This call is being recorded. Welcome to Netel Q2 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 over to Acting CEO, Jeanette Reuterskiöld, and CFO, Peter Andersson. Please go ahead.
Hello, welcome to the presentation of second quarter for Netel Group. My name is Jeanette Reuterskiöld, and I'm since two months, acting president and CEO of Netel. With me today, I have Peter Andersson, CFO of Netel. We will start with a short summary of the quarter, then go through the groups and the segment's financial performance. After that, we will open up for questions from your listeners on the phone or online. Okay, let's kick off the presentation with a summary of the quarter. This quarter has been characterized by a high activity level throughout the whole organization. We see a strong continuous market trends, and our backlog increased to a record high of SEK 4 billion. This development, along with our margin-enhancing measure, makes us expect to deliver on our financial targets during second half 2023.
During the second quarter, we have come a long way in our work to secure better margins for our business in Norway. We have, of course, also had extra focus on the situation around the specific power project in Finland. We have finalized the negotiations with that customer. This has led to an acceptable agreement, which means that we now can plan forward and adapt our organization in power. We have also settled with a large fiber customer in Sweden, which means that the customer has paid compensation totaling SEK 70 million in the quarter. The settlement also means that the dispute has come to an end. We can continue our long-standing cooperation with the customer. Now, we move on to the group's performance.
For quite a long time, we have had a stable order backlog development. In the quarter, we reached yet another record high backlog, as I said earlier, on SEK 4 billion. This should be seen in the light that we have a lower service volumes this year in Telecom. Our mix of services in power, Infraservices, and telecom makes us strong over the time. In the second quarter, we have increased our backlog with more than SEK 1 billion. Approximately SEK 1.5 billion of our order backlog are to be performed in the second half of 2023, the rest during 2024 and 2025. You see, we have a strong growth of 14.5% this quarter, mainly driven by strong development in Sweden and our acquisitions in the U.K. we did last year.
Our organic growth is 5.3%. Excluding our phasing out the fiber rollout in Sweden, we have an organic growth of 7.9%. The fiber rollout in Sweden is being phased out due to the fact that Sweden has in principle, reached a full nationwide coverage. We see a sequential improvement in Adjusted EBITA due to the high activity levels. Our Adjusted EBITA amounted to SEK 41 million, with an adjusted margin of 4.7%. This should be seen in the light that we have a margin is impacted by the lower volumes in Norway and measures to lower costs, both in Norway and Finland. We increased our margin 3.1 percentage points from first quarter, thanks to the high activity level across the group.
Profitability has been impacted by the restructuring cost of SEK 10 million in Finland in the quarter. Earnings per share amounted to SEK 0.007. We expect to reach 10% revenue growth this year and Adjusted EBITA margin of 4.5%-5.5% for the full year 2023. We expect our Adjusted EBITA margin to approach the target in the second half of 2023. This forecast is based on the existing order backlog, our market situation, and the customer's request we see today. Finally, we expect to reach our net debt of below 2.5. Now I hand over to you, Peter, to go through our cash flow.
Thank you, Jeanette. One of our focus areas is, of course, our cash flow. We see improvements, but we still have more work to do, and we have activities ongoing to secure improvements, both in short and long term. This quarter of cash flow was positively impacted by SEK 70 million from the settlement with a large fiber customer. Excluding the settlement, the operating cash flow is in line with seasonality. We expect the higher margins in the second half of the year with the improvements that we are working with to contribute with an improved cash flow for the later part of the year. We are working very hard with this. It's very important for us. You can take the next slide.
Mm-hmm.
We also have a strong focus on the capital structure target, and we strive to improve it. In the end of the quarter, we had unutilized credit facilities and cash of SEK 528 million. Our leverage ratio related to our financial target was 2.8, which is above the target of 2.5 that we have in the medium term. This is also something that needs to come down. This means that we will focus less on M&A until it has come down to a level that we feel comfortable with. Thank you for this.
Yes. Let us now begin to the performance of our segments. First, we start with Sweden. In Sweden, we saw a strong growth and robust profitability in the quarter. Both Infraservices and power grew organically in the quarter, and we have now won important frame agreements with new as well as existing customers, which is good. It is especially encouraging to see how well our acquisitions in our new business area, Infraservices, are developing. It is with confidence I can state that these acquisitions are truly value adding to the Netel Group. Yeah. In business area, power, we see a high demand, especially for power stations, and we have recently announced key contracts with the big energy group, E.ON. Business area telecom is still impacted by the ongoing phase out of fiber rollout in Sweden.
The phase out, as I said earlier, a consequence of the fact that Sweden has reached almost full nationwide coverage of fiber. Let's go on to Norway. In Norway, we see improved volumes in power, but still lower service volumes in telecom this quarter. We have been working with enhancing measures, and it will contribute to improve profitability the second half year, 2023. In July, we have seen significant agreements signed that will give effect this second half year, 2023, and in 2024. Let's move on to Finland. In Finland, of course, we have focused our activities on improving profitability. In the quarter, we have finalized our negotiations with a major power customer, and we reach an acceptable outcome for both parties. We can finalize ongoing framework agreements and adapt our organization and ways of working for power now.
We can see that Finland will come profitable in 2024. We have taken a one-off reservation in the quarter of SEK 10 million in the second quarter for the restructuring in Finland. We see that we consider that to be sufficient. The new larger fiber products we have won have started, and they have a good potential to contribute to improved profitability in the second half of 2023. In Germany, we see a strong underlying nationwide demand for improved fiber coverage. Germany has still a very low fiber penetration, which drives the demand. The second quarter has been impacted by fact that we are finalizing projects, at the same time, starting up new projects. Our focus in Germany are now to build up the local organization and competitive to meet the strong demand.
We focus on gaining new customers, we can grow with further improved profitability. U.K. Merger of our two U.K. companies is still going on in second half. The merger will make us stronger and more competitive, will ensure continued profitable growth. We are now in the startup process with the new Scottish customer, GoFibre. We have seen lower volumes this year from our customers, the underlying market demand is strong and the market is big. The U.K., like Germany, has still low fiber penetration and clear goal to improve the coverage near term. We are confident about the development, we expect higher volumes next year and prepare our organization for that. We have now come to the end of our presentation, we will open for questions. Operator, we are ready to take 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.
As we can see now, we have no further questions about this report.
The next question comes from Gustav from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Good morning. It's Gustav here from Nordea. Maybe just to start off here in Finland, could you just give us sort of your view on when you're interpreting Finland to be profitable in 2024? Is it the latter part, or is it already in H1?
What we can see now, it's probably in the middle of 2024. It's depending on the development, both in our power projects, but of course, in our telecom products, the fiber rollout.
Okay, should we see now, from Q2 and to the middle of 2024 as a gradual increase in the margin or?
Yes, it's gradual.
Okay, perfect. Then, if we sort of turn to the U.K., I think the margin there has been very volatile. What is your view forward here?
We are now in the merger of our two U.K. companies, which will be soon ready. We see that what we do now with the organization and the cost efficiency of the administration of merging these two companies will make us stronger to win more projects during this year and next year.
Okay, what is sort of a sustainable margin for the region, would you say?
Sustainable margin on the long term, maybe Peter, you can help me there?
Yeah, yeah.
You've been around.
It's above our financial target.
Mm.
Put it like that. It should be more than the 7%, quite a bit.
Are you expecting a recovery now in H2 then, or?
Yeah.
Yes. Okay.
We-
Perfect.
... we are looking forward for a good second half.
Mm-hmm.
Sort of on the cash flow here, you got the SEK 70 million payment this quarter, but it looks like the working capital is still quite burdened. Are you expecting a release in H2, or?
Yeah. We are looking for that, absolutely.
Okay.
We're working with several different activities to take it down, to bring it down. Normally, a release should be in the fourth quarter. You can see that also in the chart, in the presentation, normally how it looks like in over the year.
Yeah, okay. Can you specify the activities a bit?
It's payment solutions, because in some contracts, we have, long payment terms, conditions, for example. It could be that we can invoice more than one time amounts. It could be how we're invoicing quicker, how can we have a more efficient invoicing process? There are several different things that we are working with. That will give effect on this also.
Okay.
Yeah.
If we turn to Sweden, it looks like you have announced several new projects, both press releases and on LinkedIn, et cetera. Are you seeing demand picking up in Sweden, or?
Yes.
The demand. Sorry. Go ahead, you.
We see the demand in Infraservices and power is strong, but as in every country we've been, are, have business in, it's in telecom, mobile, it's been lower volumes, but we see that it will pick up in the end, maybe in the end of 2023 and hopefully in 2024. What we do with that is also that we are looking for new customers than we had before. We are broadening our customers even in Sweden.
Okay. perfect. Then I think, yeah, a lot of people are wondering, sort of around the covenants. Can you give any indication now in sort of a public forum or?
No. We are not going out with this kind of information, how our financial agreements are structured and look like. We don't. That is the decision at the moment. We don't go out with that kind of information.
Oh, okay. Perfect. I think that was all for me.
Thank you.
Okay, Gustav.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad.
What we can see now, we have no further question.
The next question comes from Karl-Johan Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Sorry for being slightly late in and, into the Q&A here. Looking at the guidance that you now give for the full year and getting back up to, towards the 7% margin kind of level in the second half of this year, what are the risks to that, and what kind of extra opportunities do you see, and what will need to happen to reach the higher end of the range and compared to the lower end, and so on?
We feel confident about us reaching this, our financial targets as we, and the indications we did now in this report. Of course, Sweden and especially Norway and Finland has to go accordingly as the plan. Our estimate is, we feel confident about our estimate.
Which, if you try to break it down, then where do you see the biggest risks in it? Is it a specific sector, specific countries that could be the, say, the swing factor, so to say, be one for you to either end up in the high end or the low end of that range?
We see a high performance in Sweden, and if our risk, of course, is like we have reported earlier in the first quarter is Finland and Norway. The risk is that our activities, that the mesh measures we have done, won't come as quick as we are estimated. That could be the risk of it, but we are confident now that we will reach our goals indications this year.
Looking at the, you already said, Peter, that it's really Q4 that is the cash release quarter for you. Do you have any idea about when you can see, maybe also getting the money out of the settlement you had with that was a positive factor that you haven't really seen the money for yet, when that can come in?
Which is the which situation do you refer to?
Yeah, the arbitration settlement that you had before.
We have received that. That is in the conclusion.
Excellent. Sorry, I missed that. Perfect.
We have it, so that is settled on down.
Finally, good to see the order backlog building up. Could you be a little more specific about which sector, which part of the operation that is driving the order backlog for the moment and the growth in it, and maybe geographies as well?
Yes, the order backlog in, it's different in, every country, but in Sweden, the order backlog is increasing with Infraservices and power. That's what we see right now, and in the same in Norway. As you have seen, we have released news about new agreements in Norway, in telecom as well, and that's very positive, yeah. In Finland, we are focusing on delivering on the products we have. We see that the order backlog is driven by Sweden and Norway right now.
Excellent. Thank you very much, and all the best out there.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the telco to the speakers for any closing comments.
Well, thank you all for listening in, and I wish you all a relaxing and joyful summer forward, and we are looking forward to meet you again in November. Thank you.