Teqnion AB (publ) (STO:TEQ)
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May 5, 2026, 5:29 PM CET
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Earnings Call: Q3 2022

Oct 21, 2022

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Hello, everyone, and Welcome to Teqnion's Q3 Q&A session. Happy that so many of you have joined us today, and given the strong international interest that we've had lately, we will do this in English as good as we can. Johan will kick off this 45 minutes with a short rundown of the current quarter, and the rest of the session will be focusing on the Q&A questions from you, so to say. We received quite a lot of questions over email, over Twitter, but if you have additional questions, please write them in the chat function here and we'll address them if there's time. Just a friendly reminder, this session is being recorded and will be uploaded on the website later for those of you that are interested. With that said, over to you, Johan.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us for this short session. We will try to be effective. I don't know if we can succeed in that, but we will give it our best shot. Are we now in the presentation?

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

We will show the presentation.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Yeah, for all of you that are new here, my name is Johan Steene. I'm the CEO of Teqnion. I've been a part of the company since it was founded in 2006. We are in the business of building a conglomerate of industrial companies, and hopefully we are succeeding in building something really big. Since now 16, 17 years since we started, it still feels like we are in the beginning, which makes this extremely fun and inspirational to do every day. I'm so lucky also to have a lot of great colleagues that share the same strive as I do. We have grown the group slow and steady, and by generating our own cash flow up until 2019, where we were listed.

We raised some capital and increased the acquisition speed a little bit. Of course, we learned a lot along the way, and hopefully we are today more effective and makes fewer mistakes than we used to do, but still feels like we are in the beginning, as I mentioned. When it comes to the report, if we go to the next slide, Daniel, please, it feels now that the recession is coming. We feel it primarily from we see a lack of interest when it comes to small houses. We have a couple of companies building small wooden houses for the private sector and there we see absolutely a decrease in demand.

We also feel a little bit like other segments that there are longer hesitation before you place an order, even though that most of the other industries that we have, we don't see any real effect yet of any recession. We try to grow everything with a good margin. We're not chasing the top line. In this quarter, we see that our margins are decreasing, and I think you're all really familiar with. You heard maybe not only today, but from many companies that we struggle with the price increase. We struggle with the interest rates. We struggle with the,

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

The exchange rates.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Thank you. The exchange rates. We buy some goods in Dollars, and we sell them in other currencies, which makes us struggle there to just keep up with our own price increase to our customers. I mean, for us, the strength and robustness in Teqnion is that we are a very diversified group, and we work in very small industrial niches. Once again, we see that this is something that strengthen us and makes us more robust. When there are trouble sometimes, the whole becomes extremely durable. I mean, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The margins that has been eroded for the reasons that we all know by now is something that we feel confident in, that we constantly are working at. I feel confident in the long term, anyway, we will come back to where we want to be when it comes to margins. Another thing that we have seen, and that I'm a little bit sad that we haven't caught before, is that our cash flow is decreasing.

That's the biggest effect from that is that we are growing, of course, and that cost some of the cash flow, but also that it's we put more in our stock and more in our warehouses because it feels better to be secure when the supply chains has been affected by COVID and all the disturbances there. It felt more secure to put more in your warehouse, and by that, not have so many angry customers yelling at you in your ear because you can't deliver as you promised.

It's something that has come natural to a lot of our subsidiaries that they have locked up more cash in their warehouses, and that is something that we now have talked about and starting to adjust because that's not how we are running Teqnion. Teqnion is high margins with good cash flows. That's how we're gonna build this group. If we jump maybe to the page where we show our financial targets. Yeah, maybe that one. I mean, that's how we try to think about these things. First of all, we want to have a solid balance sheet. We don't want to have too much debt. That's something that we handle, and we're gonna handle it all the time.

We make sure that everything that we have within the group is profitable and robust, and that we measure that by the margin there. It's still okay, but we want to be better. That's. We're working on that. We have a long-term goal to always double the earnings per share every five years. That's also something that makes us confident in the short term. We don't have to make stupid decisions on the short term because we look at the horizon, and we're gonna do this for a very, very long time.

We are confident that we can be slow in periods when we need to and fix other things, and then we can accelerate when we see opportunity and do the right thing more or less. Of course, we're constantly striving to be better and at the moment, we need to work extra hard due to the increasing costs. I think that the fact that we always help each other and we see ourselves as a group even though that we work in very different niches, all the CEOs of the subsidiaries see each other as colleagues and try to help each other and support each other. The diversification of Teqnion is great, especially in disturbing times, as we already know.

I don't know, me and Daniel, we primarily work with scouting for new companies, and therefore, we see now that there's a lot of companies for sale, even more now when a lot of other Serial Acquirers has slowed down a little bit. All of a sudden, we get a lot of prospects via the company brokers, and we haven't really been a part of that process for a couple of years due to the high interest and high multiples and valuations of coming from those people. All of a sudden, we have our own scouting, which is really fun and good, and all of a sudden, we also have a lot of prospect coming in from the company broker.

We have a lot to do, a lot of fun things to do, I should say, when it comes to acquisition as well. Yeah, I think I'll stop there, and we go to the-

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yes, let's do that.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Q&A.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

We will actually be showing all the questions that we have mustered up during the last days and show them to you uncensored, so you can follow us a little bit on where we are in the process. As I said before, if you have any additional questions, feel free to just write them in the chat, and we will try to address that as well. Good. Moving from the top down, we got a question from Twitter yesterday from Axeliram, who is wondering, "Is it gonna be a good report tomorrow?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

It's a good-looking report.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

It's good-looking.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

We're not happy with the margins. We're not happy with the cash flow. I mean, everything is okay. We're gonna fix those things. No, I was hoping that we were better than this.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. To be fair, I mean, we will probably never be satisfied, and it's a very long run. We feel a bit sad that now for every share of Teqnion you own, you also own SEK 15 of inventory, wheelchairs, steel, wood, transformers, et cetera. We're gonna work on that. We are working on that. We have some questions also from Pedro from Spain. He says that he would like to learn a little bit more about the process in this acquisition, and this is referring to Reward Catering, our latest acquisition in Ireland. Regarding the business model, moats, growth that has been exponential, how did they achieve that with the profitability? Given that the company is very young, they're trying to understand why would they want to sell it to us.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

That's a great question. It can be a very long answer. I will try to make it as short as possible. They are very good at design. They are very good at keeping their costs down. They're extremely good at selling and listening to the customer demands. The product in itself is you get a lot for a little bit of money. So they have everything in place to grow really big. Why they sold it, they see that they need help in that to take this product out over the world. We were lucky enough to find them, and they were lucky enough to find us. We have really fun doing this together.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. I also think that they do a lot of the bits and pieces right and do a lot of the bits and pieces a little bit better than most of their competitors, and taken together, that becomes very, very powerful. Pedro is also wondering if we could tell him a little bit about the process of finding our new CFO and a little bit about Carina's background and why we chose her.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. We found Carina in the way that we prefer to find people. She was recommended to us from one of our partners, and we met her. A lot of us met her and talked to her, and we just enjoyed being with her. She had a very good background that suited us. She's been working in company, big company-listed groups in Sweden before, and she seems to be a very warm and competent person. Yeah, feels like she fits perfectly in our group.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yes. We have a question regarding when the business grows, and we look back to retain more talent, do we see our warrant program increasing, and would we offset that dilution with free cash in the future?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

I mean, when it comes to the warrant program, it's a question for the AGM, of course. I think that we will keep that program in line with what we have had before. It's a small carrot for some people to have that, and I think we're gonna continue doing that in some way. When it comes to offset dilution, if to use Free Cash Flow, we're not allowed to do that on First North, so that's something that we have to look into when we go to the main market.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. Another CFO question. Why have we changed CFOs so often, and why don't Daniel continue as CFO?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Daniel.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Talking about myself in third person.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Daniel is a fantastic CFO, but he's so much better as a CXO. It's something that we both totally want to achieve as soon as possible, to get Carina in as the CFO. Why we change it so often. Yeah, I don't know. Things happen in life. Nicklas had an issue with his family that forced him to move to the other side of the country, so that was sad both for him and for us, and we miss him. Susanna had the opportunity to pursue her dream of moving into the beauty business and into her family company, so she did that. I don't know. It's good to follow your dream, I think so.

I mean, we are where we are, and we're very happy that we found Carina. I'm confident that we're gonna have a. We don't enjoy to change CFO as often, but maybe it's a cursed thing. I don't know.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Do you feel like it's cursed?

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

I feel cursed. No, just to be clear on that, I mean, when I took this, it was clear from everyone internally that this was an interim role. That's that we would find someone else, and in this case, Carina. That was planned. We have a couple of questions from Eddie in Sweden. Eddie's wondering, have we had any Earn-Outs that have not been paid out, and what do we think about the future regarding that?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

It's a very complex question because I mean, it can be a really long answer to it. If I try to keep it short again, I don't know if it's possible. Of course, we have some Earn-Outs that has not been paid out. As everything else, we learn along the way, and we are better now than before to just find these thresholds where we put these, the start and the end of the Earn-Outs. Our target is, of course, it's both parties, both the seller and the buyer benefits if the Earn-Outs are paid out. I don't know. You looked back, and we maybe paid out 70% of all the Earn-Outs.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

70% of the times.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Of the terms of the Earn-Out. Hopefully we're gonna go up in the future. I mean, that's what we're aiming for, but still, we don't want to take a risk in these arrangements, so we pay for something that's not worth it. I mean, so it's a balance, and it's a balance that we are very open with when we negotiate these SPAs with the sellers. We are very clear on that this is important for both parties that these are paid out and that we have a realistic forecast when it comes to the company.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Eddie also wonders, what is the reason that you always start eight past something and not at ten o'clock, for example, today?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

It's because it's a Chinese lucky number. No, it's a stupid thing from the beginning. It's that the student carnival in Stockholm leaves every third year from the Royal Institute of Technology at 2:08 P.M., so it's an old student thing.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. Johan was the head of that thing some years ago. We also have a few questions from David in Texas, who hopefully is asleep. He's saying the companies that we acquired don't seem to have a great deal in common, even though they share some characteristics. Some of the most successful Serial Acquirers, for example, Constellation Software and Judges Scientific, are more niched, but not all, for example, Lifco. Do we worry about ending up with an assortment of entirely unrelated businesses? How do we manage that, and how does the home office add value in that scenario?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

We try to add value by supporting and pushing energy into the different type of business that we own. Primarily we do that via four scheduled board meetings every year. We work closely with the strategy of each company. We are not trying to do anything with their normal everyday operations because they are the best at what they do, of course. We don't have to know everything about the details of their specific niche or industry, and that would be impossible. I don't totally agree with when it says that we are in many different. What was it about? With an assortment of entirely unrelated businesses. In my head, they are not unrelated at all. They're very much related.

They are more or less the same size. They are very specialized in a technology or in industrial niche, which requires a lot of knowledge, application knowledge, a lot of knowledge about standards and regulations. It's also something that we sell is a physical product. If it's services, it's a service around a physical product. Even though that we are in a broad variety of industry, we all have those things that I just mentioned in common. We are very much related in selling something, supplying something that our customers will be competitive with, and we try to do it in a way that we can have good margins and good cash flow.

That, I mean, it's very much related businesses, even though if you look from the outside, they look very, very different.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yes. Similarly to the question above, several of the companies that we own don't seem to have an obvious moat, says David. Reward Catering, for example, what's their moat? What keeps competition from crushing them and putting them out of business?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

We, in all our businesses, even in Reward Catering, we try to be one step ahead of all competition, if it comes to design, if it comes to functionality, if it comes to pricing, and also when it comes to building strong relationship with the customers and the best customers. Reward Catering is just a package of all of that. They are extremely good at what they do.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that really ties together all of our companies and our core belief is the belief in people. Some of the companies, Reward Catering, and actually, all of them, they are made up by exceptional people that maybe do similar things as competitors, but they do it better and do it better as a team. Maybe it's not a fair analogy, but like Manchester City that became the best team in the world is probably They don't have a moat compared to AIK in Sweden, but they are better because they have a better team.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

AIK, they are up here.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah, they are. Hope they're not listening. Many of the businesses are very small in our group. They seem to have a very strong founder leader who have built and run the businesses. Do we worry about the key man risk, and what happens if that person who is the heart and soul of the acquired company leaves? How do we protect against that?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

In my world, the most important thing is to make it inspirational and fun and work within the Teqnion Group, and we try to do that. We also are very honest and open when we have the first contact with entrepreneurs that we're trying to buy their company from or their life's work from regarding these things. We talk, we discuss it beforehand. We talk about what's gonna happen if things go bad or if things go good or whatever. We try to just get everything out in the open. While we build a relationship with these individuals, we also try to find a place where even though that they.

If it's someone that wants to retire after our normal two-year period, where we always have an agreement with the sellers that they stay on for at least two years, sometimes longer. After that period, we hopefully have shown them that it's fun to be a part of the group and that they have a place within the group, even after that period. Most of the times we succeed, and I'm extremely happy for that because they become really important ambassadors for the culture and for us when it comes to just staying true to our values. We value the people, and we want the people to stay on, even though that they have sold their shares.

Their heart are still with us, even though that they don't no longer own the shares.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

We'll cut in with a couple of questions from Teams. Tobbe, in Sweden, is wondering if we are afraid if we specialize or niche too much when it comes to acquisitions, especially regarding the British acquisition, so Belle Coachworks. Yes. That is my question.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. If we worry about it, yeah, one of the big things I do in my life, I worry about things. I worry. When we look at companies that we would like to acquire, we try to see that they are within themselves robust, that they target different niches within their own niche, and that they have different offerings to their clients, and that they have different type of clients. When it comes to Belle Coachworks, they sell, as mentioned in the questions, car transporters for used car dealers. But that's one niche. They also sell it to the defense. They also sell it to high-end cars. They sell it to the racetracks. They have a variety of customers.

Of course, we try to look into the robustness and the risk in being too narrow.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. We also have a question from Pedro in Spain who's wondering about Belle's and Reward's contribution in sales and EBITDA during the quarter. Maybe the answer is that we do not disclose the running figures for our daughter companies, but as we always do what the companies were making at the time when we started to partner with them, and we can say that they are performing as expected.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Yeah.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Alexander Nicholson says, "Hi, guys. Keep up the good work. One question: How do you view the current inventory levels and accounts receivable? Do you see any problems getting paid from our customers or getting the inventory sold at the moment?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Historically, we haven't had any trouble to get paid. I hope that we will still have that. I can say that in the next recession in 10 years, but we're pretty confident in that. When it comes to the inventory levels, I think we have been a little bit too sloppy when it comes to just trim those. It's so much nicer to live if you have inventory on your shelf when the customer is calling and wants something fast. The disturbed logistics that we have been living through here in the COVID times has done us no good when it comes to educate ourselves to have trimmed inventory levels. If we see any problems to get that sold? No.

Of course, it's not a fast thing to do, but it's something that we have addressed and that we are actively working on at the moment. We will get back to be good at this.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Our inventories, across the board, actually, it's not perishable goods, so we should have no problem selling it, but it might not take a month. Could take longer for some of the companies. Regarding accounts receivable, we do not have any bad debt that we do not think that we won't get paid. I have another question here on Teams that is wondering, "How come we buy two energy-intensive companies in U.K. in the middle of the worst energy crisis under modern time?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. They are not very energy-consuming. Maybe Belle is using some, of course, but still, not too bad. The most important thing. It's of course a good question. The thing is that we don't buy things for now to perform well now. We buy things that's gonna be with us forever. If we find something good, we find good people, we find a good product in a good niche, then we try to look 10, 20 years ahead. We believe that these companies are good quality, solid companies, and for now, we're gonna have to pay some more energy. Later, hopefully not.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. Maybe just to add there, we take the current cost into the valuation. More cost, less profit, lower valuation. Maybe the second part is that, especially Reward Catering, they use very little energy. They only do a final assembling in Ireland, while the rest of the work is outsourced to other countries. Going back to the word for a little while, Dan, we have some questions from Canada, Takanori. He says, "Out of the 23 companies acquired, how many existing owners, managers are still with the company, and how many have become Teqnion shareholders?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

I think you have the number. I think it's approximately half of them are still with us somehow.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. We counted to nine.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Oh, nine, and how many are shareholders? I don't know.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

I don't know either.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

I know a few of them, but I mean, it's their private money.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

We pay with the cash and then they can do whatever they like with the cash. Hopefully, some of them would like to be part of our group of shareholders, of course.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yes. How are the subsidiary management compensated beyond the Earn-Out phase?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

If they own, they get the normal salary, and then we have, for all our CEOs, an earnings-sharing thing every year, so they get a part of their increased earnings.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yes. We have a question regarding the CFO, but I think we addressed that before. Another question regarding dividend. Why do we pay that, given that Buffett's key insight is to not give funds back to the shareholders as long as there is a reinvestment opportunity? Even if there is excess cash, buyback is preferred to dividend due to the tax drag.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

I mentioned something before. This is a question for the AGM, of course, but my view on this is that I prefer to keep the cash in within the company and just grow it and buy more companies with it.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. Last question here from Takanori. You talk about supporting subsidiaries, difficult word. I worry about approach that is not scalable. It seems like Berkshire's model is more decentralized, which enables Buffett time to reading. Please tell us how you spend your time with existing companies versus new companies, and maybe we can address that with the chat question from Per, who is thinking about how do we scale management over the next five years.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

I'm very confident that we have the ability to double what we do on the current staff here. I mean, Daniel tries to work 100%. He's a little bit locked up in his CFO work at the moment, but he tries to be someone that just scouts for new acquisitions all the time, and he drags me along, and I'm very happy for that. I do a lot of my time doing the same thing with him. The rest of the team here are supporting and giving energy and helping our subsidiaries with strategies. This is not. If everything is as it should, we are not into everyday operations.

We have the ability to move in as a task force if something is broken and needs to be fixed, but that's not the normal way. I think we can scale this quite a bit before we need to add on extra cost on the headquarters. We have a little graph on that in the quarterly report, right?

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

That shows that we are using approximately 19.3% of the sales for covering the headquarters, and we are constantly trying to decrease that number, of course. We don't want to burden our growth.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

No. Also, what we have started to see now and what we have implemented a little bit is that some of the daughter company CEOs also take up a part-time, very small part-time role of supporting other daughter companies. We think that when we get more talent and more confidence in that these people do a good job, we can scale that as well. Good. Pedro is on fire. He wonders, can you explain the increase in CapEx this quarter and Reward's new position in the U.S? How can long-term shareholders like us help Teqnion? That's two great questions.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Can you answer it or do you?

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah, I can try. There's a CapEx. We have plans, and regarding how much we try to spend or actually what we try to buy in order to facilitate the growth. They come in lumpy. We never try to be smart about the timings, and especially now with the supply chain issues, sometimes they just come, basically, and that is planned. Regarding Reward's new position in the U.S, that is very early days. We see, or Kevin and the team in Dublin, they see potential which they want to pursue, but it's really, really early days. As you see also in our report, we are looking for talents that want to help us, Kevin, to grow Reward in the U.S.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. It's really interesting times when it comes to moving into the U.S. We have several companies that are, like, knocking on the door. We don't have any footprint yet, but yeah, maybe we are close. I don't know.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Maybe.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

We are working with it, and it's very fun.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Regarding last question, I mean, it's really nice to get to know all of you shareholders in one way or another, and we really appreciate that, especially those that are interested and want to join us in the long-term journey and also want to help out. Teqnion, we like the diversification, and we have now entered two new countries. A lot of you have great networks, so if you know someone that has a company that you think is good and actually great and maybe would suit us, I mean, feel free to send us the prospects and see if we can, if you can open the door for us. That is, of course, helpful and fun.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. Also, I think to answer the question how long-term shareholders can help us, I mean, just having these Q&As are really helpful because we have to think about things, and we have to think about how we act and how we answer things and what should be on top of mind. This is, just doing this is really helpful.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. Yes. A question regarding that we have studied Nordic Serial Acquirers and Berkshire, any change that we're making to their models to make it even better?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Workshop question. I mean, we look for the great ones for inspiration, and we try to just see what's been done before and try to learn from others. I mean, we have to do our own thing, and Teqnion, we are constantly evolving, and we try to just be better at being Teqnion. I don't know. We constantly look at others to get inspiration and see what's possible. I mean, we build Teqnion and yeah.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. We have that model, so it fits us as persons as well. Competitive advantage of some of our companies, what is so special, for example, regarding turnkey house construction, metal works, electric wheelchair, et cetera? Can you provide a brief comment on the attractiveness of each of the companies in the industry and growth segments? We do not have those segments anymore, as you might have seen, but the rest of the question is still interesting.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

I mean, I don't want to go into detail for each subsidiary, but we don't have to develop everything unique. We can just follow someone that's showed that there's a way already and just become better than them. I mean, we buy companies that are already there, and some of them are unique within their narrow niche, even though they are working in a very competitive environment. It's a constant internal education of ourselves that we are not allowed to lose that uniqueness. We have to strengthen it and work on it and value that we can offer something that no one else can, if that's just whatever it might be.

it works a lot around being very close to the customer, have long-term relationships, and have great application knowledge. Great application knowledge, in my world, gives you the opportunity to help your customers to be competitive. If you can help them being that, they're going to stay with you.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yes. Very interesting question here then from Aktieoptimist on Twitter: As a shareholder of Teqnion, what do I need to know about Teqnion?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

The first rule about Teqnion is you never talk about Teqnion. I mean, you need to know. You need to know that we are only in the beginning, that you need to know.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Also Twitter question from Magnus: Can you develop your thoughts a little bit regarding our cyclical businesses? Do you see any reduction of demand when it comes to construction and industry? How are your opportunities when it comes to cost reduction if we lose turnover?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

We try to be quick and scalable, both up and down. I think that we're good at that. We act fast. We see a decrease in demand when it comes to the house building companies, but we try to find new potential clients there, not selling to private people that's going to build their house. Now we're looking for opportunity to build a school or a more public house. We try to do that, but we're gonna struggle there. It's definitely decrease in demand when it comes to building things in Sweden. The rest, if I just look at the broad picture of the rest of the group, we don't see any decrease in demand. On the contrary, it looks good.

We have to work on increase our margins and our cash flow. That's our two big things at the moment.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. Since last quarter, we have also started to show our order stock, which you should see on one of the pages, the graphs. As you can see there, order stock looks robust. What we're going to focus on, of course, is to ensure that we get good margins and good cash flows out of that. Good. Xavier from Twitter is wondering, how many companies are you looking at as potential acquisitions? How do you look at the pipeline? Stronger, weaker, compared to a year ago? Thank you. It's a pleasure to be a shareholder.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Thank you. Potential acquisitions, Daniel. How many are we looking? Many.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Many. We have active discussions with maybe 10, sometimes up to 20 companies at a time. Those companies come in and go out of that warm list or whatever we want to call that. We try to meet a lot of companies. It's difficult to say how many companies we look at because some companies we only look at for a minute before it goes out due to different filterings. Overall, I would say that the pipeline looks strong. As you once said before, during the last year, we've had maybe 1.2 legs on to stand on. We've done active scouting, and we've had a little bit of brokered cases.

Now suddenly we get a few brokered cases every day of very varying quality, of course, due to both the lack of demand for buying, we can see that clearly, and also that the price expectations have gone down a little bit, but overall are still on the brokered cases higher than what we typically pay. Good. Magnus from Teams here is wondering, "Is there a risk that our construction companies will get worse before they get better? And, if we have any fixed price on the orders for the construction companies?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. I believe that there's a risk it's gonna get worse within the construction industry. I think all of the industry are gonna struggle at least for the next year. In Swedish at least, I like to call our companies within that niche house building companies or house-

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Doesn't matter. We have factories building houses, then we are not so much part of it, putting it together at the site. Doesn't matter. When it comes to professional customers, which is the majority of what we have, we have the opportunity to work very closely with them, of course, especially now in these turbulent times because they will also suffer. We work really closely with costs and margins and we are very open in order to go through this together with our clients. There we have the opportunity to change the pricings. When it comes to our private clients, there are a lot of limitations in changing the prices for the future.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. Aktieoptimist from Twitter is wondering, "What is the most important KPI when we look at a potential acquisition? Is it ROE? And do we have a lower threshold?" The boring answer to that is, yes, that is important, but I wouldn't say that it's most important, and we don't have a most important KPI when we look at potential acquisitions. There's a number of filters that it has to pass through. ROE is one of those. We want to look at the historical robustness. We want to look at the cash flow conversion. We want to look at the margins. We want to also see that the a lot of soft factors. It doesn't matter if one or two of those are very, very good.

If they do not pass our hygiene factors, we do not move forward with them. Damian from the U.K is wondering, "In what ways do you facilitate and encourage sharing of knowledge and ideas between the companies that we have in the group?

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

We try to meet all the CEOs, try to meet a couple of times a year just to talk about good things and bad things and learn from each other and get to know each other and get inspiration from each other, and that works really well. People becoming friends, building relationships, wanting to help each other out, sharing experiences. Of course, we keep in touch on a more individual level, one-to-one, very often with all of them.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah. Good. Those were actually all the questions that we had, and I think that we are on time as well.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

One minute past, right? Something like that.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yeah.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

That's okay for now. Great. Thank you so much for joining in and I hope to see you the next time. That will be in February.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Yes. Thank you very much.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Thanks.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Have a good day.

Johan Steene
CEO, Teqnion

Bye.

Daniel Zhang
Chief Acquisition Officer and Deputy CEO, Teqnion

Bye-bye.

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