of buying higher-margin companies with high, high gross margin coming into that effect. They, and they could then also have, you know, bring in some, some higher SG&A effects, but that's a, a small part of it. I think there's also an effect here of, of the continuous, you know, focus on, on, on, on selling, selling high-margin products. We also, we just talked about Demolition Tools. We see also an effect that if we sell more of the, of the high-margin things, you know, we have that effect also in the, in the, in the gross margin side.
I think if the market stays on the same level, and we don't have an enormous, you know, decline in demand in the next 12-month period, I think there's a good chance that we can stay on high gross margin levels. You know, there's nothing in this quarter that's totally extraordinary in that sense.
Mm. Okay, very good. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Karl Bokvist from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. My first question is a bit on kind of backlog or orders. In your view, over time, what is a normal backlog level or a rolling 12-month book-to-bill when you compare it for your businesses?
Well, if you take the period 2021 and 2022 away and look back to a 2017, 2018, 2019 situation, well, basically, it depends on the business area. In Dental, we basically don't have order books. We sell consumables or tailor-made prosthetics or software directly to dentists, no more backlog there. Within the areas where we have backlog in Demolition Tools and Systems Solutions, a typical backlog would be, you know, two to three months, and that's, you know, where we're sitting on right now, and we used to be theoretically much higher positions in that level.
Although some of the very long order books that we were seeing internally a year or two ago, the relevance of those are difficult to forecast, because if you have an order book towards not an end user, you know, those type of order books can, you know, orders can be postponed or dragged along if they don't want what they expected to want when they put the high orders in. I think now we are in a situation where we are on low order book levels, which is typical for our business. It's very... Then we have some very specific companies, which is a module portal lift that has, you know, typically long order books, but they are a rounding error in the total, let's say.
For the majority of our business, we have either no order books in the more, you know, consumable-related business, or we have not very long order books, and that's where we're sitting here right now.
Understood. On pricing, and that's always been a focus area of yours, but the current environment, how would you assess the kind of price actions taken by your companies compared to the cost increases that you also see?
Well, I think there was a period of time, if you go back to the last two, three years. First, you know, the raw material price increase came, and then we had the inflation starting. You know, we were a little bit behind in 2021, and if I remember correctly, it was about the summer of 2020, we sort of caught up with that effect, and then we'd be running on good levels. Now, I think what we're seeing now is more high to, you know, medium to high increases on prices, not the extreme high increases on price that we had to do in end of 2021 to mid-2022 situation.
But of course, you know, all our companies have to still, you know, increase prices to make sure we compensate for inflation and a lot of things, but maybe not to the extreme that it was a year ago. We also will meet, I think, also just to highlight on when we meet now the coming quarters, there was, you know, a year ago, there was a big effect on price in the organic numbers. That effect is then gradually going down. Still a important part, but not an extreme that it was a year ago.
Understood. My final one, a similar question to one I asked a quarter ago, but still, year- to- date, the margin of acquired businesses are running above 30%. It's a very strong level, of course, but again, is it a kind of a group of companies that are delivering this very high margin, or is it one or two that stand out in this group of 13 businesses year- to- date?
Yeah, there is maybe one or two with extraordinarily high margins, but, you know, we don't reach 30% margin if not every company is above our average, you can say. Maybe one or two is more around average, but, you know, it's been a little bit more than normal from margin perspective. I think just to add on that, you know, we don't necessarily need to only buy companies earning 40% EBIT margin, which we haven't done this year either. You know, sometimes we find companies with very, you know, specialized situations, and then if we think they're stable and we can be a good local member, we will do that.
We don't want to promise that we will always buy companies with this type of margin, but we can promise that we will only buy companies that we think are very differentiated and have a very good position in the market. That's us.
Yeah, thanks. Just a quick follow-up on that. Those 40%, 30%, 40% margin businesses, do they also have a bit more capital intensity? The return on capital employed is still well in line with your targets, or are return on capital employed also extraordinarily high for these businesses?
It's different, but every company we buy, the only time we make exception with that is that we are so well acquainted with the business, so basically a pure add-on. There, we could compromise a little bit and think we are basically being able to do something with the working capital of the business. Normally, and for the vast majority of companies, they basically, before we acquire them, have very solid return on capital in their own operations. You're right, you know, you could have a little bit more capital intensity if you have extreme margins and still have very good cash conversion situation. That could be, but there's also examples of companies with very high margins, still, you know, very low asset base, so enormous amount.
Now, you know, it's a mix of many different deals here, so I don't think we should go through all of them. The most important thing for us is that every company standing on their own feet has a strong cash conversion capacity, also in times of organic growth. To do that, you need a very high margin in relation to the asset base. That could, of course, vary exactly between companies, how it looks. All our companies meet that criteria.
Understood. That's all for me. Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Okay. Thank you very much for listening in, and thank you for the questions, and we look forward to have this another session here in the beginning of next year. Have a nice continued day. Thank you.