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Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Jul 21, 2022

Antonia Junelind
SVP of Investor Relations, Skanska

Good morning, welcome to the presentation of Skanska's second quarter report 2022. My name is Antonia Junelind, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Here with me today to present our second quarter results are our CEO, Anders Danielsson, and our CFO, Magnus Persson. We will start the presentation today with an overview of the group and business stream performance and provide you with some business and market outlooks together with the second quarter financials. After that, we will move over to the Q&A session, and you can ask your questions either by using the text field on our webcast page, or you can dial in on the phone conference. Just follow the instructions by the operator. With no further ado, I will hand over to you, Anders, to take us through the second quarter result.

Anders Danielsson
President and CEO, Skanska

Thank you, Antonia. Before we dig into the figures, I want you to look at the picture here on the first slide. It's Nowy Rynek in Poznań, a Commercial Development project in Poland. Fantastic office building with very high standards when it comes to environmental and well-being certifications. Has been developed, constructed, and divested by Skanska, very successful project. If you look at the overview of the second quarter, we have a good performance in the second quarter. Construction continue to deliver strong results. Residential Development maintaining the profitability level. Commercial Property Development, high level of activity, and also good margins on the divestment that we have done in the second quarter. On the Investment Properties, we have establishing that business and the pipeline looks good.

Operating margin in Construction, 3.4%, versus 4.7% in the last year. We'll come back to that. Return on capital employed in product development, above our target of 10% on a rolling 12-month basis. Return on equity, slightly shy our target of 18%, and we continue to have a very strong financial position. We have SEK 11 billion in net cash. We have managed to reduce the carbon emission further, and we are now at 51% reduction compared to our baseline year, 2015. If I go into each stream, starting with Construction, we increased the revenue to, say, close to SEK 40 billion in the quarter. We have order bookings of SEK 37 billion.

That is slightly below our last year, but last year was also, we had the exceptional order intake in the U.S., so this is more on a normal five-year average. Book-to-bill, 95% on a rolling 12-month basis, and we have a record high order backlog of SEK 215 billion. Operating income, SEK 1.4 billion, and gives us an operating margin of 3.4%. If you compare to last year, you should remember that we had the one-off divestment gain in U.K. We divested the infrastructure services, which was a gain of SEK 370 million. If you take that out, we had a margin of 3.5% last year, same quarter.

We are growing our revenue, and we have a solid order backlog, and we have been able to manage the supply chain disruptions and the cost increases in a good way. We have been able to keep the margin of 3.4% the same as we have on a rolling 12-month basis. Overall, strong performance. If we go into Residential Development, the revenue was down to SEK 3 billion in the quarter, and you can see that the homes sold was also reduced. Last year in the second quarter was an extremely good year for Residential Development. We sold a lot of homes in the second quarter, and the slowdown that you usually see in the summertime didn't happen last year, that was exceptionally good.

We also had a rental residential divestment last year of 114 homes. If you take those out, the reduction is 30%. We have been able to start more homes compared to last year. We started 957 homes in the quarter. The operating income, SEK 358 million, which corresponds to 12.1% operating margin, which is above our target. We also have are above our target when it comes to return on capital employed of 11%. We have been able to bring new projects to the market. Since we have a very strong financial position, good pipeline, good land bank, we can start project when we feel it's right. We are not dependent on the credit market in that sense.

We have been able to delivering good profitability. Commercial Property Development, operating income of SEK 800 million with gain on sale from divestment slightly above SEK 1 billion. In those divestments, we have two large projects in Sweden that are sold before construction start. It's of course natural for us to be a bit conservative when we recognize the profit in this quarter. Return on capital employed above the target 10.8% on a rolling 12. We have 37 ongoing projects, which corresponds to SEK 30 billion in investments upon completion. We have an estimated market value of those close to SEK 38 billion. 33% occupancy rate versus 45% completion rate. That is a gap that we follow very carefully. The gap should not be too big.

Right now we can see some higher activity in the leasing market, especially here in the Nordic operation. That is something we follow very carefully. Seven projects started in Q2, and we have continued to see a solid appetite from investors. There's a lot of capital out there in the market, and our portfolio, our projects, they are really attractive. High quality, high standards when it comes to environmental and other matters. Leasing market remains relatively slow. We have leased 47,000 square meters in the quarter. As I said, we saw some higher activity in Q2, so that's something we work hard with.

Finally, the last stream here, Investment Properties, is a new business stream this year, and we're targeting high quality, sustainable office, and to build up a portfolio over the years, coming years to SEK 12 billion-SEK 18 billion. That will give us a strong, stable cash flow, and we also see potential to increase the value even further compared to when we divested the projects, upon completion. The first project is transferred, Epic building in Malmö. That was transferred in Q1, and we are preparing for more transactions to Investment Properties. We have a good pipeline for that. I look forward to that.

If I go back to Construction and looking more deeper into the order bookings, here you can see over the years, over the last five years, the development on the order backlog, as I said, record high right now. You can see on a rolling 12-month basis the development on the order bookings. You can also see the orange line order bookings per quarter, and also revenue and book-to-bill ratio. As I mentioned, record high on order bookings in the quarter, as you can see, is on an average level if you look five years back. If I go into each geography, when it comes to order bookings, strong overall, strong backlog, and we have 17 months of production. You can see Sweden slightly above 101% book-to-bill. Overall, we have 95% book-to-bill ratio.

Somewhat lower in Europe, but that's not a surprise for me since we have, especially in Central Europe, have been more impacted by the war in Ukraine. We have been very careful and selective when we bid for new projects there. Overall, a good position. You can see U.S. 96% book-to-bill, but a very healthy backlog, 19 months of production. This is something I'm quite comfortable with. With that, I'll leave it to Magnus to go deeper into the figures.

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

Thank you, Anders. We start with the Construction business stream. We had revenues of close to SEK 40 billion in the isolated quarter, which is then up from the comparable quarter last year. If you look at this in local currencies, it's up 14%. And it's quite a large impact here of FX, in particular the dollar exchange rate that has moved a lot. And given that we have just shy of around 45% of the revenues in Construction comes from the U.S. market, that has a pretty big impact on the revenue as we report in Swedish krona. Slightly lower gross margin, 7.4% compared to 8.9%. Again, as Anders has already pointed out, we divested the infrastructure services business in the U.K. in the comparison quarter.

If you strip that outlier 7.7% last year. Good S&A control. We are nominally went up a couple of 100 million, but if you look on the S&A margin, 4% flat. I think that's a very respectable number here. Takes us down to an EBIT of SEK 1.4 billion, a 3.4% margin, which is also where we're trading on a rolling 12 months. Sort of long term, we are now up and basically performing at our target level, shy of a basis point or so. No material non-recurring items of any materiality that you should be aware of in the second quarter. If we move to the geographies, in the Nordics, we basically delivered the same level of profit, SEK 549 million compared to last year.

In Sweden, SEK 310 million compared to SEK 308 million last year. Slightly lower margins though, which falls within sort of normal quarter variation here. In Europe, profits were lower. Again, if you take out infrastructure services, we were actually growing profits in Europe. Margins are of course in the comparable quarter also heavily affected by this divestment. U.S. continues to improve 3.3% margin in the quarter compared to 2.8%. Really sort of a strong performance here from the U.S. Construction businesses. If we move then into Residential Development, we had revenue in the quarter of SEK 3 billion, down approximately 30%.

Market really started to slow down, I would say, mid-May and then into June. This has an impact on sales levels, of course. It's already been pointed out, we had an unusually active sales actually in the second quarter last year. No rental divestments in the numbers here. We had one rental divestment in the second quarter of last year. Strong margins, close to 20% on a gross level, very good. Of course, S&A margin is a bit on the high side there, 7.7%, completely due to the fact that the volumes are coming down then.

Leaving us with a very respectable 12.1% margin, EBIT margin, for the quarter, which is basically where we are trading also long-term, if you look at the rolling 12 months or 12.5%. A very strong performance from the Residential Development business. Looking at the different geographies, all geographies essentially perform well. Market has perhaps softened the quickest in Sweden here, but profitability has definitely kept up very well. In Europe, if you look at the margins, they are coming down, but this is also a very good performance in this business here. The margins here are in fact starting to get impacted by the newly established BoKlok business in the U.K., which we are ramping up.

Of course, when you establish a business in a new market, you need to invest both in organization, and you need to invest in a land bank and so on, and that is often before you really start to get sort of the positive benefits of a profit. We have somewhat of a margin dilution due to that, but that's for a positive reason then, I should add. Homes started and sold, we started roughly the same amount as we did last year, slightly up, 957 units. Sales, 680 units, then 140 units were a rental residential divestment in the comparison quarter. Overall, we continue to start around 4,000 units here on a rolling 12-month basis.

It has increased a little bit up from, say, 3,500 up to now just north of 4,000 units on a rolling 12-month basis, which you can see in the graphics here if you look at the green line. Continue to build up the Residential Development portfolio. Homes in production, we have around 8,200 units in ongoing production, a very solid sales rate of 72%, and basically no issue at all with unsold completed homes. Super stable position in this portfolio, which essentially means that we can continue to start projects that are attractive to us, and we are not in a position today where the level of risk in our residential portfolio is really a limiting factor for us starting new projects.

If we find commercially attractive projects, we definitely have the capacity to start them. If we go into Commercial Property Development, gains, SEK 1 billion. We made sort of two larger divestments, I would say, in the quarter, one in Stockholm and one in Poland, and on top of that, a number of smaller transactions. I think it's important, as Anders pointed out earlier also, that in this quarter, it was a little bit special because we divested a couple of properties where we still sit with a full construction risk.

Of course, in that situation, especially when you take into account the market context with the sort of cost escalations and commodity pricing, we are being quite cautious in the profit recognition to make sure that we have adequate reserves and provisions to cover those risks for the future, which is the explanation as to why the development margin looks a bit lower here. If we look at unrealized and realized gains, if you take the total investment value of the portfolio when all the ongoing projects are completed, and you include land, and you include all the completed properties, that's approximately SEK 50 billion. It's a very large portfolio we have here then. Out of this, we have sold but not yet handed over properties for approximately SEK 7 billion.

The remaining SEK 43 billion, that's what you sort of look at on this chart there. The surplus value of the remaining SEK 43 billion is approximately SEK 10 billion, and you can see the distribution here. Though, of course, the majority of the surplus is in the ongoing project, SEK 6.3 billion then. Roughly unchanged since the first quarter, despite the fact that we realized gains of SEK 1 billion in this quarter. And as usual, you can look at the orange line there. Rolling 12 months, we're still realizing approximately SEK 4 billion in gains on an annual basis out of this portfolio. We continue to generate strong values underlying here.

If you look at the completion profile, we have completed but yet unsold properties to a value of SEK 6.2 billion, end of the second quarter, these were leased to 73%, that's roughly the same number as we had in the last quarter, even if there is a sort of a churn of the properties here. We sell some, and then we add some that are completed, of course. If you then look at the blue bars, that's that represents the 24 ongoing but yet unsold projects that we have in the portfolio. The bar shows the total investment value at completion for those properties in the quarter we expect them to be completed. Then the green dots represent the current leasing rate of the different properties.

What you can see here is that we expect very little completions in the third quarter this year, and then towards the end of the year, in the fourth quarter, quite a lot more. Overall, we have sort of a forward-heavy, if you will, completion profile of this portfolio, as it looks now. Leasing remains quite slow. We leased 47,000 square meters in the quarter isolated. You know, clients are still a bit unclear about sort of their business need in terms of space here, and flexibility remains key, which can be break options, expansion options, contraction options, all sorts of different parameters that you can introduce to sort of give flexibility for tenants.

In awaiting that clarity, we see more clients rolling existing leases or renegotiating them for shorter maturities in a way that makes them sort of keep their flexibility, but at the same time wait a little bit with making sort of a real decision to move into a new space. That's basically the market dynamics there now. If we go into Investment Properties, we had an operating net of SEK 8 million in the quarter. Obviously, the comparison quarter, we had nothing. Very slim organization, so the S&A costs are rounded here to zero. We have made no change in the value of the only property we have in the portfolio so far. Takes us down to an operating income here of SEK 8 million in the isolated quarter.

If we look at the group central items, -155, looks a bit higher than last year, but in reality, the underlying running costs are virtually unchanged. The changes you see here in the accounting is due to legacy and some accounting items. We have net financial items. With the changes that we see on the financial markets and the rates going up, we're of course coming in a better situation in terms of how we can handle our net cash position, and we're starting to be able to make more money out of deposits and short-term placements that we have here. That's of course very positive. Taxes, we taxed out at 21%, which is higher than sort of what we're used to.

The reason for that is that we have a lesser degree of the profits in the quarter came from tax-exempt property divestments. We end up closer to our nominal tax rate, of course. Comparison quarter, 16% tax, we were successful in utilizing past losses for tax deductions in 2021, which contributes to the low tax rate we had in the last year. If we look at the cash flow, we had a small negative cash flow in the isolated quarter, SEK 0.5 billion. On top of that, of course, the dividend distribution that took place during the second quarter takes us down to the total cash flow then of - SEK 4.8 billion.

This essentially means that we are reinvesting all our cash profits into new land and new development projects, building up the portfolio for the future. Free working capital and Construction by and large unchanged compared to what we reported in the first quarter. We have approximately SEK 29 billion in net working capital, representing 19% of the revenue here. Cash flow from working capital and Construction was slightly negative, -SEK 0.9 billion, so there is somewhat of a currency effect in play here in the balance sheet items. If we look at investments, we are continuing to move deeper into net investment territory and building up the portfolios for future divestments. This is both for Residential and Commercial Development and very much in line with what we have communicated as our ambitions for quite some time here now.

You can see capital employed is growing in both business streams, RD and CD. I think we, for Investment Properties, obviously, it grows SEK 800 million due to the single property we have in that portfolio yet as well. In terms of funding, we have SEK 3.6 billion in external funding. No maturities coming up this year. Next year, we have one loan and one bond that will mature SEK 16.4 billion of available funds. Plenty of ammunition for us and very low level of reliance on the credit market in order to execute on our strategy and continue to build up our portfolio for creating the profits in the future quarters there. Financial position, super strong. We had an equity position end of the quarter, SEK 48 billion, adjusted net cash of SEK 11 billion.

And of course, as already said, w ith the balance sheet like this, low reliance on the credit markets puts us in a position where we can act on opportunities when they come. We don't have to sort of wait for others to agree on that opportunity, if you will, and we can start projects when we want to start projects. We can judge whatever comes our way purely on its commercial benefit for Skanska, and then we have the ability to act on it. I think, given where we are in the market, we are in a very strong position to make the best out of that.

Anders Danielsson
President and CEO, Skanska

Okay. I will continue with the market outlook. It's pretty much unchanged compared to the last quarter. If I start with Construction, we can see a stable non-residential market in Sweden, Norway, and U.S. If I look at the rest of Europe, Finland and Central Europe, it's a bit more weaker market on a non-residential market. Building residential weaker market in the Nordics, more stable in Europe. The civil market is overall stable in Europe and strong in the U.S. That was the same outlook as last year. Residential Development more softer market. We have weak market outlook in the Nordics, stable in Europe. We can see that more uncertainty since the inflation and interest rates go up.

Having said that, the low employment levels and structural shortage of homes in our market, we expect that to stabilize over time. We see that cost escalation might lead to projects being postponed in the market. Commercial Property Development, the investment market remains strong, and we can see that leasing volumes are still not back on pre-pandemic levels. We can see some higher activity in the second quarter, especially in the Nordics. To summarize this presentation, good performance in the second quarter. Construction delivering strong result. Residential Development maintaining the profitability level. Commercial Property Development, high levels of activity and good profitability levels on the divestments. Investment Properties establishing business, and we have a robust financial position. Our strategic direction remains. We will continue to improve profitability and grow responsibly in Construction.

We shall be the leading residential developer in our markets, and we have an ambition to continue to grow the Commercial Property Development. The plan to build up Investment Properties portfolio is solid, and we are following that plan. With that, I leave it back to Antonia to start up the Q&A.

Antonia Junelind
SVP of Investor Relations, Skanska

Yes. Thank you, Anders and Magnus, for taking us through the second quarter result. Now it's time for the questions. As I mentioned at the start of this call, you can either send in your questions on the webcast page, or you can ask your questions on the phone conference. I will now start with asking the operator to provide further instructions and to introduce the first caller.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch- tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are required to use only handsets while asking the question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. First question is from the line of Pam Liu from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Pam Liu
Equity Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay, thank you very much. I have three questions, please. The first one is if I look at Construction, in terms of the EBIT margin, in the Nordics, outside Sweden, that seems to have deteriorated more than the margin in Sweden. Could you please provide a bit more color on that? The second question is with regards to residential. Yes, the number of homes started has increased overall in the quarter, but I think that is driven by a decrease in the Nordics and an increase in Europe. Is that all to do with BoKlok? If that's the case, given that BoKlok is the more affordable housing units range, are we therefore expecting to see a lower margin anyway just because of the product mix?

The final question is Commercial Development. Can I please understand a bit more about how the market appraisal value is estimated? For this quarter, the market appraisal value for commercial is SEK 62 billion. That is a 24% premium to the investment value upon completion of SEK 50 billion. That seems to be quite high to me in today's environment with the rising interest rate and of course you have negative outlook across geographies in commercial anyway. Am I missing something here? Thank you.

Anders Danielsson
President and CEO, Skanska

Thank you, Pam, for your question. I will start with the first one, and then Magnus will answer the second and third one. When it comes to Construction and the EBIT margin in the Nordics, I'm not satisfied with the margin we have, we can see now in Sweden. I expect them to deliver more in the Construction stream. We have an action plan in place to continue to increase the margin there. That's that work is ongoing and I expect them to come back in the future here. That was a comment if. The second one was on Residential Development Europe.

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

Yeah. Hi, Pam, Magnus here. Bit unsure if I fully understood your second question, but if I sort of think you were asking whether or not BoKlok has sort of is the reason to why we are starting less units in Sweden. Was that correct?

Anders Danielsson
President and CEO, Skanska

No, no, in Europe.

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

In Europe?

Pam Liu
Equity Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

No. What I'm observing is you are starting less in the Nordics, which I could understand because of the interest rate environment, etc . What I'm also noting is that you are starting up significantly more in Europe. I'm just wondering if that is to do with BoKlok, and if that's the case, does that have any margin impact? Because I assume that is the more affordable housing options, and I just want to understand how that impact the margin. Thank you.

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

Okay. Fully understood. Well, of course, part of the units that are started in the European segment is related to BoKlok, definitely. Then it takes some time to move them from start into sales, obviously. As we grow this business, we will see an increasing share of the units that are started in the European RD segment actually come from BoKlok in the U.K. That's absolutely correct. The business model as it is that the BoKlok business model is normally sort of a higher return, lower margin business model than what we have in our traditional Residential Development business. Of course, you know, depending on the pace of development, it should sort of alter the KPIs a little bit. But it's not big enough sort of to make any firm conclusions on that.

In Sweden, we reduced the starts a bit. I would say it's a bit premature to connect that to rising interest rates during this quarter. It's essentially during the quarter that we've seen the biggest uptakes and the most sort of impact on the financial markets when it comes to to the rates here. Starts and the planning of starts is a little bit more long-term than that. I hope that was a sufficient answer to your second question. In terms of your question regarding CD, how the appraisal is done.

Well, essentially what we do is that when we start a project, we have an assessment of what the market is, both in terms of rents, and in terms of yields to take sort of the most obvious parameters when we start a project. These are, of course, very cautious because we have a business case to protect always, and we only start projects when we're quite comfortable that at the end of the day, we can sort of lead that business case into fruition. We don't change these parameters until we have a sort of a market sounding in place and we have completed a larger part of the property, start to talk to the market around that. That's the way this is done.

I'm not sure. I sort of on your surplus values here, what you should look at is the surplus values, and you need to relate that to the total value. Essentially, the SEK 10 billion in surplus value that we report or inform about, it is not in our books obviously, is to be related to the SEK 43 billion of total investments, which makes a surplus of, say, roughly 25% then. That is where we're running the portfolio at the moment. Does that make sense?

Pam Liu
Equity Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Okay, cool. Thank you.

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

Yeah. Thank you.

Pam Liu
Equity Research Analyst, Morgan Stanley

Yes, it does. Thank you.

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

Thank you.

Anders Danielsson
President and CEO, Skanska

Next question is from the line of Gregor Kuglitsch from UBS. Please go ahead.

Gregor Kuglitsch
Equity Research Analyst, UBS

Good morning. I only have one question, perhaps for both to apply to both the commercial and the residential business. Maybe starting residential. I think we're seeing some price erosion in Sweden if you look at the macro data. Want to understand how you deal with that, and whether you're sort of following the market when it comes to sort of pricing, and if we've seen that already in the quarter or if that's more ahead. Then similarly on commercial, is there a point where you appreciate that you're trying to lease first before you sell, but is there a point also where you decide on perhaps taking a price cut to shift or are you more inclined to hold out for kind of the prices that you had in mind when you started a project? Thank you.

Anders Danielsson
President and CEO, Skanska

Thank you, Gregor. Residential Development, the price erosion. We have seen now more hesitant market. We can see that in the second-hand market, the buyers and sellers in Sweden, they're not really meeting each other. They have different expectations. We expect that to continue for some time. That's due to the, of course, the interest rate has gone up, and the buyers are more hesitant. What we have seen in our portfolio is we have not reduced the prices. We have a good position since we have out of the 8,200 homes in production, 72% is already sold. We don't have any urgent need to reduce the prices.

Having said that, of course, when we start new projects, we are very careful with the market analysis and the price level we can expect from those projects. That is, we price every project on individual level and look at the individual business case. That remains to be seen.

Gregor Kuglitsch
Equity Research Analyst, UBS

Okay.

Anders Danielsson
President and CEO, Skanska

Magnus, the second question.

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

Yeah. Hi, Gregor . On commercial, you asked, is there any point in time where we shift prices, et c? Of course there is if there's a need to it. I mean, as I explained to Pam a couple of minutes ago, what we do normally is that we have a business case that we feel very certain on, and that business case is normally what guides our sort of the valuation that we report or inform in the quarterly report about. Of course, if we see major market shifts, then you know, we would have to address that as well. Otherwise, we do external valuations of all the properties once every year to sort of confirm that we are correct in that.

Since our properties are completed and expected to be sold at very different points in time, which you can see also on the chart that illustrates the completion profile that I showed you earlier in the presentation here, for us, it's very much to understand where is the market at that point in time, and that is a very difficult game to play. Essentially, we try to sort of be very long-term in those assessments. It's not like we go and shift yields every quarter unless there's a very sort of strong indication that the value would be wrong. That's not what we see at the moment. In terms of rents then, which is the other component that's very important to understand, we continuously lease and sort of track the market there.

We have a good risk tolerance and a strong balance sheet, so we don't have to do any fire sales of our properties in order to recoup cash or anything like that. That is very important for us. We try to use our financial strength to sort of get the most commercial benefit out of the portfolio we have as possible. If that means waiting somewhat longer with leasing or with sales, if we think the market is coming back, then that is the right commercial decision for us. Of course, we evaluate these things constantly to make sure we are not sort of standing on our heels when the market shifts. That's not what we're doing.

Gregor Kuglitsch
Equity Research Analyst, UBS

Thank you. That was helpful.

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

Sure, thank you.

Operator

Next question is from the line of Marcin Wojtal from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Marcin Wojtal
Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

Yes. Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my questions. Firstly, if I may, on the residential, can you remind us what percentage of your residential business is actually the BoKlok concept? And do you believe it will be materially more resilient than the rest of the housing market, in particular in Sweden? And then perhaps on Construction, can you comment in a bit more detail on your U.S. Construction business where you are improving margins? Would you say you are already fully satisfied with where you are, or can you improve even more? Also, how are you managing cost inflation in the U.S.? Because my understanding is that I think some of these projects in civil are at fixed prices, at least to some extent.

Thank you.

Anders Danielsson
President and CEO, Skanska

Okay. The first question, the BoKlok portfolio is, it's overall, if we compare it, vast majority of the BoKlok is in the Swedish business. Magnus, you are looking to the fine details.

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

Yeah. I mean, we obviously don't report BoKlok separately externally, but you could say it's somewhere 20%-30%, I'll say, of the overall portfolio, and that goes a little bit up and down. Obviously in a market situation like this, we would expect BoKlok to be sort of very resilient because they are in a market segment and are always in a market segment that's sort of more affordable. Being a bit cautious with terms here because the use of the term affordable varies a lot across different markets. But they're aiming towards a different customer category. That is also what we've seen historically, that that's the way the market plays out.

Anders Danielsson
President and CEO, Skanska

Okay. When it comes to the U.S. Construction margins, as we reported earlier, they are back on track. They're performing on a high level. That is good, and we expect them to continue to deliver. When it comes to cost escalation in the U.S., when it comes to the building part, we are not so hit by the increased cost because we have a lower risk and a low margin business model. On the civil side, though, we have some part of the business with the fixed prices.

What we have done, what we are doing there, that we are very careful when we go into projects to secure prices in the supply chain. We secure as much as possible when it comes to steel and other materials before we even bid for projects. We have a process and risk assessment for that in place. We're also discussing, or we can see more contracts where we have inflation clauses in the contract, so we get compensated for cost escalation. In some cases, we can take out some part of the material that has been very volatile in the past here. We have been able to mitigate the cost escalation in the Construction stream overall, including U.S.

Marcin Wojtal
Equity Research Analyst, Bank of America

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask any further questions, please press star and one on your telephone. Next question is from the line of Stefan Andersson from SEB. Please go ahead.

Stefan Andersson
Senior Equity Research Analyst, SEB

Thank you. First, also a question on the development side, I guess. Or actually starting connected to that with your Property Management business. You mentioned early there in the presentation that you said that the pipeline looks good and, in a way you control that pipeline. I'm a little bit curious on what you mean by that. If you can indicate to us, you know, when you think you will see further acquisitions, between those two divisions.

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

Hey, Stefan, Magnus here. Could you repeat the question? There's a question about pipeline and how we look upon that we mentioned in the early parts of the presentation, but what part of the business are you referring to?

Stefan Andersson
Senior Equity Research Analyst, SEB

The Property Management division, the newly started, where you have. You're managing the properties, where you haven't bought that many yet. You said that the pipeline looks good to grow that, if I didn't misunderstand you. I was just curious on what your thinking are about moving over properties from CD to, you don't call it Property Management, you call it, sorry. You have another name. I hope you understand.

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

I fully understand your question. Sorry about that misunderstanding. You're talking about Investment Properties. And the pipeline there is good. This is a business where we acquire properties from Commercial Development in the Nordics. We have said that it pertains to Sweden. What we're really referring to there is that we have a good pipeline of projects in Commercial Development Nordics. And then of course, we don't decide if we're going to sell these properties externally or internally to Investment Properties then until they are ready to be sold. Of course we see that there are plenty of opportunities given the strong portfolio we have in the Nordic development business. Does that make sense as a further explanation to you?

Stefan Andersson
Senior Equity Research Analyst, SEB

Absolutely. Let me put it this way then. Do you expect any of those properties to be, you know, moved over or co-acquired already this year? Or should we expect it later than 2022?

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

I mean, we don't comment on future divestment plans, obviously. You have the completion profile that we show you, and you can also see that we have SEK 6.2 billion in properties that are already completed but yet unsold. So, yeah, we have to wait and see.

Stefan Andersson
Senior Equity Research Analyst, SEB

That's fine, thank you. On the CDs on Commercial Development. The transaction market for properties are holding up surprisingly well. I think you've seen the real estate companies have even increased the values of properties in this quarter. Very few write-downs while the stock market, of course, is focusing on raising financial costs and the bond market that's collapsing. I'm extremely curious to hear what you see in your discussions. Are you still seeing a good interest for properties or are you seeing any, you know, hesitation or drop in interest?

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

Currently we don't see any hesitations or having a difficult discussions around that actually. Our investors are sort of willing to pay a very good price for our properties. We sort of from the 10,000-foot perspective can understand that it's on the market looks a bit different. That's in reality the discussions we have, which also informs our view when we sort of look at new projects and also valuations.

Stefan Andersson
Senior Equity Research Analyst, SEB

Perfect, thank you. On residential, looking at your presale level, booking levels, they're rather high. I guess in a way you could have started more than you've done. There should be some kind of bottleneck here. I'm just a little bit curious, and it differs in different markets. I fully understand that. Is it building permits or that is the bottleneck at the moment, or is the price cost per the project that you're looking at, or is it the demand, if you were to pick one of those three?

Anders Danielsson
President and CEO, Skanska

I would say I would pick permits. It takes a long time to get permits to construct residential now, especially in the market where we are operating. That is definitely a bottleneck. We start projects because we have the ability, we believe in the market in the longer term, and we see it as a competitive advantage since some actors in the market are more dependent on the credit market and we're not. We can start projects with a lower sales rate and to be able to sell those in closer to completion. Because today it's very hesitant and people are not willing to sign up for an apartment two years ahead of completion. That's why we can start more projects, but we need the permits obviously.

Stefan Andersson
Senior Equity Research Analyst, SEB

Okay, good. The final question, really quickly on Construction. We've seen some input costs, material costs coming down a little bit. How is your suppliers behaving here? Are you managing to follow down as well? It's always easier to push everyone up, I get that, I guess. But are you seeing the reversal as well in it to any extent?

Anders Danielsson
President and CEO, Skanska

Yeah, we can see now, especially in the end of the second quarter, that it's easier for us to get fixed prices from the supply chain. We see less pressure upwards on the cost. That is encouraging. It's easier for us to do what we should to secure as much as possible before we bid for projects.

Stefan Andersson
Senior Equity Research Analyst, SEB

Okay, thank you. That's all my questions.

Operator

Next question is from the line, Markus Henriksson from ABG. Please go ahead.

Markus Henriksson
Senior Equity Research Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Thank you very much. I just have a follow-up related to the transaction market, but instead for building rights and land bank, do you see any opportunities there already or is it too early?

Magnus Persson
CFO, Skanska Group

Hi there. Magnus here. I think we see some opportunities, but I think it's a little bit early for us. And we sort of think that if the market continues to develop in the current direction, we're pretty convinced that there will be significant opportunities for us down the line there. It might be a little bit early to get to the really, really good deals yet.

Markus Henriksson
Senior Equity Research Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Very clear on that. Thank you very much.

Operator

For any further questions, please press star followed by one on your telephone.

Antonia Junelind
SVP of Investor Relations, Skanska

That means that we have no further questions now. Thank you for asking those questions. Magnus and Anders, thanks for your answers. It's now time for us to close this earnings call. Thank you for listening, and a recorded version of this audio cast will be available on our webpage afterwards. Thank you for now. See you back here for the third quarter report. Have a nice summer.

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