Welcome to this Q1 presentation of NOTE. As always, how do I describe this quarter and where we're standing? Yet another quarter quite much affected by inventory optimization among our customers. That means that they are buying less than they sell. We see that some segments are doing quite weak. We will come back to that later on in the presentation. But we can see that the Greentech sector is not picking up as we had expected when we entered this quarter. We're now comparing our Q1 numbers compared to quite low numbers last year already. So this surprises us a little bit. It's quite far below our customers' communicated expectations as well. So that's the recovery that we have been talking about for some quarters is still not happening.
That is one of the reasons, or probably the main reason, why we did not end up in the mid of our guidance, rather in the lower end of the guidance. We can also see that this segment is not expecting to go so much better in the Q2 either. So we will see quite slow sales in the Greentech segment also in the Q2. After that, the indications is quite much stronger. But we have seen that quite many quarters now that they are forecasting higher demand than they reach. So Greentech is a segment that is still doing fairly weak in our portfolio. We can also see that, yeah, Industrial, as I said before, the last two quarters, we are expecting the majority of the growth coming from the Industrial segment.
That is very valid, as you see. On the cost side, I mean, we talked after Q4 that we are adjusting the cost base. I would say that we have done that fairly good. We are a few, what do you call it? We are a few points higher than in profitability in the Q1 compared to the Q4 last year. We are not where we want to be. We have been up to around 10%. That's where we are aiming also for this year, even with this start. We don't see that as unrealistic, given where we stand and what we see. As I said, in the after Q4, we are going to see the Q1 slow, Q2 potentially higher.
We see that the speed entering Q2 is still a bit lower than we expected when we were looking at the year, three months ago. But we are seeing that the demand from the customer side is improving quarter by quarter, if I look at their forecasted volumes. So we're still expecting to see quite low Q1. That's very easy to say because we have now communicated it. Second quarter, we are expecting that to be, yeah, in line with Q1, potentially slightly higher. We have, even if we guide quite low, we have higher ambitions. Third and Q4, we are expecting to start to see organic growth again. So that's how we see the year.
We are also seeing that the sales towards our customers are lower than their sales to their customers, where we can measure that and where we have transparency from them. And that tells me that we are on the road to recovery. I got a question earlier this today with how we see upon the underlying demand. And we have seen that we have been growing roughly 20% year-over-year organically the last five years. I don't expect the market to be at that level this year. The last update I got from the industry statistics is that they are expecting the EMS market to be flat or decline 1%-2% this year. That is the underlying growth for this year, but trending on the 7% in the longer period.
We should know that in 2023, the last number I saw was roughly 20% growth for the industry. So what everyone that tries to understand the EMS market is saying is that in 2023, the industry delivered the growth of 2024. So instead of just delivering what the customers wanted, they delivered a higher growth. That came from the long lead times that were implemented during the component shortages. Now the market is stabilizing and we see that everyone is trimming down their inventories and that will have this effect. Then again, we are into a slower economy in general in Europe and that has an effect.
So my prediction is that we are, if we have been seeing 20% year-over-year growth, for NOTE side, I would say that our customers are now, customer sales this year are probably in the 5%-7% growth if I look at their sales to their customers. So I still believe that our customer base will grow with the portfolios that we produce this year. Yeah, long introduction. If we go into the numbers, yeah, sales roughly flat, SEK 1.55 billion. That is, that includes 4% acquired growth. So we are 4% negative on organic. Operating profit, underlying operating profit is more what we are trying to measure ourselves from, 8.8%. Last year, 10.2%. Last year we had SEK 5 million in positive currency revaluations and this year we had SEK 2 million negative.
And we have talked about how the big swings of the currency are affecting our profitability. And I've also said that it doesn't really matter if the Swedish currency is low or high. It's the fluctuations that are affecting the result much more than where the actual level is. Then you can argue saying that, okay, if the dollar increases in relative size to Swedish, the price will go up because we have this currency converters in our agreements. And then our customers will pay a higher price. But that is basically how it works. The positive side with the weak Swedish krona is that the added value in Sweden is becoming lower compared to others. So the Swedish competitiveness is becoming stronger if that's the case.
We can also see that the sales from the Swedish entities are roughly 50% of the NOTE group sales. And that is, we, we entered that level last year and we are still on that level. So as I said before, it doesn't really matter where the, where the currency is, but the fluctuations will have an effect on us. And that's why we, we have started to, to show you the effects of it. Because going back some 3-4 years, the effects were very small because the fluctuations were not that strong. The last 2-3 years, it has been really big fluctuations and that has a big impact on us. Over time, it will often flatten itself out. Last but not least, cash flow, positive, SEK 84 million. It's also important to know why are we seeing positive cash flow?
It's yes, we are earning money that will convert into cash flow, but we also see that the inventory is declining in a good way. I think we had SEK 90 million in inventory reduction in the quarter. It's the Q3 in a row where we have seen inventory reductions. And we also see that the cash flow will be like 2-3 months after the inventory reduction comes because that's the payment terms from the suppliers that will have an effect. So given the inventory reduction we see, we are also predicting that in Q2 we will have a good cash flow. That's what this indicates.
So we also see that what I said the last few quarters that we will have a strong cash flow in the coming quarters, but it will also fluctuate depending on how, how all the numbers will come in. So that's very important. Our cash position is strong and it's getting stronger every quarter as it looks now. If we look at the two segments, Western Europe, slight increase. It's basically acquired growth. Rest of the World, the decline. We see that if I look at the sites, we see that Estonia is doing fairly flat, China is reducing. What we can see if we look on the year as such, we will see that China will decline. We see a much weaker demand in China compared to all other markets that we are in.
As I've said before, we have also adjusted our sales in China to more be going towards Chinese companies or Western European owned companies with assembly in China. We see that the demand in China and Asia is weaker at the moment compared to the rest of the world. I think China in itself, we're down with like 20% in a quarter. That is also one effect. We have seen that and we have taken that into consideration when we have done our guidance for the year. China is weak. That has an effect on the margins on the rest of the world. We are, yeah, Western Europe, 9.7%, still not where we want to be. The big reduction this quarter is coming from the rest of the world.
We are expecting both the Western Europe and the rest of the world to increase. But we will see that the Western Europe will have a significantly higher margin this year than the rest of the world, primarily driven by the weaker sales of China. We have adjusted China quite significantly in the cost side, but it's. We are not expecting to reach the same profit level in China this year as we did last year. Going forward, segments. If we look at this, we can see that strong growth in industrial. Now it's around 60% of our sales, highest number in quite a few years. We see that growth is 12%. As you know, defense is part of this segment, but we see growth in the segment even despite, even if we exclude defense. So industrial is a strong segment at the moment.
Several accounts that we started to ramp up in the H2 last year have continued to go well. So we are expecting Industrial to continue to be on a strong level for the rest of the year. We have good order coverage in this segment. Communication, we have ramped up several accounts in the last year. If you remember, we had good growth throughout last year. This year we see that many of the installations are postponed. You see 5G, the rollout of 5G base stations is significantly slower than the operators have communicated earlier. And we see that our customers that are delivering into this are affected by this and they are pushing out their orders to better match what they see on the market.
This has probably an effect of the slower economy and the higher interest rate where they don't want to invest so much in the systems as they have done in the past. I expect this to bounce back, but it will take more than one or two quarters. So Communication is expected to be on a lower level this year than it has been before. Medtech also saw very strong growth last year, more than 100%. We are on a good level. We are expecting that Medtech will jump a little bit up and down. It depends on what orders we get out for the quarters. I don't expect it to grow this year, but we will see how this quarter or how this segment will end.
Then Greentech, I looked at some numbers in 2021 and the H1 of 2022, Greentech was up to almost 30% of our sales. Now it's down to, I think the number was 14% or something at the moment. So it's, it has basically halved in relative size. So when our sales have grown significantly, Greentech has actually been reducing also in actual numbers during the last two years. So it, the recovery that the customers have expected and communicated to us and what we have then read out of these expectations has not come in. So this is, this is one of the segments that we are very disappointed in the sales. And we are also looking at the orders for the Q2 is not indicating that we will see a swing upwards.
So if I look at the segments, we will be, Industrial will continue to drive our sales and that is what I expect for the year. The Communication, Medtech will probably see a quite weak Q2 and then we are expecting it to bounce back with and come back with positive numbers. Greentech, if I look at what the customers are telling me, it will bounce back, but that has been the story for the last four quarters and it has not yet happened. So we are looking into Greentech with some, how shall I say, less certainty. The other segments are fairly or are easier to track than Greentech. A lot of startup and scale-up companies that are expecting to grow, but their markets have not come in as they have seen. Some highlights.
I think as always, I have this as my top remark every time. It's quality and delivery is what is important in our industry. As long as we continue to deliver good numbers here and are continuing to drive efficiencies out of our production, we will have a good dialogue with our customers. You could argue with saying, okay, we have seen quite slow sales the last, say, 2, 3 quarters, but we have not lost one single customer during this period. So my expectation is that when the customers bounce back, we will be gaining from that. And we don't have any discussions with customers that they are not seeing that we are performing and that we have exit discussions.
So the customers are staying and they are fairly happy and we do like customer service every year and that is very positive. Every year it's very positive. I think this year is more positive. It's the best year ever if I got the information correct. So it's, I still expect that we have a strong, solid and fairly loyal customer base. And that is where the majority of our growth is coming. If I look at the sales increase the last two years, the existing customers with extensions of the program has been contributing more than the new accounts that we have been winning. In 2020 and 2021, it was the opposite, but 2022 and onwards, the existing customers have grown more or more of our organic growth has came from organic or from existing customers relative to new customers.
So that is, and we expect that to continue. Yeah, when I talk about order stock decreases, we have 18% lower order backlog now compared to 1 year ago. If I look at how many quarters in advance customers are placing orders today compared to 1 year ago, it's a significant difference. Last year at this, or in 2023 at Q1, we were still looking at 9-12 months of order horizon. Now we're often taking orders on 1-4 weeks, but then we have an agreement covering the fluctuations within the first, say, 4 months. So transparency in terms of how long order visibility we have is much lower today than it was 1 year ago. However, this is how our industry has been living for all the years except for the years where we have component shortages.
So this is a normalization of the market. It doesn't mean that we will, that we will see lower sales or that we will see customers starting to move production around. It's more that they want to place the order quite late because that will reflect what they need rather than placing orders, say, 9-12 months in advance. So this is a normalization of a pattern rather than something else. We have been talking about this and I was one of the only transparent CEOs when this increased because we had like order increasing with 100% some quarters that, and we were very open saying that this is not a reflection of how we will see the next two quarters. This is more of an extension of the order length. So now we're going back to normal.
That is, in my opinion, fairly good because that also increases the how shall I say, if you win a new business, if they have placed orders for 12 months in advance to their current EMS supplier, then the time it takes for us to take over that production is very long. Now when it's normalized, it's easier to get access to new wins faster. And we have a very low exit from customers. We are winning much more than we are losing. We're relatively set not losing any big order or customer. So for us, this is good. We also talk a lot about investments and CAPEX to support our growth. For those that know, we are extending our factories. We are increasing our capacity.
So our view of the future is very bright. We would not do this if we didn't see this demand coming. So if we look at what our customers are expecting, say, 4-6, 8 quarters in advance, we see very positive look on that and we see that we will gradually come back in, into those numbers. I've also said in the, in the past that increases comes, when they come, they are steeper and faster than you expect because then you also see a stock buildup. And in many cases, it's not only our customers, it's their distribution channels that are also building stock because they want to meet the current, the increased demand with a higher preparation. But that comes negatively when the, when the, when the demand is declining.
Every step in the chain are decreasing their inventories and that's what we have seen. So fluctuations are, how shall I say, quicker and deeper or higher than we have seen in the past. So that is something to keep in mind. Then you can argue indeed why couldn't we see this clearer two quarters away? But that's, you can also always learn. I think we and the peers are going to see that this is the same scenario for many of us. But that's how it is. We're still investing quite heavily and this is one of the reasons why you can continue to drive our headcount relatively steady compared to our sales lower and lower. And we have a lot more to do.
So even if we have been doing this for several years, we have a lot more efficiencies to take out from our factories and we will do that and we are doing it. That's part of our daily tasks. So I'm very pleased to see what we're doing there. Return on our operating capital, 23%. We have been up almost to 30% when we were doing at top. I expect us to come back to that in the coming years. Always strong balance sheet, equity ratio of 45%. It's the highest we have seen in several years. Our liquidity situation is stronger than I think ever since I started. So good preparations for the quarters and years to come. Outlook. Yeah, Q2.
I think we are still seeing that the pace we have in the Q1 is where we are standing. We have some signals that it might increase. I want to see that before I guide it to you. So quite moderate or modest guidance for the Q2. I think our cost run rate is improved. So if we hit the same sales as we did in Q1, we will see higher margins. For the year, we are still seeing positive views from our customer sides. So we are, and that is what we try to indicate when we look at the year, the year to come. And also we are heavily driven by margin or sales will drive margin. We are adjusting cost level to where we stand.
So as soon as we get the good growth, we will see that our operating margin will come back. For those that have followed us until the end of 2023, we had 15% fall through on our organic sales increase. And I don't see why we should not come back to that when we see the sales coming back. I've also said that I think that 5%-7% organic growth is, as I said, if you are below that, you will struggle with improving your margin. So we need to come back to that level. Then we will start to see that the margins will increase year-over-year. So we are expecting to turn the negative swing on our margin development. So that is basically what we're seeing.
I think the market is really strong looking over a longer period of time. There's no indications that the usage of electronics will decline in the society. There's no signs rather that the digitalization that is ongoing will stop. I would say that the digitalization trend is getting stronger every quarter. We, with a high footprint in the relatively strong industrial countries, will probably see a higher sales increase relative to Europe as such because Europe as such is quite burdened with the Mediterranean countries that are not growing in their industrial side as well as the Northern European countries are doing. So I think our position is very favorable going forward and we have made our growth in the countries that we see is most beneficial for us.
We still lack some dots on the map as I call it, but we will see if we can close some of them. Our preparation in terms of funding is very strong at the moment. So we are actively looking into the acquisitions possibilities that we see. There is no one that is as far in the pipeline that we can talk about, but we are as always keeping dialogue with a few companies at all times. Some more interesting than others, of course. But looking at this, what you should bring with you after this presentation, I would say, sales. We're not happy where we are. We are where we are. We will do whatever we can and we do a lot of activities to come back into growth. Profitability, we are not happy where we are.
8.8% if you look over time is not a very bad position, but given our last year's performance, we're not at all happy with that. And we are expecting it to come back into new levels. I would be surprised if when we close 2024, if it's not the best year in NOTE's history, meaning that we are expecting that we will beat our last year's sales and that we'll beat last year's EBIT in money. That is my expectations. And I think that we see what the market is indicating that is supported by what the customers are saying. And then we have to, of course, act and work accordingly and ensure that we take out all the benefits we can from where we stand. So I'm quite optimistic.
When we look at 2024 as a year for the aggregated EMS market, it will be the weakest years since 2020. That is for sure. I think nothing that happens from now on will change that fact that the market or the industry overdelivered volumes in 2022 and 2023 that now are depleted or are now in inventories around our customers' distribution channels. That has to be depleted until we see that the growth come back. We started the stock depletion earlier than the peers. If you look at our Q4, it was significantly weaker in sales growth compared to peers. I think that we were much earlier in accepting that this was the case. That affected our Q4, of course.
We talked about it in the Q4 and in our profit warning we had to do in December that we were allowing this to happen. But I think that will come back in Q1 and Q2 with better sales than the peers. But again, we are reporting first. So it's easy for me to say something that I cannot look into. But that's what I expect. I will end there and I will open the floor for discussions and we start with the questions in the room. So anyone? Of course, Karl is first.
Thank you. It's maybe a question on the inventories at your customers or the inventories at your customer sites. What are you getting for feedback when you're speaking with them? Are the customers, are the inventories coming down or what is your impression?
Yes, it is. Normally, we have good visibility for maybe 35% of our sales from customers, meaning that we have direct access to see what they have in their own inventories. We see that those levels are coming down. Not as fast as we had expected to be because we were expecting this to be fairly over at this point. It's still going to drag into Q2. For the other customers, we have to take their, how shall I say, word for it. We can see that if I look at their sale or the purchase forecast that we get is that they are gradually improving the numbers when I look through the month of this year. That is an indication that they are going to see an increase.
It's important because if the forecast come in in the next six months, it also drives their material commitments. So we, we can see that they're increasing forecast within the committed period and that's very important for us.
Yeah. And are you seeing any signs of that order intake is starting to pick up or I know you don't report it, but I guess it's order intake still a little bit lower than net sales in Q1 or?
I could answer you, but I don't have the number. My gut feeling on that is that we still see slightly lower order intake for because we're otherwise we would have seen higher demand in the, in the next quarter. I don't see this as, how shall I say, alarming in that way. I don't expect the Q2 to be, I expect it to be within our guidance, but it's, it's an indication that we're slightly lower than last year.
Yeah. Is it possible, maybe—I also know this is a difficult question to answer—but the sales of your, let's say, legacy customers, how much they grew or contributed to growth in the quarter and how much the new customer wins in the last one year contributed?
I think we can a very honest answer on that is that the time from you win a new project until it's implemented has extended. So customers are dragging out of implementation of new products at the moment. We can see a clear delay in those projects among, especially among the smaller customers. If you take the large industrial customers, they are just moving on as normally. But on the, how should I say, startup or scaleup or new, they are significantly slower in new product introductions than we have seen in the last say, two, three years.
Okay. Are you seeing any signs of, what do you say, more price pressure from your customers that want to push down pricing? I guess materials, et cetera, are down quite a bit yesterday.
Yeah, you can say, I mean, we look at this every month and we see where the overall price is going. And we see that in 2023 we saw a reduction of maybe 8%-9% on material price, but that also were an effect of the spot buys. This year we also see a reduction. So we are, I would say that we're very close to getting back to where component prices were, say, three and a half years ago. So more normalization is where we are entering. And that has, of course, an effect on our top line because that we are adjusting pricing when the component cost is going down. I don't see so much pressure on the margin side.
It's more that we have to come down or follow the material price reductions. And that is, as I said before, we're quite transparent here. So this has a direct effect of this.
Yeah. And just the last question from myself on the receivables. I saw they were up quite a bit despite lower sales or flat sales. Can you maybe elaborate a bit on what is impacting this and if there's any signs of credit losses or something like that?
I would say that Q1 we had significantly higher sales in March compared to the other quarters and relatively seen to last year. That was also the case. That has an effect. We also see that we had several customers that were late and they have closed their late payments in the first, say, days or weeks in April.
I mean, if March was a good month, then you should have a good run rates maybe going into Q2?
Or we stole from April. I'm just kidding. No, we will see. I think if I look at it like this, I still see it's very hard to predict. We are expecting that it will be lower. I have a good overall feeling that the market is coming back or that our market is coming back. It's hard to say for everyone else because it's very customer dependent. So I'm still confident that it will start to come back in this quarter. But I want to see it before we start to, so to say, guide for it.
Yeah. Good. Thank you.
Any other questions? Okay. Then I start with questions from the web. I start one from Øyvind. How much sales comes from the defense industry and do you see increased demand from this sector? I don't have the exact number. I would say that 6%-7% of our Q1 sales were from defense, could be up to 8% in that range. And yes, I expect that the increase will continue over the year and also in the years to come. Next question also from Øyvind. A question with regards to consolidation in the industry. Have you looked into larger consolidation of the EMS industry, not via small acquisition, but to, for example, a merger with Kitron? I like the question.
It's very hard to look into, but it's hard to merge with large peers when the industry is increasing, then the valuations are quite high. Currently, I think the EMS industry is pushed down on valuations. We see that for us and for others. But it's also hard to see that we could find a common ground with the company where, say, for example, Incap, that is, it could look attractive because the valuation is now maybe 60% lower than where they were peaking. But I would say that many of the owners are expecting to get up to the peak level. So it's very hard to convince someone to say that it's a good deal to buy on, say, 50% compared to where they were a year ago.
So I think the common ground for listed peers is very, very tricky to find that to work. Smaller, not listed, we saw HANZA buying Orbit One and that, of course, is something that we, every time we see an opportunity, will pursue them quite, quite heavily because that is interesting. Size is relevant. And if you buy something that is relatively big with, say, 2, 3, 4 sites, we can take out some overhead when we do the integration. So that is important. So I would say that if an opportunity will occur, we will jump on it. But so far we have not seen that opportunity that has been a good fit for us. Looking with some historic background, we should have taken BB Electronics. That was a very fantastic acquisition for Kitron.
I'm impressed with that they, that they took it. I don't know if I answered the question, but that's going to be my answer. Then we go to Grundén. Within industry, can you comment on drivers of growth in various verticals, verticals please? Yes, one is of course defense. We talked about it. That is one part, but it's also our big, yeah, big industrial customers are growing fairly well in this segment. So we, we see that the strong brands that, that are, are maybe reporting today or so are, are also doing very well in, in this segment. So we see that the big industrial companies are also driving the industrial sales. So both defense, but also our, our common platform in this segment is going well. Next one from Lucas. Lucas from Inderes Equity Research. I have three questions.
Is the anticipated growth being realized in the Industrial sector? Additionally, are there any other industries within the Industrial sector apart from Defense that are showing promising development? I think I answered that in the first, in the last answer. From a macro perspective, do you anticipate demand improvement to materialize in 2024 even if major central banks refrain from significant rate cuts or implement only minimal cuts this year? I would say that what we look at is our customers' demands based on where they stand today. We are not anticipating a swing up in the market. If that happens, we will be, it will be a positive effect for us.
So we are expecting that the market, we are guiding and looking at our customer base based on where we stand, not taking into consideration of what might happen if the central banks are starting to reduce their interest. So I would say that we are quite, we look at where we stand instead of trying to make a guess of where it might be going. Greentech and the last question from Lucas here. Greentech have developed slower than expected. Why and does the outlook remain difficult? Yeah, I think I touched upon it before, but I would say that our customers in this segment are not hitting their own expectations and that will, that is, so to say, depleted over to us and down, downstream.
So I think the slowdown of sales of electric cars and so on is affecting the EV charging boxes a little bit. That is the effect. So it's, I think it's a, the political question is a little bit important here, but where we stand today, I don't see that this industry will recover in the short timeframe. That is why we are quite negative on the expectation of this segment. Last question I have is from Tor Egil. Apart from automation, how do you look upon AI and the potential for further efficiency gains other benefits? Yes, this is a really good question. And I would say that we are using AI quite significantly when we look at how we improve our production lines. We are using machine learning.
We're using that the equipment is learning on the errors that they spot. We correct them and then they start to detect the same type of error and stop telling us that. So AI is heavily used when we make line efficient line improvements throughout our value chain into our factories. We can do a lot more, of course, but this is one area that is quite substantial and important for us. So we are using it. We can do be a lot better. We have some discussions on how to improve this internally. My only concern here is that when you open something and say that you open, we open our system, there's a lot of information there.
How do we ensure that what you can extract is the information that we should be able to extract, not all information because that can be a bit of a change or a challenge. But we are looking into this segment or in this sector or whatever you call it or this trends and we are hoping to take out more efficiencies from this. Okay. One more question just came up from Magnus. Could you elaborate on how you are planning on increasing the EBIT margins through 2024 when the revenue growth is expected to stay relatively flat? Yes, I can say that we are, when we enter Q2, we are around 4% less headcount and we are expecting that we will see a margin improvement on the top line because the material content is going down.
So we will see, if the quarter goes as we expect, we will see slightly lower material part of our sales and we will see that the cost side is kept at the same or slightly lower level than in the Q1. So our expectation is that if we hit the same top line, we will have a higher EBIT margin. I don't know if that was elaborated or not, but that is what we see. Any other questions from the room or from the web?
Just one question. You announced after the closing of the quarter that you're acquiring the facility in Herrljunga. Could you maybe just elaborate a bit on what's the plan with that facility? And I guess you buy it as you want to expand sometime, but just give us some background regarding that, please.
Yeah, it's, you can say that it's, when we acquired the business in Herrljunga, the old owner remained as the owner of the real estate. We did not agree on the price of the estate at that point. Now he announced that he wanted to sell the property to us or to someone else and then we looked at it and we could find common ground on what the valuation should be and then we decided to acquire it because we feel it's a good deal to make. We are a bit hesitant to allow a new developer in there to own the facility. We had a quite good lease level, so we did not want that to happen.
Okay. Do you plan to expand in the near term or no?
In Herrljunga, we have probably a 50% capacity increase in the current building. So when that is filled up, we are going to extend it if needed. But we have some work to do there before we are hitting that level.
Good. Thank you.
Thank you. The more I speak, the more questions come in. So I have two more here from, first from Johan Boström. Have you adjusted your forecasting process to reduce risk for negative surprises? If yes, how? When we do forecasting, we look at what the customer states. We look at the current run rate. We look at how we expect the segment or the niche that they are in to develop. And then we make an assessment of if we believe in the number we see or not. And we are often using a lower number than what the customers are using when we look at the forecasting. So we take some precaution there. So that is how we do.
If we are, how should I say, immune from, from further negative surprises, very hard to say. We are, we are, I would say that we are getting into a scenario where we are expecting more relatively positive surprises relatively than negative. But if we are through, it's hard to say at the moment. I rather report a positive number than promise a positive number. Then we have one more from Thomas. Thank you for a well-delivered report and for your transparency regarding new guidance for 2024. How have you considered doing share buybacks at the share price at these levels? The intrinsic value seems to be well above today's level in the long term. Very good question.
I think that we have an annual general meeting later on today and where the board has put up a proposal that we should be allowed to do it within the board's decision. So we will see upon that. I like the idea, Thomas, but I'm not the one that decides. So that's that will be my comment on that. Yeah. No more questions. If not, I would say that thank you. Very good questions. I like them. So keep on sending them in. It's always easier to respond to that when I'm standing here rather than to try to think about what you might want to know. So that's always good. And I would say that I look forward for Q2 and for the rest of the year.
I hope that you will all join me for the next presentation in Q2. Thank you for today.