Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Teqnion 2025 Q4 Q&A. Thank you all for joining us today. We will, during the next hour or so, give you as partners and interested parties, the opportunity to understand your business as well as possible. We will be alternating between the emails that have been sent to our Q&A email before today, and the ones that you raise live in this Teams section. And as a reminder, you'll find the Q&A button on top of the Teams screen. So as always, before we jump into the Q&A session, I would like to hand it over to you, Johan, to say a few words.
Thank you so much. Welcome to our call this morning, and this is my coworker, Daniel Zhang, who's the Deputy CEO of Teqnion . My name is Johan Steene. I'm the CEO and also one of the founders of this company group. We are today, as we normally are, in Daniel's office here in Solna, north of Stockholm. 2025 has, of course, been a big year of transformation for us in the group. We moved away from a rather loose organization that was very well functioning when we went from no subsidiaries up to roughly around 20. And now we are in a place where we doubled from there, which means that we need more structure in our organization, and that's been a year of implementing that.
Just to reflect on why it took so long for me to understand that we needed this, I don't really know, but you're used to something and you do it for a very long time, and you don't see when things change around you, maybe. But luckily enough, nowadays, I have really bright people around myself, and this team is a very strong team, and finally, they managed to persuade me or lure me into actually changing the organization here. So today we have a much, much more stable platform to work from and scale from. I gave ourselves a grade D- minus for 2025.
Maybe the last quarter or so, or the half, last half of the year was, could maybe have, earned a D, but since we had a very weak beginning of the year, we have to settle for a D- minus. That's, okay. No, that's almost okay. It's, it's not that fantastic, of course. The, the improvements that has been implemented so far has freed up some working capital, so the cash flow is back, on some sort of, of, okay level. The organic growth, as you've seen, is down. We're not happy by that, but we're normally chasing, organic earnings growth.
In retrospect, we have made active decisions to remove some poor businesses and business deals that, of course, affects the top line, but also gives us a better bottom line when it comes to earnings. But we're still in a rather weak economic environment, which also, of course, affects these things. Just a reminder, and maybe I say that too often, but it's the organic earnings growth that we're chasing and not primarily the top line. Normally, that will follow, of course, but in these circumstances, you might see this effect. We also had a weaker Q4 than the Q3 when it comes to earnings.
Some of that might be effects from the projects that are rolling out, but also it's to blame. This is maybe a little bit too stupid, but it's a rather long Christmas holiday, which meant both customers and ourselves were off work for quite some time at the end of the Q4 quarter. But disregard that. What I'm most positive about at this stage is that we have a new organization in place. We have two new business areas, one in the Nordics and one in the UK, with dedicated Teams in each of them. We now have a platform that is so much easier to scale from, doubling again from 40 to 80.
During that period, of course, we will learn new things and have to adapt to the reality around us. But we are really on a much better plateau or foundation today than we were a year ago, and that feels fantastic. Now we can start working again. We're not done with all the improvements and all the things that needs to be done in order for us to be happy with what our performance is, but we have a much better platform to do that from at this stage. Yeah. So once again, we're definitely not.
Happy and proud of where we are, but we're in a much better place, and there's still a lot of improvements and repairs to be done for us, but we do it from a much stronger position today. Yeah, and it's the profitable growth that we're aiming for and that we're chasing, and nothing else. Yeah, sorry for the long intro, but.
Perfect. Great. So jumping into the questions then, we have a few questions that are variations about organic change in revenue and bottom line. So maybe we can just take all of them at once. So basically, the questions are, if we can give some explanations about decline in organic revenue and also the differences between the different geographies, et cetera.
I know that we reported during the first half of the year that we reorganized and merged a couple of factories together. We have also scaled down some of the production sites in order to just target profitable businesses there, taking away some business deals that were not profitable or not, over the long run, something that we would like to keep up. So some of this decline in growth or top line has been due to active decisions from our side.
Yeah, I think that it has been a tough journey during 2025, and as you may remember, we've talked a little bit about that, there are no holy cows, as our aim is to ensure that we create the highest, biggest share value for the long-term shareholder as possible. And in that, we have looked through all of our companies, all of the project, different product lines, and ensure that we have cut down on things that are not profitable or not profitable enough. So of course, over the long term, we believe, that we need to have organic growth and through that, get the organic earnings growth as well. But in the short term, we've had a little bit of too many companies and, product lines that were unprofitable.
Of course, when you cut that, top line goes down, which looks bad. But as you can see, that has also translated into higher earnings organically, which is what we've been aiming for, of course, forever, but a lot during 2025. We also got a few questions about the differences in geographies. So as you know, during the last year or so, we talked a little about, quite a bit about that. The biggest challenges that we've had are in the Swedish market and mostly in certain cohorts. So that is where the decline has been biggest, because that's where we have been slaughtering most of the products. In the U.K., we actually have, for Q4, an organic growth of around 9.5%, which is quite healthy, in my own opinion.
There is, of course, some FX effect that translates to a lower revenue as well. During 2025, I believe the British Pound lost roughly 8%-9% against the Swedish SEK. So when you translate that, something happens as well. I think we caught most of the things there, but just to reiterate, I mean, over the long term, we do believe, and we should have organic earnings growth and organic top-line growth. But in the shorter term, we have implemented on what we have discussed. We have killed things that do not create value, that decline in top line and the increase in bottom line. Good. You want to add something?
No, but yeah, maybe. I just feel that the situation we're in, in the world with the economic downturn has, of course, also affected some of the businesses, but since we are a rather diversified group of companies, some are affected in a positive way and some are affected very badly, and that also has, of course, also caused some effect on the top line when it comes to sales.
Good. We have one question here. Could be good if we take that, right off the bat as well. So Emmanuel in the Teams chat is wondering, "Why has it not been disclosed that Teqnion is being sued? What is the amount of the claim, and has anything been set aside to cover a negative outcome?" Question mark.
We talked about this in the last Q&A, and it was reported also that we have a legal case going on in Ireland. That is still going on, and it's gonna be handled by the courts of Ireland, and it's not gonna be handled by media or us talking about it outside the courts. So we leave it with that.
Yes. Good. Akash from P&R Investment Management was wondering since earlier: "Can you please reflect on this difficult last one-year period? What was the biggest lessons that you can take away from it?
A lot of learnings. I think if you have to just take one thing, it's the thing that I already mentioned, that we need while growing. We do this for the first time. We often, I should say, got the question that how. Today you have 10 companies, how would you manage to have 20 or run 20 companies? And the true answer that I think that we always given also is that we don't know. We have to scale and see and learn along the way.
At this stage, I think I was the biggest brake internally here at the head office when it comes to changing how we work, and when they finally penetrated my stubborn head, we started doing that last winter, and now we see the effects or the possibilities, I should say, of a much more structured, well-structured organization, where you have people in the right place at the right time with the right competence.
So the biggest takeaway for me for this year is, make sure that you have a foundation that you're able to scale from, from the position you're in. And the feeling right now, which is positive, is that we are in a place where we have a foundation, where we can scale again. That was hard for me to really see and understand. I don't know why, but yeah, sorry. Good. Further on from Akash, "2025 has been an exceptional year for M&A. Looking ahead, qualitatively, should we view 2025 as one-off or close to the new normal with regard to deal activity?
I think that we've been, also stubbornly over the years, talked about that we, we believe that we have the capacity to, to do a handful of acquisitions per year. Since the group and Teqnion has evolved, we also now have the opportunity or possibility to, to acquire better and better companies. We look at, more profitable companies today than we did two years ago and absolutely four or five years ago.
So these business deals, even though that we still stick to, to the rather loose term of a handful of acquisitions per year, that should be much more earnings coming from those, future earnings coming from those, handful of acquisitions than compared to what we did a few years ago. Last year, it was quite a few, quite a few acquisitions because we have a very good general when it comes to sourcing and making business deals with Daniel. He had a rather long pipeline going into 2025 and a lot of relationships ongoing with potential sellers, and it turned out that they were ready to sell, and we are ready to buy when the seller is ready to sell.
Yeah. Good. Next one from Akash: "Can you please tell us a little bit about the new governance structure? What are the responsibilities of the UK and Swedish segment heads? How are they incentivized?
Do you want to start, and I.
Yeah, maybe.
I go my own.
So the UK head, David Barton, and the Swedish head, Martin Lagerberg, they are acting as the CEO of the groups. So basically, all of the CEOs in the various countries will be reporting directly to them. Johan, I, and Jonathan are sitting on the Board of Directors of each of those two holding companies. So David Barton and Martin Lagerberg will then report to us, which creates a much higher efficiency because it's impossible to duplicate Johan, even if it would be very, very good. Then we have, of course, set out processes and structures regarding the mandates of these two country heads. And regarding incentivization, basically, they have the same incentive as everyone else. So it's built on earnings growth in their own segments.
Yeah. It's you get the percentage of the earnings growth compared to history.
Yeah. Good. Another question from Gert from the Q&A email. He's wondering: "Will all future acquisitions have an average EBITDA margin that is above 9%?
It's so strong words. It's very fixed goalpost when you say all future. But disregarding that, yes, we are looking at acquisitions with better margins or better financials than the average of the group, and the average of the group is higher than that. So of course, we are looking at better and better. And over time, we believe that's a trajectory we want to follow into the future as well as long as we can.
The expectation is that they will not only be above 9%, but it will be a lot higher than 9%.
And that's the outcome of the acquisitions from the last three or four years, anyway.
Exactly. Larry, in the team chat, is wondering: "How many companies have emerged from the report? The majority of the increase has come from removal of earn-outs? How many companies did this involve?". So first, maybe starting with the second question. It's not correct that the increase has majority is coming from removal of earn-outs. So for Q4 in 2025, the effect was SEK 9 million. So that is a number, but it's far from the majority. I don't know, should we get into the technical details of earn-out revaluations work?
Yes.
Yeah. Okay. Let's do this.
Yes, let's do this. Well, first of all, when it comes to setting up the price for an acquisition, it's an individual process for each business and each seller, of course, or each vendor. If we're looking at and building a relationship with a potential seller of a business that has been really stable, when you look back into the financial history, it's rather easy to see that they will probably have the same type of normally single-digit growth going forward as well. It's much easier. They know what they're selling, we know what we're buying, and we can probably come to terms on how to structure a deal looking like that. And it's easier to agree on the right things in the SPA.
When it comes to earn-outs, how long should the earn-out period be, and what would the targets be in order for the earn-out to kick in? When we have a company. But another rather normal situation is that the seller has implemented a lot of changes that should make the company stronger for the future, and you can also see by the financial history that they are growing stably from the last three to five years or something like that. And of course, they wouldn't be satisfied with us paying the current earnings on a multiple on the current earnings figures.
So then we have to find a way, if both parties are happy to proceed with the business deal, then we have to find a structure where they actually get paid what the company will be worth, let's say, in three years. Normally, we have a three-year earn-out period. Then that might be. Normally, that target is rather high because the seller wants it high, because they have strong beliefs in that they're going to reach that target.
We try to down talk that a little bit because we don't want the uncertainty in the business deal, and we don't want anyone to be dissatisfied when we reach that day, which means that we will find a number that might be hard to reach in order to pay out the earn-out. In those cases, when the overall global economy has been weakened, of course, it's even harder to reach that target, and we have reached those situations quite a few times now, the last year or two.
Yeah. I'm going to do 60 seconds on some boring accounting technicality, but it might be interesting to understand. So when we reserve the actual earn-out that we believe will be paid out in the future on the balance sheet, of course, we have to do our best guess, but it also has to be a conservative number, which means that best guess plus a little bit of margin, because that is how accounting works. Then, of course, with a little bit of optimism, sometimes we're right on target. It doesn't happen too often, but on the cohorts, as a group, we used to be quite right. Some are wrong in the pos-- on a, in a positive remark, some are wrong in the other direction.
So what happens is that you get also an asymmetry, because when we book up an earn-out to the maximum on a balance sheet, and let's say that that company actually performs twice as well as we thought from the beginning, then nothing happens because we cannot pay out more than what is actually under the SPA. But if another company, actually, let's call it same size, is performing half of what we are expecting, then what happens is that we get a revaluation that goes through the other income or in the income statement.
So even though if you take those two companies, for Teqnion as a whole, nothing happened. One became better, one became less. As a group, they became the same. Then on the accounting part, you only get one of the effects. But just to add to that, we do not value all the earn-outs to the maximum. We do it through, what's it called? With conservative assumptions, to ensure that the debts are not undervalued, because that is very important from an accounting and audit point of view, but we do not put them at max. Good. Maybe that was that piece.
Great. Then going back to the emails here, we've got an email from Veronica, private investor. "Good morning, Johan and Daniel. What is the percentage of potential companies being approached by you versus approaching you? Has the number of companies approaching you increased during the last five years?
To start out, maybe just answer the last bit of the question first. Yes. Due to the fact that we've been around for longer and we've done more business deals, which more people know us. And it's fantastic to get approached by a potential vendor because of word of mouth and that they talk to people that like how we do business. But over the years, since we started in 2006, depending on where we are and who we are, I should say the deal flow has been from different sources. In the beginning, no one knew about us. We were very small, and we had to do more or less cold calling to approach potential sellers or companies or entrepreneurs.
After a few years, some of the Swedish brokers knew about us and sent us business deals. We found some good companies there. But when we started out, it was necessary and fun to learn how to approach potential entrepreneurs or sellers, just actively from ourselves. And that is a tradition, maybe not a tradition, but that is a way of working that Daniel also likes. So he's been doing a lot of that from the day he started here back in January of 2021, just to reach out actively to companies that we really like looking at and that have performed really well historically. Then with Daniel's courage and business drive, we jumped outside Sweden and started doing acquisitions 3.5-
Four.
Four years ago. And the transparency from what you can find in, in, financial history is much more limited outside of Sweden, which means that it's much harder to just be actively reaching out or cold calling companies because you know very little about them, who's owning them, what are the earnings, and whatever. Here in Sweden, you can find all that, so it's much more easier. So what we've been doing in, in primarily the UK, is that we found really good partners or, good, strong relationship with, with, with some, business deal brokers that knows who we are. They like us, we like them, and they find us more and more Teqnion companies to look at, and, and the people that they strongly believe could fit into our culture and our, our environment.
So the business deal from abroad is mainly driven by brokers, but more and more as the second part of the question was asked, also nowadays by word of mouth, that someone knows someone that sold a company to us, and they also like what they heard about that, and they also contact us in order to see if we're interested in their company, which is fantastic, of course.
Yeah, and maybe just to add clarity to that. So, so the brokers that find us deals, they do this because they, for various reasons, but they are never paid by us. They are always advising the sell side. How long is the process on average from initial contact to a deal?
I like the question. We received it a lot over the years, and I like to take the example of one of the companies from the first cold call that I reached out, a very long time ago, until we actually signed the SPA and transferred the shares. That was not a little bit over 9 years. We have potential deals in the future that's gonna break that record. And the shortest might be 1.5 months or something like that.
I think we did it four weeks.
Okay. Okay, four weeks. So it's a very broad spectrum d epending on, we try to be flexible on that side. I think I mentioned earlier today that when the seller is ready, we need to be ready. We want to be ready. We want to be easy to make business with.
Yeah. But it's quite normal that it takes six to 12 months, I would say. How often do you lose out to other serial acquirers? Is the reason only price?
Also varied over time. We like when it is price, but, but, it's, it's people. It's even though that we, we, we are competing in a financial world with, with, return on capital, it's a people's game. And when a potential seller meets us, they either think that they want to leave us with the trust of taking care of their life's work and work with us going forward, or they feel like, "These guys are not for me."
So the ones that tend to like our way of doing business and like the culture that we try to nourish, they can, from what we've seen and what we are very happy about that, they can accept a lower price for the shares than they would expect from selling it to another type of culture, another type of holder. That is, of course, fantastic. But we meet competition, and sometimes the seller likes us better, and in some cases, they like the other party better.
Yeah. I think what is important to stress here is that we meet with a lot of entrepreneurs, and we get the opportunity to buy only a very few of them for various reasons. Some doesn't really hold up to the quality that we thought when we first looked at it. Some of them go because of price. But then, of course, it's, as you said, it's so much personality. And one thing that we try to do is that we really, really try to be transparent and open about who we are, and we encourage the seller to ask the hard questions before. Because if we do this right, it's gonna be a forever relationship.
We encourage everyone, even if they sometimes don't want to, to take references, because it is—yes, it's nice to acquire a company, and you always have a honeymoon period, but over a lifetime, that's a long time. For us, it's much, much better to walk away from a deal no matter the reason than to just get a bump in the numbers and get problems later. And good. Then we have another question here from Sven, who is a private investor: "Thank you for your clear communication in your quarterly update. Obviously, the complete write-off has a large impact on the result. How certain are you that it stays with one write-off? Should we expect more to come?
It's impossible, of course, to talk for an eternity of future lying ahead of us. As we are today, we're not seeing any of that. I mean, the turbulence in the world and everything that's going on, you never know for the future, and it's tough to make any promise when it comes to that, so that we can't do. As it is of today, it's nothing that we can foresee.
Good. Then we have another question here from Francesco from Antelma Asset Management. "You said that we've been in your CEO words forced to use the word marked by horrific and dark conflicts. You also invested in a company supplying critical components for military tanks. I'm curious about how you deal with this.
That might be a long discussion, but for me, it's always been clear. I don't know why, it's just the way I'm made, I guess. I strongly believe that we shouldn't be aggressive to one each other—to, to one another. And, I also strongly believe that to have a strong defense that make sure that no one, roll the dice and attack you is a, is a very good. It's, it's a very good thing to have. That has been shown, unfortunately, it has been shown, since, the, the aggression, the Russian aggression on Ukraine and other examples in the world. It's, it's very good to be able to defend yourself, and unfortunately, you have to defend yourself with, with force.
So for me, it's always been very normal to, within the boundaries of the law, make sure that we can supply the defense industry and defense organizations with the right material, and I strongly believe in that, and I'm gonna continue doing that in the future.
Yeah. We have a live question here from Hai: "What's the current environment like for M&A in both UK and Sweden, given the current weak macro about other markets in Europe?
It would be—I don't know exactly how to answer. I'm gonna leave it to you, I think, but I'm looking forward to having a stable business area in the Nordics and having a stable, bigger business area in the UK, and together with Daniel, starting to investigate other geographical areas. But we're not quite there at this stage, but we're getting close to it, and it will be very, very fun.
Yeah. No, I agree. I don't have anything to add on the geography part. Regarding macro, I feel that I've been here for five years or so, and it has been maybe not the same macro, but similar-ish with some kind of gloomy outlook. And what we try to do now and always is try to find companies that are not so pure macro-driven. Of course, all companies are, to an extent, part of some kind of cycle, but we want to find companies that are in different cycles and have uncorrelated risks so that we can do well, no matter the macro conditions.
Good. Douglas from Samrisan Capital: "Hi, Daniel and team. Thanks for the hard work. A couple of simple questions from me. There seems to be a rather big difference in profitability between Q3 and Q4. Can you please explain this a little bit more?
I think I tried to explain it. Maybe you can do it in a better way or more clear way than I did.
No, but I think that it. We've not been good enough, is, of course, the.
The most honest answer.
The most honest answer. We should have done better, and, I mean, we don't think the Q4 was great, far from it, and that's why, as Johan wrote, it's a D- minus, maybe D, if we are nice to ourselves. Then, of course, the Christmas timing did affect it. It's nothing that should affect if we did our jobs well enough. But then there's also quite a bit of timing question. So we have a number of companies that are very project or one-time project-driven, and those orders come in when they come in. And during Q3, we had a few of those that went well, and Q4, we expected a few of those, but have been pushed to a later period.
I mean, in a group like this, you should, of course, expect to have a rather stable profitability over time. Right now, we are still doing a lot of things to get to that point, but on an individual subsidiary level, quarter is not the right way to look at some of these companies, and right now, they still have a bit too much effect on the total group. Yeah. Next question comes from Alexander at Slow Compounding: Earnout performance hurdles. Generally speaking, a meaningful share of your acquisition consideration is paid via earn-out over a two to three years period. As a rule of thumb, how much does earnings typically need to increase over the earn-out period versus acquisition year for the earn-out to be paid out in full?
We touched a little bit on it, but not in detail, of course. It's. If the forecast is something that stands out from the historical numbers, it's harder to reach those hurdles. If it's a stable history, it's easier. The hurdles are lower, of course. I don't know how much into detail we should go on that. It's a big topic to try to cover, and it's very much case to case, depending on the person, depending on the financial history, depending on the business area the company is operating in. How is the market for that type of products and whatever, going forward?
I think generally speaking, and over time, and the key words here are over time, because, for individual cases, it can be very different. But over time, we expect organic growth for the group to be GDP plus a couple of percentage points . And then, as, Johan, mentioned, we look to acquire better and better companies, which means that, we, for these companies, the expectations are usually a little bit higher than that in order to get the full earn-out payment.
In the team chat, we then have Steven, who writes: Strong recovery, Daniel and Johan. On the long term, your objective is to double EPS every five years, 15% CAGR. I understand the reason for you to double EPS every 5 years, but if we take the 15% CAGR, how much of the 15% would you want to be organic growth on the long term? I think the acquisition strategy slightly changed because of Daniel. Do you aim for more organic growth with the new acquisitions? You want to start?
No, but I can do it.
Please.
No, we've said—I mean, we normally don't look much at our peers, because we try to do the best we can with what we have and our own resources. But of course, we have looked a little bit at how they express themselves and what they actually performed over the years when it come to those two metrics. And normally, what they say and what we have also said, and what I strongly believe in, is that we're gonna have a few single-digit percentages of organic growth on the group as a whole, and we're gonna acquire at least 10% or acquire 10% from that growth per year.
That's, of course, very rough numbers, and it can be a little bit less some years and more another year. So it's not figures or numbers that we look at and target. It's more the opportunities we have on the acquisition market and our whip on our own backs to make sure that the existing portfolio performs as well as we believe it can perform, where we should see the organic growth.
So for us, we need to make sure that the existing portfolio and our beloved subsidiaries perform on their top level and gives us and themselves organic growth and preferably organic earnings growth, while we also make sure that we have a good deal flow when it comes to acquisitions and where we acquire better and better companies that will give the minority of the growth going forward.
Yeah. And maybe also to add to that, so we, we like the financial targets because it's a- it's three targets that we want to keep forever and ever. What is worth keeping in mind is that, I mean, we come from a period with very suppressed earnings because a lot of things didn't go as we wanted them to do, due to our own fault. And we're also very young as a company, which. And if you take those two together, I mean, over the long term, as you wrote, yes, it's a doubling every five years or 50% CAGR over time, but in the medium term, and we do believe that we can do much more than that.
And in the medium term, it will be driven both by acquisitions, as you saw, last year, we did a lot of acquisitions, but also due to the suppressed earnings, especially here in the Nordic region. With Martin in place, we were expecting things to change. Good. Next question comes from Prakul Goyal here in the team's chat. He's writing: "The recent margin expansion has primarily come from the gross margin expansion, which I think is mostly because of the U.K. acquisitions. Is that fair? Is it fair to say that the gross margin you earned in H2 2025 sets up a new base?" I think, maybe if I start the second part of the question, a little bit, as you said in the beginning, we're setting up a new platform.
We were numbers-wise in a good place a few years back, but we didn't really have the structure, process, people to ensure that we could grow from that base. That is more and more in place now. So yes, the H2 numbers, margin-wise, is what we think should be some kind of new platform, a new low point or whatever you wanna call it, and grow from there. The margin expansion, yes, it comes from that we have acquired better and better companies, and that absolutely has an effect, especially given that there were quite a few acquired companies. But it also comes a lot from that we basically put stop doing stupid things, i.e., removed revenue that didn't give us anything other than losses and gray hair. Yeah.
And, and also, of course, supporting our coworkers within the subsidiaries here in Sweden and give them the courage to say no to poor margins businesses and say no to things and not chase the top line, while losing at the losing on the bottom line. So it's a lot of hard work also, organically or what to say, operationally here, during the last year or so. Yeah. Good. Next question comes from the same person. "Even though your free cash flow profile has improved a lot this quarter, but a lot of it came from gross margin expansion and release of working capital. How do you think of your company in terms of free cash flow margin going forward?" Also, rough numbers. Yeah. We acquire companies.
I mean, right now in the group, we have companies still that are both underperforming when it comes to margins and underperforming when it comes to free cash flow, and underperforming when it comes to other things as well. That are things that we are working on, have been working on, and will continue to work on. But going forward, if we allow ourself to look into the medium-term future, we acquire-- we want to acquire companies, and we want to own companies that have a result and free cash flow that are more or less the same. Of course, due to accounting, they might not be the same every quarter, but over time, over a year or so, we would expect these companies to match free cash flow with results. The whole business model is based on...
I think you wrote about that. I mean, cash is our raw material. So we want to acquire companies that have a very light balance sheet. It means that we don't, they don't need to reinvest in a lot of CapEx. They don't need to hold more inventory than they need. They don't need to be overly kind when it comes to receivables, which means that whatever they spit out, we use that to acquire new businesses. So that is how we think about it going forward. But free cash flow will jump between the quarters. Some of the quarters will look bad, sometimes it's because maybe they were bad. But when it comes to the working capital, we have some companies where we're trying to be opportunistic.
So when prices are good, we will be buying them in, and then they might be sending out the stuff this next month. But over a year, we expect the free cash flow to be in parity with the results. Good answer. Good. Going back then to the emails, we have a question here from Marcus, private investor. He's wondering, "Lower earn-outs suggest acquired companies are underperforming initial expectations. Was the issue overall overestimated synergies, weaker markets, or integration friction?" You talked a little bit about this before. If we look at the groups as a whole, my, my take, our take is that the, the group we acquired last year, the year before, the year before that, they as a big cohort are growing as we want them to.
However, there are some companies that are underperforming a little bit compared to the expectations, and there are some companies that are better than the expectations. Due to accounting, we do a revaluation of the earn-outs, but it only goes overall, it only goes in one direction. Next question is also from the email. It comes from Mergim: "How do you view the opportunity to continue acquiring companies in Sweden, the U.K., the rest of Europe, given how many competitors there are in the same space? How do you view your business model? Are you exclusively a serial acquirer of industrial manufacturing companies, or do you see other ways to expand into other areas, such as software, investment, et cetera?" Hmm.
We try to stick with what we understand. It doesn't mean that we know everything about all the companies that we acquire, but we understand the business model, and we understand the need of the product going into the market. Over the years, we decided to focus on physical products, meaning that we are not acquiring, up until this day, software companies or consultant firms. If we support our customers with support, it's always in addition to a physical product that everything centers from. That's how we see our business model. But it's definitely not only industrial manufacturing companies.
It's companies that has a very narrow niche, where they can dictate the terms for that little piece of the market when it comes to knowledge and application know-how, and where we can supply true customer value, which means that we hopefully can have a reasonable margin for what we deliver. And we see a lot. Going forward, we see a lot of more potential. We find these type of companies, and I don't see the reason why to look into any other niche at this stage. This is a rather broad niche. We find companies in all different sectors.
We constantly find new. We constantly find companies that are expert in a product that we didn't even know existed before we learned about that company, which is also not only interesting, but also very fun and keeps you alert and keeps you constantly questioning your knowledge about society, because you always have to learn new things. You get humbled by doing business like this.
We are looking at companies that know a lot about their product and the application where they're used, meaning quite often that they have extensive skills when it comes to standards around that application or that product. A lot of certification like hurdles and modes for competitors coming. Doesn't matter if the total market is rather limited, as long as you can dictate the terms within that, market sphere.
Good. I didn't listen for the last 30 seconds - but I'm thinking on what I should say next.
I realized that, because if you would have been listening, you would have wanted to add something. No, but talking about what type of companies we're looking at and that we decided to focus on, companies that sell physical product to other companies. That's what we do, but we all, we do that in all industrial niches.
Yes.
Definitely not only manufacturing industry.
No, exactly. Things that solve real problems and cannot be taken away by anything due to the laws of physics. What I was thinking about is strange to think out loud in a live session like this. But, Johan and I, as people, we, it's up to you to judge, but what we always, always try to do is to be transparent and genuine about everything that we do. We always try our best to focus on earning money and creating value for the long-term shareholder, and that is on the basis that we do everything by the book and ensure that we follow legal ramifications and our ethics and morals. As I said, that is what we're trying to do. It's up to you to judge if you believe in that or not.
That is also the reason why we have a open Q&A, so that anyone, no matter if you like Teqnion, if you love Teqnion, if you hate Teqnion, or if you just hate us personally, want to join in under maybe a pseudonym, anonymously, and write things in, in order to do whatever you want to do. So as you probably have seen, there are a few people that are focusing a lot on the Irish court case. As Johan said, we, we will only comment on that when it's appropriate to comment, because we, we cannot say what other people should do, but we always will follow the rules and the processes, and we will update when it is suitable to update. What I want to add to that is, we will continue to be open.
We will continue to have open Q&As and be open for discussion so that people can send in whatever they want. But I also want you to know that there are certain people out there that are doing whatever they can to pressure Johan, me, our families, our employees, our CEOs, in personal capacity, to scare us, pressure us, frighten us, whatever you wanna call it, in order to cave in and give away Teqnion's money, your money, to other people. And we won't do that. We will continue to follow the legal rules of the countries where we are in.
We will honor the jurisdictions. We will honor our moral compass. So you can please continue to do what you want to do with our, your lives. But we will continue to do the best for Teqnion, and that's the end of the Irish piece of this. Sorry for that.
Oh, no, fantastic. I agree with everything you said.
Good. Going back to this then, we have a question from Kolappan Pillai in Teams. He's wondering: Are we done with repairing low-performing companies, or are these low companies continue to drive organic growth for a while yet?
Unfortunately, we will never be done with it because we moved the goalpost all along. As we, as a group, become better, we also gonna make sure that the, the tail also needs to perform better in order to, to fulfill the obligations towards the Teqnion group. So yes, no, we're not done. Yes, we will always continue doing this, to improve, to, to improve the individual subsidiaries within the group. I mean, it's fun to improve businesses. That's what we do, right?
Yeah. Exactly. Greg, a private investor, is asking: Thanks for the great job and the transparency. One question from me, what is your dream acquisition?
I think we missed it, unfortunately. I never look back because I'm, that's the personality I think. So I don't cry over things that could have happened. But we, Daniel has a fantastic nose for finding very niche, very good companies driven by fantastic entrepreneurs, and sometimes we are not the right taker for them, so we missed a few of those, and some of them I sometimes think about when I get confronted with their products.
But the future is so long and so fantastically bright because we will always adjust our ways of operating due to our size and our abilities, and we will find the most fantastic company going forward. I'm so confident in that, and that's, of course, one of the big drivers of just pushing energy into us to just continue doing this because we know that we can do more and better, and that also goes with acquisitions going forward, of course.
Yeah. There are so many nice companies and, and it's difficult to say what the dream is. I mean, just yesterday, I think I told you, but I had the Olympics on when I was thinking about other things, and then they were doing curling, and then I thought, you know, "Who makes these stones?" And apparently, it's a Scottish company that makes those stones that are-
It's Scottish granite, right?
Yeah, exactly. From an island outside of there where they have a lease until 2050.
Yeah. Okay.
Okay.
2050, we have an opening.
Exactly, exactly. That would be fun. I think they're called frey, clay, whatever. Just for your information, finding interesting companies that could suit our group is, it's fun, but that is not our USP. There are so many companies out there. There's Google out there. So, you know, giving away some thoughts about what could be an interesting company, that is not what is building Teqnion. But otherwise, I think we have a lot of really good, great companies in the group. I think it will be fun to build a little bit more within those niches and see if we can find more similar companies that can become friends with each other.
Yeah, I thought of one of those aspects the other day is we have several companies within the group where I would love to work operationally. It's so fun products, so nice Teams, fantastic management. So the dream company to acquire, it's constantly gonna change because we change, and the world around us changes, but the opportunities are extensive.
Yeah. We have another question here from Prakhar in Teams. "The backlog jumped 50% in fiscal year 2025 year-on-year. How material is it to look at that this?" I think that it's important to view it not in a vacuum, but together with everything else. I mean, everything equal, that going up is good. We, of course, have a lot more granularity regarding which companies have increased it, and as you know, the profitability of some of our companies are really, really great.
Some are, you know, at a 50% margin, EBIT, and some are far from it. So obviously, the former group's backlog growing is much nicer compared to the second, but that is not something that we disclose, but of course, that going up is a good thing. Next question coming from Arthur de Munck. Sorry if I mispronounced that. "Congrats on the comeback. That is worth B- minus for me." Thank you. Don't really agree, but thank you. "In the beginning of 2025, you gave some insight about the amount of acquisitions you expected, which became a record for the year. How do you expect it to be 2026 without going into specifics?
A handful.
No, I think going without going into the specifics, we will put more focus on doing acquisitions. We have-
Well, yeah, sorry for interrupting.
Yeah. Go ahead.
One great effect, and maybe we didn't touch up on that today in the call, but of course, as we structure the organization in a much better way, it frees time for Daniel and for me, and for Jonathan, and for other people at the headquarters, which means that we can actually do more of what we're supposed to be doing, and in Daniel's case, to search up great acquisitions. So that is a huge advantage that we gain from the new organization.
Yeah. But also just keep in mind, we got a question earlier from Veronica regarding the usual timeline. So let's call it that a normal acquisition takes six to 12 months, which basically takes us into Q3, Q4 2027 for a normal acquisition. We did one in nine years. Last year, I thought we would buy one after 13 years of discussion. This year, I think we're going to do it after 14 years of discussion. So,
Maybe next year, it will be 15 years.
Exactly. Jokes aside, we, of course, internally have some thoughts about what could be realistic to get this year, but it moves a lot, usually not because of us, but mostly because when sellers feel that they are ready or not, and it has to be feel really, really good for them, because otherwise we don't think it's going to be a good match. But what we're doing now will lay a foundation for a more optimistic and more attractive sales, sorry, acquisition pipeline going forward, that some of that will happen 2026, and some of that-- most of that will happen later.
Good.
We got through most of the questions. I see that it's 2 minutes past eight . Sorry, nine. So with that, do you want to say something before we.
I just want to thank you all for listening in. It's fantastic that you're interested in what we're doing, and we see that we have a much better platform. Maybe that's the big takeaway from today. We have a much better platform to scale from, and that feels great for us in the team.
Thank you, everyone, for joining, and, look forward to see you again in a few months.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.