Morning everyone, and welcome to today's webcast presentation with Volati. With us today to present we have CEO Andreas Stenbäck and CEO of Salix Group, Martin Hansson. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A, so if you're calling in and want to ask a question, please press star nine to raise your hand and then star six to unmute yourself when handed the word. You can also submit in questions via the form to the right. With that said, please go ahead with and start your presentation.
Thank you, and thank you everyone for listening in today. This is most likely also my last call with Salix as part of Volati, and very happy to have Martin Hansson, the CEO of Salix Group at my side here today to give you some more flavor about the strong development in Salix. Let's get into the presentation. Volati creates value by developing our today six platforms, growing them both organically and through acquisitions. From this quarter, Salix Group is considered discontinued operations, while the remaining five platforms are now reported separately in our segment reporting at and as then separate business areas. That will then be the remaining Volati of the potential separate listing of Salix Group.
We will get into more details about all of these six platforms later on in the presentation. If I start by summarizing the quarter, net sales increased by 3% and EBITDA came in 3% behind last year. I do not typically talk about items affecting comparability or extraordinary items, but in this quarter, I think it's justified to do that. The reason being that we have significant costs related to the separate listing process of Salix Group, and that is also in a quarter where we have, because of a seasonality over the year, relatively low EBITDA. These extraordinary items are affecting us more than usual. If I adjust those, the EBITDA increased with 4% compared to last year.
What's the main reasons behind this growth? We have another strong, very strong quarter by Salix Group, growing with 37%. That is now, I think, the fifth very strong quarter in a row from Salix. Ettiketto also showing a nice growth of 18%. Communication and Corroventa coming in in line or actually slightly better than last year. While we have two platforms, S:t Eriks coming in lower than last year, and Tornum Group actually quite significant behind last year. We will get into more details behind all this later on, but that I would say summarizes the situations among the platforms. We show very strong profit, strong growth in profit after tax and earnings per share.
I'm also very happy about the cash flow that we see in the quarter. This cash flow has enabled us to complete two acquisitions so far this year, adding roughly SEK 930 million of annual turnover. We have had a good start of the year when it comes to acquisitions. Lastly, the separate listing process with regards to Salix Group are developing as planned, and we have an important meeting later on today. It's our annual general meeting, which we'll then hopefully decide upon proceeding with that process.
Looking at the numbers a bit more in details, I'm not planning to discuss them actually in detail. What one could see on this side is also that the net debt to EBITDA ratio is now at 2.9. It's in line with last year, and it's in the upper part of our net debt to EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA range. That's a very, very deliberate decision by us to be there. Looking at the figures on an LTM basis, our sales are up 4%, while our EBITDA is up 3%. What I think is strong on this side is the operational cash flow, which has been very strong the last 12 months.
That's one of the key drivers behind why we have been able to also, keeping up our acquisition pace. Our financial targets, last time with Salix Group, most likely included. Again, behind on the EBITDA growth, we have discussed this now for actually a couple of quarters. We are currently operating under our EBITDA level, which we should achieve in a normal level. That has created our growth gap, the growth gap that I usually talk about. Once the market normalizes, I expect to close that gap. We already actually seen it in Salix Group, while we have some of our platforms still behind.
What that means is that we will grow at levels exceeding our financial growth targets for some time once we see that happening on a group level. The return on equity, ROE, is back where it should be. It should be in excess of 20%, and it's back now. I actually expect that to continue to increase the coming quarters. Net debt to EBITDA already touched upon. With that, I leave the word to Martin, who will tell you a bit more about Salix Group and the development there.
Thank you, Andreas. I would like to present some results from Salix Group. Who are we? We are a growing B2B trading and distribution platform with an active M&A agenda. On the right-hand side, you find a graph showing the sales development since 2022 as well as the EBITDA margin. We landed sales a bit over SEK 1 billion in the first quarter, which equals some 3% organic sales growth. Organic growth remained positive across several markets, although some segments continue to face some challenging market conditions. EBITDA grew, as you heard Andreas saying, organically with 37%. We now have eight consecutive quarters of growth, with five of them with some stronger growth, but eight consecutive quarters of growth in total. The EBITDA margin grew from 8%- 10%, leading to an LTM of 10.6%.
If we go back to the right-hand side of the graph, it's our view that our relevant market have lost some 25%-30% in volume since 2022- 2024 when the decline bottomed out. Our sales held up in this period mainly due to sales price adjustments combined with eight acquisitions. We believe that we are in a strong position to further grow in the period ahead of us with this market ahead of us. The EBITDA margin improvement was mainly driven by favorably currency effects, product mix, and implemented price adjustments. As you can see in the bottom of the chart, our return on capital employed landed on 39%, strengthening from last year and further showcasing our capital efficiency.
In the end, acquisition of Ladix, we are very happy about that, and I will comment and say a few words about that in a moment. This slide shows the EBITDA development per quarter since 2022. As you can see, Salix Group experienced a negative earning trend from Q2 in 2022- 2024, with acquisitions then partly offsetting the decline. We have had the strong earnings momentum since Q1 2025, with five consecutive quarters of substantial growth. If you look into the details of the chart, you can see that we have eight in total of growth quarter by quarter. A few words about Ladix. That was our last acquisition acquired first of April, and we are very pleased about this acquisition in Ireland. The company is called Ladix, as I said, and the company is a market-leading building materials provider in Ireland.
Ladix is closely aligned with the other Salix businesses in many ways, and we have a revenue of around SEK 480 million with a reported EBITDA margin of around 13%. This company provides a scalable platform for us for continued organic and acquisition-driven growth in Ireland, which we find very, very exciting and hope to build further on. This will then give us a 10% share of turnover, roughly overall in Ireland compared to the overall Salix turnover. Salix in a good position to sum up. Salix is in a good position to further grow sales when the market turns. We do see strong favorable trends and drivers in our segments going forward that points to positive market trend in the future to come.
We are really looking forward to have Ladix on board, contributing both to growth and also performance for us in the coming quarters and years. Thank you very much to the Salix team and for a good quarter. Thank you, Andreas, for this couple of times when we have presented for a lot of Salix together.
Thank you. We'll go into the continuous operation then as it is called. By what we mean by that is the five business areas which will remain with Volati. As said, these are now presented at as separate business areas, which also means that I will be able to give you some more details about their overall development. However, before we go into the separate business areas, I would just like to say a few words about the overall development in continuous operations. Looking at this slide, firstly, what can be seen is that we had a very strong development up until 2023. However, this growth graph also shows the very clear that the growth gap that I earlier referred to.
That has been created then because of the poor development after 2023, mainly market related. Just stopping for a short time at 2023, I think that is a good year to just. It's a good indication of where our four platforms that were earlier included in business area industry as a combined entity operated at a normalized level. While Ettiketto, since 2023, has grown in acquisitions, they are currently operating at levels above 2023. What do that mean? That means that the continuous operations should, in a normal market, operate at least at 2023 levels, I would say, beyond those levels. That is the growth gap that I'm referring to.
In order to get back there to those levels, we need to show an organic accelerated growth. That growth need to be in excess of our financial target for quite some time in the future. Then talking about the development in the individual business areas or platforms during the quarter, we start with Ettiketto Group. Etiketto Group showed very strong sales, and that was both acquisition driven. We have done two acquisitions that are still rolling in. It's also an organic growth, and that is much thanks to the demand on the important Swedish market, which is now back on track. EBITDA growth of 18%, and that's been driven both by acquisitions but also organic growth.
The EBITDA margin is, as expected, decreasing, and that's because of the dilution that the acquisitions that we've done creates. However, in our business model, we increase the margins of the companies that we acquires. That means, which means that we will over time also increase then, the overall market in the Ettiketto Group. That was that with regards to Ettiketto Group. If we get to the next business area, Communication, sales were down in the quarter. That's because of generally lower market activity in our core markets. However, we mapped that with better margins, 2 percentage points better to be more specific. That's mainly because of two reasons.
One is the deliberate move towards more profitable segments, the other reason is that we have a generally lower operating expenses. Given that, I would conclude the development and the EBITDA development in Communication to be quite satisfying at the time being. Looking at Corroventa, we actually met somewhat tougher comparables when it comes to sales and profit for that sake as well in the first part of the quarter. That was because we had floodings late part of 2024 with rentals lasting into 2025, so the first months of 2025, which we then met in this quarter. We have, however, I would say successfully compensated that with core sales. We still had another quarter, and I would say then 12 months now of extraordinary dry weather.
As all of us know, after sun shines, we typically see rain. That means that we are now meeting easier comparables, but if the patterns will be similar in the future as it, as it's been in the past, we will hopefully see some better market circumstances for Corroventa going ahead. I would like to conclude with Corroventa that this is a very nice company to own during dry times, and that can be seen in the financial that we are presenting. It's also an extraordinarily strong company to own when we get the help of our clients. Next platform that is S:t Eriks Group.
S:t Eriks showed a net sales up of roughly 7%, and that was despite an unusually cold weather during January and February in Sweden. EBITDA margin, however, declined, and that was mainly because of the lower production rate, which means that we had a lower cost absorption. The lower production rate was a deliberate shift or deliberate decision. It was because of mainly two reasons. One reason is that we're shifting away from the volume segment. The second reason is that we are releasing capital, tied-in capital, or capital employed. We have taken cost measures in S:t Eriks to meet this lower production pace as we foresee that it's gonna stay that way for the foreseen future.
We also have some cost adjustments related to the segment shift that I talked about. When it comes to Tornum Group, we've seen significantly lower volumes in the quarter. That is mainly due to industrial projects. The most important and significant one is Lantmännen that we have not been fully able to offset in the quarter by new volumes. That has also, despite the lower cost base, led to a significantly lower EBITDA. I think it's SEK 27 million below last year. We see some positive signs on the market. We do gradually fill the order book and offset the decline in the contribution from Lantmännen. Looking at the quarters to come, I'm a bit more optimistic than what we've seen in this last quarter.
Nevertheless, we have taken cost measures to meet lower volumes and to ensure that we can show profitability also at these very low volumes that we are operating at right now. Again, I would like to really put the emphasis on that this is market related. We have one of the toughest markets in end market since the during our ownership period within Tornum Group. That is at least in the last 20 years. That was the business area updates. Next section is to tell you a bit about the acquisitions. We've done two acquisitions the last 12 months, that also concludes two acquisitions this year. It's Ladix and Interket Group.
I did tell you a bit more about Ettiketto Group in the last quarter call and Martin told you a bit more about Ladix this call. Looking at the acquisition pace, we're now at SEK 930 million of annual turnover. I would say that that's at a good pace. We have a very good acquisition activity across our platform. That remains high. The trick now for us at Volati is really to balance the pace of acquisitions against the net debt leverage. As we've said before, we are still comfortable of operating at the upper end of our target rate when it comes to net debt to EBITDA.
Given that, we still believe that we have room for making acquisitions. The cash flow, Q1 is a negative cash flow quarter for us. Nevertheless, we have had, compared to last year, a stronger quarter. Our operational cash flow, our cash generation is now at 90%, so during the last 12 months. That's at a good level. We have, as I said, a net debt to EBITDA at 2.9x . Now we have a more or less neutral cash flow quarter in front of us. As always, our H2 of the year is the cash flow strong quarters, quarter three and four.
That means that we will increase our or expand our acquisition room during the rest of the year. To summarize, another strong quarter for Salix Group with EBITDA up 37%. We have the acquisition of Ladix supporting further growth in that business area and that platform. We also saw profit growth in Interket Group and Communication, both actually showing 80% up compared to last year. We've had a negative development in S:t Eriks and Tornum compared to last year's. We have additional cost measures initiated in both of those platforms to meet the lower volumes. Good cash flow generation that has enabled us to complete two acquisitions in 2026.
So the acquisition pace is there, and we are also well positioned overall for accelerated organic growth once the markets improve. As already concluded, the preparations for a potential separate listing of Salix Group, that's progressing according to plan. With that, Martin and myself leaves for any potential questions from the audience.
Thank you so much for the presentation here. As you mentioned, now we'll carry on with the Q&A. If you're calling in and want to ask a question, please press star nine to raise your hand and then star six to unmute yourself when given the word. You can also send in questions via the form to the right. The first caller here is cell phone number that ends with 8904. You have the word. Please go ahead.
Hello, Andreas and Martin. I hope you can hear me. Just a couple of questions from my side. If we start with Salix Group, is it possible to disclose the organic growth rate here in the quarter? If you have any comments on how demand developing throughout the quarter and also maybe if you have any early indications for the start of Q2.
Sales growth in the organic growth of sales in the quarter. Was that your question?
Yes, exactly.
Yeah. We have a 3% organic sales growth in quarter one compared to last year. I believe that the underlying market still is, we see some growth in the market, and I think we should be pleased with our sales growth of 3% compared to the market development. 3% organic sales growth in the market. When it comes to the next quarter, that's not for me to comment on today. Organic growth in the quarter.
Yeah, that's clear. Do you have any comments on how demand shifted or varied maybe across the quarter? I've been hearing from maybe some peers to you that January and February might have been a little bit slower partly I guess to the colder weather and then that we saw more of an uptick in March. Is that also the situation you are seeing?
From our perspective, as you say, in February, we had a couple of cold weeks that actually slowed the sales down a little bit. As you said, it start to pick up in March. I think you answered the questions by asking it.
Yeah.
We have seen this pattern as well, of course. We are following the weather and wind is also impacting us to some degree. Overall, I think that was leveling out throughout the quarter. Even though we had a couple of weeks with cold weather, we kept to that sales a little bit later.
Yeah. No, that's clear. Thank you. Yeah, if we move away from Salix and, just look at the group overall, you mentioned non-recurring items here related to the IPO. Is it possible to quantify those maybe, and also if you expect to see any further IPO related costs in the, I guess, Q2 or the upcoming quarters overall?
Yeah. What can be seen is we do specify in the quarterly report the non-recurring cost or the items affecting comparability. Under note five, you will be able to see how much of those items affecting comparability that was attributable to Salix Group. The vast majority of that number is attributable to the separate listing process. To answer the next question, I would foresee that there will be additional costs also in the coming quarter connected to this separate listing if we get the go-ahead from the annual general meeting later on today.
Yeah. All right. Got it. Yeah, we talked a little bit about your expectations for S:t Eriks going ahead. You obviously mentioned that you've been doing some efforts there. Do you foresee that taking effect and resulting in margins improving a little bit already next quarter, or is this more of a, call it, long-term, project to increase those margins?
Yeah. We typically don't give these kind of like forward-looking statements, but what I can say is that we've taken measures during this quarter, and we will see the effects gradually kind of coming in during, you know, the coming, I would say six to nine months or two to three quarters. We will see effects already in the next quarter from that. When with regards to the overall margins, that's of course also dependent on the demand and the top line and the turnover, which I'll not comment on.
Yeah. I see. We talked a little bit about this during the last quarter, but are you still observing some sort of delays related to deliveries in S:t Eriks? We obviously had the weather being quite cold here.
Yeah
... impacted you negatively, I guess, is that something you're still seeing? Do you feel you still have sort of a delivery backlog that's yet to be seen in the P&L for that business?
I would say that yes, we had some delays in Q4. We had a very cold start of Q1. Similar what you talked to Martin about, January, February was very cold, and that affected S:t Eriks as well. I think we picked up some of that in March and overall, we showed a turnover growth, which was good. Some of those delays, I believe, we kind of caught up in Q1. We have some of them with us in Q2, but I wouldn't say that they would, you know, have any major effect of the future development.
Yeah, that's clear. Maybe if we turn to Tornum for a second, and just, it would be interesting to hear your comments there on what you're seeing in terms of market dynamics, but also how we should view the, I guess, the comparison going ahead.
Yeah
... here, given the, I guess, the absence of similar volumes from the Lantmännen project. This is still gonna be, I guess, a little bit challenging for the upcoming quarter before hopefully getting better or, yeah, if you have any general, yeah, thoughts on that would be helpful.
Yeah. I guess the general comment on that is that we weren't able to compensate in Q1. That is very clear when you look at the turnover delivered. We are also had meeting volumes from Lantmännen and its industrial projects mainly in Q2 and Q3. I would say that we have had more time to compensate for those volumes. And I think I said that also during the call that I'm more optimistic of meeting those volumes in Q2 and Q3. I do not expect the same deviation as we've saw in Q1.
Then also more importantly, we have taken additional cost measures, which, similar to what I said with regards to S:t Eriks, that's something that we will see effects from in the next six to nine months. We are also meeting potentially lower volumes with cost reductions. This is also driven by that we do not see any significant shift in the market short term. We see some positive signs. We also see that it's not getting worse. We do not see any significant signs of any significant shifts. That's why we have decided to take these additional measures.
Again, Tornum, we are very well positioned for once the markets really come back, once we get back to close to what we've had in this historical levels, then we're very well positioned to show good profitability in that in that platform.
Yeah. That's super helpful. Just lastly from my side and moving on to the acquisition pipeline, and I'm curious to hear more about Etiketto specifically. You've obviously done a couple of larger acquisitions there recently.
Mm-hmm.
If you have any comments on the acquisition pipeline within Ettiketto and how we should think about that, I guess throughout 2026, can we still, despite these larger acquisitions taking place quite recently, expect more to be done there?
Yeah
... during this year? Or are you gonna be more into now, I guess, an integration phase and value creation phase and increasing margins in those already acquired businesses before we see a resumed M&A activity there?
Yep. Good question. Two comments on that. Firstly, when it comes to Ettiketto, yes, we are able to do more acquisitions. What the two acquisitions that we've done lately has created new platforms for us to grow from, meaning that we now have platforms of our geographical markets. I would say Germany and the U.K. being the most significant ones. And we are prepared, you know, already during this year to add acquisitions to those geographical markets. And that's also the reason we have now created a platform with a capacity, a big enough platform, with a capacity to both kind of do acquisition, build pipelines, integrate them, and do that at a more constant pace than we've been able to in the past.
If we find the right target, if we find the right acquisition to Ettiketto, we will be able to do that during the course of this year. The second comment to the acquisition pipeline is that it's broader than that for us. We do you know, we want to do add-on acquisitions to all of our platforms. We are also looking into add-on acquisitions in the other platforms. I would expect, in the last next 12 months or so, that we also will see acquisitions in some other platforms that we haven't done acquisitions in during the last one or two years.
Yeah. That's clear. Maybe just a quick follow-up on that. When you look across the platforms constituting former industry, which platforms do you see the greatest M&A potential in? Also if you maybe look at your current pipeline on where most opportunities are currently existing.
I think that's a short-term and long-term answer to that question. Long term, I think I see a good potential in all of them. Short term, as one could understand, we have S:t Eriks and Tornum being a bit more internally focused right now, while Communication and Corroventa are more in a position to also short-term handle an acquisition or a more sizable acquisition. Short term, I would say that it's mostly likely in those two, Communication and Corroventa. Long term, we've done several acquisitions in both S:t Eriks and Tornum, and I foresee that we will continue growing these platforms with acquisitions also going forward.
Yeah. That's super helpful. Thank you very much, guys. I'll get back in line.
Thank you so much for the questions there. We will now go ahead with some couple of questions that have been sent in to us. What was the key growth drivers for Volati in Q1 2026, and how does the company plan to expand its business going forward?
There I think we touched upon that. Very short answer to that is that Salix, Ettiketto, were the main growth drivers in the quarter, but also S:t Eriks contributed to the growth in Q1. With regards to the other question, the question what segments we envisage growing within, our clear strategy is to grow in our platforms, meaning not expanding into new segment or new platforms, but rather focusing on growing the existing ones, with both organically, which we've done very successfully, for example, in Salix, at Ettiketto and S:t Eriks this quarter, but also will add on acquisitions.
Thank you. With Salix not being a part of Volati going forward, do you see any risk of not being able to fund the dividend to the Volati preference shares if you want to continue the M&A pace?
No, not at all.
Thank you. Are you fully prepared if we're still heading into slower times? Seems like a recovery is expected near term, but what if it's not?
Yes. I would say that we are prepared. When it comes to Tornum, for example, which we have talked a bit about this quarterly call, we are not expecting a short-term, significant shift. We are not rather preparing for the market to remain for yet some time. However, we are also confident that the markets will come back. When they come back, that is when we will show that accelerated organic growth.
Thank you. Moving on to the last question here. How should we think about growth and margins for the remaining businesses post Salix spin-off?
I think we've tried to be a bit more helpful about that. We do now have a target margin for each and every business area or platform. These are the long-term goals that we believe that those platforms, the EBITDA margins that those platforms should operate under. That's a good indication of where we believe the margins to be in the long term.
Thank you. That was all the questions we had. Thank you all for calling in and answering our questions. I will now hand over the word to Andreas for some concluding remarks.
I think firstly, thank you, Salix, for great contribution, not only this quarter, but the last couple of quarters. Let's see what the annual meeting decides later on today. You know, if the process continues as planned, we will be two separate companies for the next quarterly report. That leads me to the remaining Volati then, which I am extremely excited about. We have had some headwinds in the remaining Volati and in some of the platforms, but I'm also extremely proud about how our leaders out there are handling that every day. I'm also very confident in the position that we are.
I expect to continue working also with the new management team of Volati, the extended management team now, to continue developing Volati hub. Thank you everyone.