Hello, and good morning. Welcome to the Teqnion Q&A. After we have released the Q3 report, we are talking to you from, as, I don't know what this is called. It's a conference place in the suburb south of Stockholm, because we have the CEO subsidiary CEO conference with the Swedish subsidiaries today and tomorrow. So before we start, we just apologize for this is a little bit more poor studio than we normally have than when we are broadcasting from Kanalgratis. But we will do our best, me and Daniel.
So I have Daniel here, and we will together try to answer some of the many, many questions that you have sent in beforehand, and we're really thankful and grateful for that you take your time and send these insightful questions to us, and we will do our best answering them.
We can maybe also mention that this call is being recorded. We will upload it on YouTube later this week. If you have any further questions during this call, please write directly in the Teams chat, and we'll do our best to address them as well. And we'll try to be short and condensed, and we will finish by 11 Swedish time at the latest.
Yeah.
You want to say a couple of words about the report, Johan?
Yeah, the report is, you, you've seen the report since Saturday. Hopefully, you, you got all the figures already, so we don't, we don't have to talk about those again. But just to mention a few things, we're, we're rather happy that we are getting back a better cash flow, that we wrote about in the last report that we wanted to address. We have done that. Seems to be better. Of course, we will always continue to work on our cash flow because that's what we live for, and that's also the life nerve of Teqnion, so we constantly can invest in new good things, new good companies. So happy about that. Still very difficult in the house building business in Sweden.
We have two companies that, that's really struggled there, and they probably going to struggle for a long time as it, as it looks of today. They are, they are really, really fighting, really, really, addressing all type of projects that we could produce. We sent out so many offers, but the customers or the potential customers is just holding on, and, and not making any decisions. So it's really frustrating for our, for our coworkers there, but they're really, really fighting, and hopefully, hopefully soon, something will happen. We'll see about that. And then I think I also write a little bit about that the electrification of society and the, and the situation in the world with all these, wars and, sad things going on, the, the defense industry is also really strong.
Unfortunately, or how to put it, it will probably be like that for a long time as well. Electrification, defense, really, really strong. But in general, most of our businesses is still performing really well, even though that maybe the economic climate globally is declining a bit. So, we just do what we normally do and struggle on, and hopefully, we will come out of this down cycle on a very good term. Yeah, but I think we'd rather just jump into the Q&A session because that's where we might give you something like,
We received quite a lot of questions, actually, about our housing businesses, and just to maybe condense that into one kind of answer. We like to talk about things that are on top of our minds, and we tend to address things that are going more poorly, where we see that there's a lot of potential to make it better. And just to give you a little bit of color on that, our housing businesses are less than 5% of the revenue for the quarter. So it's, I don't want to say downplay it, but it's closer to a rounding error than that it's, you know, a major issue. However, we do spend significant time and effort on it. Maybe just that's enough.
Yeah.
We received a question here from Cristoforo in Italy that basically has asked two questions, who is wondering about the margin improvement for the quarter. Where does that come from? Is it organic, acquisitions, anything else? And secondly, wondering how long do we usually follow the acquisitions? Maybe you can talk a little bit about the last two.
Yeah, do that.
Yeah, sure. We'll start to the other end. So the last two acquisitions are very different. The first one, Stanwell Technic, we spoke with them for maybe six months, more or less, before we decided that we wanted to acquire them and that they wanted to join us. The reason why was basically, of course, that we liked the financial profile of the company to begin with, and we really liked the people and felt that we spoke the same language and that we wanted the same thing and had very similar values. And it was also a great case for continuing to diversify and build a stronger group. So that was a rather quick process. You have more background on Schill .
Yeah, Schill is a Swedish company, a small Swedish company with their own developed product. It's for weapon alignment. So it's to make sure that what you're aiming for is also what you hit. And, the company is founded by Bengt Schill in the 1980s, and he, together with his team, has developed the product and the systems that they offer to defenses around the world. And, they have been a really small company, and they have just trying to get their products out because their product is really a game changer when it comes to naval alignment. And, slowly, it has penetrated the old hierarchies and the old ways of doing things within these naval industries.
A few years ago, they started to get the really big accounts going, and he felt that he was ready to move on and find a new owner for going towards the horizon with Schill. He has also started to recruit a new team from that industry that works within Schill. I have had ongoing talks with Bengt since, I don't know exactly, but 2015, maybe, somewhere around that. So we know each other pretty well. It's been a long relationship build, and now, finally, he was ready to sell, and then we are really happy to just continue their great work, and hopefully, we can do it forever.
Yeah. Regarding the margin improvement, the simplified picture is that the companies that we have in the group, already had in the group before the quarter, and for the year, they were more or less on the same margin as the previous quarter. And to give a little bit of flavor of that, we have one company, Dima, who is very project-oriented, so they had a tremendous Q3 last year, which doesn't happen every year, which they didn't have this year, of course, because that's the nature of their business. So disregarding that company, the rest of the group actually had a little bit of higher margin this year, but most of the margin improvement comes from new companies that we acquire.
And as you know, we are very inspired by Jeff Bezos and, and his talk about bar raising. I mean, every company that we acquire into group, we want that company to somehow raise the bar and make the group better. It doesn't necessarily have to be the best company every time, but it has to be better than the average. All right, Brandon Osborne from Twitter and Prakhar from an Indian hedge fund is wondering, basically, why have we focused on the industrial sector as opposed to, for example, vertical software or other sectors?
It comes from the founding of Teqnion, where we started out with looking at our peers in the trade, Addtech, and they had smaller industrial companies. We somehow thought that we understood that type of business. I have no software background at all. So we made up the rule pretty early on that we should focus on things that we understand, and we can grasp why that company will be relevant now and in 10 years and hopefully in 20 years as well. We tend to focus on industrial companies that sell something that hopefully will be needed by society in more or less with a tweak forever.
So it's more or less we stick to what we understand and that we believe is necessary for the society to continue. So easy, understandable. We also understand how to make good money out of selling physical things.
Yeah. We have three people, Victor, Tom, and Mindful Investments on Twitter is wondering: What is the most of Teqnion, the holding company?
Tough.
It is difficult.
I don't really know. I mean, we focus on trying to be better every day. We focus and we try to be curious every day to constantly learn and never be satisfied. But I don't really know. The moat for us is not something that we think about. We just want to be best at what we do. Maybe that makes a moat over time. It's people that makes a good business. It's people that and relationships with the suppliers and customers that make sure that we always can have a sustainable business, and we try to be better at that every day.
Yeah. I think it's a different kind of moat. It's soft, it comes down to soft values, as you were talking about. I mean, we don't have any proprietary technology or IP or, some kind of super scale advantage or so, but, it's really the soft and network things that makes this work. Great. All right, Brandon from Mexico is wondering, "Do you look at, nano or micro cap companies that are listed in Sweden to find potential targets for acquisitions? Why, why not?
Hmm. No, we don't do that normally because we try to pay something for an acquisition that we will get back within five years, and normally, listed companies are at higher value than that. Yeah, it is, it has never been the case. We have never found anything, but I mean, you never know.
No. We have spent very insignificant time to look at them sometimes because it's fun to see if that opportunity exists, and so far, as you say, risk-adjusted, just not good enough. Kyle in Canada is wondering, it's basically around,
Unions.
Thank you. Unions, unions – unionization of our subsidiaries. Do we see any risk of this? Have there been any issues in the past, and do you think there will be any troubles in the future regarding this?
No. If there's a union, if a company has an agreement with the union, we let it be like that. If it's not, we let it be like that. In Sweden, there is a really long and strong tradition of having the unions active at the workplaces and within the companies. It works really well, and in most cases, we just try to keep that good relationship going.
What has happened is that at some stages, maybe we have some discussions with the unions within our subsidiaries, but the only examples that I can come up with from the top of my mind, it has been really good, really good situations where we and the union understand what's needed to be done in order to stay competitive and to stay ahead and make the company profitable and sustainable. So normally, you can have, if you have a good relationship with them, it's really good to have them because you have to speak to one part and not to many. So I don't see any risk, at least, but I'm talking about Sweden here, and in other areas, I have no experience, and I don't know.
But here, it's a very common and normal thing to have a good relationship with the union.
Yeah. We have a guest on Teams, Steven, who is wondering, "Do you have any doubt on the firms that we possess?
We have any doubts?
Yeah.
That's the only thing I have. Always. I always have doubts. No, I don't know. We try to fantasize about a horrible future when we acquire something and look at what—turn every stone in order to see what might be hidden and what might happen in the future when it comes to bad things. But I think the entrepreneurial spirit that is held by most of our CEOs is very, very positive. So we can come in as the top management and try to by, via questions and a strategic board work, we can try to address potential risk for in the future by having a good strategy for each and each of our subsidiaries and always be prepared to whatever might happen.
Maybe that's one of our modes. We always think it's gonna get worse.
Yeah, maybe. Maybe.
Yeah. Alexander from a German fund is wondering, basically, comparing to companies like Lagerhaus, Addtech, Lifco, Indutrade that have very high margins, why are our margins so low compared to them?
Yeah, that's terrible. Actually, I don't really agree with that question. We have low margins compared to those companies, but those companies has been practicing for many, many more years than we have, and it's a much bigger group of companies that these margins are spread out over. So there's a robustness within getting bigger and more diversified, and we are just on the, we're still in the beginning of building something. We constantly try to increase our margins, and we will not be happy until we are best in class, of course, but we won't be happy at that decision either.
But it's a constant struggle, and it's a slow process, but as Daniel mentioned before, we try to always as we go ahead, we try to acquire companies with better margins, and over time, I think this will do the trick. And also in relationship with just talking about having the right margin with the existing subsidiaries as well. It's this thing with pricing is something that you can never stop talking about because you can always evolve, and you can always be better, and it's a fun thing to talk about. That's real business, to make sure that you get what's worth for what you're delivering.
Yeah. I think maybe just using other words, but this sounds a little bit complacent, and it is not meant like that. But if you would compare us with a cohort that were founded more or less in the same years as us, I think that our margins are actually a little bit higher than those. And if you look at the companies that have been here for decades longer, I think that's maybe a realistic long-term target of where one could expect us to go, at least in that direction, and as you say, higher.
I like the question now because it will force us to just, we want to improve and grow, and be better.
Please ask again next quarter.
Exactly.
Is it possible to split revenue growth into different growth drivers, and specifically organic M&A divestment special? I can take the short answer. So of course, this quarter, as you saw, organic growth was close to zero. We're in a very challenging, economical environment. Over time, if you look back, it's split closer to 50/50 between organic and M&A. And I think if you would look very much into the future, that is maybe closer to where we think we will end up, because the ones that we mentioned earlier usually are close to that as well. We don't do divestments, and we don't have much effects or special items. From the same fund, we got a question: What is the difference between raw material and merchandise in our P&L?
Yeah, basically, raw material, we have different type of companies. Some companies buy raw material, process the raw material into a finished product, or at least a semi-finished product, and sell it to someone else. And some companies are pure, let's call them resellers for the simplicity. They buy a product, they add the competence, they have networks, they know application, and then they sell the same product without basically touching it, and those goes into merchandise. Another question, the last question from the same founder, "Vixar AB seems to be our biggest shareholder, owned 50% by the chairman, Per Berggren. Who owns the other 50%?
The other gentleman's name is Carl-Johan Ahlström. They've been the largest shareholder of Teqnion since the fall of 2008.
We got a question from Justus Frederick. "How do you feel about expansion towards Germany in general? And secondly, how do you feel about companies that are well-positioned, meet all of our factors, but have problem with corporate succession?
The first question regarding Germany or any other geographical area at the moment, we try to focus on Sweden and the UK at the moment. We have two companies in the UK, one in Ireland, and we hope to acquire a few more companies there in order to get a good footprint on that soil, so to speak, to get to know the regulations, to get to know the market, and also all the regulations regarding that. So we're looking there, but still our main focus is Sweden. There's so much to do here, and of course, that's our home turf. It feels secure and safe for us to be here.
Yeah.
Hopefully in the future, I don't know when, but in the far future, we will hopefully start to look at different geographical areas to address and acquire companies, but not now.
Yeah. I mean, English is our second-best language, right? And
Yeah, that's poor.
Yeah. Unser Deutsch is nicht sehr gut[Foreign language] . How do you feel about companies that are great but have problems with corporate succession?
We prefer to buy a company where the succession is in place or where the entrepreneur can stay on, but we are also looking at companies where the owner wants to retire. Then together with him or her, we make that succession happen over a 2- or 3-year period. So we get to know the people within the company, we get to know what's needed for a leader in that company, and together with the former owner, we do that recruitment process.
Yeah. And maybe just to add two points, because I think it's a good question. We try to look for companies, of course, where all factors are right or perfect, which of course, doesn't exist. But when it comes to succession, and if we need to help the company to do succession, we first need to figure out, you know, if we have the capabilities and time to do that, super important, otherwise, we won't. And secondly, we, our experience is that when the entrepreneur leaves and someone else gets recruited, and especially if it's someone that is not, has not been working at the firm for a long time, things happen to the company and the financials.
Because we pay basically a forward multiple, 'cause, say, we try to get our money back within five years, in our forecast, it means that we tilt the revenue down, we maybe compress the margins, and we will pay less for something like that. So it's risk-adjusted, gets, becomes still good for us. David in the U.S. wrote and says: "Thank you very much. Don't get me wrong, but I feel a little bit uneasy that the company is dependent on you, I guess me, and Johan. I know that Johan has a lot of shares. I understand that there's a lot of you keeping here, you here on board, but why is there nothing regarding long-term incentives in place?
What do we say about that? Yeah, we, we, we incentivize all the CEOs in different way, in monetary ways when it comes to... We try to promote them to increase their earnings all the time, and they get a share of that. And I think that's the question we can talk one day or more about incentives and long-term incentives, but it's not really for us to do. I mean, it's when it comes to incentives for the top management, it's a board issue, so-
... Yep. Simba on Teams is wondering, "Are we looking for businesses that have better recurring revenues, for example, where it comes from maintenance and services?
Mm-hmm. We say about that, we focus as we mentioned, we focus on companies selling physical products, hopefully rather boring products with that has a lot of regulation around them or their applications. And actually, at quite a few of our companies, they also sell services towards that product into that system that they have delivered, but it's not their main focus, and it's something that we try to develop when it comes to the business constantly, because it's a very good recurring revenue. But when we look for companies, it's not what we target, and it's something that we try to develop over time instead.
Yeah, and maybe philosophical as well. Recurring revenue sounds very good to talk about in when it comes to Investor relations. People love that, but, a lot of recurring revenue is not gross recurring revenue, as you probably have seen, for example, in the Netflix report, recurring revenue is just recurring for a while. What we try to find are companies that are really, really good at providing the product and services that demand, basically, that the customers need. And as long as the demand for beer or, weapon alignment systems or whatever, our customers buy, we want to be the ones that are best at providing that. And that is absolutely not recurring in the sense of the word, but it is sticky. We like that.
Alexander is wondering, "Do you expect to make some more acquisitions in the remainder of the year?
Yeah, we always expect to do acquisitions. We are constantly in talks with potential sellers. We have a long pipeline of relationships going. We mentioned it before in this Q&A that one acquisition had from the first call to the closing, six months or something. One had, I don't know, eight years-
Yeah.
... six years. So we, we always have something going on, and but you never know. I mean, things happen, and I, I don't really want to talk about it, but we haven't slowed down. We, we constantly are in discussions trying to, to buy more quality companies.
What is important, maybe to send us a message, is that, I mean, we don't really think in years or any calendar units, when it comes to acquisitions. We make the acquisitions when the terms and the people in the company are right, and then if it is on this side of November or December, January, we do it. If it's not, we do it anyway. So they, they come when they come, but we will never do businesses, do deals just because to get hit a certain number of deals in a certain year. Molly in the UK are wondering, "When we do acquisitions, do we always do them on a Teqnion mother company level, or do our subsidiaries also do acquisitions?
We only do it on the mother company level, and but we try to ask our subsidiary CEOs and our coworkers if they have any good ideas. Maybe it's a good competitor or a customer or whatever, a supplier, that they like, that they would like us to have a look at. And then normally it's me and Daniel that has a look at that and then take the first contact and do potential acquisition.
Yes. Book or Bookie, sorry for the pronunciation, is wondering, "I noticed that you have no longer, that we no longer show the acquisition prices of our acquisitions, since Valmet. Why is it so?
Daniel, you want to take it or-
Go ahead.
Yeah. Uh-
You're on a roll.
I'm on a roll. No, we, it's normally a seller that's not so interested in getting his private economy displayed on the internet. Since we don't have to do it, we just—you know, we know that we have valued the company, so we will hopefully get our money back within five years. I guess if you want to, what's it, if you want to backtrack, you can go into our reports, and hopefully, you will find out approximately how much we paid for everything.
But I mean, it's still one thing to just make the seller a little bit more anonymous when it comes to how much money that person has gotten, and also it's a little bit of a competitive advantage for us as Teqnion not to display exactly what we pay for our acquisitions.
We don't want to end up in a situation where all of the negotiations we have is where they look back and say, "You know, you paid this multiple or whatever," because every deal we do is different. There's different circumstances and makes just life a little bit easier.
As you said, some companies, I mean, since we risk-adjusted everything-
Yeah
... it's, we have to be able to use that tool.
Another question from Teams, Andrew is wondering, "Since December last year, there's been a modest amount of debt that has become current liability, i.e., falling due within the next 12 months. Why is this?"... You're the bank guy.
We have a rather long relationship now with our bank, and it's been time now to renegotiate the loan terms with them, and we are in the finalization of that, so it's just a temporary thing.
I'm very happy that people are still reading the balance sheet. Sometimes I wonder if people still do that.
That's really good.
Jesus, portfolio manager in Spain, is wondering: "How do we feel about our cash position?" I guess we feel good. We brought in quite a lot of money this July, August, and now we also have debt financing with some new terms. So we feel good.
Yeah.
Order Backlog has grown less than revenues. Do we feel that there are headwinds ahead?
I know. I think there's headwinds ahead, yeah, in the world, on a broad spectrum. But, I think that we have, we have a little bit normal order intake at the moment, compared to after COVID or in COVID, because there was a lot of customers just trying to buy as much as possible because the demand was so high. There was, it was hard to get material, it was hard to get finished products, so it tended to just increase the order sizes. They- I think, I don't know, I, I get the feeling that it's normalizing a little bit. And, then also, we buy- some of the companies that we buy, don't really have an order stock. It's, they just get the order and, and deliver. So that can also, in effect the- our percentage order stock.
Yeah. So percentage of companies that do not have an order stock have increased in the last couple of years. Jesus is also wondering how come the CapEx is so low for the group?
I want it to be lower.
Yeah.
So I have a... We tend to focus on companies that have a light balance sheet and doesn't need to buy many machines or things, inventory to function. That's one of our criteria when we're searching for good companies. Still, we have a few factories that needs to be reinvested when you used up a machine or whatever. So we still have some, and we try to be the best we can when it comes to reinvesting in those facilities.
Yes. Last question from Jesus is wondering why are we not translating our reports to English?
Yeah, I think it's mainly because we try to focus on running this business. We have a very small team at the head office. We're seven people, and a few of us is doing these reports, producing these reports. Since there are really good tools nowadays, where you just take the PDF file, put it into Google Translate, and you get a pretty good translation for any language, your own language, it seems like it's not necessary. We focus our time on other things than doing that.
Yeah. We hate to do double work, and because we also are headquartered in Sweden, no matter which languages we use, we still need to make our annual report in Swedish, so that it's work twice. Okay, we have a long question, but very good question here from Etienne, who's basically saying, "You've been with us for many years. You have scars from the financial crisis. If we are going through a period of slower economic growth and more turbulent geopolitics, is the tension that we will be gearing or deploying the cash balance first?" You want to answer that? Should I...
I didn't quite get the question.
Because I only read half of it. Sorry for that. But basically, if we are going into more turbulent times, I mean, we survived the financial crisis, because of a lot of things, but one of the things that made us go into that financial crisis and really crashed was that we had too high gearing, and we didn't have enough cash and flexibility. So, we believe that we have a very diversified and a robust group, that will be able to, do well even in whatever circumstances we go into now, which hopefully you can see in the Q3 numbers. And if we need to deploy capital, I mean, using our own cash, first for defending our, current businesses, that is what we would be doing. Maybe we can also say...
You, you started off by talking about the different businesses we have. I think that when reading the financial press, and, people talk about recession and how hard the landings will be, of course, it, it will affect us as well. Some companies, like the house building companies, they are affected to an extreme, probably one of the most impacted businesses. But then we have the other type of businesses from electrification of the society. We have defense companies, and we have med tech companies, and what we try to do when we build this group is that we have very diversified risks and very diversified cycles. So hopefully, when the financial press talks about hard landings, it's hard landing for a small portion of our group, and not all.
That is, if we have succeeded in building this, that would be what we would expect.
Yeah, and maybe we will have a hard landing for a few, a soft landing for a few, and just some strange acceleration for a few. It's... But we love the diversification.
Yeah. Another question from Teams, Justus is wondering, "Do we support our subsidiaries in finding good employees?
Yeah, it's a very important thing of what we do, especially when it comes to recruiting CEOs for the subsidiaries. We, of course, take the main responsibility there, but we are also helping them when it comes to hiring qualified staff members, and we follow a very strict procedure because it's so important to get the right people in.
Yes.
The short answer, yes.
Jeremy on Twitter is wondering, "How does usually the margins of the businesses evolve after we acquire them?
Well, normally, selling your life's work, which the sellers do, normally do, is that they focus a lot on that actual that business deal, and lose a little bit of the focus on their everyday business of the company. So historically, we've seen that there's a little bit of decline when it comes to sales, and focus on their real business, well, during this process, when they talk to us and before the acquisition. And therefore, we try to speed that up and do it as swift as possible and as straightforward as possible.
And we try, also try to talk about these things from more or less the first initial meeting with the potential seller about these emotional things that they are going to go through if they sell their life's work. And it's very good to have open discussions about it because everyone thinks, "No, it won't happen to me. I'm full focus." Yeah, but it will happen to everyone because it's a really big thing to sell the thing that you're so attached to and that you spent maybe 20, 30, 40 years building. So, we really understand this topic, and we address it, and it's normally it bumps back pretty fast when they see that we are kind people that try to help them and support them and not try to regulate them.
Yeah. And looking over the longer perspective, if you look at companies that we have had in the group for, let's say, 10 years or so, I think for all of them, the margins are higher now, significantly higher compared to when we acquired them. And that is probably also the biggest reason when you look at the serial acquirers, like Lifco, Addtech, Indutrade, et cetera, that have been here for a long time, that the margins are so high. And in the shorter term, like three to five years, it's more difficult to say. I would— My feeling is that average company have higher margins now, but then, of course, house building company that made 20% margins four years ago do not make 20% now. Ilari on Twitter is wondering: "How is the pipeline?
The pipeline is good.
Yeah. We get this question almost every time on the quarterly calls, and I think it's a very good question because, of course, it's the fuel for growth when it comes to acquisition. But I think, I will continue to say that as long as that's true, but it probably looks the same all the time. We want to acquire roughly 5 companies a year. It can depend a lot, depending on how calendar looks, and we have close discussions with maybe two handful of companies, and we try to meet 100, 200 companies a year, and that's basically how we work.
And we touched this subject before, but we have a lot of relationships that are many years long, and we have and we constantly add on new relationships. Most of our acquisitions comes from just cold calling or scouting, so there's a very few of them nowadays that comes from brokers. Just to add that on.
Yeah.
Daniel is, you might understand that he's a very effective guy, and he has a very high speed when it comes to scouting and contacting potential acquisitions.
Thank you. Molly on Teams is wondering: "Do you think that acquisitions at holding level, instead of subsidiary level, could slow down acquisition rate when Teqnion gets bigger in the future?
You answer.
Yeah, I'll try to make up an answer. Maybe. I mean, we don't know exactly how we will be organized in the future when that actually becomes a bottleneck. Right now, having you on and me, we don't feel that the bottleneck is us. It's basically how much we can absorb in order to, because we need to take care of these companies, and things break because of that, we're sometimes unlucky and sometimes because we're just not good enough. And we're learning through that process, so it's more of the absorption rate that is the bottleneck currently. Then, I mean, long into the future, we don't really know. Currently, most of the subsidiary, maybe all of the subsidiary CEOs, I mean, their passion is to run their companies, and they're really good at that.
But running their company in a very niche market and acquiring companies and capital allocation are two quite different skill sets. Maybe in the future, we'll find CEOs or business area managers that have the passion for both, but we'll figure that out along the way, I believe.
When we see the need, I probably gonna, we're gonna see to it that that happens, but we don't see that need at the moment.
Yes. Pedro Leon from, Spain, is wondering, "Would we reconsider leaving minority interest in the subsidiaries if the right opportunity comes up?
I wonder what the right opportunity is, actually. But yeah, of course, it might happen. It has happened at one time in the history of Teqnion, but it's very. We strongly believe that we can lift off the invisible burden of owning a company from an entrepreneur by just giving them cash for the shares, and then they are free to do whatever they want. And our experience tells us that such a person can get revitalized by that. That person feels that they came to the finish line of their life's work, and they still can focus and if there's the right type of person that we like to work with, they get a new energy just to run business and do business development within the same company.
That's a fantastic effect that we've seen, and we try to, try to do that in the future as well. We don't like to lock someone up with the shackles of shares because we are a listed company, and they should, in that case, own a minority post in a, in a subsidiary of a listed mother company. It's you're, you're very, very locked up there, and, and people that feel that they are locked up doesn't work as good, in my opinion, as people that are free. I like free people.
I think in our case, theoretically, we could consider it. I mean, there's nothing to say that we cannot, but we meet with so many good entrepreneurs, and there are so many cases that are so good, and at least at the same level. So we never have felt that we're forced to take a deal like that just to get the case. We can find others that are at least as good or convince them that this approach could be better for both.
And then, of course, we get really proud and happy when some of the people that have sold their companies to us start buying Teqnion shares. That is fantastic, of course, but it's nothing that we demand from them, but it tends to happen anyway because they love their job, and they love Teqnion.
Darius on Twitter, I have two questions about our newest two companies. The first one is Schill. I'll address that to you. How are they impacted by the Middle East conflict?
Not much. I would like to say not at all, but everyone is more or less affected, of course. What Schill is selling is systems for weapon alignment, and those systems are just starting to penetrate the market because it's a very conservative market, of course. All the admirals has been knowing for hundreds of years on how to do this, and now it's technology that we can offer them that does it more accurate and much, much faster. So, it's a slow process to just penetrate that old way of doing things, but we have just done that, or Schill has just done that, so it's not really affected by any situation in the world at the moment. It's more, it's just how that business evolves. So it's,
I think, John, the CEO there, just spoke with him before this. He said that the average sales cycle for them is roughly two years. So, I mean, it's not imaginary that it would impact them later on, but it doesn't work like consumer units where something happens, and then the sales goes up the next week. The second question from Darius is, our Stanwell, have they been impacted by the cautiousness of consumers?
From what we see and what they told us, no. It's people still like to go to the pub to have a pint, and I guess you would like to do that no matter what the economy looks like.
Yes, it's a very stable company that basically works like a clock.
Yeah.
That's our feeling.
Like a beer clock.
Like a beer clock. It has the market, if we want to put a few words on that, have changed a little bit, in the UK. So where people go to have the drink have changed, but the beer is still flowing. So it doesn't matter if it's a pub or if it's a restaurant or if you go to a Manchester United game, it's all good for Stanwell. Henry, South Africa, from Twitter, is wondering, "What do investors underappreciate about our business?
Yeah, what to answer there?
Me neither.
Sorry. Sorry, Henry.
... and what are we doing that competitors are not doing yet?
It's also really hard to answer because we don't really look at what competitors do. We try to do what we do a little bit better, better every day. And I mean, we're divided into 26 subsidiaries that do their own thing and try to be best at what they do, so I don't really know. We try to be close to them, we try to support them, we try to help them to lay out the strategy for the future so they will be relevant in 10 years from now as well. But I don't know if competitors do that or not. We do it.
Yeah. Exactly. Brandon Rodriguez, I think, from Mexico. Why are you awake? "No question here, but thank you guys for being ethical, transparent, and treating your shareholders the right way." Thank you.
Thank you.
Steven, are you more cautious with acquisitions with a high interest rate at the moment, or do you see it as an opportunity to pay lower prices for some firms?
I feel it's a question or an answer for you, but if I just-
Yes, go ahead.
No, we don't change pace when it comes to that. We, since we want to do this, we've done it since we started, and we will continue doing it as long as you let us. We try to find the best companies for us, and we try to acquire them at that moment when it's time. So it's one of the aspects that we always have to look at, but it doesn't affect us in any way other than that we have to live with that at the moment. As when we started out, I think the interest rates were on this level that we are now, and then it was zero for many years, and then that was dangerous for many.
I think we just continued on as normal, and we continued on as normal as we speak.
Yeah. Now we keep the same valuation method. We try to get our money back within five years, no matter, interest rate levels. For a few years ago, of course, some companies thought that was very low. Nowadays, that's been maybe more normalized. It is difficult to buy things much, much cheaper because there's a few things to it. One is that we need the person to come on board and feel that we are partners and that, that person didn't get tricked. That's the worst thing that can happen, because then we bought something for maybe EUR 3 million, EUR 5 million, EUR 6 million, and that person is dissatisfied, and we-- everything just, burns up.
And the second thing that is, interesting just to note about is that, yes, we do have competition sometimes, for with other firms that, leave offers, to buy a company, but we also sometimes compete with the ghosts of these competitors, or peers. Because if someone left a paper that said, "You know, you're gonna get the 12 times EBITDA," which I've seen a couple of times, and they did that two years ago, that paper is still there, in the person's locker, and they are not maybe super happy to sell it at, five times EBITDA when we come. I see that the time is now 11:00. We got through a lot of questions, but not really all of them. Should we maybe just go back to our CEOs and do something?
I think that's, that's the plan, yeah. We are really appreciative that you joined in today. It's fantastic that you're interested in what we do. We try to do our best, as you know, and continue doing that. Thank you very much, and this will be uploaded to YouTube within a week.