Good morning. We want to start with saying that we are not satisfied with the profit growth in the year-to-date period. The organic development is not satisfactory; we have not been able to complete acquisitions at the pace that we aim for. Regarding the organic development, there are some challenges with construction and automotive exposed companies, and as an example, the UK government has increased taxes on pickup trucks, resulting in lower demand for these vehicles, impacting some of the Röko companies. In addition, we have some companies with sales in the U.S. of products manufactured either in Asia or in Europe, and for some of these companies, we see significant sales declines in the US market following the trade tariffs. On acquisitions, there is a mixed picture. We see plenty of opportunities, more quality companies than we have done in recent years.
However, the pipeline is not worth anything as long as we do not complete acquisitions, and we are not satisfied with the acquired growth we have achieved so far this year. If we go to slide number two in our Q2 presentation, we look at two important metrics for compounders that are growth in EBITDA and change in leverage. We grew EBITDA 11% in the first nine months, driven by acquisitions and organic growth. Sales grew 6% in the period, and the higher growth in EBITDA relates to both margin improvement and recent acquisitions being margin equitative. In the year-to-date period, we have also had negative exchange rate differences of around -3%. Leverage decreased with 0.1 turns to 2.1 times EBITDA compared to one year ago. In the 12-months period since the end of Q2 2024, we have invested SEK 806 million in acquisitions.
Of which two have come in during 2025. One of them has been an add-on. We continue to assess multiple opportunities. We still believe that we see a decent number of qualitative companies, as mentioned, but have not been successful in completing the satisfactory number of deals this year. We are working hard on making sure that we execute the right type of acquisitions, and as you know, it is a reasonably binary process, so there could be a bit of lumpiness in the acquisition completions. If we continue to page three, we have the highlights of our group's financial performance. In the year-to-date period, we grew sales with 6%, 3% organic in local currency, negative exchange rate differences of -3%, and also growth from acquisitions. EBITDA grew 11%, as mentioned before, driven both by acquisitions and organic growth.
The exchange rate differences were negative, as mentioned, and they impact both sales and EBITDA. The margin improvement compared with last year is driven both by margin improvement in comparable companies, as well as recent acquisitions being margin equitative. Across our subsidiaries, we see mixed developments where most companies develop well, but we have some weakened demand in companies that are exposed to construction or automotive, as mentioned, as well as the. Difficulty in the US experience following the trade tariffs. However, we should mention that year-to-date 6% of Röko's net sales stem from the U.S., so it's not a very big piece of the business. If we then turn to page four. Start to look at cash flow. Free cash flow declined 6% in the year-to-date period, and cash conversion was 68%.
If we, however, adjust for the transaction costs relating to the IPO of SEK 41 million in the first nine months, cash flow declined 1%, and cash conversion was 72%. The decline in sort of organic cash conversion relates predominantly to increased net working capital in the companies, which relate to higher organic growth in local currency, and that we can see that they tie a little bit more in working capital. We monitor the development of inventory and working capital in general quite closely and are always working with our local management teams to improve cash flow. If we then look on the right-hand side, return on capital employed for the nine-month period improved from 13.8% last year to 14.5%. Our return on capital employed remains relatively low compared to our peers as we are a younger company, but we see that it improves year- over- year.
As you can see in return on capital employed excluding goodwill, so excluding the intangibles arising from our acquisitions, it remains at a high level of well above 100%, so 164%, evidencing our asset-light group of companies. With that, I will hand back to the moderator who can moderate the Q&A sessions if there are any questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. There are no more phone questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions or closing comments.
We have a few questions that have come in through the chat, so I will take two of them. The first relates to what the biggest obstacle has been to completing acquisitions. I would say it's a mixed picture. We have seen some high-quality companies this year. For high-quality assets, there has been a lot of interest from buyers, both compounders like us and from private equity, and it has been difficult to complete those acquisitions at valuations that we think are reasonable. We can also say that there have been a couple of opportunities where the current trading of the companies that we have assessed has not improved or been uncertain during the process. Those are the two main reasons.
I'm not too concerned given that we actually see still quite a lot of high-quality companies coming up for sale, so we just need to work hard on executing those opportunities. I think that actually covers both the questions that have come in through the chat so far. Given that it doesn't seem to be any additional questions coming in, I hereby conclude this conference call and say thank you very much for listening.