Addnode Group AB Class B

Addnode Group AB Class B

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Q1 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptApril 28, 2026

Operator

Welcome to the presentation of Addnode Group's interim report January to March 2026. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad.

Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO and President Johan Andersson and CFO Kristina Mackintosh. Please go ahead.

Johan Andersson

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the presentation of the Addnode Group Q1 report for 2026. I'm the CEO, Johan Andersson, of Addnode Group, and with me I also have Kristina Elfström Mackintosh, our CFO Addnode Group.

Today we will give you an insight on Addnode Group, talk about our divisions, a little bit of acquisitions, touch upon AI, and we will end with a Q&A. Q1, it was a quarter where we improved earnings and we can see stronger cash flow.

We delivered solid earnings growth. The companies acquired in 2025 performed well, and combined with cost savings, contributed to our favorable earnings performance.

EBITA was up 26% to 274 million, and EBITA margin increased to 17.9% from 14.9%. Earnings per share increased by 24%.

We can see the increase in cash flow from operating activities increased to 363 million compared to 203 million the previous quarter in 2025. We can also see an acquisition, Technia acquired a customer contract base in Germany.

We continued to lay also the foundation for future earnings growth by continuing to implement AI, develop new offerings, and optimize organizations. If we look at from a longer perspective that you can see in the graph to the right here, we can see that from 2025 to the rolling 12 months ending this quarter, EBITA has doubled from 469-- 461 million to 960 million.

I will later walk you through Q1 by divisions, but I would like to hand over to Kristina, our CFO.

Kristina Elfström Mackintosh

Thank you, Johan, and I'm going to take you through the net sales development from Q1 last year to Q1 this year. We can see that net sales increased by 5% to 1 billion 531 million SEK, and the growth is mainly supported by acquisitions.

From the organic position, the currency-adjusted organic growth amounted to -6%, and the negative organic growth was attributable to mainly Design and PLM divisions. In Design division, Symetri saw a slower market in Europe and US and lower share of 3-year contracts compared to the same period last year.

As we have previously communicated, 2025 last year was one of the years where there's a lot of volume, high volume of 3-year contracts being renewed. Also, the market situation in Germany where PLM is operating remains challenging.

Looking at the acquisition, they contributed to plan and with 223 million SEK, and the integration of the new acquisitions are progressing well, and the acquired businesses delivered in line with expectations. Currency movements had significant impact during the quarter, and mainly the weak US dollar had a negative impact of -61 million SEK in the quarter.

That relies mainly in the Design division where a majority of the US dollar denominated business resides. We're going to have a look at the cash situation and cash flow.

In Q1 2026, cash flow from operating activities improved by 79% to 363 million SEK compared to 203 last year. This increase was mainly attributable to stronger earnings and positive changes in working capital.

This graph that we have shown past meetings show the cash conversion over the past decade where we calculate the free cash flow in relation to EBITA for the rolling 12 months quarter-by-quarter. You can see in the pink line we have had the cash conversion rate about 70% up to the time when Autodesk contracts allowed us to obtain the 3-year payments upfront for all the 3 years.

That changed in 2023, and now we are getting the payments yearly in advance year-by-year. You can also see the graph now reflects an upward trend in the most recent quarters, and in line with what we have previously communicated.

Also, historically observed, the working capital effect and the cash conversion tends to vary between quarters, and we expect such volatility to persist going forward. We're going to have a look at the financial position also.

As of March 2026, the net debt including leasing amounted to 2.2 billion. It was also supported by around 900 million SEK in cash balance, and leverage amounted to 2.1 times as a result of the recent acquisitions activity.

From the facilities, we currently have we have about 800 million SEK in available unutilized capacity. During 2025 and in Q1 2026, we have completed 11 acquisitions, which have resulted in a temporary increase in the leverage.

We're also going to look at the return on capital employed in next slide. Return on capital employed amounted to 14.6% as of March 2026.

The many and large acquisitions that we completed last year temporarily impacted the reported return on capital. While the results of the acquired companies are included only from the time of acquisition, and that, if you remember, is SolidCAD came in by the end of October last year, FF Solutions in Brazil in the beginning of August, and Janus in Norway from beginning of July, the full amount of the capital employed is added immediately at the point of acquisition, and this timing effect creates a short-term dilution of return on capital employed, which you can see in this graph.

Now we're going to go into more details about the divisions. I'm going to hand back to Johan.

Johan Andersson

Thank you, Kristina. As some of you may know, we are organized in 3 divisions.

We call them Design Management, Product Lifecycle Management, and Process Management. I'm going to walk you through the development in Q1 for each of our 3 divisions.

Before we do that, you can see that the 2 bigger divisions, if you look at the share of EBITA, you will find it's Process Management and Design Management, and then also Product Lifecycle Management. Let's start with Design Management.

Before we do that, I just want to remind you that as of January 1, 2026, Tribia has been transferred from Design Management division to the Process Management divisions. All the comparative figures you will see today have been restated to reflect a scenario in which Tribia has already been transferred in 2025, the numbers are like-for-like, there's no effect from the transfer in the numbers that we can see here.

With that as a start, we can see that the Design Management division net sales increased with 7% to 659 million. As Kristina mentioned earlier, the weak US dollar had a negative impact, and adjusted for currency effect, organic growth was -12% in the division.

However, EBITA increased by 7% to 158 million, and the EBITA margin increased to 24%. The acquisitions in Canada and Brazil has developed according to plan and contributed to improve net sales and earnings.

In Brazil, growth was driven by continued investment in infrastructure, and in Canada, we can see that customer continued to show renewed confidence in us as their partner. Looking at Europe, we can see that net sales in Europe and US, it were negatively impacted by a few things.

We had a lower volume or to the subscriptions that was up for renewal, and out of those that were up for renewal, we can see that more customers than historically has chosen a 1-year subscription over a 3-year when they renew, and we can see that that trend is continuing. That means that they're still customers with us, but with regards, as we have explained earlier on, that as we are considered an agent, we are reporting the full value of the contract at the time of the sale, if we sell a 3-year contract, we boost the sales, and if we sell a 1-year contract compared to having sold a 3-year before, it has a negative effect in that quarter comparable, but it means that we are still having the same underlying business value, so that's important to have with you.

We can also see that there are some geopolitical changes in the world, and we have some effect also from the market. That has probably also affected the choices from the customers, because you could imagine that in a more uncertain world, you're probably going for more for a 1-year compared to 3-year if you have the option.

The number of customers have increased in Europe and US during this period. We also have Service Works Global in the division, who are more focused on facility management solutions, has delivered a stable earnings performance compared with the preceding year.

If we look at long-term, this is a division that's, if you look at the graph to the right, we have moved from net sales in 2021 over around short of 1 billion to the plus 2 billion that we are today, and we increased the profit. The trend is long-term.

We can see that in this quarter, acquisition has performed really well, and as I mentioned, net sales in Europe and US are a little bit lower than we would have liked, but the results and the margins are with us. Looking at division PLM, we can see we have decrease in net sales to 420 million in the first quarter.

If we adjust for currency effect, it's -4%. Here, we can also see that we have a trend of customers choosing subscription solutions rather than perpetual licenses.

That has sort of have had effect also on top line. The demand for PLM systems, design and simulation software, and related services from strategically important segments such as aerospace and defense remains strong, and we have expanded several customer engagements, particularly in the Nordic countries.

The market situation in Germany still challenging, and there are investment decisions regarding major projects are still being approached with caution from our customers. EBITA has increased to 33 million compared to 4 million last year, but those of you who were with us last year know that we had some restructuring costs last year.

Those have had a positive effect, and we can see the positive of that. Margin is going up, and if we add back the restructuring costs and compare, we can see that still that we have a growth in EBITA of 18% compared to the comparable quarter last year in the run rate.

It's a good performance, and we can see that the cost-efficient measures taken have had an effect in the business. We have made an acquisition here in Q1.

Technia acquired a customer base in Germany of Dassault Systèmes software, added 18 new customers and to the 6,000 that we already have here. Net sales on that customer base is roughly around 18 million and is something that we can add to the organization that we already have in the German part of the business of Technia.

Looking at Process Management, continued their positive streak that they have for 7 quarters in a row right now. Net sales increased by 15% to 466 million in net sales.

EBITA was up 27% to 104 million, and the EBITA margin increased to 22.3% from 20.3%. This was the 7th consecutive quarter in which the EBITA margin improved year-on-year.

Along with good efficiency and effective cost control, margin-enhancing acquisitions such as Janus in Norway have contributed to this earnings improvement. Sales to public sector still stable, but we can see that there is an uncertainty in the world, and those larger projects that we probably did more of a couple of years ago are still being approached with some caution.

As we mentioned earlier on, Tribia has changed to this division, and all the comparative figures has been addressed with that. We think this is a good change.

It's in line with the group strategy, and it aims to strengthen collaboration between companies focusing on the public sector and digital case management, and will create conditions for further growth and efficiency improvements. It also means that division Process Management will have a stronger node in Norway with the companies Janus, Decisive, and Tribia.

We had touched upon acquisitions, and as we mentioned, we had a really strong year in 2025, adding at least 700 million in net sales and strengthen the group. Had a good effect of that, meaning that we were able to build, for example, Symetri to be the world-leading global Autodesk partner with presence in Europe as well as North and Latin America.

We also strengthen Process Management with a strong Nordic footprint and acquisition of Janus in Norway. In Q1, we can see that the acquisition climate has been characterized by greater uncertainty in valuation discussions, mainly driven by AI concerns and a more complex macroeconomic and geopolitical environment.

As I mentioned earlier on, we have made one acquisition of the customer base here in Germany, and we are still continuing to look at acquisitions, but as we did so many acquisitions in 2025, and with the uncertainty in the world, we probably will see a slower acquisition rate this year, and we expect to pick it up by the end of the year. Just to touch upon AI.

AI is something that we are all talking about, something that will have an effect and is having an effect on all of us. It's an important focus area for Addnode Group.

We believe it enables continued innovation, this will increase customer value and our internal efficiency. We are, as a group, focused on a few nodes around software and digital solutions for engineering, design, asset management, and public sector workflows, and we think that's an important asset.

Our strong customer relationships and our in-depth knowledge of their processes, paired with the data created and stored in the digital solutions we provide, represent a strong platform for development of new AI-based services. What is core in all our domains and the nodes that I mentioned is that we have a deep domain expertise and provide software for entire workflows.

We provide mission-critical systems that are embedded with our customers. We are a trusted ecosystem partner in regulated environments.

We are supported by strong partnerships with, for example, Autodesk, Bluebeam, Dassault Systèmes, and Esri, that means that they are able to invest and things that we are able to provide to our customers. We also embrace AI because we believe that is something that will make us stronger and our customer value.

I believe we have a good starting point where we are. Just to give you some examples, if you look at the last, I think it's 3, 4 quarterly reports, we have presented some new AI products just to give you a flavor of what we are talking about.

If you look at what we are presenting in this quarter is, for example, with the inUse Connect to IoT platform, one of our customers, the machine manufacturer Altma, has been able to increase its production efficiency, cut costs, and reduce its service calls. If we look at the other example with AI simplifying, streamlining inspections, then we are in Sweden, and then we have a demand that you need to do ventilation controls and report it to the local authorities, and the local authorities are our customers.

With the software Vianen and Atom, you can automate and create an end-to-end digital workflow that enables Swedish municipalities to fulfill their statutory responsibility for mandatory ventilation inspection. This has resulted in shorter lead times, lower energy consumption, improved public health.

These are 2 very good examples where we can infuse existing solutions with AI to provide more value to our customers. AI is definitely an enabler for increased customer value, it's innovation, efficiency.

The technology which is being integrated in our customer solutions, internal processes, is an important aspect of how we create value. We as a group do believe in decentralization, but it means that we push through a few themes to make things happen within our group.

All the different companies in the group are doing a fantastic job, but what we specifically push and help each other with is to make sure that we continue to develop AI-driven customer solutions. We are doing that by ourselves, we're doing that with our partners, and it's a constant development.

An important thing in this is leadership and how we make these things happen, because it has an effect. We try to work together, we push it through our executive summits, we have different meetings within our divisions to make sure that we have the right leadership to make things happen.

Then also on a more subject matter level, looking at development, sales, market, example, there are different networks within the group that goes over group level, but also in the different divisions, to push this to make this happen. Then we try to promote by showing good examples.

For example, Addnode Innovations, we have 60 very good applicants, and now it's down to 7 in a final, and most of them are actually in production, because you can see the potential in AI, they started vibe coding a couple of months ago, and it's already now happening. It's a lot of things happening, and we're trying to push for it.

We are a decentralized organization, that means that we have a lot of things happening in the group. Trying to sum this up.

We can see that we are delivering on our growth strategy. We are combining organic growth with a value-creating acquisition strategy, if we look for a full-year perspective, even though we have a quarter with lower in organic growth.

Our financial target is to grow EBITA with 15% year-on-year. That means that we aim to continue to double EBITA every 5th year.

Since 2016, we have a compounded annual growth rate EBITA of 19%, and we are increasing EBITA margin. With the presence in various regions and the industries where our digital solutions are mission-critical, we have built a robust business that remains strong even in a challenging economic climate dominated by geopolitical turmoil.

Looking forward, growth and improved earnings will continue to originate from the development of new offerings, the implementation of AI, and acquisitions. We will continue to optimize our organization as technology, market conditions, and economy changes.

Addnode Group has shown and will continue with the creativity, perseverance, and commitment needed to generate value for both our customers and our shareholders. With that as an introduction, we would like to open up for Q&A and questions.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad.

Operator

The next question comes from Erik Larsson from SEB. Please go ahead.

Kristina Elfström Mackintosh

Hello, Erik.

Erik Larsson

Hi. Can you hear me?

Johan Andersson

Yes.

Kristina Elfström Mackintosh

We can hear you. Thank you.

Erik Larsson

Hi. Okay.

Sorry for that. Great.

I have a few questions. First off, if you look at your customer base for the rest of the year, do you see fewer agreements that are up for renewal or was that more isolated to Q1?

Johan Andersson

What we can see is that we had here in Q1, yes, fewer agreements. Then we will probably see that we go back to more of a historical, sort of normal activity over the year is that Q2 is usually slower, Q3 okay, and Q4 better.

We will probably have see that pattern during the year as well, what I would believe.

Erik Larsson

All right. Then I wanted to ask about the M&A contribution, which was strong here in Q1.

If you could just give some flavor if that also reflects the seasonality in SolidCAD and FF Solutions or to what extent we could extrapolate this to Q2, for instance?

Johan Andersson

No, but it's a very good question. Yes, there's a seasonality in that, because these are more the basic Q1 are to be very strong, yes, there's definitely a seasonality in this, you cannot extrapolate it for Q2.

You should probably expect more, like I mentioned, that is Q1, yes, very strong and we are proud of that. Then we will probably see that Q1 is the slowest quarter during the year, and then Q3 will be sort of okay and Q4 will But that's so I'm talking about the full of Design here.

If you look at the guidance where at we said that we are probably around 700 million plus on the run rate for the acquisition we did for in 2025, and then you compare it with a very good contribution in Q1, you'll see that we there's a sort of an overachievement compared to that in Q1. That has to do with some expectation that Q1 should it should be better, to speak.

There definitely is some seasonality there.

Erik Larsson

Perfect. Then a final question on cash flows.

I think you talked about it a bit, but we've seen now 2 strong quarters, and this normalization that you've mentioned several times is currently taking place. Then, historically, we have seen limited cash flows in Q2 and Q3, the question is, should we assume that in '26 as well or is it still some catching up to do, to say?

Kristina Elfström Mackintosh

Yes, if you look at the cash flow, we have the strongest cash flow quarters in Q4 and Q1, and based on historical patterns, Q2 is slower, and the lowest pattern in cash flow is in Q3. We expect the same pattern going forward as well.

Erik Larsson

Okay. That was all for me.

Thank you.

Kristina Elfström Mackintosh

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Thomas Nielsen from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Thomas Nielsen

Thank you for taking my question. When you mention a lower share of 3-year contracts in Q1, when it comes to the -12% organic growth we saw in Design Management, how much of this 12% negative organic growth comes from a lower share of 3-year contracts in Q1?

Johan Andersson

We don't have an exact figure for that, but just to give you some guidance is that we started off, and this has to do with the base of the business, that we, for example, the contracts that was sold 1 year and 3 years ago, those are the contracts expected to be renewed this quarter. That means that we had a lower base that was sort of previously sold to be renewed compared to the last quarter last year, we expected a slower net sales compared to that.

We have an effect of that, and that was expected. Then of the contracts that were renewed, the customers choose more to go with a 1-year contract, and we expect that pattern to continue going forward.

We will see that. The good thing is that the customers are increasing, the number of customers are increasing, we can see that we are at least sort of flattish on the underlying customer value of the contracts if we try to sort of annualize the value of the 3-year contracts.

We are sending a signal that it's not 12% organic down, it has these effects on the going from the 1 or 3, and you can see the strong cash flow as well. You will not get a sort of a full number of that, but we are saying that we are more on a flattish on the growth rate of the underlying business.

Okay.

Thomas Nielsen

In terms of organic growth at group level, when do you expect we'll return to organic growth for the group? Will it be in the remainder of 2026?

Johan Andersson

I think best guess is that to expect that we will not, as a group, have organic growth this year. It has to do with if you look at it, we will always It's more also has to do with us as a we will continue to protect the bottom line, you can see there, for example, we are increasing our EBITA and we are increasing our earnings per share with 24%, we'll have a focus on that, but I wouldn't expect us as a group to have organic growth in this year as has to do with we started with this quarter, you can see that we will not be able to sort of catch up that during the year, and we are not planning I think we said going back to our Capital Markets in last autumn, we said that we expected low-digit organic growth for the next year.

Now we can see that there are some definitely the sort of the geopolitical situation and the market has not probably expected as we are as we expected at that time. If now we are probably saying that that low sort of organic did percent of growth has probably turned around to say, let's be strive for organic growth, but we are not planning for that.

Thomas Nielsen

Okay. Thank you very much.

One final question. Do you see any risk on the horizon from AI-native startups in your business areas?

Johan Andersson

Of course, we see risks because we also see all the opportunities by ourselves what we can do. The next question is probably, have something of that materialized?

No. Because there are the things that, as I mentioned, we are very much still embedded in our systems, it's more we are working in regulated environments, the sort of 2, 3-man startups are not relevant options for our customers to handle this.

Having said that, we are also seeing so many things that you can do, of course there are risks, and we try to address them as best as we can and we develop ourselves, there are always risks in running a business, and within the risk also lies the opportunities.

Thomas Nielsen

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question comes from Daniel Thorsson from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.

Daniel Thorsson

Yes. Thank you very much.

I also have a question on Design Management here in Q1. Do you think that the 1 and 3-year agreement changes here is to some extent explained by some AI uncertainties as well, both because customers may not know what competition and pricing may look like 2 years out, but also that they may face headcount reductions internally themselves?

Is that something you hear in customer discussions?

Johan Andersson

We are not hearing that saying that, okay, this is because we are looking at AI. We're also hearing some customers saying that, what do you think about changing your systems?

"No, that's not an option, because we are so heavily embedded in our processes and routines." For example, if you are an architect or technical consultants, all the new development that you're doing, all the historical, everything is so heavily embedded, it's a very sort of long and painstaking process.

It's like trying to change SIP for Ericsson, it's all a lot of things in it. Having said that, it's quite tough to understand what is sort of normal geo things affecting business and what is AI.

Daniel Thorsson

No, I understand that businesses are embedded by the customers and they may not change it, but I also think that some of the customers that consider a 3-year agreement now, they may think that prices for this will be lower 2 years out

Johan Andersson

or

Daniel Thorsson

our 100 architects today

Johan Andersson

maybe

Daniel Thorsson

90 architects in 2 years because of internal efficiency and productivity, it's better to go with a 1-year now because we don't know how we will look like in 12 months' time.

Johan Andersson

Could be.

Daniel Thorsson

You haven't really heard that thought?

Johan Andersson

We haven't really sort of had those type of discussions saying that, "Because of this, we are on..." You are a little bit ahead of the curve compared to our customers.

We have also customers who are saying that, "We want you to ensure that you are not implementing AI in our solution, because we cannot do that for regulators." We have all those type of discussions.

Let's see. I usually say ask me that question again the next quarter, and then I will sort of probably re-evaluate that.

Far, we haven't had those sort of big discussions with our customers saying that, "You know what, we're going to decrease with X percentage of numbers, be prepared for that." I'm not saying that that is not going to happen, I'm saying that we have not had those discussions.

Daniel Thorsson

Cool. Understand.

Then second question here on Design Management. You answered partly to Thomas' question there on organic growth guidance for this full year.

Did you refer to Design Management or on a group level? Because on the Capital Markets Day, you said that you expect low single-digit organic growth in Design Management for 2026,

Johan Andersson

and

Daniel Thorsson

now you say not on a group level.

Johan Andersson

No, but I think it goes with each other. If we are not able to do organic growth in Design Management because it's roughly half of our business, then we're probably not going to be able to do organic growth on a group level, because for PLM, for example, we have took the sort of the decision to discontinue some business to improve our profit margins, we can't really expect to do organic growth in PLM for the full year.

If we are saying that we can't expect organic growth in Design, then the organic growth that we would hopefully be able to generate some percentage in Process, that will probably not be enough to compensate for the sort of entire group.

Daniel Thorsson

Yeah. No, that makes sense.

Then a question on Q2 here in Design Management. We know that we have a tough comp from last year, you had the positive boost from renewals before mid-year there.

How should we think about kind of the magnitude in organic growth in Design in Q2? It will obviously be materially larger on the negative side compared to Q1 here,

Johan Andersson

but

Daniel Thorsson

20%, 25% magnitude, is that unreasonable given that you grew 50% last year?

Johan Andersson

I think that depends on what you compare with, because we had a significant boost in Q2 last year of pre-ordering of 3-year contracts. All that also mean that we have less sales in Q3.

I guess it's not that easy to just answer because that depends on what base you are comparing with.

Daniel Thorsson

I was thinking year-over-year versus Q2 last year. I guess it will just be a large drop.

Johan Andersson

It will be a large drop. It's a very good question, and I just want to remember everyone that Q2 last year was a significant boost from the pre-ordering that meant that we had Q3 very much slower.

If you want to try to sort of address the magnitude of the changes, you need to sort of combine Q2 and Q3 last year.

Daniel Thorsson

Yeah. That's clear.

Then the final question on Process here. You had 1% organic growth in Process, so that means that either volume or pricing is negative year-over-year.

Which one was negative here in Q1, if you could check? No, but

Johan Andersson

I think it's volume. We have some pricing, and the pricing that's probably we can do some, I think it's a mix, but that means that depending on a little bit how we measure, we are having slightly volume negative or flattish.

There's no growth in the volume to make that organic growth happen.

Daniel Thorsson

Yeah. That's clear.

Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question comes from Fredrik Nilsson from Redeye. Please go ahead.

Fredrik Nilsson

Thank you very much. Good morning.

I want to follow up on the movement from 3-year to 1-year deals in Design. Have you seen a similar pattern before in more uncertain economic environments?

Johan Andersson

No, I think what is happening now is that, yes, we might have some uncertain in that, but we also said, I think just to be very clear, we have a move under irrespective from the sort of uncertainties here that is going to 1-year contracts. That has to do with that if we go back, for example, a couple of years ago, the customer had a discount from moving to 3 years compared to, and then it was moved to you can fix in the price, and now we can see that, and they had still to pay upfront, and then over the year it has moved to that irrespective if you fix the price for 3 years, you still have to pay yearly.

The trend has been going on for the last sort of couple of years that move to 1 years. I think the majority of what happened is that there's a push to 1-year contract within the system.

Then we have an uncertainty in the market, sort of normal sort of market things are going to happen. Just to add some flavor to your question.

The question then the other one, is to say, no, we don't have any sort of a good historical comparable saying that in this time customers choose this and that. We are talking more from a it probably makes sense, and I had previous questions that do you think the customer has done that.

It's hard to answer, but I also want to put out there that we have a trend moving to 1-year contract, and that will continue. Good thing is that we will be able to show more sort of less volatility in our reporting earnings going forward for the same customer base if we are able to sort of increase the number of 1-year contracts, if that makes sense.

Fredrik Nilsson

Yeah. That's good.

Let's move on to PLM. As you mentioned, the margin increased quite a bit year-over-year.

It was still below the second half of last year. I guess there might be some seasonality, but still, there seems to be a slightly lower level.

Has the market worsened somewhat or could you help us understand the number?

Johan Andersson

No, I think what you're pushing at that Q1 is always the best quarter for Design Management, but is also the less best quarter for PLM historically. Irrespective, if you look back over the years, you will find that Q1 is probably the quarter, and that has to do with some seasonality with sales of software and deliveries of projects.

They have more services within themselves, so that means that January is probably a little bit slower because there's a sort of you start up for the year, you do more projects, and in Design, you end the year in January, there's some seasonality in that.

Fredrik Nilsson

Okay. I agree to what you're saying to some extent, but still, in 2024, 2022, the margin was quite strong also in Q1.

Were those quarters exceptional then, you would say, or how should I understand that you don't really see that seasonal pattern in the numbers you report, I would argue? No,

Johan Andersson

you have better sort of data in front of yourself than me, but I don't feel that if the question is that do we feel that we are being less efficient as we go ahead, that's not my thing. I expect that we will be able to continue to improve earnings over the year this year compared to last year if that's sort of the underlying question.

Fredrik Nilsson

That's clear. Last question regarding the capitalized work, it increased quite a bit relative to sales.

Is this the level we should expect going forward or was there something special in the quarter?

Kristina Elfström Mackintosh

The special in the quarter is that we now have our company in Norway, Janus, who are providing own proprietary software, which have capitalized in the Q1. We didn't have that in the past, so that you can expect, and that has not been depreciate or amortized over time yet.

For the companies that are providing own products and solutions, we will expect more capitalized R&D being put in the numbers.

Fredrik Nilsson

That's clear. That's all for me.

Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question comes from Mikael Lassin from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Mikael Lassin

Yes, good morning. Hi.

I have a few questions, and the first one is on Design Management and how Autodesk's increased focus on new sales versus renewals are affecting your business. No, but

Johan Andersson

that's a good question. The short answer is that we don't have the full analysis of that.

The things that you mentioned is that from February, it's the first month of the Autodesk year, the sort of the incentives are slightly changed so that they are pushing for moving from more from the back end to new sales. It's a little bit too early to say that, because we have only had that process for 2 months, and so we don't have any sort of a good analysis of that.

Basically, what they're trying, like everyone else, are trying to promote new sales over sort of renewal and taking care of existing customer base. We are getting sort of incentivized for both, but in the new model, more on the new sales.

It's a little bit too early to do any bigger analysis of that. Basically, if we sell less, we probably will get less margin on that, that's the sort of expression.

The margin then means that in an agency model, that's our net sales.

Mikael Lassin

Okay. You haven't seen any dramatic effect so far in Q2 then?

Johan Andersson

No, not yet, I would strongly advise you to ask me that question again the next quarter, and then we will see, because then we will have been able to go through a full sort of Autodesk quarter and then into next quarter, and then we will be able to see how this pans out.

Mikael Lassin

Okay. Can you then give us some sort of background to the dynamics in new sales versus renewals for Symetri, the Design segment, how that works today and yeah, we can sort of understand the potential changes if there are any?

Johan Andersson

I think you have to look at it by market by market. If you look at Europe and US, right now we can see new sales, it's a little bit slower.

New sales means that either we are selling new sort of seats, could be to of existing systems and modules, or selling new modules coming out of the new software, it's a mix of that. Then also if you look at the dynamics, you can see that, for example, in Brazil, we have a strong growth, and that is supported by all the infrastructure investments being made, and so that we have a strong position there.

Canada, we have a very strong positions as well, we can see that's growing well. What we've been struggling shortly here is being in Europe and US of new sales this quarter.

I don't know if that was sort of your underlying questions, please ask me again, I could probably

Mikael Lassin

explain. Just thinking about the renewal rate is, I guess, pretty high.

You have a loyal customer base

Johan Andersson

to renew, and so

Mikael Lassin

it's just you will still get a fair amount of revenue on that, but it's sort of tilted more towards new sales, you get rewarded more for pushing more new sales? That is what's going on here?

Yes.

Johan Andersson

That's it. Yes, the short answer is yes, compared to a year ago, we will get sort of more percentage-wise margins, to speak, on new sales compared to renewal of existing customer base.

Mikael Lassin

Got it. All right.

Are you seeing any pressure on pricing here in the Design segment or volumes or partner economics in sort of in general, as underlying changes apart for this push for new sales?

Johan Andersson

If you're talking about pricing, are we talking about pricing to customers?

Mikael Lassin

I guess so, and your relationship with Autodesk.

Johan Andersson

Yeah. No, but pricing to customer, we haven't seen that in a sort of pressure on that.

This we can see that we have sort of a normal, more of a KPI level price increases. That's sort of in the system.

With regards to the message is that if we continue to do our work, we will sort of get still our share of the cake in the same level. That goes back to your question, how has that panned out with sort of promoting more new sales compared to historical.

We haven't seen how that panned out, but that's the message still, and we are going for that. Still they are pushing for the channel, and we have still some more work to do, so.

Mikael Lassin

Got it. I was also thinking about so in general, the underlying trend for these type of CAD, AEC players is to bundle more and sell more complete packages, I guess.

Do you also benefit from that, selling more to the customer base, upselling, cross-selling? How do you work with that?

No, but that's

Johan Andersson

what you mentioned, yes, as these products are becoming more and more sort of adding more value to a customer, it also means that they are more complex to address with the customer, so that means that we as a partner are investing more and have invested more in our service capabilities to be able to address that value for our customers. That means that it has been beneficial for us as a bigger part or the biggest partner, for example, for Autodesk, and one of the biggest to Dassault, so that we have the capabilities to bring out sort of the full platform.

That's definitely a trend, we believe that compared to other partners, we have a upside on that, definitely. That means that we are investment in people.

Most of the people that are working with us, they have a history from the industry by themselves, they have been architects, technical consultants, been working as in process industries and etc., we sort of would like to claim that we understand the processes that the software is about to be supported, so that's very important for us. We believe that's something that are having a positive impact on us.

Mikael Lassin

That's good clarity. Thanks.

Maybe if I may, a question on what you mentioned, the CEO comment in the report, that you talk about new offerings. Can you sort of talk to us about what that means?

No, but

Johan Andersson

I think new offerings for us is some of the examples I mentioned here in the report today, we are to bring some new IoT offerings to the market, helping our customers getting more productive within the maintenance. We are also enabled to have sort of existing offerings combined them, infused them with AI and provide more value to our customers.

We are probably not the type of company that's going to sort of greenfield investment of a sort of major investment, we are probably good at making things even better as we are, and we can also see that our product development is becoming more and more efficient by ourselves, and we're also working with our partners to bring new products into the market as well, it's not the product, it's a lot of products that we're constantly developing to bring out to the customers, so as part of a more of a evolving rather than revolution.

Mikael Lassin

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Daniel Djurberg from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Daniel Djurberg

Thank you, Operator. Good day, Johan and Kristina.

Most questions asked, obviously, but I have a question coming back to you talked a little bit about the pricing trends with Autodesk and Dassault. Can you say something more on that, like-for-like magnitude and also if we saw the full impact in Q1?

Also if there has been any changes with regards to Autodesk if they, given the changes from renewals versus new sales and so on, if they take a larger share of this price increases themselves than in the past? Thanks.

Johan Andersson

Okay. The first question I got with, okay, can I say anything about prices, and just to be clear, on the last one, I didn't sort of fully understand the question, the last part of it.

Daniel Djurberg

All right. Neither did I, I guess.

Let's do the first question then.

Johan Andersson

Thank you. No, but about pricing, we can see that our expectancy is not that we're going to go for 5%, 10% price increase.

It's more like can we expect to do 2%, 3% price increase and then on the sort of existing volume, that's probably more what we can go for to expect in this environment.

Daniel Djurberg

Yeah. May I ask you also, since it is now Autodesk doing the invoicing themselves, do you have easier to get the price increases through since it's Autodesk doing this and you will just go with the flow here, I guess?

Johan Andersson

No, I think the good thing is that we live in a world where we have sort of the help of Autodesk to keep the price up. Historically, when we were more of a direct sales organization, there was a competition on the price pressure.

With this new sort of agency model, it's easier to keep the overall prices up in the market from that perspective. Yes, we can see that because we send the quote to the customers.

We definitely see the end value. We know sort of the end value to the customer margin as we are the one sending the quote to them.

When they say yes to the quote, they get an invoice from Autodesk.

Daniel Djurberg

Understand. Another question after me.

You talked twice, I think, in the call on that you've seen number of clients that has increased in EMEA and North Americas in Design, I think. Number of customers.

Is this also excluding the acquisition, SolidCAD and FF Solutions?

Johan Andersson

Yes.

Daniel Djurberg

Great. I will leave with that and good luck Q2 here.

Johan Andersson

Thank you.

Kristina Elfström Mackintosh

Thank you.

Operator

There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Johan Andersson

No, just thank you for all the good questions and taking the time to talk about Addnode Group. Thank you.