Afry AB

Good morning, everyone, and warm welcome to our presentation of Afry's Q3 results. I will begin with some of the highlights from the quarter, and then our CFO, Bo Sandstrom, will provide a more detailed overview of the financials.

So in the third quarter, we delivered stable results and improved our EBITA margin to 6.4%. We also saw a positive development of the order backlog, which increased 3.6% compared to the same period last year, or 5.3% when adjusted for currency effects.

We achieved this despite a decline in net sales with a total year-over-year growth of minus 5.1%. Similar to what we saw in the second quarter, currency effect had a significant negative impact on sales.

For Q3, it amounted to minus SEK 118 million. Sales volumes were also impacted by a challenging market we experienced in parts of our business, mainly in our global division Industry.

The third quarter was also the first within our new group structure and our three global divisions. Under the new group structure, we have intensified our efforts to improve utilization and to structurally address the cost base.

As part of this, we have continued executing on the restructuring agenda that we initiated during the second quarter. And for the third quarter, we report restructuring costs of SEK 31 million related to this, and they are classified as item affecting comparability.

So to summarize, I can conclude that we have been able to deliver stable results despite a decline in net sales, and we continue our efforts to pave the way for profitable growth. Moving on then to the market, and let's start with Energy.

We see a continued strong long-term demand across segments and on a global scale. Market activity is particularly high in areas such as transmission and distribution, hydro, and nuclear.

At the same time, we are seeing some short-term regional variations. This is evident in areas such as thermal, solar, and wind power, where, for example, demand in the Nordics is currently somewhat slower.

With that said, this kind of variations are expected over time for a growing and dynamic sector like the energy sector. For Global Division Industry, the demand remains mixed.

We see that persistent global uncertainty continues to impact the overall investment sentiment in several segments. For example, in the Pulp and Paper, where the demand for new large-scale projects remains at low level.

The slowdown in the Nordic industrial market is also impacted in the automotive segment. At the same time, we see strong market opportunities in areas such as defense and also within mining and metals, which is encouraging to see.

And finally, in Transportation and Places, public investments in transport infrastructure and water remains at good levels across the regions. The investments are driven by large-scale infrastructure programs and increasing focus on climate and defense-related projects.

At the same time, we see that demand in the Nordic real estate market remains at low level and is mainly driven by refurbishments and public investments. So now let's dive a bit into our new global divisions and their performance in the quarter, starting with Energy.

We continue to see high project activity in several of our segments, which reflects the overall market that we experience in Energy. We report negative total sales growth in the quarter, which is impacted by significant currency effects of minus SEK 45 million as well as short-term regional variations in some segments.

We keep profitability at a solid level of 9.8%, which is slightly lower than last year. Moving on to our Global Division Industry, a challenging market reflects the net sales development in some of our segments.

Despite this, profitability improved year-over-year, and this is due to the ongoing capacity adjustments and the improved utilization in the quarter. In the second quarter, we announced the acquisition of Reta Engineering, a Brazilian company specializing in project and construction management services with a strong foothold in the mining and metal sectors.

And in the third quarter, we completed the acquisition, and the numbers are consolidated into the Industry division as of September 1st. And finally, Transportation and Places.

Here, we saw some sales growth in the quarter, which was driven by high activity in projects as well as improved attendance rates. Also on the EBITDA side, we continue to see positive development, driven by the continuous efficiency measures that we do in the division.

I would also like to highlight some of our key project wins in this quarter. In the Mining and Metals segments, we were selected by the British mining company, Anglo American, to lead the pre-feasibility study for the Sakatti mining project in Finland.

The mine is planned as a highly automated underground operation with low carbon footprint. And once operational, the mine will supply critical minerals that are essential for Europe's green transition.

And Afry's strong expertise in sustainable engineering makes this a great fit. On the Energy side, we have signed a strategic framework agreement with Svenska Kraftnät, Sweden's national grid operator.

This is the second of two recently announced agreements and covers technical consultancy and design planning services within transmission and distribution, which will strengthen Sweden's energy system. Svenska Kraftnät is one of our key clients in the Swedish energy market, and we are pleased to strengthen our partnership with them through these agreements.

In Denmark, we have won a contract in the Road and Rail segment, covering comprehensive advisory services in intelligent traffic systems, traffic management, and emergency preparedness. With Afry's extensive experience in traffic engineering, this project is a great opportunity to deliver innovative and effective solutions that improve road user safety and mobility.

And with these great projects, I would like to hand over to you Bo.

Thank you, Linda. So I will cover the financials for Q3 2025.

Quarter three showed net sales of SEK 5.7 billion and EBITDA, excluding IAC of SEK 362 million. On rolling 12 months, we are now at SEK 26.2 billion on net sales and remain right below SEK 1.9 billion on EBITDA.

On the rolling 12 months development compared to 12 months ago, we carry significant negative currency and calendar effects, explaining approximately SEK 600 million on net sales and SEK 240 million on EBITDA. In Q3, with a net sales of SEK 5.7 billion, adjusted organic growth came in at negative 3.7%, where volume continued to be pressured by capacity adjustments during the last quarters.

As previously, the decline in volume was partially compensated by positive pricing. For Q3, we continue to see higher average fees, although at a somewhat lower level than the last number of quarters.

Total growth is reported at minus 5.1%, affected also by FX movement from a strengthened SEK compared to last year. The negative adjusted organic growth in Q3 was sequentially lower, and global divisions, Energy and Industry, both saw lower growth levels.

In particular, Industry experienced a challenging market and continued capacity adjustments pressure growth rates. In Q3, Industry also saw show lower sales of material than last year, affecting the quarterly growth.

Transportation & Places showed sequential improvement, mainly driven from the Road and Rail segment. The order backlog continued to develop favorably and is reported at SEK 20.4 billion, improving to last year, but somewhat lower sequentially.

Currency adjusted, the backlog has improved 5.3% to last year with improvements primarily from Global Division Industry. The Energy division maintained the largest order backlog in relation to net sales at a level in line with last year, but improving 3.7% adjusted for currency effects.

EBITDA excluding IAC is reported at SEK 362 million, and the EBITA margin was at 6.4%. Calendar affects EBITA with plus SEK 15 million and the EBITA margin with plus 0.2% to last year, so that calendar adjusted margin was marginally better than last year.

Currency movements have marginal impact on the EBITA margin, but on absolute terms, we estimate a negative currency impact of SEK 13 million on EBITA compared to last year. Global Divisions Industry and Transportation & Places support the calendar-adjusted margin development of the group, while Energy reports the highest margin of the global divisions, but somewhat lower than last year in this quarter.

We reported utilization of 72% for Q3 in line with the rolling 12-month level. Looking at the year-over-year development by quarter, we see that Q3 '25 is again behind last year, but with a decline at a lower rate than seen last two years.

Utilization is a clear focus for Afry, and we are determined to turn the negative trend. We report SEK 31 million restructuring costs as items affecting comparability in the quarter.

The restructuring costs again primarily relate to redundancies across the group. In the new group structure, we will continue to address our cost base as well as making portfolio optimization in quarters to come.

And we reiterate our estimate of restructuring cost of SEK 200 million to SEK 300 million in the quarters from Q3 '25 to Q2 '26. We have not guided on phasing, but given that the cost levels were slightly lower in Q3, it is fair to assume that they will, on average, be higher for the upcoming quarters.

Cash flow from operating activities in Q3 was stronger than last year. Available liquidity remained at SEK 3.8 billion.

Net debt remained at SEK 5.1 billion, where the positive operating cash flow compensates completion of the acquisition of Reta Engineering that was completed during the quarter. On net debt to EBITDA, we remain at 2.9x.

Normal seasonality would provide significant deleveraging in the last quarter of the year and take us to around or below our financial target of 2.5x. With that, I leave back to you, Linda.

Thank you for that, Bo. So I would also like to say a few words on our next chapter and what we've achieved in the third quarter.

So as I mentioned in the start of today's session, we launched a new group structure in the third quarter. We now operate through three global divisions, representing 14 core segments, which all will drive global sales and delivery.

This has been a key milestone, simplifying our operating model and paving the way for profitable growth. During the quarter, we also intensified our efforts to improve utilization and to structurally address our cost base.

As a part of this, we continue to execute on our restructuring agenda, which remains on track and will proceed as planned through the second quarter of 2026. We have also reviewed our existing incentive structure, and we took action to align and harmonize them.

This will reduce complexity and suboptimization and ultimately drive group performance. And finally, strategies for each global division and segment are now in place, which provides a strong foundation to deliver on our strategic ambitions going forward.

And even if we are still in the initial stage of our strategy execution journey, it's encouraging to see the progress we are making. As we finalize our group strategy and have the organizational foundation in place, we are ready to fully move on to strategy execution.

We will share more details about this at our upcoming Capital Markets Day. In parallel, we are progressing according to plan with the implementation of the fit-for-purpose operating model while continuously working to address operational efficiency and our cost base.

And as mentioned, we are looking forward to welcoming you to our Capital Markets Day on November 4, where we will be presenting our new strategic direction and our plans ahead. I'm excited to meet many of you there and to good discussions and insights.

And with that, let's open up for the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] And let's start with Raymond Ke from Nordea.

A couple of questions from me. I'll take them one by one.

The short-term regional differences in energy, could you elaborate a bit in terms of whether it's due to market, certain customers being hesitant, or where you are in these projects? Any color to help us understand sort of how long this might persist would be helpful.

They are related to wind, solar, and partly to thermal, and it's mostly related to the Nordic region. We don't expect it to be that long-term.

We see it more as a temporary bump, but there are delays in some investment decisions from clients in the Nordic market. On the other hand, on the same segments, we see a strong growth in Asia in the same segment.

And regarding your restructuring plans ahead then, which, of course, may impact personnel. How many FTEs or how should we think about this when we compare sort of consultants against back-office employees?

What's the sort of share of headcount reduction distribution there?

Well, I'll provide some light on it, and then hopefully, you get even more light when we come to CMD. We haven't provided guidance on that split.

But like we elaborated last time, Raymond, you will have a split between different kind of redundancy costs coming out from this restructuring. There will be a part that is more on a managerial level.

There will be a part that is more based on the support structure of the company, and then there will be an operational part as we move ahead into the restructuring efforts. We experienced that in Q2.

We see it again in Q3, and we'll elaborate a bit further when we come to CMD.

Looking forward to that. And just one final one.

On the new incentive structure that you talked about there briefly, could you maybe just clarify how was it before and why you expect it maybe to make a major difference or where you expect it to make a difference this time around?

As we talked about before, now when we have deep dived into our organization and the setup and our ambition to simplify, we actually saw that we had a lot of different incentive structure programs that were somewhat contradictory to each other. So, by harmonizing this, this will drive our efficiency, it will drive internal mobility.

And ultimately, it will support the development of Afry. Then we'll open up for Johan Dahl from Danske Bank.

Just on this -- interesting to hear that you finalized the plan for the new divisions here to sort of improve the margins. I presume that's some sort of multiyear progression to achieve financial targets.

And the question is, you have been quite clear on cost-out actions in the near term, the coming 12 months. But what other buckets do you identify in this plan to sort of drive towards financial targets?

If you could just broadly outline those.

I can start. Yes, of course, we have the cost side, but we also have the revenue side.

And here, I mean, our sales effort is paving the way for that. As you have heard over the last quarters, we have been quite successful in securing important contracts going forward, and we are building our order backlog.

And this will continue. So we've continued to put a lot of efforts into our sales force and also to our structured key account approach.

And this is evident that this is a way forward for us. So that's related, I would say, to the revenue side and our structure going forward.

And then maybe you should comment, Bo, on the other initiatives.

No, I can just add to it. I mean, ever since we started the work with the next chapter of Afry that we will present in just a couple of weeks, it has been clear that it's a multi-component effort that we're working on, kind of starting in sense with the clients and the commercial aspect of the business that we're doing, but also looking at what is actually the portfolio and how do we structure that and then leading into the operating model and the cost-out actions that you are referring to.

So it is a multifaceted, and we'll do our best to explain that in better detail also on CMD.

Do you see currently -- you talked about positive pricing in the operations. But can you see currently in the order book proof of concept that the sort of intense -- you start talking about improving the order book quality quite some time ago.

Can you see that for a fact now that's having an effect? Or is that still something you expect going forward?

Yes, I'll elaborate a bit. It is tricky.

I mean the order book is, of course, a very long-term -- it's a very long-term order book, particularly given what we do and the length of many of our large projects. At the same time, the market is developing and the market is developing fairly short-term in that sense.

So it's that combination. But of course, we're happy with the order book and the profitability margin in it, and the steps that we're taking towards a better profitability through the order book.

But it's really difficult to see, in a sense, quarter-by-quarter, the development. But over time, we're happy with where we are also compared to 1 or 2 years ago when we started talking about these things.

Final question. Just the increase, 5%, 6% FX adjusted on the order book, when will that translate to revenues, do you think?

Or when would you see that inflection point on reported revenues?

I start, yes. Yes.

And that is exactly the tricky ones, as the order book contains of large projects over many years, and it's also very short-term. So of course, we see that continuously, we will improve, but it's difficult to say exactly what kind of revenue is converted from the order book in Q4, for instance.

So -- but we see a slight improvement quarter-by-quarter. Next question is from Fredrik Lithell from Handelsbanken.

Maybe a follow-up on Johan's question there. The order book, is it broad-based the development?

Or is it sort of very narrow in certain pockets of exceptionally good demand? Or how does that look?

No, I would say it's broad. We present the differences between our new 3 global divisions here.

But you can see that there are some differences. And of course, that Energy, for instance, had relatively stronger order book than the others.

But I would say with -- it is a broad base that we have in our order book. So it's no segment that is without orders.

Another question is on sort of your support platforms. You have earlier, and we have talked at length many times before about your upgrades of CRM, HR, ERP, maybe billing systems, maybe something else.

Where are you on that route? And how big of an impact have you had so far in better being able to follow your trends, offboarding, onboarding, billing rates, and what have you.

So it would be interesting to hear you elaborate.

Yes. It is a broad question, Fredrik.

But we come quite a bit on that journey. It is a long-term journey because, like you said, it involves kind of several parts of the company.

It's not just a one system, and then you can measure how far you are progressing. It's a combination of different things.

I would say that we're more than halfway in that sense, but we still have a bit to go kind of to get to fully there. And successively, we're getting -- I would say that in the phase where we are right now, we're getting better and better transparency.

We're shifting into the part where we can also translate the transparency to efficiency and improvements. But that is also kind of a gradual shift, if that is elaborating a bit on your wide question.

Yes, yes, it's very helpful. And on that, just a follow-up, do you have any sort of heavy lifting?

Are there any specific big steps in this project in any way? Or is it really just a gradual work every day?

It is, to a large extent, from an overall perspective, it is a gradual work. Then, of course, we have internal milestones that we are kind of kicking off as we go.

But from kind of from an investment and cost perspective, we're not expecting any significant effects kind of shifting upwards that will be material for the group as such.

Thank you, Fredrik. Then we welcome Johan Sundén from DNB, Carnegie.

A few questions from my side as well. I think, firstly, a little bit curious to hear some kind of high-level comments on the kind of sentiment within the organization.

How has voluntary employee turnover developed over the summer? How is commitment among employees?

Just curious to hear those kind of feedbacks.

Thank you. That's a good question.

I would start by saying it was a big shift for us of what we are doing. With that said, I think it's quite logical and well understood why we're doing it.

So there's a lot of commitment within the organization towards our new strategic direction. But of course, when you are impacted directly, there will be some additional question marks.

So it's not all sort of 18,000 super happy. But I would say the overall direction is good, and we have our employees with us on this journey.

The second one was related to the employee turnover. Was that right?

Yes. Actually, we haven't seen any sort of negative development on that.

So it's in line with what we have seen the last quarters. So no change there.

Healthy level.

And also on the kind of more of an HR place, maybe the leadership within Transportation places, where are we in the process there?

Yes. So Robert Larsson will do his last day here at AFRY, the 31st of October.

And then from 1st of November, we have an acting solution in place, Tuukka Sormunen, who will take on the division as acting. And we are in the final stages of the recruitment process for the successor.

And then maybe a little bit of a nitty-gritty question for Bo. Firstly, on the order backlog, and there's been pretty negative news flow regarding the forestry sector in the Nordics recently.

Should we be worried for cancellation or those kind of things that could impact the order backlog going into Q4?

No, I wouldn't be particularly concerned, Johan. I mean you're right.

We're not floating a lot of positive news now, but we haven't really had that positive news flow over the last couple of years. So we're not necessarily looking at a large order backlog that is particularly exposed.

So I don't see a big kind of downside risk on that from where we are right now.

That's encouraging. And then 2 small nitty-gritty questions.

Firstly, on working capital. If it's just possible, been a busy reporting day, I haven't had time to go into all the details, but can you please go through the dynamics between the kind of how you come with such good working capital release in this quarter?

Yes. I mean you're right.

We had a healthy working capital flow on an overall perspective, particularly if you look at a normal Q3 for us, it was a bit stronger this year than it was in a normal year. We don't have a big reason for it to present in that sense.

You should expect that, that would be more seasonal swings also, then looking at how Q3 is normally then composed, then this could very well kind of have a contradicting effect in Q4. That's how it's normally played out.

But it's nothing out of the ordinary in that sense, more referring to seasonal swings that we saw in a positive way, of course, in Q3.

And on overhead cost, which has trended a little bit higher first quarter this year, I think you mentioned in Q1 that there was some intra-year phasing that pushed that up a little bit in Q1. Should we expect very low overhead cost in Q4 then?

Or how should we think there?

I mean we're clearly -- I mean, now we closed Q3, so we're pretty far into the year. So as been seen throughout the year, we will expect -- I mean, you should expect a higher full year than last year.

That's pretty evident where we are kind of 3 quarters out. Looking at Q3 specifically, then the main rationale for the year-over-year is we have -- we carry a very high activity level currently, or particularly during this year.

That's one side of it. And then we have some currency-related effects that sneak into the net group cost that we report as well.

But in general, I would more look at the activity level that we are carrying at this moment.

And when should we kind of be ramping down to more normal levels? Is it '26?

Yes. No, I don't necessarily see that.

I mean, over the next few quarters, we will be looking at more normalized levels. That is to be expected.

Then whether it will happen in Q4 or going into '26, too early to say. But this is not -- it's not a permanent level, I would envision.

Next question is from Dan Johansson from SEB.

Two additional ones. Linda, I think you spoke briefly on the billing ratio declined slightly versus the quarter last year, but perhaps less so than previously.

And connecting this to the restructuring program, how do you think it's progressing versus the initial plan you had when you introduced it? I know it's a short period.

And I assume you did not see much now in Q3, it's a summer quarter. But you have taken out SEK 120 million of restructuring costs now.

So for Q4, if we look into that, do you expect to see some first positive signs in terms of utilization? Or will it take a bit longer to see the effect from that?

Just so I get it right from a run rate level here going forward.

I start? Yes.

Our important topic of utilization rate. And actually, as you saw on both slides, this was actually the -- it was still lower compared to Q3 last year, but not as much lower as we have seen before.

So that's why we say we see some early positive signs within the quarter, and we also see the end of the quarter going better. So we will keep our focus on this question during Q4 for sure and during next year.

In terms of the capacity adjustments, that is ongoing at the moment. And as Bo said, we can also expect relatively more in Q4 from that adaptation, our capacity towards our current workload, and see that we get that right, and by that, also improving our utilization rates going forward.

Just to add a bit on it. I mean we are progressing according to our plan, and we're seeing the effects that we expect in a sense so far.

But still, also with the guiding of the restructuring program that we launched right before the summer, I mean, you're completely right. We just passed a summer quarter.

And then looking at the SEK 200 million to SEK 300 million that we guided, we have just stepped into that bucket, so to say, in terms of restructuring efforts. So where we are right now, a bit early days still, but we are seeing the effects that we anticipate, but more to come.

And maybe a final one, if I may. In the industry, I'm still a little bit stuck in the past on your old segment structure here.

So just to improve my understanding, the industry margin uptick, is that mainly an effect of your Process Industry business, the Pulp and Paper part, I guess? Or is it more like a -- the local broader industry part you have in Sweden that's a little bit better than last year, i.e., the Industrial Digital Solutions, we look at your previous segment structure.

What sort of the improvement here in the quarter?

If you're talking about the order backlog, it's more related to the Process Industries part. If you're looking at the net sales development and the negative growth, it's more related to the historical the IDS part.

Thank you, Dan. And those are the questions we had today.

Super. So then we say thank you for today, and we look forward to talking to you again at the Capital Markets Day.

Have a nice weekend.