Teqnion AB (publ) (STO:TEQ)
Sweden flag Sweden · Delayed Price · Currency is SEK
156.00
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May 5, 2026, 5:29 PM CET
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Earnings Call: Q1 2024

Apr 23, 2024

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Teqnion 2024 Q1 Q&A. Today is the Teqnion AGM, and due to logistical reasons, that is also the reason why we released our report today instead of on Saturdays, which is our preferred option. We are, as you have noticed, not in our home office today either. We are in the borrowed office due to the AGM that is coming up in a couple of hours. As you have noticed, we have also changed our reporting language from Swedish to English due to the growing share of our partners, and also businesses are international, so we thought that would make sense. As usual, we will alternate a little bit between the questions that have come in through our Q&A email and the live chat.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

That is new, right?

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

That is new.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Q&A email.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

It's easy to keep track of everything.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

qa@teqnion.se.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yes. Before we begin with the Q&A, maybe just a few words from you.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. 1.5 hours ago, we released our Q1 report. It shows that we are still struggling, generally in the economic situation that we're in. More or less, the operations are just running along as it should. We still have difficulties of selling wooden houses in Sweden, as you might understand. And gladly enough, we actually had some good order intake here the last couple of months, which means that we have at least some things to do, at least up until summer. But I don't think that we have seen a big trend in that industry yet, but hopefully still some good signs anyway. Otherwise, we have good operation in the electronic components, in the electronic and electrical component sales, and also in defense sales. We are very happy that we can welcome a couple of new colleagues.

Actually, there will be three, but the third one will start in a week or so. We have Anneli, a new accounting expert, working together with Maria. We have Patrik, a new CEO coach that will focus on our U.K. and Irish companies as a point of contact for them from our side. Fantastic people, and I'm very, very happy to welcome them into our little Teqnion team. Now, at the end of the month, we will actually be nine employees in our little office. Fantastic times. Yeah, we have also a rather poor cash flow in the Q1, mainly due to that we sold a lot, so a lot of the cash is actually tied up in accounts receivable. In one way, that is good, maybe. Hopefully, we will see that soon.

On the other hand, we don't look at our operations or business in a quarterly perspective, so it will always fluctuate, of course, over a quarter or two. Yeah.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yep, thank you. So it seems like for every quarter, we have one favorite question. Last quarter, the favorite question was, "Did I buy or sell shares?" I have not done that since last time. This quarter's favorite question is regarding goodwill and accounting. It's quite seldom that people are so interested in those arcane stuff. And I guess the underlying question that we have received a lot regarding is, "Why don't you have other intangibles rather than goodwill?" Because that could potentially deduct the tax and thereby get a better cash flow. I think that we, it's a little bit unusual, but Johan wrote in great length about goodwill and the arcane stuff that goes on depending on what you do.

But the short answer is, of course, that because the group is not a tax subject and because goodwill arises only on a group level and not on the holding company, which is a tax subject, goodwill or other intangibles do not affect tax. But I won't, or we won't repeat what's written in the CEO letter there. But if you have any other questions regarding goodwill or other fun accounting stuff, I mean, shoot questions to us. Following on to other questions, so we have the AGM coming up today, and we have, as you have seen, two new board members that are being proposed to be elected. One is Chris Mayer, and then we also have Lena.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Almfeldt.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Almfeldt, thank you.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

And Boel Sundvall.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yes, sorry. So maybe we can have a short introduction of those that people have asked for.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Yes. What we hope was, of course, is they will be elected in an hour or so, one and a half, on the AGM. Chris is a major shareholder via Woodlock House, and he's been into investing for a very, very long time, and it will be very insightful to have him on the board. It also will make us speak English in the board meetings, which will be a good dedication for us. I'm really looking forward to sharing more thoughts and ideas with him. Lena Almfeldt, she's been working with AQ before as their company lawyer. She's very familiar with all the legislations and rules on being on a regulated market and also on everything around acquisitions. She's very good and has a lot of experience there. I'm really looking forward to working with her.

Boel is a manager and has a long experience in digitalization and IT companies, which we are mainly novices in. So it will also be very helpful to have her expertise and experience in the board. So hopefully, that will strengthen us a lot for our path forward.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Very sure. Quick question from the Q&A. Why is accounts receivable up so much? Are the customers struggling to pay the bills, and in which industries do we see this?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

We have actually sold. It's very hard since we have 28 entities to talk about individuals. But overall, we have sold quite good over the group the last quarter. So there's no, what we believe, hopefully, no bad receivables out there. It's just normal operations going on, so it's nothing strange or nothing that is just for this moment. It's just normal operations.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. I mean, as you've seen, we have some fluctuations on a quarterly basis, and of course, that means that on a monthly basis, it fluctuates even more. In this quarter, we just had more sale than usual in March, and that is what's happening. Of course, those account receivables, we expect those to translate into cash during basically this month. Going back to the pre-submitted questions, we have one question from Aviation Tutorials, who is wondering regarding the hurdle rate of 15%, which I guess is from that we are saying that we want to double our EPS every five years, and why don't we have a higher target now in the beginning when we are young?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

That's a lovely question. Yeah, we love to set high targets, but since we want to stay in the game forever, so we want to have a target that we always can deliver on. I actually like our targets very much. We see them as reachable hurdles, and we want to reach those hurdles forever.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. I also think that as persons, I mean, we try to do our best, really, no matter what the actual target is set as a financial report. It's more that it's a guideline so you know a little bit how we are thinking about things in the long term. I don't think that it will change if that number would be a 20% hurdle rate or a 50% or a 10%. We just do the best that we can. Pricing power is another question from the same person. Nearly all the highest performing CEOs requires focus on investing in companies with the ability to raise prices, often due to limited competition. This is often called moat. Does Teqnion plan to allocate capital to companies with moats or focus more on the total price paid?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

It's one aspect. When we look at potential acquisitions, we look on the whole palette of different things to consider. And of course, we love companies with big moats or pricing power, but it's many other aspects that we look at. So it's the whole picture. For us, what we call quality companies, that is one little thing of that, of course.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. I guess the flip side of that is that we do not try to buy cigar butts. We don't try to buy a company just because it looks very cheap if we don't believe that it will be sustainable and be cash flow generating even in a decade or more. One last question from the same person is regarding the incentives for our business managers. Do you want to talk a little bit about our subsidiary CEOs, how they are incentivized?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Yes, I can try. What we do is that we have a yearly bonus, which is constructed so that they will get the percentage of the average earnings from the last three years. So every Krona that is earned over the last three years' average earnings, they will get the percentage of that Krona. So what they target to do is to earn more money than the year before and the year before, and the earnings are on earnings before taxes for that specific subsidiary. We also have an aspect of that, that they need to keep the working capital on a sound level so they cannot lock up too much capital because that is needed for Daniel and me to acquire new companies.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yes. Mauritz is writing that you wrote that underperformance year-over-year, oh, sorry, that we are underperforming year-over-year, and part of that is self-inflicted pain. Can you talk a little bit about what we did to screw things up?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

We always do things to screw things up because we're not perfect. In this case, I mean, it's also hard to find good examples of what we do. You always wish you could do better, and we are never satisfied with what we do. We could always do better on everything, on every level. In this case, it's easy to point out two specific things. We have made two big location moves. We moved two companies to new facilities, and during those projects, we lost some efficiency and also the ability to earn good money in those two companies during this period. And we are still not up to full effect there. That is something when you look in the rearview mirror; we could probably have planned it better. We could probably have put in more resources to do it more efficiently and faster. And yeah, that is one example.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. I think that some of the self-inflicted pain, or most that you can see numberwise now, is not something that we did during the quarter. It's more something that we did the years previously. For example, what companies we acquired, how we handled those companies, what type of people we have hired, etc. And those effects show up over time.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Good answer. Good answer. Thank you.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

We have a question from Kip, who is wondering, "How can we scale up M&A without sacrificing quality and returns?" The way I understand it, Daniel is currently the only one sourcing acquisitions candidates with a little bit of help from Johan. Other acquirers such as Constellation, Lifco, Momentum, Volati, etc., have pushed at least some sourcing down to group managers. Are we looking at that?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

We are constantly looking for improvement and increasing our ability to scale what we do. At the moment, we don't see the need to change the way we do the acquisition scouting. In my world, Daniel is at least 10 acquisition scouts. But so we have a very good inflow when we compare ourselves to others when we speak to them. So there's no need to find any big new way to find potential acquisitions. Of course, we are talking to our managers, and we ask them and all our colleagues to have their eyes open for potentially good businesses to acquire. And those that believe and think that that is fun and inspirational, they do that. So we get some inflow of prospects from our coworkers within the group.

And also, luckily enough, we get more and more potential prospects from people that heard about us, know us a little bit, and friends and also previous sellers to us that recommend us to other business owners that we are good takers of a life's work. So we're very happy about that. But just maybe to focus a little bit on the answer, we are not trying to change anything fast. We try to do small changes all the time in order to not make big mistakes. So in this case, we are happy in the way we have a big pipeline right now of potential prospects, and we have a pretty confident feeling that we have plenty of companies to visit and build a relationship with and hopefully acquire over time.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. I think, as you said, we believe that we're looking at actually more prospects than most of our peers that we know about. We have said, and we continue to believe, that we're going to acquire roughly a handful of companies per year, but we don't really do it on a per-year basis. We do it when we find the right quality, the right relationships, and at the right hurdle rate. That is the focus. It's fun because we're trying to find new ways to find companies. We've also received some really nice prospects from some of you just sitting here. Thank you very much, Ricardo, for example. So I mean, please send them over. We're looking at, we love looking at those companies.

Another question from Kip is, "Looking at acquisitions Teqnion completed before Daniel started, some like GB Verkstad, Elrond, Eloflex appear to have grown both sales and profits significantly, while others such as AirTarget and KFAB have declined. Do you want to share a little bit about lessons learned?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. Well, I want to share. I don't know if I'm able to, but just a little brief looking back at the history. When we started, we started without any external capital. So we could only acquire companies from the cash that was generated from our own operations, which meant that we had to look for, let's say, cheaper companies. So it's been an evolving process all along the way. And as we grew, we also had access to more cash to buy higher quality companies from. But also, to be fair, the companies are in different positions in their life cycles. And what we are able to do in Teqnion is that we can help companies to get to the next level or help them to get out of a downward trend because we are operational as well.

We come in, and we can help our subsidiaries with operations when necessary. But with that said, of course, we are better at acquiring companies today than we were 18 years ago when we started because we learned, hopefully, something along the way. And of course, we have this guy standing next to me.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Standing on the shoulders of giants. This is for you, Johan. EBIT margins evolution regarding our house-building companies, order intake, are we taking in orders at very low margins?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Yes. We are. In order to keep production running and keep our coworkers in the factories, we more or less offer on any question we get. So we are happy now that we actually have things to do, and we have projects in the production line. And yeah, we can keep our coworkers and keep everything just afloat going through this period. I mean, when the economy changes, those companies, not only ours, I mean, it's going to be crazy for the construction industry in Sweden when interest rates start to plummet a little bit. And unfortunately, right now, the entire segment of the business, the construction business, is really, really halting or freezing at the moment.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. Good. We got a very good question here from David on the email. He was wondering if we would ever consider switching our five-year EPS double goal to a five-year free cash flow per share goal instead.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

No. You give a pleased answer.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. I mean, we do understand. And I mean, how we think about it is really the cash flow. Profit, as you've seen, can be altered very much with accounting. Free cash flow, especially maybe free cash flow excluding acquisitions, is, I mean, real money that we can do things with. However, over time, we do feel that the EPS number should smoothen out and give a better view of how things are working. And we don't want to get into a situation where we get into a slippery slope of optimizing the free cash flow numbers because it's much easier to make a free cash flow number look good in a certain quarter or a year. We get emails almost every day from people that want us to sell invoices to trim the quarter's numbers or similar things.

We never want to get into a situation where we feel that would be attractive. Of course, if free cash flow over time do deviate from our earnings over time, I mean, that would be a big red flag. We have a question from Alexander that is wondering regarding our whiteboard where we try to explain a little bit what IFRS accounting can do to profits during a quarter or a year. The question is basically, which P&L lines, the items of the three FX have been booked? I can take that. The FX, the exchange rate effects on the balance sheet, they affect the financial costs. You would see that on that line. The financial cost is not only our interest rate but also accounting stuff on a group level.

The revaluation of the earnouts is something that you can see in other operational costs, which is above the EBIT line. So unfortunately, due to the accounting rules, these things that are accounting happenings with no operational effect—or sorry, that are not due to operational effects—they change both EBIT and EBITDA and further down as well. All right. We got another question from Marcus, who is wondering, "How are we thinking about the long term, let's say 10 years-20 years? What do we need to do in order to build a culture where people and companies want to be part of it?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Oh, who has the answer to that? I think it goes back a little bit to what we said previously. We need to make changes slow. I mean, we love the way we are today, but we want to grow, constantly grow, and be better at what we're doing, which means that we can't move too fast because then we might risk to lose something that is so important, all the aspects of the culture. So I don't have the recipe or I don't have the magical answer to that question. But I think one essential thing is that we are very sparse with big changes and just feel our way while going forward and always try to be ourselves, of course. That's the most important.

I think when Daniel and I come out to business owners and try to build a relationship and hopefully be able to acquire them along the line, I think they feel that we are like this, as you see us now. This is how we act, and this is how we are. And we don't know any other way, and we don't want to play any other role. So I think they genuinely understand that what they see and what they hear is what they get. And hopefully, nowadays, or hopefully, what we have nowadays, is also a lot of references saying that, which is also helpful in the acquisition process.

We can tell the potential seller that if you want to hear from another seller that already sold to us how we act after the deal is done and what will happen to your life's work, please call another seller and ask them how they experienced it and how they experienced Teqnion and the coworkers with it.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. Good answer. Ricardo Ferreira is wondering, "I noticed there's a lot of eights that have been used in the communication. Is there a symbolism around the number eight? Can you share your motivation, superstitions?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Is there a lot of eights? Aha. Oh, okay. Okay. According to the timing or everything.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. The whiteboard is maybe on page 8 as well.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Yeah, it is. The magical number eight. Yeah. No, I think we keep that a secret. It's not a secret, though. But it's an old thing from university. It was fun back then, so I kept it because it's important to keep fun stuff in your life.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

We got this. It says, "Love working here. We try to have fun. It's helpful." Okay. Anton Rudenok is wondering, "Why do we change CFOs so often?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Oh, it's not one reason. It's been three individuals. They are all very good persons. I love them very much, all three of them. But there are different reasons why they left. And I think we answered that many times. Yeah. I don't know if we're going to go into details. There's no secrets there. And it wasn't, at the moment, the right place for them to be. And maybe I'm tough to work with.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Very tough. We got a question regarding the two companies that have moved locations. When will they be operating at full efficiency? And roughly speaking, how much growth will that enable?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Tough question because it's the question that demands me or us to look into the future. We're not able to do that. We are working very hard to be fast and do things right in order to make those companies robust and sustainable. They are both very good companies. Right now, our colleagues there are working really hard to get everything into place and get settled in the new facilities. It won't take. It will probably take some more months. Why did I say that? Probably.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. I mean, we don't like to move. So I mean, one of the things that we look at when we acquire companies is if there's a long runway that we can continue at the same place. I mean, that's a small plus. I mean, it's not the most important thing, but just small plus because we know that every time it happens, it's a big drain on energy, and it affects our cash flow as well. But sometimes it's good for the really long term.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Right. And it's necessary because the companies are growing. They need more space. They need more coworkers. And I mean, the bottom line, it's a happy thing to do. But of course, when you look at the short period of time, it's frustrating. But we have to raise our eyesight a little bit and look towards the horizon. It will be good.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

I mean, if we were a private equity company or if we were potential sellers of a company and would potentially sell those next year, we would never do that. We wouldn't do it if they.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

They would have to cram in where they were and stay there.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Exactly.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Yeah.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

We got a follow-up question from Benjamin. So he's wondering about the evolution of margins. I'm reading this really quickly. But I guess the question is, if we exclude the housing companies, how are margins changed for the group? Do we have anything interesting to share?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

No, they would go up. But we prefer not to comment too much in detail on a specific subsidiary. That's not who we are. We are a company group. In some periods, a specific segment is going to struggle. And in a couple of years, another segment is going to struggle. And that's the beauty of Teqnion as a group. We are and should be robust as a whole. You don't have to look into specific companies. Or at least, that's our job to do, to make sure that they perform as good as possible on each specific time.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

I think as a theoretical framework, if you look at serial acquirers that have done well and plot them over time, the longer they've been around, the higher the EBIT margin. We can see that in our group, that the companies that have been here for a long time overall get higher EBIT margins. But it takes time. It's not always quarter over quarter, but over time. And we think that we're following that trajectory as a whole.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

We love that trajectory. I think that's also one of the reasons why we and others manage to constantly increase that margin because it's fun to work with. Everyone that understands that continues to work harder on that. It's fun to earn money.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. Xavier is wondering, "In terms of acquisitions, are you planning to take advantage of some of the strengths in the Swedish industry, like the innovation in defense area, given the current geopolitical scenario and potentially upcoming years?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

I know that you would love to answer that. Me too. I give it to you.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Thank you. I mean, we look at companies where we believe that we can get our money back within roughly five years and where there is a long, long trajectory of increasing cash flows that are sustainable. We look absolutely at companies within the defense industry. We try to not follow trends. We don't try to acquire companies because they are popular at the moment. That gives the mother company a higher multiple on the stock exchange. So in that sense, we are maybe a little bit countercyclical. The reason why I'm saying that is we can clearly see that we have three companies in our group that somehow have connections to the defense industries. Two of them were acquired long before the geopolitical turbulence. One of them, the discussion started several years before.

Those were all acquired, or the relationship started at least in a period where it was not popular to acquire defense companies. It was almost politically incorrect. Some funds even spit out companies that acquired those. But we believed in those for various reasons. Now it has become very popular to acquire those companies. For every cash flow SEK those companies spit out, unfortunately, there are companies that are willing to pay much more now compared to both previously and us. So yes, we're looking at it, but more people are looking at them.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

We're not looking at them more today than we did before.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

No. Exactly. How do you see the future rate of shares dilutions annually?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Sorry. I was reading another.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

No. So regarding the share dilution, I mean, the boring answer is that it's really a bored question. We do have some call option programs, as you've seen in our interim report. We have no option program for decision for the upcoming AGM in a couple of hours. So I don't know. Do you want to add something to that?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Thinking about what to answer to your question, yeah. I think it's a very good way of including coworkers into the forward journey to have some kind of stock incentive or share incentive. Options is one thing. I think I will always and constantly work towards that we find a way to incentivize our coworkers with some sort of program. But at the moment, as Daniel said, we have nothing on the table.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

No. I mean, what is important is that as an investor, which I'm very interested in investing as well, I mean, share dilution is scary in the sense. It's a sword with two edges. One part is what you want to say. The other part is the pure dilution thing. And that is also the reason why in our financial target, we have the earnings per share because whatever dilution we do, we want that to create more upside than downside. And that is key. Okay. We have another question. So from Mauritz, who is wondering, "The weaker organic growth, the negative organic change, is that due to the housing business?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Part of it is. But I mean, the entire economy is struggling. And we see it in many segments. And also, we come from really high levels of sales due to the fact that COVID and the pandemic created that. It doesn't mean that we are struggling in every segment or all over our group. But I mean, just to have some thought about it is that it's not as crazy order intake as it was a year or a couple of years ago, maybe. Sorry. But of course, the housing companies are a part of that.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

We had a slight negative organic change. Without them, I think it would be different. We got three questions from Roberto. I saw that you wrote that you joined a few minutes late. We answered your questions a bit earlier. We will upload this video on YouTube within a week after this. So you can maybe find your questions and answers later. Steven is wondering, "If you could only buy stocks from the public stock market, which kind of stocks would you be interested in?" Example.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

No. No. No. No. Not for me.

That's for you .

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

That's too difficult.

I think I'm going to pause on that one. I don't want to stand here and pitch stocks.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

No one should never, ever ask me that question. Or at least, I will never answer. I will only tell Daniel because he can laugh at me.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Mulder is wondering, "What are the biggest lessons you learned during the past half year during the macroeconomic struggles?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Oh, tough question. Good question. I think it's in tough situations that you actually learn a lot and also that you remember that this is part of running a business. It's not always sunshine. I mean, I think that one of the most important things when times are tough is to actually take care of each other and motivate each other and try to be positive and be a role model regarding that. And of course, never stop doing things. Do more things. I mean, a lot of our coworkers within the groups are struggling really hard because you have to because you want to show a result. You want to be good at what you do. And so just when times are tough, take care of your coworkers even more and try to motivate them and try to give them energy to keep the good work up.

It's going to be better soon. Just keep that in mind. Yeah. So maybe it's not really a philosophical answer to your question. I'm sorry about that. But that's the most important thing for me anyway, to make sure that everyone is feeling as good as possible even though that things are really, really tough. I also think that it's easy to just wait things out because I think it's genetic in most human beings that if you just sit still, something else is going to happen soon. We don't like that. So we fight against that genetic part of humankind. And we try to do things all the time, even more things when it's not going our way. We want to push through. So do more things. Try more things. Call more customers. Visit more people.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. I think another learning, which is easy to read about but a little bit different to actually digest and understand when you're in it, is that it's easy to talk about the long term. But as Yvon wrote in his thoughts, I mean, the long term is really just a lot of short terms strung together. And even if you really want to focus on the long term, it's painful when things are not really going financially as you want them to. And it's important that we keep reminding ourselves to really focus on the long term because there are things, of course, that we can do to trim the numbers now but would make it not better in the long term.

We would rather have a higher CAGR with a bumpy road rather than a smooth lower CAGR and not fall into the lure of doing those things. I think that's maybe also one thing that is easy to learn on paper but needs to get battle-tested as now. Maybe another learning. I can talk about this all day. But I mean, when things are going well, you talk a little bit about this. It feels good. And there are things now in hindsight where we both felt maybe we should have done something about it because we felt.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Good point. Yeah.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

This is not going exactly in the right direction. But because the economy is good, everything's booming, it's very forgiving.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. You get satisfied with what you have. It's good enough. Very dangerous feeling. So maybe, yeah, very good point. I mean, the learning is maybe that we should have done more when the economy was good.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. I mean, what we're doing now is not going to fix April numbers. What we're doing now is going to fix next year and numbers in five years. So I guess I don't know the actual when the tide water runs out, I forgot that quote. You can see who's bathing naked.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

I don't know. Yeah. Something like that.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Okay. Sorry for that. We have another question here from Antonio Martinez, who is wondering, "Would you ever consider acquiring a serial acquirer within Teqnion, for example, something like Dino Polska?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Sorry. But yeah. Well, we never say no to anything. But in that case, I think it's, I don't know. Is that even a serial acquirer in that perspective as we are now?

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

I think there may be more of just growing.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Grocery shops.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. Growing a lot. They're doing well.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

They do pretty well. But yeah. But back to looking at other to acquire serial acquirers. Throughout the years, we came across a couple of groups that were for sale. We have looked at them. And we found that maybe parts of that group were interesting for Teqnion but not the entire bit. So yeah. As you know, we've never done anything like that. But we will never say no. We are always open for new ideas and want to learn. But we don't see it as an easy thing to do when it comes to getting your money back in five years, which is religion for us.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. I mean, it really comes down to that and risk-adjusted returns or, as Jamie would say, the brain-damage-adjusted returns. I think that some of these, they, of course, want to have a lot more multiple-wise than what we're willing to pay because they do have the alternative to either go to the stock market or they are already on the stock market. It's interesting. Because we're curious people, we look at it every now and then. It doesn't take up our waking mind.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

No.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Mufasa: Despite declining sales in absolute terms, are the subsidiaries gaining market shares?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

It varies a lot, of course. We have companies that are growing in their market niche constantly because they are in that position on their life cycle. Others, they are market leaders in a very narrow industrial segment. They are pretty still. Maybe they grow with single-digit percentages every year. Some are in rough times. As everything else when it comes to our group, it's very diversified. I don't think I can give a single answer to that question.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

No. One thing that also makes the answer a little bit tricky, I mean, it all comes down to how you define what the market is. Some of our companies are in a niche where they are the market, basically. But I mean, if you look at the overall number and if you want to take out the house-building companies as a group, the organic growth is maybe not negative. And compared to the overall GDP, we are a little bit higher. So on some kind of super high level, we might be gaining a little bit. But maybe one thing to say as well, I mean, we don't focus on market share and focusing on taking market share.

We focus on trying to be good and carve out a niche where, I mean, in the ideal situation, we want to be able to bid so good to carve out a niche where we are the market and in that way, be able to be very cash-flow generative and profitable. Another very good question here from Brandon Wang, who is saying, "We have coaches for our CEOs. And they help our companies, leaders. But what are you folks what are we doing right now to help them grow?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Oh, we do a lot. One very important task for the CEO coaches is to work closely to those who need them, to managers that need them. And that these bounce ideas come with thoughtful insights. But it's also operational things like helping in recruitment processes and also everything that is out of the everyday kind of work for that subsidiary and where they might lack experience or knowledge. We can jump in and help them as a resource getting through that faster and quicker and hopefully better. So it's both on a strategic level where we act more when everything is good and healthy and maybe more on operational level also when the company is struggling with something that they're not familiar with at the moment.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. Hai Nguyen is wondering, "Will the results of the AGM be published later today?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Yeah.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

That was quick.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Yeah. It will. It's regulated that way. We have to do it. As soon as it's written down, we're going to press release that after the AGM.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Shane is wondering, "Where can we buy Teqnion merch? Just owning some stock is not enough. I need to announce it to the world." I love the question.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

I brought three hats.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

We can auction those hats on the AGM. No. But we do get some questions every now and then about merch, which is very fun. We get happy. It does take us a little bit of time to go and mail them. I don't know if I should say it because if I say it, I have to do it. But I have a thought that one day when I'm bored, maybe I'll just set up a print-on-demand shop for us. Let's see. Big disclaimer on that one.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Big, big, big disclaimer on that one.

Daniel Zhang
CXO, Teqnion AB

Good. I think for the first time, we actually reached the end of all of our questions.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion AB

Great. We managed to do it within 50 minutes. I think that's a good time period for this. Thank you so much. We are really happy that you follow us and that you're following along on the journey. Please come back to us with further questions. Remember the new email address qa@teqnion.se.

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