Welcome to Studsvik Q3 2024 report presentation. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to CEO Karl Thedéen and CFO Peter Teske. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and welcome to Studsvik's interim report for quarter three, twenty twenty-four. As you know, I'm the new CEO since a couple of days back. So to make this really good, I'm actively supported by my CFO, Peter, and he will also start the presentation of the Q3. Please, Peter.
Thank you, Carl. We'll take you through the group financials on the top level, and as most I think you have read in the report, we have a challenging quarter behind us. We see, and that's one reason about that is because of the fraud that we had in Scandpower in the U.S. during August this summer. One positive thing about that is that we have a less impact on that, on the financials compared to what we said in the press release during August, and on that fraud there are still ongoing investigations in that one, but the impact in the financials in the quarter is around 10.1 million SEK. If we look in our group net sales, we see that we are improving our sales.
They are higher compared to last year and also the same quarter last year. But we have... We're not achieving our goals compared to last year, but and that's mainly in the, in our business in Sweden, in FMT, that we're not reaching them, because as we have written, there is some problems in the production there, but we will come back to that later. But also, we need to mention that our Scandpower business and the decommissioning and radiation protection services are having higher net sales and also higher results compared to the quarter last year and also compared to the full year last year. Yeah. And due to this, as you understand and see in the numbers, we have a challenging also on our cash flow, and that's also because of perhaps three big things.
And that's one is our investment levels that are bigger, and one thing is the demonstration facility in the inDRUM, that Carl will talk a little bit more later on. But also, we made some media investments here at Studsvik site in Nyköping, and that's affecting, especially in the Q3, cash flow. We also did the acquisition of Extreme Borehole Source, the first of July, and there we already see positive effects on the financials in this quarter, but also. And we think that's gonna be much more positive in the next coming months and next year. But also one thing that affects our cash flow negative is, of course, our lower operating profit, and that's 19.6 million SEK less compared to the same period last year.
Due to this, of course, we are focusing a lot on the cash management within the group, and just a big focus on that one right now. If you then go further down and talk about our business areas, we will start with the Decommissioning and Radiation Protection Services. As I mentioned before, this is a stable quarter for them, and also compared to last year, they have higher sales, both in the quarter and compared to last year. We see the operating profits also higher this year, this quarter compared to last quarter. And one thing about this is due to the acquisition of the Extreme Borehole Source technique, and that we see that we have a lot of positive things ongoing and positive discussions, so it will support the rest of the Studsvik group in a good way.
And gladly also is for 2025 and 2026, as our Sweden in Switzerland, we have signed a new framework agreement that will secure a stable level of business in the market for next coming two years. And if we go further to Fuel and Materials Technology, we have also here, positive when we see on the higher sales compares to last year, and also the same quarter last year... But we have, as we wrote in the report, also negative earnings due to during the quarter, and also that's because of the technical production disruptions we have. And that's one thing that we are focusing a lot right now, and that's streamlining the work in the production facilities, and also a lot of focus to work with the order backlog, so we can produce and make more revenues.
Carl, I will leave it to you to talk about Scandpower.
Thank you very much. You can take the next slide, please. As you know, Scandpower is a combination of engineering, but primarily a software business. The software is written or, designed by highly skilled, scientists in our area of business, i.e., the nuclear area, but obviously also with software skills. We have a very strong development in this business, for the year and also the quarter. We have also signed, new customers in this quarter, so it's a strong underlying positive trend, both on top line and, not to say the least, on earnings. Obviously, the draw that, we announced in August did hamper the profitability, but if you put that back, you can all see that this is a very, very strong business in the quarter, with a bit of, unfortunate situation with the, with the fraud.
This is also if you go to next slide, please. Focus now is obviously to continue to drive orders, and we have a good order signed. Also, the U.S. market is interesting here. It remains very strong. You may have seen the announcements of new investments from global players into the nuclear business in the U.S., and that is obviously both resulting in maintaining and modernizing existing plants, also taking some of the ones that have been in standby to bring back service and a plan to build new ones. This whole momentum brings a very dynamic situation in the U.S. market.
For me, coming in new, I see both opportunities to continue to develop this market, but also that the U.S. can be an interesting market based on the very skilled and knowledgeable and team with a lot of customer contacts to see what more we can do with this, for example, M&A, and also bringing more of our other products to the U.S. market. So very pleased with the development of Scandpower and the U.S. market. Next slide, please. Waste Management technology, and this is then based in an engineering service, where we support our customers with how to handle waste. But we have also here introduced a new IP and new technology to reduce the waste called inDRUM.
It's a disappointing quarter, based on that, one of the ways we sell inDRUM, sell licenses on the technology, that's been a bit slower, and also the engineering service has been a bit slower. Initially now, after a couple of days, I see positive opportunities. If you skip to the next slide, please. inDRUM is pretty easy to understand. It reduces volume of waste and makes it disposable. We have invested, as Peter alluded to, a demonstration line here, if you like, of this, where we can demonstrate how this affects mainly the volume of waste that customers can run in this demo equipment.
We have already customers lined up for Q4 and more to come in Q1, and hopefully this will also then drive their interest to actually invest in licenses and build outs of this technology, when they can actually see how good it is working, live here in Switzerland, so this is also similar to EBS, a product, an IP, that we can more easily scale worldwide than some of our other services, so finally, obviously, the quarter is a disappointment, not necessarily on top line, but on profitability, which is, in my view, easier to fix, and I see a lot of opportunities. I'm very happy to join. It's a great team. There is a lot of opportunities for growth in the existing product and services range that we offer the market.
We have a fantastic market position with a very high confidence, and we are a very highly recognized brand. Also to be independent, not part of any state-owned organizations, but there are a lot of work to be done here, of course, to make this business even better, with high growth and high profitability, and that's one of the some of the things we're focusing on, so obviously, the FMT business that is predominantly managed and delivered out of Switzerland in Sweden needs to increase their profitability dramatically, and that's what we focus on now going through next year. In general, as an incoming CEO, I will see opportunities for streamlining and improving efficiency in the company, and we will also look into that to make sure that I have the right setup for driving this company.
There are definitely investments in organic growth that we need to do, and we need to identify what are the best areas to really invest more in to get more growth from those faster into 2025 and beyond. As was described in the press release for my announcement, there is also possibility here for M&A, and one of the works we're starting now is to create a strategy where to look and a process for building that M&A pipeline, including strategic partnership, because this is obviously a market that is dominated by some big players, and there could be ways for us to operate together with them for certain opportunities.
And then, I hope that we, over time, will be better and better to actually explain exactly what our business is all about and what different trends in the market are driving the different businesses. The general positiveness around nuclear is positive, but I want to be very clear on exactly what is driving forth, and we will come back to that when we have our Q4 report, how we can describe our business, so it's easier to understand what is driving what. So with that, I think then I can open up for questions on the Q3 report, please.
The next question comes from Stefan, from ABG. Please go ahead.
Hello, Carl and Peter. A question first on fuel and materials, just to understand if the production disruptions are resolved and how much they affected, because I can see sales being down 10% quarter over quarter, year-over-year. But you also have a higher OpEx level, so it obviously affects the operating profit even more. Just to get an understanding on how much, like, the negative effects were here in the quarter.
I think that we have, yeah, because we are working on the business to streamline the organization also, of course, and there are other things also affecting in the quarter for FMT. For example, we have, as we read in the press, in the report also, like SEK 4 million in costs for a fuel transportation. So that's also affecting the result, of course.
Maybe if I can comment as well. As I have discussed this with the team, we have orders to work on. Many of these orders are very long-term, and obviously, the more we work on them, then we take that into the result, and then we also invoice on milestones to our customers. And basically, that's where we need to be stronger and more making sure that we meet those deadlines, so that we can invoice and we can account it for revenue. And that's basically what we are now looking over, what we can do better there. Obviously, it would be worse if we had no orders to work on. That's not the case.
We have orders to work on, but we just need to be more efficient, how we spend our time and how we allocate, for example, laboratory time for the different projects on. So there are reviews ongoing on that as we speak, to make sure that we can drive that, you know, quarter by quarter to become more efficient.
But the tactical issues that you had in the quarter, they are resolved, so you don't expect any impact from them in Q4?
No, but tactical is tactical could be, it's not stopping like that. It could be a problem in a lab. It could be a problem in lab tomorrow again, you know, those types of things are happening. What I see, it's important is that if you have problems, that you have high alert, that you do everything to resolve them as quick as ever possible. You can get the labs up as one example. So that's what I'm reviewing and, you know, I think you can always try to do things faster, so the hiccups that you will see in all projects are resolved faster, you can deliver better. That's the big one. But we have no. It's not that labs are on a standstill, they're not working.
These are a combination of smaller things that will add up, that has added up to this sort of negative implications.
Okay, perfect. Then I have a follow-up on Scandpower. Obviously, you talked a lot about the fraud there, but if I just extrapolate the fraud from the numbers, it looks like you had a really positive operating profit here in Q3. Was it like a large effect from license sales of the GARDEL software, or do you think that you are on a new higher level in terms of underlying profitability already?
I think we should be a bit careful of, you know, because I also did the math, and then it looks extremely positive, but also the invoicing and how we account for things there is a bit back-ended, I think, in the year compared to the beginning of the year. But yeah, there is, over the years, you can see there is momentum in the business, and every dollar that comes in there comes with a strong growth margin. So yeah, correct. But I wouldn't just, you know, extrapolate that super high earnings if you take the 10 million back for what this business can deliver.
Yeah, that is clear. That was all for me. Thank you very much for your answers.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for closing comments.
So, thank you for listening to our Q3 report, and we will get back with the Q4 report in next year. So, see you then. Thank you.
Thank you.