Welcome to Netel Group Q1 report for 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 Ove Bergkvist and CFO Peter Andersson. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Okay. Welcome to Q1, Netel. Q1 started growth. We had 9.3% growth. We had organic growth of -8.8%. Here we have, since a few years, we are stopping to do fiber in Sweden. We have very little left. If we take all the other segments and business areas and exclude fiber rollout, which is what discontinued, then the rest of the areas have a organic growth of 3.6%. First overall, and then we go to the countries and give more specific comments. Overall, demand. There are variations, of course, but in most places, demand are good. There are some weak sites. Decent order intake, strong backlog, actually highest ever. It is a Q1. We are doing lots of work outside.
We can't start projects when the ground is frozen. Q1 is always the slowest quarter, the lowest quarter this year as well. We have contribution from acquisition on top line in Sweden and U.K. When it comes to top line and also overall performance, it's weak in Norway and Finland. Top line wise, as I said, if we adjust for fiber rollout in Sweden, which we are discontinuing and there's very little left to do, we have on the rest of the business, we have 3.6% organic growth. We are weather dependent. We don't start outside project, excavation project in Q1 as long as the ground is frozen. Most of it starts then after Easter, May, June. We are approaching high season. Q1 is very slow normally and slow this year as well. Backlog is high. We look at profit.
We have a weak or a low 1.6% first quarter. We had a high 4.5% last year. Again, first quarter is by far the smallest quarter for us. We have strong markets, but it's affected negatively from Norway and Finland. Here we do lots of things, and we will get to that to actually enhance the margins going forward. If you look at Sweden, Germany, U.K., very strong, actually. These markets are, I would say, over-performing. That is eaten up by the current status in Norway and Finland. In Finland, specifically, we have 1 customer, 2 frame agreements, old frame agreements where we are not compensated for global price increases, and these are hurting, and we are in discussions. We wanna limit the effects.
Overall, we want to limit the volumes in these frame agreements. We wanna get out of them, basically. We want to get more compensation. That's an ongoing discussion. We will talk more about that when we reach Finland. This quarter, we have taken SEK 10 million for that restructuring of that frame agreement. We actually hope to take more actions towards those frame agreements where we don't have any compensation. We have made a change in our reporting. Hopefully, this presents our business a little bit better, more transparent. We are keeping the countries, the segments. Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, U.K. We change the business areas, and hopefully this presents us a little bit better. We introduce what we call Infra services.
This is water sewage, central heating, civil engineering work. This we have in Sweden so far. It's roughly SEK 700 million. It's profitable. The longer-term aim is to start expanding the other markets as well. We have power, it's unchanged. It's all the electrical work we do. It could be public networks, it could be stations, it could be power lines, it could also be installation work. It's all the electrical work we do now on the railway, on the subway, and towards defense, which we got now with the acquisition of Elektrotjänst i Katrineholm Telecom, which is now everything we do in Telecom's networks, so to say. It's fixed, it's mobile, it's fiber, it's 5G, it's service, it's installation, it's rollout. So it's more traditional telecoms. We hope this will make it easier to follow our business.
Starting with the countries, Sweden first. Growth, very good growth, both from acquisition but also in existing business. In Infra services, here we have good demand. This is interesting. We have, of course, we are a little bit exposed to new bids, to property development. This is very slow. There's nothing. On the municipality side and on the government side, still a lot to do, still a lot of tenders, still good volumes. In the quarter, we had 21% growth. Power, especially on the station side, there's still high demand in Sweden to expand the network. Much more power needs to be distributed. So it's a big push for station, especially with E.ON. We are big with E.ON, so we have a very nice backlog. It's more demand than supply, so prices are good.
We are looking forward to deliver this year, very high growth on power. Within the power segment, we have the acquisition of Elektrotjänst i Katrineholm, they are partly exposed to the railway, to the underground and tunnels. These are good places to be. It's good places to be now, it's gonna be good in the future. Telecoms, now it's the new definition of our telecom. It's both done 5G and fiber and service. Here we have a drop in Sweden, of course, since we are not any longer in rollouts, it's high penetration in Sweden. On the telecom side and on service side, this was a good quarter. We made good money, we had decent growth.
In Sweden, even though overall the telecoms operators are really holding back now, they are selling assets and accumulating cash, and they're also holding back on service, and they are holding back on 5G rollout actually. In Sweden, we have Tele2, and Tele2 is really pushing the rollout, and they have a joint network with Telenor, and they're also pushing out the 5G rollout. In Sweden, it's a good situation for 5G rollout, even if Intelia is aggressive at all. They are holding back. Norway, poor development. We have a situation with lower volume, which affects our margins, which leads to that we are taking measures to actually enhance margins going forward.
The situation is that on the power side, we have distribution networks, which are local networks, and we have regional networks which cover Norway. On the distribution side, you normally have one or two customers since you are local. Our customer is holding back because of network regulation. It doesn't pay off so much to invest right now, even if demand or capacity is high. We have less volume on local network than we expected, and than we are built for. On the telecom side, we have a good backlog on fiber rollouts, but this hasn't started in Q1. Q1 doesn't get any contribution from fiber, which is normally a high margin product. We have our service contracts. Since we are going for service in Norway, this is a long-term business, and we have big service contracts.
Here these are telecom customers. These are Telenor, these are Telia. They're holding back. We now have four costs that are lower than we expected. Our organization is a bit too big, and it's designed to actually do more. Both within our power and telecoms, we are scaling down a little bit, but we are also working a bit different to actually get profit out of those volume we have now. We're gonna get there. It takes a little bit of time, but we will see effects later on this year in Norway. On the power side, of course, a little bit longer term and longer term, the grid in Norway is in the same need of more capacity as in Sweden. It's a long term. It's really good.
Service in the telecom networks are also a long-term business that will be there. We need a little bit of changes and a little bit efficiency given the new conditions in Norway. Finland, here we have a special situation. Of course, it's winter in Finland where little is done. Small effects get very big on the result. We have, if you look underlying, if what will happen in Finland in the next couple of years, of course, there is also a big demand to expand the power grid. They are behind in fiber rollouts. They have quite low penetration, and there's a big push for fiber now in Finland. The segments as such, demand-wise, would be okay the next couple of years. Fiber would be more than okay. Our profit is impacted basically on the power side.
Most power customer, or the few we have, they are compensating, but one isn't. We have 2 big frame agreements with this customer who are not compensated cost increases. We are in discussions. We wanna scale down our commitment. We wanna, of course, get more pay for what we do, and we want to be more efficient ourselves. We aim actually at restructuring these frame agreements. We want to get down in volume. We have so far taken SEK 10 million for that restructuring of those specific frame agreements. We actually hope that we can do more in Q2 so that we can get rid of some of the problems. We can't roll out. We're actually aiming for a little bit more restructuring in Q2 if we can find such a solution.
We also have to say that fiber now, we have big contracts on the fiber side. This is the first year they are ramping up. We'll start to build a little bit before the summer. We'll build more after the summer. Fiber is normally a more high-margin project, product than power. The aim here is to scale down on the power side and scale up on the fiber side, and then we should get the profits. That's the plan, and this is what we aim to do, and this is what we will do. Germany, strong. Been there a few years now. We are still growing. We have good margins. We have a new customer, very interesting. We got a new big contract which is ramping up with UGG, which is Unsere Grüne Glasfaser.
It's actually Allianz and Telefónica, EUR 5 billion joint venture to build fiber in Germany. If we, if we handle this correct, we will get much more in the future. Our two big customers will be E.DIS, which is E.ON, and UGG, which is Allianz and Telefónica. These are big names with a lot of money. We're opening up new offices, we are hiring more people and profit is good. U.K., our newest market, we bought two companies last year. This is our first Q1 in operation. We are merging the companies to one, Netel Ltd. We have OK volume. We are ramping up with people and organization. We have a good backlog. We got a new order with Scottish GoFibre, which is GBP 10 million, which is fiber in Scotland, and we are located in Scotland.
Good profit. Here we actually fight to expand capacity and to grow in a very positive market. A few words on cash flow and working capital from Peter.
Yes. Last year, we started to initiate additional measures in order to reduce capital tied up. We now we can start seeing some effects of this work. In this quarter, we can see that we have an operating cash flow that was +SEK 8 million compared to -SEK 85 million last year, which was not a good quarter. We also see more potentials for improvements of reduced capital tied up. We are continuing the work. We see more potentials with that. The working capital is down from SEK 519 million to SEK 491 million this start of the year.
We are down to around 12% if you look at the working capital compared to pro forma sales, if we adjust for the SEK 80 million for the arbitration. We have orientated that we should be between 9% and 12%. We continue to work to reduce the working capital. Come down more on that. We have SEK 601 million in available facilities at the moment, that is also good. We have possibilities with that also.
Okay. Thank you, Peter. Acquisition 1 this year in Q1, Elektrotjänst i Katrineholm. It's power, you will find them in the power business area. They're especially interesting. Yes, they do electrical installations more than once. They also work with projects toward the railway and the subway and defense. We do think that if nothing very special happens, the high investment level will continue, the lack of suppliers will also continue in these segments in the next couple of years. It's a good chance that this will be good, it's a good first step in these segments. Megatrends, we usually talk about them. No change, really. I mean, there's a big push now. Of course, there's a big lack of distribution capacity in the power grid. 5G will be rolled out.
Fiber network will continue. Lots and lots of service. Many markets are behind, like U.K., like Germany, like Finland. Lots of work the next couple of years. Then all the other infrastructure. We are in water, sewage, central heating. We're also approaching railway and defense. So there will be lots and lots to do for many, many years. To sum up, weak quarter margin-wise, activities ongoing in Finland and Norway to get back to profitability. Especially Finland, we hope to do a lot in Q2. Stable long-term demand also in most places, not in all places, but in most places, also good demand, now. We are growing R12, 24%. We have a high backlog. We have 600 million SEK in credit facility. However, we are consolidating a little bit, both operationally on working capital side.
There are less focus on M&A. It's not ruled out, but it's a little bit less focus on M&A next couple quarters. That's it for the presentation. If you have any questions, please.
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 Gustav Berneblad from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, it's Gustav here. Just maybe to start off here on Norway. I think I missed a bit here what you said around the national regulations for grid operators in Norway.
Mm-hmm.
Can you expand this a little bit and also how you view this to play out in 2023?
The power grid is a monopoly, however you price it or however you charge, send the bill to the end consumer is regulated. The bill that's being sent depends on the status of the network. The status depends on the investment. It's basically regulated how much return on investments you get on network investments. There are good times and bad times. For this specific time now, there is a little bit less return on investments for this specific, for Elvia, which is our big customer, old Hafslund. They're holding back a little bit, and they do other investments, that will come back of course, because networks are getting old. On the regional network side, there we have more customers. We span a bigger geography.
Overall in Norway, there are investments ongoing, for us, especially on the regional network side. For instance, we just recently won a very big station. It was built first because Google wanted potentially to start a data center. There isn't enough power, actually, electricity, then they need to build a very big station. We won it, and our work is 70 million NOK, but it doesn't even include the groundwork. There are activities in Norway, but not specifically right now in this area where we are on the local side.
Should we expect that your areas will be suppressed for whole 2023, or what is your interpretation there?
I think it's lower. I hope we can scale up on the regional side, but not on the distribution side. It will be a little bit less. Hopefully we get started with a bigger station on the regional side and the aim is to make money on those and to compensate like that. This we don't know yet. We... This is the aim.
Perfect.
On the local side, it's more service like. It's smaller projects. On the regional side, it's more station work, it's bigger projects, and it takes some time to start up. We have a backlog, and we have some good stations that we want to build. The aim is to make money, but they are still projects, so we haven't done it yet.
If we move to Finland, and you commented on you having started negotiations with larger customers there, due to global cost increases. Can you maybe expand this a bit? How likely is it that you will be compensated, would you say?
It's very likely, but it's not super likely that we'll be compensated enough. Yes, there will be compensation. We are also trying in to scale down on the commitment. The less we do, the better actually in this situation. The less they order, the better. There are limits to these contracts. It's a little bit gray zone how much we can scale it down. There are some legal arguments going backwards and forwards now. The strange thing is that they want to build much, much more, but they don't want to pay for it. Demand is there, but the margin aren't there. We want to do less, and they want to do more. This is sort of where the discussion is going on.
But it-
Mm-hmm.
If we look at the whole of 2023, can we expect a similar as to last year where you sort of worked the whole year on recovering the lost volumes and then maybe incur higher costs due to this? How should we view Finland?
No, this is not our aim. Really not. I mean, our aim is to either get compensation or scale down on these specific frame agreements. Well, it's basically restructuring those frame agreements, and that means less people. We want to scale up on the fiber side. When we get to Q3 and Q4, the mix would look different, we aim at, and the mix would be more profitable then. This is the aim. Because it will be more fiber and less power then. If it might turn around, the customer might say, "We want to do much more, and we want to pay you." This is unlikely, but then it might look different. We're in the middle of it. We are fighting hard, and we have some good arguments, but we don't have all of the arguments.
for the organic growth, sort of for the, for Finland for 2023, should we see sort of a net zero effect then if you, if you scale down power and then ramp up fiber or?
If we can get to that, I will be super happy, actually. We will be profitable.
As-
Yeah.
If you reach a 0% organic.
We probably get organic growth. In this case, we rather would get the mix changing so much that we don't get any growth. We would get profit instead.
Oh, okay. I see.
Yeah.
If we sort of move to the positive here, you comment quite positively on Germany. Should we expect the bottom mix to be completely out of the way there or?
No, because now we start a new customer, and for every customer you start, in Germany, they're fairly new as well, the customer. It's a fight to get the projects going. I mean, you followed us for a long time, now we are on full swing with E.ON. It didn't work out so well with Orange Telecom, now we are with E.ON. I think it will work out much better. I think we start to produce in Q2. We're gonna see some upsides in Q3 and maybe sort of full speed in Q4 with that customer. The next phase, then they maybe ask us to do apartments because the others are FTTH, our sort of dream in Germany is to do apartments, large-scale apartment installation. This customer might want to do that. That takes some time as well.
When that kicks in, then later on, then we start to see margin, really. It will slowly grow. It will not be explosive because it just takes too much to start this project. We're in there for the long run, and we try to start as many projects as we can and still be in control.
Are you more positive to 2024 then, I would assume?
I'm positive to 2023 and even more to 2024.
Okay. If we sort of ask the similar question in U.K. here, are you seeing any signs of weakening demand there within the fiber rollout?
There's been lots of turmoil in the U.K., but not with our customers. They're still building. One of our customer got into problems like most of the fiber company does. They build quickly, and they realize they're poor quality, and they just stop. This is partly CityFibre then, and some Swedish companies are working there, and then they get to stop, and nothing happens. British Telecom did the same for some time, this just stops. Then they throw out their suppliers, and they bring in new ones, and that will always happen in the fiber business. We do GoFibre-Decent, stable. We do NetCom now and we do Sirisia, so we actually supplier to supplier. This looks stable under our demand.
Every now and then things happening because everything should go so fast in a fiber rollout, or in a national fiber rollout, because you want to get first to the customer. I don't see, and I know some network owners are buying some other network owners and so on, and that might temporarily lead to stop. From where we see, from the small scale we still operate on, there is enough demand, and we will build, and we are actually fighting to ramp up right now at capacity.
Okay. A bit of luck in having the right customer then or?
Yeah, being small. I mean, if we were building for sort of 2 billion SEK now, I'm sure we would be influenced somewhere, and we couldn't move all of that volume. We are still running. It's still very small scale. Then you can actually, okay, one customer is standing still, then you can send a few teams to another customer. You can't send 100 teams to another customer. It's just too much. We don't have 100 teams.
Yeah. Yeah. Got it. All right. I think that was all for me. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, Ove and Peter. Just to get some better feel for what's really happening here, and there's obviously a lot of moving parts. If you start by looking at the record order backlog, how much of that do you see gonna be delivered during this year?
Oh, we have to come back on that. I don't know how much is from the backlog and how much is sort of incoming orders during the year. I don't know. It's a very good question. Could we sort of log it and-
Yeah. No, no. Fine. Fine.
Yeah.
Because what I'm aiming at, because obviously, as you indicated, lots of networks owner are, say, moving their plans and similar kind of things. When you look at that, have that impacted how you calculate the order backlog?
I think I mean, you see all of this. You see what the telecom operators are doing. They are selling assets, and they are scaling down, and they try to accumulate cash, most of them. Our business on the telecom side in the Nordics, where we see this behavior, it's on service in Norway, right? It's really with those customers. There it's maybe 15% less or something, 20 maybe. That makes a difference because here, this is a people business where you have your own staff, actually. You're dependent on both. If you take on the fiber side, we don't roll out. There we have a backlog, and that will, strangely enough, be delivered. It's in Norway, for instance, it's lots with Telenor, and I'm quite sure.
I might come back in Q2 and say I was wrong, but now I'm quite sure it will be built and it starts now, its order. It will not be taken away. Sweden, we have very little. In Finland, these are completely new operators, and they will build. There's a rush in Finland. For us, it's on the service side and on 5G. On 5G, Telia has basically halved. Telenor has basically stopped in Norway. We don't do anything with Telenor. We do very little with Telia. Our big customer in Norway is ICE this year. ICE is ramping up. They're building a new network. We haven't heard so far that they would stop because they want to build a network. We do traditionally in Sweden, we do 5G with Telia. We're sort of the main supplier. Very little this year.
Luckily, we also started with Tele2, and they are pushing. Since they are pushing, Telenor needs to push in Sweden since they have a joint network. There we still see now and after the summer that we have requests to do more than we can deliver, actually. Little bit luck, but this will remain, I hope. Little bit luck, I mean, that we are so into Tele2 and that we actually did that two years ago. Finland, we are very small on 5G. We don't do any 5G in Germany or UK. That was long, but that may be one answer.
Yeah, no. If you look at it, there's lots of good indication. If you, if you think the service contract with Telenor, Telia in Norway for the moment is running 15%-20% lower, has that impacted how you have calculated that part in the order backlog?
Yeah, it should. We, this is just one year, and then we have to think about next year. We don't include sort of 100% of the forecast in the backlog. We maybe take 70%.
We are conservative in the frame agreements that we have. We're conservative with that when we look at the order backlog.
Is it fair, is it then fair to assume that the duration of the backlog stretched a little longer than you saw before comparing to how you reported the backlog in last year?
Could be. Are you ahead of us? You are more you're thinking deeper on these things. You are actually right, yeah. If business doesn't disappear, why should service in the long run disappear? It should be there. It might be sort of later, and there might be a new negotiation, so someone else might have the contract, so to say, then the duration isn't longer. Otherwise, if we have the contract, it's longer.
Now when obviously, as you allude to, Q1 is a difficult quarter for you from there been a lot of snow and cold conditions. Have you seen that the agreements that you want to see to get started in Q2 has got started in a good way?
I wouldn't say yes because it's still early on. It's Easter in a few weeks. I haven't heard that sort of things are stopped, really. Some sort of a massive, okay, finance are bad, we stop everything. We haven't heard anything like that.
The kind of normal spring roll, ramp up, that's what you're seeing this year, at least in this situation.
We You know, the I mean, the trend is good. January still stand, February very little, March a little bit more, it's picking up in April again. May should be sort of full swing. This is what we think it is.
The final question from me, looking at the settlement with IP-Only, have you received the money from it, or is that something that is still outstanding?
It's a short question. I can give you a very long answer.
Okay.
We won quite clear the arbitration. We had good arguments. They challenged. You can't challenge an arbitration. You can just challenge the process, right? You can say there's some process error. They did. Then you go to Svea Hovrätt, actually. At the same time, you can't say, "I don't want to pay. I want to pay later." Normally, Svea Hovrätt accepts that, so they say, "Okay, you can pay when we have decided." This time, Svea Hovrätt said, "No, no, no, you have to pay now. This is bullshit." You can only get allowance to pay later from Svea Hovrätt if you have a fair chance to win in Svea Hovrätt.
Svea Hovrätt said, "This looks a bit shady, so you should pay." They should pay, but we don't know when. Now it's with Fogden, Tjona Fogden. I don't know. I hope soon. You can also escrow it with the Swedish state, but you still pay interest. The only thing you do is you put it in escrow, and you pay later. It's conditions for that as well. It's sort of you put it in escrow with the Swedish state if you-
Yeah
... if you think that the counterparty can go bankrupt throughout the process with Svea Hovrätt. Yeah, you realize, right? Right. The answer is, I don't know. It should be an hour.
Before the Svea Hovrätt might accept the case, then they need to put at least the money into an escrow account or something like that to, for the procedures to continue.
Yeah. Now, they either need to pay us, or they need to put it in escrow, or-
Yeah
or it calls for bankruptcy. This is 1 big fiber customer we said, you know.
When you talk to your lawyers, what kind of timeframe do they give for, say, getting this to the finalization or at least getting to a situation where you see the money somewhere?
To get it solved, there's a queue to get these type of issues to Svea Hovrätt of roughly a year.
The money could come. That we don't know. It's a decision that, like, Fogden will do. The Svea Hovrätt has said they have to pay it to us.
Mm-hmm. I expect it soon.
So-
Otherwise, everything else would be strange. It has been strange so far. We have a lot of money, but we want more, of course. The numbers will look better.
Yeah, no, it's better if you have them available.
Yeah
You can say, "I understand the comments, why you build, then believe that, maybe, M&A shouldn't be the main feature of the company for the next quarters or so to get, say, the financial structure back in good order," so.
we have a lot of things to. But I think if we get them right in Finland, it might, you know, sounds a bit strange or maybe, but we finally get the situation after all of this now when we threw it to a better situation in Finland. That would be nice.
Yeah.
That would be a very positive thing.
I guess your earlier ambition in Finland to at least get it back to break even or higher, that might be a little challenging with the current environment, even excluding potential one-offs.
On a yearly basis, yes. I soon like to see a quarter with plus. Maybe not Q2, we, if we find a solution with these frame agreements, and if we start to push volume on the fiber side, and if we deliver what we said, then we should see a quarter.
Yeah
... plus. This is the target.
If you compare the work that you're now doing in Finland with the work you're planning in Norway, do you feel that the Norwegian challenge is harder or easier, say, if you try to grade it?
I think it's very different. I think the challenge on the service side in Norway, that's a very strategic issue because we really want to do this. We strategically decided we want to do more service. We want the big service agreements. We are making money, but we want to make more money. Now volumes are lower, and we have a good organization. It could take some time, but we will sort it out. This is long term. This is really where we wanna be. On the power side, yes, we can improve ourselves. Demand is a little bit weak now, but it will come back. I'm market-wise and organization-wise, I have more confidence in Norway.
It might take a little bit longer time, actually, because it's not sort of a restructuring case where you want to sort of get rid of a contract and then it looks better, as in Finland.
When you look at the challenge in the service operation in Norway, you don't have any opportunity to, say, basically recycle the employees in areas where you have an opportunity. I'm seeing demand for it. I guess it's quite a different operation.
On the technician side, but not on the back office side. The first wave here that we're looking at right now as we speak is to reduce back office. We have taken several service contracts with several different organizations, from Telia and from Telenor, and now we've created one organization. Then we can use the service technicians for more than one customer, and we can also use back office for more than one customer. All of this has to be done. The first step is back office and to reduce overhead, and this is ongoing as we speak.
Finally, when we look at Germany, the same thing, the perspective going, maybe not doing so much with Deutsche Telekom, but going after the Telia and Telefónica client you mentioned.
Mm-hmm.
Is that changing your base perspective? Can you use the same kind of subcontractors on your side?
Yeah.
-be able to cater for it?
Same. Same. Absolutely. It's slightly different. This is more rural. Deutsche Telekom is much more in a city environment and rural is a little bit easier for us. It's a little bit easier to find subcontractors. You need a little bit less knowledge on permission and stuff, so this will be good. Again, as I said, we are aiming actually to do apartments as well, large sets of apartments. I hope within a few quarters we can present something like that. We did Stockholm. We did lots of apartments in Stockholm, and that's quite easy. It's fast. It's not so much problems. We have all the subcontractors we need from Europe. What we do now is rural. It is backbone, actually, with the Uvia. We're in the planning phase.
Okay.
We do the planning. This is a turnkey project which we have been looking for and talking about a long time, and this is the first one.
When you're looking at payment, the payment development from the German clients, is that I think you mentioned earlier that Deutsche Telekom were the weaker payer, so to say, when on Flex?
Mm-hmm.
E.DIS was slightly better. Is it, when you look at it, do you feel better, say, flow of payments also in the kind of contract amount?
Lots to do still. Here we have a big, big upside. We actually started the back office in Serbia to do, to prepare invoices and so on. We have four people there now. It's gonna be more. We have more people in Germany to do the preparation. We're starting to learn the system, we are starting to push harder. Here we still see the big upside on working capital. It's improving, really.
Peter, is that the last component in getting, say, working capital back to the 12%-15% of, I would say 9%-12% of working capital to sales?
This is Germany, this is Norway, I would say. Telia in Norway doesn't have. It's not okay what they have in their contracts, we're working with it. We haven't solved it yet. We are close to actually saying enough is enough because you can wait forever. If you install something and if they are dependent on another operator to get it connected, you have to wait until they have fixed it with another op. See, it can take a year. That's what it says in the contract, but it's not okay. I would say, yeah, Germany and Norway. A specific customer in Norway. It is improving actually, so it's going in the right direction.
Now we're at 12 if you adjust for the arbitration. We said between 9 and 12. Of course, 9 is the target. That's, that would be very good.
Yep. Excellent. No, I appreciate a lot of moving parts out there and a challenging environment. All the best.
Thank you. Thanks. Thank you for the questions.
The next question comes from Carsten Dehn from Lanibo. Please go ahead.
Hello, this is Carsten calling from Lanibo. Thank you for taking the call. I think you really have to be much more disciplined going forward when it comes to Finland and especially when here I'm really focusing on your ability and your skills when it comes to negotiations on contracts. It seems to me like profitability in Finland will continue to be very weak. Your negotiation power is weak. Your compensation from customers will continue not to materialize. Therefore, really my question is, do you have a firm plan when it comes to Finland? Secondly, have you made any changes when it comes to the organization in Finland? This has to have some kind of effect on the leadership in Finland.
No, you're right.
Let me, before you answer.
Yeah.
Before you answer, just to remind you, it seems, just to remind you, the stock price is down 30% of these numbers. I think, we really have to step up now.
No, I agree. We have an issue in Finland, and we try to solve it now, and it includes all the things you mentioned. Yeah, you're right.
No, I'm not. No. Did you change the management in Finland?
We have, yeah, Ari has left. We have a... Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Then.
Okay.
Yeah.
Do you have a plan for leaving Finland?
We are in these contracts, and they are long, so we can't leave them. We need to get rid of them.
Just to understand, a manager in Finland took in some contracts which was loss-making to begin with, and you can't get out of them. Is that how it works?
Yeah, they are frame agreements.
Yeah.
And they-
They're frame agreements.
Five.
Top management-
We try to redeem them.
Top management, including you, did not look through the contracts before they were signed. Is that correct?
They were read through, but things happened and they were negative, and now we are making money.
You're not making money.
No, not on this contract, no.
What are the implications in the future for making, just for signing contracts? What did you learn from this very, very weak negotiation power from your side?
Yeah, we learned that we don't have enough scales in Finland and that this contract isn't good, and we're trying to scale them down and try to scale down the organization. Right now we have them, try to get out of them.
That could happen in other countries as well.
I don't think it could happen like this, no.
Why not?
I think we're a little bit better. Yeah.
Yeah. A little bit, that you have to explain. I mean, the stock price is down 30%. I think we are entitled to have some more information here.
Yeah, I don't know what more information I can give.
What is wrong in the contracts and how do you avoid making these mistakes again in other contracts?
We're not protected against price increases in these contracts, and this is hurting us. We are protected in the other contracts.
When you entered the contract, you did not take into account that there will be fluctuations in prices?
No, there isn't any KPIs in this contract, no.
I mean, you accepted this contract from as a CEO?
Yeah.
Well done. How can that happen? Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you, but I tried to answer.
Yeah. How can that happen? How can that happen?
I don't have any more answers.
How can you sign a contract where you are not covered for price fluctuations?
It was done. I can't give you any more answers.
Yeah. Okay. In the other countries, I mean, looking at the current order backlog, are there any contracts where we could have a similar pattern?
I have to go and look at all of them before I answer. I mean.
You don't know that?
Not all big and small. No, because we have limits where people sign contracts.
Okay. I think that would be one of the big challenges for the management going forward to look through all the contracts so we will not have a Finland case in the other countries. Is that fair or is it unfair?
Yeah, that's fair.
Okay. Good. What's the profitability on the current order backlog?
We don't, we don't present that. I can't give you that number. I shouldn't.
Okay. Are you aiming for above 5%?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Okay. Okay, thank you. I hope that you understand that the job you have done, and that is... Now I'm talking to you and the CFO, that the job you have done is simply not good enough.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Do you agree with me?
We're not happy about the situation. Absolutely.
No. Thank you. Now it's time to step up. Okay?
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Okay. Thank you everyone for listening in and asking questions. See you again after Q2. Thank you very much.
Thank you.