Welcome to MEKO Q3 Earnings Call. 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 Pehr Oscarson, and Interim CFO, Anders Lindén. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of the third quarter for 2023. Today, I will guide you through the results, but let me also present our interim CFO, Anders Lindén, who I have by my side. Anders have had several leading roles in finance, especially at Atlas Copco for many years, and later as CFO for Epiroc, listed at Nasdaq Stockholm. As previously communicated, we are in the process of recruiting a permanent CFO, and Anders will be our interim CFO until this process is finalized. Welcome, Anders. Thank you, Pehr. Now, let me start to summarize the highlights of Q3. Let's look at slide number two. In short, we have a strong growth in the quarter, and we have made significant improvements in the key markets like Sweden and Norway.
Overall, we continue to see a solid underlying demand for our product and services, and we increased our revenue, improved EBIT, and generated stronger cash flow. This also enable us to continue to strengthen our financial position. Our leverage is now clearly within our target range. In short, this development is fully in line with our plan. That said, we do see a clear potential to improve our margins, and that's why we will launch a company-wide initiative to improve profitability, which I will talk about more in a few minutes. So now let's look at the key figures for the quarter. Looking at net sales, we have a strong performance. We grew by 13% in total and 9% organically in the quarter. EBIT is also improving, up by 28%, supported by the sale of properties in Denmark. Results is going up.
Adjusted EBIT grows 4% compared to Q3 last year. And I'm also pleased with a significantly stronger cash flow and the fact that earnings per share is up by 39%. Let's look at our stronger financial position, and we move over to Slide four. We continue to reduce our net debt, thanks to strong cash flow from operations and the sale of property in Denmark, and we are now well within our net debt target range, which gives us financial headroom and security. Moreover, we can confidently pay the second installment of our dividend later in November with a record date set for November 23rd. To summarize, this curve again demonstrates how strong our strong business model and ability to generate cash flow over time. So, now let's move on to this next slide and our gross margin development.
As you can see, the gross margin is at 43.5% in the quarter. It's an improvement from Q2, but lower than Q3 last year. And there is various reasons behind this. We have made significant price adjustments, but they do not fully offset the effect of inflation and the weaker Swedish and Norwegian currencies against euro. We will continue to focus on improving gross margin, and, let's look closer on Adjusted EBIT, and now we are on Slide six. Adjusted EBIT is improving. We are a larger company today than a few years ago, and with a presence in more markets reflected in this picture. As you can see, the performance varies between markets, and I'm especially pleased with the strong development in Sweden and Norway and Sørensen og Balchen . The situation is a bit more challenging in Denmark and, Poland and the Baltics.
In Finland, we have booked cost for the integration of Mekonomen and Koivunen. This is according to plan and will lead to synergy gains that we have communicated earlier. The item other relates mainly to added resources for increased ambition in sustainability and improvements in IT to improve our governance systems. So now, let's elaborate on our new initiative to improve profitability and move over to Slide seven. This initiative is about improving our adjusted operating margin noticeably and sustainable. We work within three focus areas: cost reduction and efficiency, supplier optimization, and implement a new business system that will increase synergies across the group. To be a bit more specific, this means that we will do more of what we have done successfully in Norway recently, closing branches, optimizing our network.
We also aim to create stronger partnerships with preferred suppliers and thereby achieve more attractive purchasing prices. In addition, we will increase our revenue share from private label or exclusive brands, as we call it. The new business system will lead to increased efficiency and a wider assortment, that will also open for further revenue synergies. This initiatives will also cost along the way, but the long-term net effect is clearly positive. Financially, we estimate that this initiative will improve our EBIT margin with at least one percentage point with full effect during 2025. In other words, this means improved EBIT of at least 15%. In sum, the initiative will strengthen our position as the market leader, and to be clear, this is an initiatives on top of all the other EBIT improvement initiatives we are undertaking.
Now let's move on to the business areas and start with Denmark on Slide nine. In Denmark, we are the clear number one in this market and managed to grow despite a very intense competition. EBIT improved, thanks to the sale of the property. The Adjusted EBIT is stabilized, but is affected by a lower gross margin, as I touched upon earlier. We will intensify our activities to improve performance in Denmark as a part of our new plans for higher profitability. Then we now turn to Finland on Page 10. Operations is progressing in a good pace with a solid organic growth of 7% in the quarter. The margin is affected by temporary costs, mainly related for extracting synergies, and this is fully according to plan, as I have mentioned.
Then we move to Poland and the Baltics on Page 11. Here we have organic growth of 5% in the quarter, driven mainly by a positive development of export sales and operations in the Baltics. The EBIT margin was impacted by a slower Polish market, and we will address this with more initiatives to increase gross margin. Turning to Sweden and Norway on Page 12, and we are very pleased to see that Sweden, Norway, strong performance in the quarter. Organic growth was 11%, and EBIT margin improved significantly despite currency headwind. The margin of 10.8% is the highest during a separate quarter for many years. This is partly effect on our many activities to improve profitability and partly an effect of a strong market.
We will now continue in the same pace and in line of our initiative just mentioned. Then we can move to Page 13, and Sørensen og Balchen reports a strong organic growth of 15%, mainly a result of successful effort to gain market shares within B2B. EBIT margin is stable around 17%, way over the industry average. Sørensen og Balchen will continue their activities to gain market shares within B2B to compensate for the weaker retail market in Norway. This was a brief overview of the development in our business areas, and now let's have a look on our footprint on Slide 15. And this picture confirms that MEKO has a broad geographical presence. This makes us more stable as a company and opens growth opportunities. Our largest markets are, as you can see, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, with equal shares of revenue.
Looking at market shares, MEKO is number one in several markets, but still with room to grow. So let's turn to Page 16 and highlight an important investment that we announced this morning. And as you might have seen, we will build a fully automated warehouse in Norway. This means that we will consolidate our logistic activities to one common facility in the Oslo region, and it will be fully operational by the end of 2025. And this is a crucial step for us in the important Norwegian market, and it will mean improved service level, better availability, and lower costs. We are now future-proofing our logistic activities in one of our key markets and optimizing operational efficiency, which is a strategic focus area for us.
So let's turn the page for a summary. In the quarter, we had a robust organic growth. We've performed exceptionally well in key markets. We are increasing EBIT. We have a strong cash flow from operations, which improves our financial position, and not least, we will launch a company-wide initiative to improve profitability. And one important step in this process is the new automated warehouse in Norway, announced earlier today. So that was our presentation. Thank you very much for listening, and we are now open up for 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 Mats Liss from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Mats Liss, Kepler Cheuvreux. A couple of questions. First, regarding the price increases, you're a bit behind there, and should we expect that to continue throughout the balance of the year? Or have you already done measures there for the fourth quarter, or is it more of a year-end measure?
Well, it's a bit of a moving target due to currency and, of course, inflation in products. But we do see the stabilization when it comes to purchasing prices in general, which means that we should be more or less back on track from that perspective. Then I'm not the one who predict how the currency will continue to develop, but we are in, we're closing the gap, so to say.
Great. Then, if you could sort of spread a bit more color on the strong performance there in Sweden and Norway. I guess it's more... Well, have you been able to pass forward prices more, or is it also volumes that are improving?
I think it's volumes, it's market shares. I mean, we do the right things that is appreciated by our customers, both areas. And that is, of course, due to hard work in all possible ways. We have a stronger market in Sweden and Norway also. Maybe a little bit, if we reflect to the same period last year, then Sweden and Norway was a little bit slow. So I think maybe for some demand that is coming later, so to say, but it is very normalized market, where we have a very low sales on new cars, which means that the car park is getting older, so there is a lot of activities.
When it comes surprising, it's actually Sweden and Norway who are most hurt by the weak currency, so here is also still room for improvement.
Okay, great. And then Finland, then, you mentioned that you had some, well, you have a process integrating MEKO with Koivunen, and could you say something about the cost that you had during the quarter?
We don't disclose the exact number, but to give you an idea, I mean, we had a warehouse in Mekonomen also that we are merging. So it's costs for extra personnel during that time. It's cost for cleaning up in inventory, it's new shelves, it's transport costs, and it's double rent and a lot of different things connected to that transformation. So it is a significant, let's say, burden this quarter.
Is it, well, will it be about the same in the fourth quarter, or was there a peak in the third?
I can't rule out that it might be some more costs coming in the next quarter also, but maybe in the same area.
Okay. And finally, I guess the cash flow is strong, and you working capital is helping somewhat, but do you expect- is there more to be down in working capital, or is it sort of positive development there in the third quarter?
I mean, you can always have ambitions, and I think that we do have strong ambitions in improving the working capital. That should also be balanced through the very important inventory and available to the customers. But if you remember, we had during the pandemic, we increased the inventory to compensate for disturbances in the supply chains, whatever, and then it went down to a little bit more normal level. I don't see any big changes, but we are working in all areas to get better payment terms, optimize the inventory, and so on. But in general, I would say that it's a level we have now.
And finally, just about this company-wide initiative to improve profitability, you mentioned some costs to be expected. Then again, it's a good improvement to be seen in 2025. Is it more costs during 2024 than to implement these measures, or could you-
We will be back-
Yeah.
We'll be back on that when we actually start to do what we should do. So, I need to put some hold on that question.
Yeah. Yes, sir. Understand. Thank you very much.
Okay. Nice, thanks.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Andreas Lundberg, from SEB. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Great. Yeah, just a quick question on the cash flow. You had operating cash flow around SEK 600 million. Is that a clean number, or are there any effects from the divestments included there or not?
Anders can answer.
No, that is not anything included from divestment.
You have that on the investment side of the cash flow statement, right, or?
... Well, it's actually the fact is that if you mean with divestment, the real estate in Denmark, which is the big, big item, that money has not arrived in Q3.
Yeah, but that was not included in operating cash flow, right?
No, and it will not be included in the operating cash flow. No, it you know, it's in the investment of the cash flow statement.
Okay. And what was the underlying investment or CapEx in the quarter?
Oh, yeah. No, but let me come back on that in a moment.
Oh, sure. Maybe one on the gross margin bridge there, you have 10 basis points as a positive impact on price adjustments. Is that the, so to say, the sole price effect that you have taken, so to say? Or is any price effects also included in the other parts of the bridge? Because it seems very small, if you just look at the price effect, maybe. Yeah. It...
You mean, yeah, but that is. I mean, it looks like almost nothing when you compare it, but then again, this is since it's a consolidated number, when we have price pressure, for example, in Denmark, driving the prices down, then we might increase with 3%, 4%, 5% in another market. So it is, it's more relevant to look at the price adjustments market by market than on a consolidated level.
Mm-hmm. To come back on the cash flow, then, you were asking about the investment, right?
Yes. Yes.
But it's not. Was that something in particular? I mean, it's, you know, it's just normal. It's not nothing major in there.
No, the thing is that the cash flow statement includes many things and
I didn't remember it to be a big number, so, I would maybe... I had to double-check, but no, it's nothing major in there. I mean, in the financing part, then obviously, we paid off some loans.
Right. Right. Okay, thank you so much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Stefan Stjernholm from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi. Most of my questions have been asked, but I have one. Regarding the new warehouse in Norway, did you say how much the investment will be?
No, we haven't disclosed that number.
Will you do that, or is it, is it substantial?
No. No, we will not do that, because that depends a bit how we will be financed also in the end. So it's long term, or maybe not even long term, but it's a very positive business case. And it will be improve our profitability and margins.
Okay, I see. That was my question. Thanks.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
All right. Then, thank you very much for listening, and goodbye.