Thank you. Welcome to you all to our second-Q conference call.

Please go to the first slide. Let me provide a brief update on our key strategic priorities and the progress we have made during the period.

Starting with Norway, we successfully completed the integration of Sonepar Norge in the second quarter of 2026. The integration has proceeded according to plan and represents an important milestone for the whole Solar Group.

Our focus is now on realizing the operational benefits from the combination, strengthening our market position, and ensuring that customers and employees continue to experience a seamless transition. Turning to Kumla, the logistics center has now been commissioned and is fully operational.

More broadly, Kumla marks the completion of a significant investment cycle over our logistics network in the core business. That has taken some years and we have heavily invested and expanded and modernized our automation of our warehouses facilities across our Nordic markets.

With these projects now largely completed, we have established a modern and scalable logistic platform that supports both future growth and hopefully also improved customer service. As we move forward, the focus shifts from construction and implementation to capturing the benefits through higher productivity, greater efficiency, and stronger return on the huge investments we have made.

On the digital side, we have initiated the rollout of a new customer-facing platform. The platform has successfully been launched in our smallest entity, and that is on the Faroe Islands, just to experience all things equal.

We have so far seen a valuable experience, and the feedback we got from the customers has been very promising. We are also progressing the next phase of integration, including the implementation of a new search engine on the existing platform.

These initiatives are aimed at improving the customer experience, increase our digital engagement, which is already high, and making it easier for customers to do business with Solar. Finally, a few comments on what we see in the market at the moment.

We are seeing early signs of improvement in installation activities, which is encouraging. However, market conditions remain soft across much of the industry, and visibility on timing of a broader recovery remains a little bit unclear and limited.

The main exception continues to be MAG45, where activity levels remain relatively robust. At the same time, trade continues to show positive momentum, supported by several large-scale projects opportunities across the region.

Overall, while we remain cautious about the near-term market outlook, we continue to execute on strategic initiatives within our control. Last but not least, I will tell we have now strengthened our operational platform, advanced our digital capabilities, and completed several important investments that position us very well in the market and the coming years.

I will now give the word to Michael for some financial highlights and our guidance. Please, Michael.

Thank you, Jens. Please turn to page number 5.

If we take one step back and look at the period we've been through, in 2024, we were on an upward trend that gradually moved us into positive territory, and this continued into Q1 2025, which you can see in the figure, where we hit +6.5% in organic growth. The remaining part of 2025 was headwind with -6.1% in Q4.

This gradually turned in Q1 with -4.2%, partly due to the harsh winter conditions, which mainly was an issue in Norway and Denmark. The turning point was the start of March, and this has continued throughout Q2 as expected, which now delivered strong organic growth of 6.1% when adjusted for number of working days.

This resulted in a revenue of 3.4 billion versus 3 billion the previous year. Now please notice that the acquisition of Sonepar in Norway added almost 200 million in revenue in the quarter.

If you look at the growth, we saw positive growth in all main segments and in all main markets. Installation, particularly Sweden and Poland, delivered strong growth, with the latter delivering strong double-digit growth.

Within Industry, Denmark was the only one who was below last year. If you take a closer look at this, Infrastructure remains challenged, whereas as expected, MRO OEM were more stagnant.

We still believe that over time, Infrastructure will improve, but currently the main part of the investments are within high voltage, which to a very large extent is direct business between the grid owner and the manufacturer of cables. As we gradually move on, we will also benefit from the huge investments that are coming through.

In Norway, we also saw a stagnant development with Infrastructure and Marine & Offshore. MAG45, as Jens hinted, returned to growth actually slightly earlier than we initially expected, and we can see that the order pipeline continues to increase, which gives us confidence that the growth will continue throughout H2.

Now please turn to page number 6. Now the EBITDA of 85 million, 84, Q2 was in line with our expectation.

Integration and restructuring costs amounted to 38 million, which was also as expected. If we compare the underlying EBITDA, it's 122 million, which is slightly above what we saw last year.

If you look at the figure, you can see that COGS had a decrease of 1.2% on the margin compared to last year, and this is despite these cyclic inventory gains of approximately 20 million. Of the 1.2%, approximately 25% can be explained by increasing costs to freight due to the increasing fuel costs, and we have not been able as expected to pass this fully on to the market.

The drop we see is spread across market segments and sub-segments. It is our assessment therefore that there is a fierce competition in the market, but we also see a minor negative effect from the mix with more low-margin customers, particularly also within projects coming through.

Cost initiatives the last couple of years, of course combined with the growth, has ensured that staff costs actually had a positive impact on the margin. As in previous quarters, we can see that loss on trade receivables remains well under control.

Now please turn to page 7. If we take a short look at H1, then underlying EBITDA of 212 came out slightly below last year at 243.

A substantial part of this can be explained by the harsh winter conditions we saw in Q1, where particularly Norway and Denmark were very hard hit. The loss of gross margin was also on the half-year substantial as we announced when we gave our guidance despite these additional cyclic inventory gains that we've seen here in Q2.

Now despite the headwind we saw in Q1, we managed to catch up in Q2, enabled us to deliver a total organic growth of 0.8%. However, we've not been able quite to catch up with the earnings that were lost in Q1, meaning that if you look at H2, we remain slightly below the mid-range of our guidance as regards earnings.

Now please turn to page number 8. Now operating activities came out with -267 million.

If we take a closer look at it, can see that there is an increase in inventory, meaning that we're not normalized the inventory. Now this is as announced due to the fact that we did additional purchases in Q2 in order to counter the price increases that we saw.

We decided to accelerate this further compared to our initial expectations. We see the benefit from this that we've been able to raise our expectations from 20 to 40 million in cyclic inventory gains.

We of course expect inventory to normalize during H2. If we look at the receivables, we also see an increase, and it seemed to do to that we had a very strong June compared to March.

Short on the investing activities, we spent 79 million of which the 39 million is PPE. Of this, the main part, 26 million, relates to Kumla, meaning that there remains between 20 to 25 million and then we're done with the investments in Kumla.

Now please turn to page number 9. If you look at the net working capital, we also see a trend shift and it started to increase here in Q4.

We think this is temporary. We ended on 17.7 versus 15.1 last year, the inventory being a main part of the explanation, which is approximately 250 million higher.

Again, bear in mind, this is not a coincidence, it is based on a decision that we have made in order to counter the price increases. If you look at the gearing consequence of this combined with the investment is that we now see an increase to 5.1.

This is still within our covenants, but of course it's outside our range. This was expected, and the drivers being net working capital, which will normalize over the year, that would be H2, and similar with investments.

We expect investments to come down substantially here in H2 now to a normal level, and thereby the gearing will start to reduce from now on. Please turn to page number 10.

Now normally we deal with macroeconomic uncertainty, but the environment we're operating in now also contains geopolitical uncertainty, and we have not really seen any relief of this during 2026. In our most likely scenario, meaning the mid-range, we still expect all our markets to post stagnant growth, with Installation being slightly more positive and Industry slightly more negative, MAG being excluded from this.

Our outlook reflects a continue declining gross margin, mainly driven by the pressure of sales prices. Despite the cyclic inventory gains, which we have increased now to 40 million, we do not expect this to wear off.

We expect the development we saw in Q2 to continue, meaning that the gains are offset by the competition within the market. We reconfirm our revenue guidance between 12.9 and 13.4, which is equal to an organic growth in the range of roughly -1.5 to +3.5%, and also our EBITDA we reconfirm to the range of 400 to 480 and still with approximately 75 million in restructuring and integration costs.

As said before, this is a transition year mainly in Norway, and since we now in all material aspects are done with the integration, we'll gradually here during H2 start to see the benefits of the acquisition that we did in Norway, where we expect that it will strengthen the margin on a for the group going forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. Now it's time for questions, please if you have any.

Yes, thank you. A couple of questions from me.

It seems that your key headache here is the gross margin and this price pressure you refer to. However, I cannot help thinking that now that you are showing decent growth and continued gross margin pressure that you might contribute to this price pressure yourself.

Is there an element of that that you are accepting lower prices to gain volumes?

I think it's a fair point that we are part of the problem, but hopefully also a part of the solution. In all aspects, we also have a lot of projects going on at the moment and that of course also put a pressure on the margin, but meanwhile also that the freight costs are really a heavy burden.

I think that goes for all in our industry at the moment. It's a fair point that we are part of the problem, at least for a moment.

You said you're also part of the solution, how will you get the gross margin up? Maybe firstly, am I correct in interpreting your guidance that you don't expect the gross margin to improve in the second half of the year?

Then longer term, how should we expect that you can boost...

We don't short-term, Kristian, we don't expect any substantial improvements on the margin. What we can see is also that the price increases that we see from the suppliers, it takes sometimes to put them into the market.

I think if we compare to the situation in 2022 where we also had substantial gains on our inventory, the situation were different. There was simply a shortage then and a high demand that drove up the price increases.

What we see that drive of the price increases here is cost, it's energy basically, and at the same time the demand is much softer. There seems to be, and at least that's what we have seen so far is, that people, and including us, tend to sell out what we have on the shelves at the old prices that we bought to basically, and first when you kind of run out of it, then you start to increase prices.

This is also why the these gains kind of end up in the market to a large extent. I would say I would still expect a gradually improvement of the margin, but don't expect any miracles here, not short-term at least.

All right. Fair enough.

Then just some clarifications. The 38 million in nonrecurring items in the quarter, they all sit in the non-allocated segment, is that correct?

Yes, fully correctly on the spot. If you look at the segment note, yeah.

If I take 38 million out of that segment, you're at 215. Is that the real underlying number?

Is that how what should then work with going forward?

To some extent, it's a bit more tricky than that because you'll have all the costs from Sonepar coming in and the integration didn't happen overnight, it's a gradual process where we are reducing the number of people in total, not just Sonepar, also Solar people, it goes without saying. Here we're talking about people who are in other lines in the segment reporting.

People at the central warehouse, for instance, we closed down the central warehouse in Drammen, but these people were reported as handling costs, but they are out now, and they've been that since, yeah, I think the cleanup was finalized in June. It's not completely through as such.

You'll have to wait until you get to H2 actually, especially

when... You have the full-year effect.

Yeah. Then you start to see a more correct picture of the ongoing run rate.

Just to clarify, what you're alluding to, that's the synergies essentially, the savings. Will they also impact the non-allocated segment or will they be...

Exactly. No, to some extent because you also have overhead that has been reduced that were in Sonepar.

That's clear when you add two companies together, merge them, you don't need two of everything, which also goes for the overhead costs, they are also impacted by it.

Fair enough. Then just the initiative on this customer-facing platform.

You've launched it in the Faroe Islands, which is obviously a fairly small market. When you sort of go to the next phase and roll this out in larger markets, should we expect that to sort of drive elevated costs again, or can you maybe just help me, put perspective on the cost of that initiative?

I think it's more a question of bringing us on par or above where our competitors are. It holds some clear advantages as compared to where we are today, but I think it's difficult to put an exact figure on it, what we benefit from it.

It gives us some opportunities, but it will be early days, and regardless, you will not see any impact this year, that's for certain.

No, not at all. No.

We might have some more data we can disclose when we come up next year, but right now it's simply too early days. We cannot use the Faroe Islands, as you clearly pointed out, it's a relatively small area.

There are some good impacts from it, but the figures are simply too small for that we dare use them as a basis. We need more transparency before we can share anything with you.

Fair enough. I was equally thinking sort of implementation costs, should you roll this out in say the Danish market, should we expect a quarter or two with elevated costs as a consequence?

No.

No. No.

No.

No. We already have taken a part of it, don't expect that.

Okay. Fair enough.

Obviously what I'm with further questions trying to get at is that Q3 should be a fairly clean sheet and going forward as well.

Close to. Q4 should be.

Q4 should be. In Q3 we still have minor cleanup activities in Norway and also we need to cleanup the old Örebro central warehouse, so that's gonna...

but it's... Within a few months, it's done.

Yeah.

Agree.

All right. Sounds good.

Then just my last question here goes to your net working capital and financial gearing. Where do you expect that to go at the end of the year?

If we do a 10,000-foot If we take a 10,000-foot look at this, Christian, we have like I think it's 2.3 billion in debt right now. We expect inventory to normalize that should bring in at least 250 million.

You will have a seasonal effect between 300 to 400 million, say for the sake of the rational 350. The P&L will bring in, well there's some money as well, but there's also going to be some investments still, it's not like it's going to be zero.

That's going to bring in I don't know, 100, yeah, 100-150 I would say-ish. That will bring the debt down to around 1.6, which equals like I think 3.5, something like that.

We are still a little bit above our target.

Still slightly above, but I think this is a very high-level gestimate based on what we have disclosed and what you know if you've been looking at Solar for some time. You'll end up around 3.5, I think.

That's a fair guess.

Yeah. That makes sense.

I guess that also means that in terms of you to start sort of increasing the payout to shareholders, we probably need to wait another year.

I think that's will be is a board decision, and this will be based of course not only on the historical development, but also on the expectations for 2027. It's way too early...

That's way too early. ...to make any clear assessments.

Of course you will not see payout ratios in what you saw in 2022, 2023, and then 2024, but let's see.

Excellent. That was all for me.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. We have received two written questions so far.

The first one goes: You are maintaining the EBITDA guidance of DKK 400 to 480 million despite EBITDA of only DKK 143 million in H1. What specifically gives you confidence that the underlying business can deliver the significant step-up in EBITDA in H2?

How much of that improvement is volume-driven versus margin-driven?

Again, if you do a 10,000-foot calculation, as from 10,000-foot distance, you can see, yes, it's true we ended on 143, but first half were affected by one-off of 69 million. We had very harsh winter condition that cost us between 20 to 30 million, meaning that the underlying performance was 240-ish, not taking into consideration the ramp-down in costs of Sonepar, leave that out.

Now if you take the 143 and you add 240 million to that, that brings you in the 380-ish. Right, that's still a way to go.

Then there is seasonality in the costs. Staff costs, mainly the main driver being holiday provision for holiday, basically maybe a bit too simple, but when people take leave in H2, we release the money from the provision for holiday, whereas when they are on leave in H1, it's a lot to a large extent it's holidays, which means it's paid by Solar.

Traditional, this brings in 40 to 50 million. That's the delta.

If you add these figures together, you actually end up around 425 to 440-ish million. It is, all other things equal, I know the world never is that, but that gives you an idea about why we feel fairly comfortable that this is within reach, I would say.

Second question.

Yep.

Q2 showed a 6.1% adjusted organic growth, which is a significant improvement from Q1. How much of this reflects a genuine improvement in underlying demand and how much is simply a recovery from the weak winter conditions?

I would say the weak winter conditions hit us very hard in the first half year and I don't believe that we will catch that up. We have to understand that then people at least should do overtime and they don't, at least not in the Nordics.

I think it's postponed more or less forever, or it's in front of us. We need to catch up in other ways.

What we see as Michael also stated that we saw a pretty okay catch-up from or pick-up in March, and so far we have seen the same pattern. Don't expect that what we left in first Q that we will get that for free because I think simply we are pushing that in front of us, to say, if you understand what I mean.

No further written questions. Okay.

Then I think we will say have a nice day to you all and thanks for listening in. If there's any other questions, you are always free to call one of us, bye-bye.