Luotea Plc

Luotea Plc

1.83
EUR
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0.47P/E
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Oct 28Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 27, 2026

Antti Niitynpää

Good morning, and welcome to Luotea's Q4 2025 results webcast. Thank you for joining us today.

In this session, we will walk through our fourth-quarter performance and key financials, review the full-year 2025 results, and take a look at Luotea's strategic direction going forward. This time, I have to say that presenting figures is especially difficult because presentation in accordance with IFRS 5 does not reflect the profitability of continuing or discontinued operations as separate legal entities prior to the demerger.

The presentation will be delivered by me together with our CFO, Mika Stirkkinen, and throughout the presentation, you can submit questions into the comment field, and we will address them in Q&A session at the end of the webcast. Let's begin.

Let's go first through Q4. Group net sales decreased by 1.2%.

In Finland, sales decreased by 7.8%, partly due to a continued termination of unprofitable contracts, but also because of intensified price competition and low additional sales volumes. Many companies have ongoing cost-saving measures which affect to our additional sales.

We are not engaging in margin undercutting in our contract sales. Finland's EBITA declined by €1.6 million, of which half is explained by higher social costs and the rest of it is explained by missing profitable additional sales.

In Sweden, net sales increased by 11.5%, supported by stronger additional sales, and in Sweden, economical situation is better than in Finland. Sweden's adjusted EBITA improved by €0.5 million, reflecting the progress of efficiency actions implemented in line with our playbook.

The group IFRS reported EBITA was -€0.3 million compared to €1.4 million in the reference period. Mika will explain the impact of IFRS 5 regulation on this figure.

In Sweden, one large unprofitable contract ended at the end of November, and this will support our turnaround efforts during the year. Let's go to the 2025.

I'm especially proud of the work of all Luotea employees in 2025. We succeeded in improving our employee and customer satisfaction in both countries, and in both countries, EBITA improved significantly.

In following slides, I will go through the segment-specific results and their comparisons with last year. Group net sales declined by -1%, and group cost allocations changed due to IFRS 5, which caused an increase in reported costs.

As I told you, Mika explains this. The board of directors proposes a dividend of €0.07, 7 cents per share.

Here is the figures from segments which are comparable to previous reporting, and I will start from Finland. As I said, net sales in Finland decreased partly due to a termination of unprofitable customers, fierce price competition, especially in cleaning, and low level of additional sales due to customer's cost-cutting measures.

Q4 EBIT decreased by €1.5 million, due to a higher social costs and low add-on sales. In 2025, we changed the way we accrue social security costs, which led to higher employment side cost in the comparison period.

Q4 also included one-off work accident-related costs, which were higher than in the comparison period. The sales margin in both services remained at a good level, and we continued our efficiency improvement measures in Finland.

We also made a good new contract in Q4, which will start early 2026 and are a proof of that our spearhead strategy works. I will go that customer case through later on in this presentation.

In Sweden, the customer satisfaction improved significantly, which led to better additional service sales, which are profitable in Sweden. The efficiency improvement measures in line with our playbook continued, which led to a better adjusted operating profit, and full-year adjusted EBITDA was €1.1 million.

A significant unprofitable customer agreement ended at the turn of November and December, which will help us turn around the result in 2026. We were able to extend the contract with Jernhusen, which I will tell you more about in a moment.

In both countries, as I said, we were able to improve profitability thanks to the efficiency measures. Our playbook is very clear when it comes to improving profitability: clear roles and responsibilities, a weekly management model with the right KPIs, and efficient supply chain management.

In Finland, EBITA is already over our 5% EBITA target level. Luotea's adjusted segment operating result improved by €6.3 million, and this is the end result of successful efficiency measures.

We will continue our determined work in both countries in 2026. In Finland, the focus will be strongly on turning the business into growth, and in Sweden, on turning the result in accordance with our playbook.

We had a clear improvement in our key employees metrics. All remain above industry average.

As I said, all our personnel-related metrics improved. Our employee satisfaction improved, and we succeeded in reducing our accident frequency by managing determined occupational safety proactive measures.

Our staff turnover also dropped significantly, and we are now at historically low turnover rates. These results are also something to be proud of.

Let's go and look forward and look to our strategy. This image summarizes Luotea's strategy.

I will start opening the strategy image from its foundation: our mission and our values. Our mission is to create value for people, companies, and society that goes deeper than the surface.

It means supporting our customers' businesses by making their everyday operations smoother. All of this is guided by our values: courage, a down-to-earth attitude, and collaboration.

These define how we meet our customers and how we work together every day. On the next level of the house are our success factors.

We provide a full-service offering that makes facility maintenance smooth and cost-efficient. Our data-driven services provide real-time insights and help allocate resources precisely where they are needed.

Our expertise in sustainability is reflected in our commitment to biodiversity and energy efficiency solutions. In addition, our Smartti services enables intelligent and climate-smart energy management in buildings.

When I move up to the next floor, our four strategic focus areas come into view. Succeeding in these areas enables our future success, and I will go through the focus areas in more detail later.

At the top of the house is our vision: to navigate the way toward a smarter tomorrow. This is the direction in which we want to take Luotea.

In the clouds, you can see the major societal shifts that affect our businesses. These large-scale megatrends, such as climate change, growing repair debt, and urbanization, increase the need for predictive maintenance, energy efficiency, and intelligent facility management.

Our services are designed to address these needs. To conclude, Luotea is next-generation facilities services company that navigates the way toward a smarter tomorrow.

We build services where technology and human expertise complement one another and make buildings more sustainable, smarter, and more functional for their users. We want to make a deeper impact by improving our customers' everyday life.

Let's go through our strategic focus areas, and I will briefly walk through this. These focus areas guide how we allocate resources, how we develop our capabilities, and how we execute our strategy.

First one: high-quality and responsible services. This is the engine of our growth.

We continue to strengthen our core businesses by delivering high-quality, sustainable services that meet the expectations of our customers and the evolving requirements of the market. Our aim is clear: to consistently deliver the best customer experience in the industry and to secure leadership positions in selected business segments.

Second, maybe my favorite one, is the efficient operating models. A major priority for us is improving efficiency, especially in Sweden, where we are executing our turnaround according to a defined playbook.

We are focusing on a stronger operational discipline, harmonized ways of working, and tighter cost control. These actions support margin improvement and create a scalable foundation for long-term profitability.

Then the third one: Luotea is a people's business. We have over 5,000 employees, and we want to be the industry's best place to work.

Our people are central to our success, and building a unified Luotea culture remains as our strategic priority. We are investing in leadership, competence development, and embedding our values across the organization.

At the same time, we are strengthening our employer brand to attract and retain the talent we need as in our business growth. Fourth: digital services and AI.

Technology is a core part of how we create value. We are expanding the use of AI to support daily work, and we are strengthening our position as a leader in data-driven facility services.

Data-driven maintenance, data-driven cleaning, data-driven technical services should become a standard across our operations, enabling us to increase our efficiency, improve our quality, and deliver more predictable outcomes for our customers. These four focus areas forms a coherent framework.

They guide our decisions and support our ambition to operate more efficiently, grow in a disciplined way, and continue leading the development of modern facility services. Let's go to customer cases, and I want to start by highlighting that we are now securing strategically important wins that clearly strengthen our position and validate our direction as a company.

We have launched a comprehensive facility services agreement covering 20 Scandic hotels, which represents about 1/3 of their hotel portfolio in Finland. For us, for Luotea, this is a strategically meaningful win that strengthens our position in a important customer segment and demonstrates the value of our integrated service model.

What makes this partnership especially important is the role of Smartti, our energy optimization solution. Scandic had already piloted Smartti with strong results, and the new agreement expands its use across much larger share of their properties.

Smartti is at the core of our strategy, combining intelligent analytics, real-time energy optimization, and data-driven insights to reduce energy consumption, emissions, and life-cycle costs while improving indoor conditions. This is exactly the kind of impact we aim to deliver for large multisite customers.

Through one unified operating model, we will manage facility maintenance, technical services, and energy management and indoor conditions for all 20 hotels. This allows us to harmonize service levels, improve efficiency, and bring predictability and transparency to day-to-day operations.

For Scandic, the partnerships supports their goal to offer a responsible and high-quality guest experience. For us, for Luotea, it enables scale benefits and operational efficiency improvements in our Finnish businesses.

Strategically, this agreement shows how our capabilities in digital operations and energy management differentiate us in the Nordic market. It deepens our collaboration with a major hospitality player, strengthens our technology-driven service offering, and supports our long-term growth in integrated facility services.

In summary, the Scandic partnership is a strong example how we combine technology and Smartti to deliver more sustainable, efficient, and high-quality operations. Let me next highlight an important milestone for our Swedish businesses this quarter.

We have signed a nationwide partnership with Jernhusen, covering 143 properties across 45 municipalities. It is the largest procurement process in Jernhusen's 25 years history, and being chosen again as their long-term partner is a strong acknowledgments of Luotea's capabilities.

For us, this agreement is strategically significant. It strengthens our position in Sweden, supports our growth ambition, and directly aligns with our strategy to deliver modern, efficient, and sustainable facility services at scale.

What makes this partnerships especially important is its scope. We will be responsible for a unified operating model that combines maintenance, technical operations, and energy optimizations across the entire portfolio.

This plays directly to Luotea's strengths: data-driven operations, energy expertise, and the ability to run large national networks with consistent quality. The agreement also includes ambitious requirements in areas such as circularity, reuse, climate reporting, and SBTi-aligned targets.

These are exactly the capabilities we have been building, and they differentiate Luotea clearly in the market. From a business perspective, this is a major step forward for our Swedish operations.

It improves scale, strengthens efficiency, and supports margin development as we harmonize processes. In short, this partnership proves that our strategy works, it deepens our presence in a key market, and creates a strong platform for long-term profitable growth.

We are proud of this win, and it demonstrates the trust major Nordic assets owners place in Luotea's ability to deliver smarter, more sustainable, and more efficient operations. Now I will hand over to our CFO, Mika Stirkkinen.

Mika Stirkkinen

Thank you, Antti. Good morning also from my side.

I will give some more details on the financials and the guidance. It's very rare for a CFO to start with his or her presentation stating that presentation in accordance with IFRS doesn't reflect the profitability of the operations properly.

This is highly unusual. If you look at the reported result, which is absurdly high of 161 million, in real life that doesn't reflect any true financial performance, nor does the result for the discontinued operations.

The closest resemblance to truth is the 1.2 million, but neither does that tell a true story of the result of Luotea. That is due to the IFRS 5, which resulted in group costs being artificially high in the reported figures.

Should you be interested in how we have come up with these figures, please read the notes section in the financial statements release. Now, when you have a look at the breakdown of our results, the nearest or the best figure to look at our figures, which gives the best picture of the raw performance, is the adjusted EBITDA of the segments of Finland and Sweden together, i.e., 9.9 million euros.

The effect of the IFRS 5 on group costs was 2.9 million, and that, as stated, that was artificially high. We state that going forward, that figure will be lower.

That is forecasted to be lower in '26. If you look at the rest of the result, the PPA amortization, that will be over by 2028, i.e., the current amortizations.

Then items affecting comparability, those are likely lower in 2026. Then additionally, finance net is forecasted to be lower in 2026 due to the fact that we are expected to generate cash flow and our net debt will end being net debt and we turn highly likely to net cash position.

When you look at the reported group adjusted EBITDA for the year, that we reported 7 million. A year ago, that was 1.2, the difference being 5.8 million.

As stated earlier, the more realistic figure for the year was 9.9, i.e., the sum of segments Finland and Sweden together. Over there, the improvement was 6.3 million from a year ago.

I.e., clear and steady improvement during the year. There was a minor dip in real performance.

That was due to the statutory social costs in Q4 that includes occupational accident insurance impact, and that impact was 0.7 million. That was partly due to the accrual difference during the year.

Then on the left-hand side, the IFRS 5 impact was even bigger than a year ago, half a million bigger, so that lowered the reported adjusted EBITDA by half a million. Overall, we can say that the playbook worked during the year.

We can say that Sweden improved, but it's clear to all of us that there still is work to be done in Sweden. Going forward, during this year, it is clear that the partial demerger is now finalized.

We can forget that. We can focus on the business.

That doesn't affect Antti's job, it doesn't affect my job, it doesn't affect the other management team people's daily operations. Another guidance for the '26 is that the reported group costs are forecasted to be lower.

Being an independent facility services company clearly has its benefits. We can truly focus on the facility services, not on any other business.

On the capital structure, our capital structure is very strong. Our cash position at the end of the year was 15.7.

Then we have a bank loan of 5 million, and then IFRS 16 interest-bearing liabilities of 14.8, totaling of net debt is 4.1 million. Then when you compare this 4.1 million to our adjusted EBITDA, that gives us the ratio of 0.2 of net debt to adjusted EBITDA.

That's a really, really, really strong figure. Then on top of the cash, we have a revolving credit facility of 10 million euros, which is fully unutilized at the moment.

We are a company with a solid and strong EBITDA. The full-year figure was 17.3 million.

It improved from last year's 11.8. We don't report cash flow figures due to this demerger, but here you can see an indicative cash flow after investments based on the P&L figures.

Our adjusted EBITDA for the year was 17.3, our investments 1.3, naturally negative, finance net 0.7, and then tax of 1.1. All this sum to indicative cash flow after investments, excluding net working capital impact, of 14.2 million.

Here are our financial targets presented in the Capital Markets Day in November. As you might remember, our dividend policy is to distribute at least half of the net profit as dividends.

Our official net result per share was 3 cents, and our dividend proposal is 7 cents, or the board's proposal to the AGM. Our guidance states that the adjusted EBITDA in 2026 is expected to be better or materially better than the adjusted EBITDA of 7 million in 2025.

Thank you. This was my part of the presentation.

Minttu Vilander

Thank you, Antti and Mika. My name is Minttu Vilander, and I'm the Brand and Communications Director here at Luotea, and I will be asking the questions that you send online.

There are a couple of questions, and firstly, from Valtteri Rossi from Danske Bank asks, 'Do you expect sales to decline in Sweden 2026? How about in Finland?'

Antti Niitynpää

In Sweden, I expect the sales to be roughly at the same level. In Finland, I really believe that we will have increase in sales in Finland.

Minttu Vilander

What can you do to improve profitability this year?

Mika Stirkkinen

We have a strong focus on the sales margin at the very kind of detailed level in a region-by-region level. We follow that very meticulously.

On top of that, one of our objective and key results for the year is the fixed costs. The fixed costs are under the loop.

We follow that very closely. Then another one is the customer satisfaction.

We see that whenever the customer satisfaction increases, our add-on sales increases, and there are proofs of that in Sweden during Q4.

Antti Niitynpää

Exactly. Most of the improvement in our profitability will come from Sweden, and we have clear KPIs how we manage the business on a weekly basis.

Minttu Vilander

Thank you. Then there is another question from Valtteri Rossi: 'How do you know that you were able to maintain the market shares?'

Antti Niitynpää

We have a rough study of the current market share and how the facility services industry grows in Finland and Sweden, and of course we know our own growth rate, so that's the way to calculate it.

Minttu Vilander

Thank you. Then there was topic also about the Jernhusen contract, and there is a question: 'How much will the contract generate sales?'

Antti Niitynpää

We won't publish those specific customer sales figures.

Minttu Vilander

Thank you. Then there is a question about the dividend, that why is the dividend so low?

Mika Stirkkinen

We we had a thorough discussion in the board meeting on the on the dividend. It's a it's a combination because, as I stated earlier, the the result, the official result is very weird, to be frank.

It's a combination of the being higher than the the net profit. At the same time, it takes into account the true underlying profitability.

Then due to the fact that we didn't post any official net profit, we we needed to take care of the balance sheet as well, so that was the one of the underlying factor factors. In the end, the the 7 cents per share was a was a kind of unanimous decision by the board.

Minttu Vilander

Thank you. Then a question about the revenue: 'So how much the revenue decline is due to the terminating unprofitable contracts?

Also continuing question about how big was the loss from the terminated contract in Sweden 2025?'

Antti Niitynpää

I won't answer to that Sweden customer, as I said, we won't publish those figures. As in my section, I said that roughly half of the net sales decline came from the terminating unprofitable customers and half of it by lower additional sales levels.

That roughly the scale.

Minttu Vilander

Thank you. Then there is a question about the services, and especially from the strategy part of the presentation.

According to the report, demand for data-driven cleaning services and AI-assisted energy efficiency services continued to be strong. What are these services in practice, and how do they affect demand for cleaning services or your profitability?

Antti Niitynpää

The AI-driven energy management services, energy optimization for customers: we connect customer's facilities automation to our energy savings center in Kuopio, then we have this Smartti AI machine between those energy management services center and customer's automation, which tunes the automation thousands of times per day, and helps customer to save in energy costs. Roughly, we can save about 20% to 25% of energy expenses from customers, it's quite good service for the customer.

Then data-driven cleaning, for example, is that we don't clean according the service instructions, but we clean according how the facility has been used. For example, how meeting rooms has been used, and how much toilets have been used, and so on.

Cleaner can do decisions how he cleans on daily basis with data, and it is much more efficient, and that's the reason why it's cost-saving also to customer.

Minttu Vilander

Thank you. There is also a specific question concerning this same services, are these innovative services used mainly in Finland?

Antti Niitynpää

At the moment, but we are expanding those services currently to Sweden also. What I told you about Jernhusen contract, we will expand Smartti to Jernhusen contract in Sweden in the future.

Minttu Vilander

Thank you. Then there is the last question, at least now: 'According to the report, adjusted EBITDA for 2026 is estimated to grow or increase significantly.

What is Luotea's definition of significantly growing guidance?'

Mika Stirkkinen

We don't disclose those exact euro amounts.

Minttu Vilander

Thank you. That was all the questions that I have online, we are ready to close.

Antti Niitynpää

Thank you for your questions and for taking the time to join today's webcast. We appreciate your interest in Luotea and your continued engagement with us.

Our next webcast will take place in May 2026, and when we will review the first quarter as an independent company following the demerger. We look forward to updating you then.

Thank you, and have a good day.