Welcome, everyone. Christopher and Joel here on a beautiful summer day, looking forward to present the result.

Then, as usual, we'll finish off with some Q&A at the end of that presentation. Starting a little bit of summary of the quarter.

Of course, we like the heading of another record quarter. As when we put all of our business together, Q2 driven by EMEA is the strongest quarter of the year.

We had a 6% growth of sales, about 1% organic of that 6%, the rest acquisitions. Also, as we stated a little bit before, we're now coming to the end of very strong comps from Eastern Europe driven by some inventory issues in Eastern Europe last year.

As we move forward now to Q3 and Q4, that'll be fading off. That's also why we state if we adjust for Eastern Europe, the underlying organic growth was around 5%.

We see some good trends in especially in EMEA. APAC continues to be positive, and there's no major changes in the US market.

We also notified, of course, this quarter, no FX, it's nice to be more of a clean result in the business. Solid margin again, I would say in all regions across the board.

We're happy and continue and work with our margins and develop value in the different regions despite reporting just 1% organic growth. Cash flow continues to be positive.

Joel will speak more of that, but now we move into a very strong cash flow generation in the next couple of quarters as we flush out our accounts receivable for the year. We also closed AM Distributors in Q2, a very nice asset in Florida, a new state for us, focused on parts and supply with good margins and extremely good growth profile.

We do see quite some opportunities to grow organically in Florida as we expand their business. All in all, I would say another solid quarter, but with picking up underlying trends, especially in EMEA, and we'll come back to that in the next slides.

Looking at the group, as I noted, we'll continue and accelerate growth in our OEM business driven by EMEA, but also very good activities around in APAC, in Southeast Asia. We see more and more trends moving over to natural refrigerants, and a lot of activities there.

EMEA, we've seen accelerated transition into the natural refrigerants, and part of that is that January 1st quota levels in the EU is going to be cut by another 50%. Also you see a lot of trends on natural refrigerants on the heating side through our Fenagy platform.

Record backlogs, good growth in the OEM side, and we see that continue as we move through the rest of the year. HVAC negative affected by Eastern Europe, otherwise positive, and we also see trends now in Europe of picking up demand in countries like France, Netherlands, UK, and other markets.

Pretty positive on the HVAC development as we move through the year. The refrigeration stable, 3%, solid quarter on the industrial and commercial refrigeration side.

Moving over a little bit to EMEA, as we talked about, we would say good underlying organic growth in the platform. We see good activities across the board.

As I said, Nordics positive, Central Europe positive, Southern Europe positive. We see that trend moving in with good backlogs on the HVAC side as we move into the second half of the year.

Positive on EMEA as Eastern Europe is fading away here in Q3. We'll all have a good development as we move through the year, both driven by HVAC side, but also on the OEM side, as we mentioned before.

Also, I would say good backlog, and as we state here on this slide, both are two key platforms in OEM, Fenagy and SCM Frigo, having record order intake and record backlogs to move through the year. We see a lot of activities on the OEM segment, and also, of course, a very strong quarter for them on the sales side.

Margins, at good levels. We're still, are producing at record levels for Beijer Ref here in Q2, we continue to be happy with the margin side in EMEA.

All in all, very solid quarter in EMEA, and as I stated before, it looks positive as we move into the rest of the year in the EMEA division for us. Very happy about that.

You move into APAC. APAC continues to deliver a solid development, continue to be driven by Australia and rest of Asia.

Also active in the OEM segment, that is very happy. A lot of these regions don't have regulation, but still looking at transition into natural refrigerants.

They continue do a very good job in those areas, and we'll continue to invest quite a lot of building up sales training centers around Southeast Asia where have more activities in a lot of countries. South Korea is mentioned here, China, Thailand, India.

Quite a lot of activities here that we believe long term will also start driving more growth in this region as step by step, they start moving into more of OEM-type solution for us. Margin, solid.

All in all, Q2 is a smaller quarter. It's more of a winter quarter out in Australia, New Zealand, so, of course, their season starts ramping up at the end of Q3 moving into Q4.

Another good, solid development in our APAC region for the quarter. Moving into the US, -3% organic.

It was kind of a messy quarter in the US, to be very frank. It started off with, some bad weather and rain in April, the season got started late.

Then we also had some announcement on in May on pricing and different type of customs from Mexico where a lot of equipment is manufactured for OEM. We first had sharp price increases, then the announcement were pulled back, and then price decreases and, etc.

For us as a distributor, it was a very messy May to align with these, and our exclusive OEM went first with price increases, then realigned it. Looking at more clean June and July was pretty good and a nice growth in there.

We're keeping track of that. We believe the pricing issues are behind us, but a little bit of a messy quarter to start off, April, May, but strong June and a good development in July.

Margin, solid if you adjust for dilution, continue to develop good margins. Nice acquisition in AM Distributors, and we do have continue to have a nice pipeline, expecting to close a nice deal here in the next couple of weeks as well.

That's very strategic for the US. All in all, quite positive.

As I mentioned before, we don't see any big trends in the market shifting. We're still waiting for higher activity in the housing market, but in the meantime, we continue to develop well and stable in the US in the aftermarket replacement and repair.

I think worth mentioning what's going extremely well in the US is our private label expansion. Now moved in to almost 90 of our 130 branches.

We're going to continue to expand that portfolio, and we continue to grow at, double high double-digit levels in this, and we expect this to continue. It's a very nice added part of our portfolio in the US, and also as we move into this acquisition, a big driver to expand their sales and margin through this platform.

We continue to expand in the US, and we expect this to continue. If you summarize the quarter, sales growth of 6%, organic 1%, EBITDA 5%, EPS change 5%.

An okay quarter, but a little bit more positive as we move into the rest of the year, especially in our EMEA platform that we expect to see pretty good growth, and that should also accelerate our numbers in this type of slide as we move into the rest of the year and next year. With that, I'll hand over to Joel.

All right. Thank you, Christopher.

Good morning, everyone. As always, straight into our EBIT, which is up 5% compared to last year.

As mentioned, the FX translation effect that has been substantial now for a number of quarters have now almost finally faded fully. On a currency-neutral basis, our Q2 EBIT is up 6%.

Financial net continues to develop well. On the back of our new financing structure, we report a financial net here in the quarter of 122 million, which is 5 million below last year despite the higher net debt position.

We did have some favorable FX effects in the financial net compared to last year, but adjusted for that, we are on basically par with last year. Tax line, 285 million, effective tax rate of 25% in line with last year.

All in all, net profit of 834 million, 5% higher than last year. Moving over to EPS, 1.63 in the quarter, increase of 5%.

Year to date, we are at 3%, but as you remember from Q1, we had some relatively tough FX headwind. On a currency-neutral basis, our EPS is up 5%.

Cash flow, as Q2 is also a quarter where we continue to build working capital. We did, however, deliver an operational cash flow in Q2 of almost 300 million.

Yes, cash flow in Q2 was lower compared to last year, but it was driven almost exclusively by a more back-ended buildup of accounts receivable this year compared to in Q2 last year, where trading faded a little bit differently in individual months in the quarter. Next slide here, as you see, continue to deliver positive cash flow in our seasonally weaker first half of the year.

Now we are entering the more cash-generating quarters, where we have a rolling 12 months operating cash flow of 4 billion here so far. Leverage, net debt increased by approximately a billion here in the quarter on the back of M&A activity and distribution to shareholders.

Our leverage ratio here sits at 2.16, which is 0.3 turns above Q1 and also above Q2 last year. As said, we are now entering the seasonally much stronger cash flow-generating quarters, and we are in a very good position to continue to execute on our M&A pipeline.

With that, I'll hand back over to Christopher. [silence] Chris, can't hear you.

Summarizing Q2, another record quarter. As I said before, Q2 is our strongest quarter driven by the EMEA summer season.

Good underlying organic growth if we adjust or look at EMEA, and a lot of regions, especially in Europe, looks good. OEM, strong development.

solid EBITDA in that, only the second time over 12%. Of course, it was Q2 last year, but then there were some currency effects, underlying margin and what we see looks good.

Cash flow, as Joel said, will accelerate quite a lot here in Q3 and Q4, also that, it looks positive as we move into the rest of the year. Then you have the acquisition that we really like down in Florida, and we have more of those hopefully coming in here in actually in the next couple of weeks, looks good.

Then if you look at the long term, I think just updated here is, of course, the backlogs in the OEM and the development there. See a lot of activities in there and looks positive here, I see not only for the rest of this year, but also for 2027 and moving forward.

Hopefully, we start seeing the this acceleration transition as by 2030 in the EU, you cannot use synthetic refrigerants and moving over to this type of equipment that we focus on. Also, in general, in EMEA, backlogs on HVAC looks good.

you follow the news, been quite hot all over the place, and a lot of requirements on moving into HVAC. As you're probably aware, today in Europe, I think penetration is less than 17, 18%.

Just as a reference point, in the US, penetration is 80%, it's two different market also, and this is, of course, not going to change in the short term. Looks good.

The US platform, I think a little bit of a messy quarter running through April and May on especially on the pricing side, as we talked about. Looks to be in control now and find the right alignment with our OEMs.

Private label continue to grow at a high pace and will continue to expand in our portfolio. Then if you look at the rest of the position, balance sheet, cash flow, and pipeline looks good.

A little bit more positive this quarter as we move in to the rest of the year and '27, as we finally and at least in EMEA see some good traction and improvement of the business. With that, our presentation is concluded, and then we open up for any questions on the call out there.

Good morning, gentlemen. A couple from me.

Firstly, you mentioned here that you started to see accelerating momentum towards the end of the quarter and into July. You did, Christopher, mention heat waves just now in your ending commentary.

Can we dive a little bit deeper into that? Are you actually seeing that the heat waves across Europe are impacting your demand positively?

If that's the case, I guess what sort of trends should we expect for Q3 because you are meeting tougher comps on reported numbers in Q3 than you did in Q2?

Thanks for that. As and talking about weather always makes you a little bit uncomfortable because it's probably one of the hardest thing to predict and understand and see.

Sitting here in EMEA, in countries like France, if you try and get HVAC now, installers would probably telling you have to wait quite some time. What we see in key markets, Central Europe, UK, and France, where it's been extremely hot for a long time, and penetration in those countries are not at the levels.

If you have heat waves in Spain or Greece and other countries, it's less, it's more replacement market, but in these markets, you also get penetration in that sense. In these segments, it's, we're realigning inventory setups and moving inventory in here and supporting because there is a lot of demand out there.

I think we're moving towards higher comps, you're absolutely right, but if you look at EMEA with this trend and also on the OEM side, we still feel pretty positive around a good EMEA expansion here over the future. With those two points, it looks promising.

Also, remembering we're sitting in July, it's a one month moving into that, but June was pretty solid, July started, Eastern Europe is fading away during the quarter, all in all, what we look seeing at right now looks good in that part of the world.

Thank you for that. On Cool4U, can you remind us if the contribution was as significant in Q3 last year as it was in Q2?

It was massive, and that is, one of the main components. If you look at Cool4U last year, we reported that sales growth in M&A as it wasn't organic, it has a major impact on organic growth in EMEA in Q2, and then it faded off.

For details, the reason why Cool4U was up so much last year because it was a inventory issue in their key market, Hungary, where they have a huge market share, they had to replenish all the inventory, and that drove up their sales. It wasn't sales out, it was more sales in to their distributors.

It was a little bit of a special situation there. When we look at these things, the underlying development in most of our regions is really good.

As you see on EMEA, it was solid in Q2 if you exclude this. Cool4U is one of the main reasons for it, more a one-off situation last year, and that's normalizing now as we move into Q3 and Q4.

Great. Then you were talking about the refrigerant upgrades in Europe as well.

Should this result in any sort of price tailwinds as you enter H2?

No, I think on what we're seeing in that is, of course, the acceleration on the OEM side driving that you need to replace your equipment. On the refrigerants per se, we had seen one, and I think some of the analysts picked that up, UK has made a significant price increase on refrigerant because they're starting to follow more the EU phaseout, and they haven't been doing that for many years.

That's positive for us, but it's not big enough for Beijer Ref to be make any significant difference. In the rest of Europe, right now refrigerants are stable, there's no significant price changes.

We are curious how the market will start moving at the second half of the year as January 1st, the quota levels for refrigerants in EU will be cut by another 50%. Right now, we're seeing more stable prices on the refrigerants, no major impact on our margins.

Okay. Then lastly, if I may, on North America, it has been somewhat of a disappointment over the past three quarters, granted that it's been moving factors impacting the organic growth development, but how confident are you in a recovery now already by the third quarter?

No, I think it depends on your expectations, and we would challenge the word disappointed. I think right now as we see the US market, it for that to start on the distribution side, you had some alignment on product changes on, 410A being phased out in your Sears, OEM and distribution wasn't in line for the last, 18 months.

I think it's in line now. On the market that we see and active on the aftermarket replacement and repair, we see the market as pretty stable, and we haven't seen any, change really in the market from Q1 and Q2, and we don't expect to see it really in Q3 or Q4.

In the meantime, we don't see any deterioration, but I don't see any major improvements. I think we need to start looking at, housing sales and other triggers to start picking up in the US to start seeing that tailwind.

Of course, what we've seen in the market is that you start building up a pretty nice pent-up demand on the housing side, but also as you're repairing equipment, you need to replacement. You have in the case in that, you start getting to an age of equipment that a replacement cycle mathematical should start picking up here in the second half in 2027.

I think to balance that, you need also the consumer to get some more investment into it with interest rates, the housing sales, how it's connected until you start seeing a nice tailwind in the US. I don't have any signals today where we looked that that's shifting or changing, but in the meantime, I don't see I have no signals either that the market is going backwards either.

Great. Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Adela.

Super. Hi, Christopher, Joel.

Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Perhaps firstly, if I could push you a little bit on, there's a bit of moving parts here in Q2, and if you could just elaborate a bit more on the phasing of comps in EMEA.

You obviously sound quite optimistic for growth in the coming quarters, but, I guess in Q4 this year, comps in Cool4U will be completely gone if I don't read this commentary wrong. How will it look now in Q3 more specifically?

You had a 7% headwind now in Q2. Is it half?

Is it And perhaps just to another perspective on that, you mentioned 8%, underlying organic growth in EMEA. how does that help us for Q3 given how comps develop?

would that does that entail, 5% organic growth or whatever in Q3 if you could just help us a little bit with the quantification?

Do you want an exact number?

Do you have the decimals also, please?

Yeah. Now, let me open my AI tool, and I'll get it to you.

No, but I understand what you're asking for, and, of course, there's mathematical ways to calculate on our side depending on comps and, etc. Then you have the market and trends and everything else.

I'll leave the details to Joel on as how it fades out. I think if you try and just be short term, Viktor, Q4, just to take that, was kind of a weak comps quarter, I'm not too worried about or that.

While Q3 was still okay in most regions. I think we had a 5% organic growth, it's more of, overcoming that as Q2 last year was +2%, Q3 was a good quarter for us.

I think, you can look at the Eastern Europe fading away at least 50% as we move into Q3 and completely gone in Q4. Based on that, underlying looks good.

You have the OEM sales. Now we had a really strong OEM in Q2, right, +25%.

You look at those components, it just will move more from, the Beijer Ref the underlying or the adjusted for Eastern Europe. We think these are the activity levels we see right now.

By the same token, let's not get carried away and start, pushing out very high numbers. Let's see.

We do believe based on those adjustments and the OEM side and the activities in EMEA that they will, accelerate as we move into the rest of the year and into next year based on what we see right now.

That's brilliant. Very helpful.

Perhaps just a follow-up on that because from my perspective, 8% underlying organic growth in Europe in Q2 very solid. We discussed a bit, heat waves and weather difficult to forecast also.

The question being, do you feel, that 8% includes a lot of heat waves in Europe, or is that more of a Q3 topic, I don't know, end June, July thing? Just to understand if that 8% is, boosted a lot from that.

Of course, it is, because if you look at our Q3, and as we speak about EMEA, the two big months are June and July, right? As you move into August, you pretty much have two weeks of business, then all of Southern Europe shuts down for two, three weeks and, etc.

You have parts of the heat wave in June, and then it triggers off in July. Of course, part of that 8% is the very high growth in OEM, right, if it's 25% growth, and then you had June strong and July at a good level.

Then the numbers for us as a seasonality fades off in August, September. I think you can look at it, half in Q2 and half in Q3 type of thing.

Then, of course, the OEM will continue and grow, double digit and balance that. I think with those points, that's how we're looking at the market right now.

Fair enough. Then if I may, just a final on North America, just to understand a little bit, because a lot of moving parts there also, that sounds like messy April, May, a bit better in June, July.

Could you just help us, what is okay June and July? We're talking you discussed flat market.

Is that volumes? If you could just help us with, what is the cadence on volumes and on top of that, price, of course, because you discussed price quite a lot in North America.

Is that the positive factor now into Q3? Yes, if you could help us with some sort of cadence for North America.

I think it's looking a little bit on if you try and not help you with exact numbers, you look at 2025 and 2026, and we don't see the markets have changed a lot on the sentiment, right? It's still repair, it's replacement, housing sales continues to be weak, new construction is weak.

Of course, if you live in the southern parts of the US, you have to repair or replace your HVAC equipment. It continues to be, I would say, on a sales level, a flattish level.

Then if you take volume, you probably have 3, 4% price mixed into that, I would have seen volume being down, 5% or a little bit more, and depending on that. I do, of course, sometime this will catch up, but I think to catch it up, you need some trigger points where this volume is going to start picking up organically on volume.

I don't see that trend changing right now. I think you need some changes in the housing and, etc., to move.

Of course, in the meantime, you can only repair this equipment so many times. They are aging and replacement cycle coming in, I'm more looking at more of the same in 2026 as 2025.

Then you might have a quarter that's up or a little bit down depending on some project or some weather patterns or anything else that affects the business short term. I'm expecting that, presuming in Q3, and then in Q4, you move a little bit more into heating.

Then let's see how 2027 plays out. Of course, for every quarter in the US with this type of development, you continue and build out a pent-up demand because the difference here is, of course, you have 80% is installed HVAC in the US, and the equipment is aging and it's getting hotter, you're wearing it down.

I think long term, we feel extremely good about the US. Then short term, we continue to invest in branches, in private label, acquisitions.

It's a very good time to buy companies, we believe. We're active in those that.

Our sentiment, I usually say every quarter is a quarter closer to, the market improving, but right now I'm more used the word stable.

Noted. Many thanks.

Many thanks, guys.

Thanks, Viktor.

Hi, gents. Just a few questions from my end.

Firstly, I wanted to ask a bit about OEM, obviously, very strong sort of numbers here on organic growth. You say that both SCM Frigo and Fenagy enter Q3 with record order books.

Could you give a bit more color on sort of the I guess the backlog duration and if you see any production capacity constraints going forward?

It's two different colors, right? If you look at a company like Fenagy, their backlog is built on longer lead times and projects.

There's no standard products in their portfolio, a Fenagy backlog will be somewhere between 6, 12, and 18 months, and then you deliver accordingly. The fantastic part of Fenagy, they have a backlog now well into 2027 with nice growth and a lot of activities out there.

While SCM Frigo should have a lead time of 10 to 12 weeks. What happens when the ordering take of activities is higher than we expected, lead times gets pushed out, and you shouldn't have more than 10 or 12 weeks in this industry to be competitive because our customers doesn't have the same view as if you do project with Fenagy, might be planned to be executed 6 to 12 months later.

It's two different stories. Capacity, yes, we are ramping up in SMC.

It's more putting on a second shift and these type of things, but we've been working on that for the last six months as we've seen the order book accelerating. I think that the question, should I assume 25% growth every quarter going forward?

No. Should I assume double digit?

That's what I was getting at.

No, and I think this was, a lot of finishing projects on Fenagy, but double digit, I feel pretty comfortable to say, yeah, it'll be double digit as we see for quite some time now in the backlog we have in the OEM side.

Makes a lot of sense. Thanks for that.

I also wanted to ask a bit about the US, not maybe talking so much about the sort of organic prospects, as that's been covered quite well, it sounds like. You mentioned, expecting a strategic deal in the next coming weeks, if I didn't sort of hear you wrong there.

Without disclosing specifics, could you characterize anything about sort of the size or geography or product segment of this?

I can give you one, it's HVAC.

That's not what I was looking for. All right.

I can give you some, the reason I'm being specific is that we're just about to wrap it up, but we will in the next couple of weeks. I can give you, it's bigger than AM, it's in HVAC, it's a strategic area for us, and we've been working quite some time together with this target, we really look forward to get it over the fence.

Of course, in the US, when we do signing, it's signing and closing at the same time because you don't have any competition authorities. We also have a fantastic opportunity in Europe where we're looking at expanding the OEM side with new capabilities.

That's also on the way in. We're, yeah, we're positive on that side as well, and we don't we are lumpy when we do acquisition, right?

It doesn't come five a quarter. We've been working on these for quite some time, they're fairly strategic for us, and we look forward to getting them into the platform here by hopefully, in the next couple of weeks, to be honest.

Exciting. Thanks, Christopher.

Finally, I just wanted to ask a high-level question, but elephant in the room, obviously, AMSAB is, set to become the or is the largest shareholder by voting rights. Does this change in any way the strategic direction of you guys, or alter the pace or nature of capital allocation decisions going forward?

Anything there that you want to share?

I guess it's the good elephant in the room. Usually when you hear an elephant, it's a bad thing.

No, I think

I didn't mean it as a bad thing.

I know. No, it's very good for us, and I got the question earlier this morning that everybody has been aware over the last, three, six months that EQT was on the way out, which was, you always want to have clarity in these situations.

I usually answer that we had a fantastic journey together with EQT. It was more to transition the last ownership of A-shares that was important, I think, for Beijer Ref, for management, for our shareholders and investors out there.

I think we got a fantastic solution with one of the best owners we could ever wish for: long-term, strategic, involved owner with good capabilities. Short term and long term, I think a little bit as the press release, they support the strategy, they like the M&A, they like the consolidation, they like the industry.

I think we're fairly aligned on the plan going forward as well. I don't expect any major changes than what we continue to do and continue to grow the business.

Very very good. Thanks.

Thanks a lot, guys. Have a good day.

You, too. Thank you.

Morning, team. I just had one more topic that I wanted to follow up on, which we are obviously following very closely: the private label expansion in the US.

You talked about it in the beginning, it seems to be progressing really well here. I just wanted to hear, could you talk a little bit more, broadly when you expect this to be wide in most of your branches?

Maybe also, secondly, given that you have a a different main distribution partner externally in the US relative to your European operations, do they have any views on this, the expansion you're doing on the private label side, or is that fine?

I'll combine or start with your end. When we talk private label in the US under our brand, Sinclair, it's under what we call the transactional part of the business, which in the US, it changes per territory and branches or in most, but transactional, we would call about 30% of your HVAC portfolio.

That's a second tier for the OEM, if we are exclusive, say, with Rheem, that would be related to our premium brand and dealers and portfolio work together to expand. On the transactional part, always historically, you can buy anything you want.

You could be, Rheem has five second-tier brand, Carrier has 10, you have Allied, you have a plethora of things, and there's no exclusivity. We were never been loyal to Rheem on the private label.

We used to buy it from somebody else and, etc. The whole strategy was built to exchange that transactional with a much better product in our view, a stronger brand, and a stronger margin with Sinclair and build up that brand.

Today, we launched it at, I think 80 to 90 branches. By the end of the year, it'd be fully integrated, and next year, we will only do transactional with Sinclair.

We're also expanding that portfolio into ductless and some other areas from ducted. It's nothing it's two different strategies.

We'll continue and expand together with Rheem and that part of business, but now we have a fantastic portfolio. It also opens up, we can go into more project-based, we're going to new construction, we can go into different areas on the commercial side with this portfolio and still make good margins.

We can't do it, too fast because it's also building capabilities, setting up the inventory. When you do private label, you do your own logistics, you set up, it's a lot of steps to build, and that's why not a lot of companies can do this.

Of course, as we do acquisitions, we can integrate this portfolio into it. We are excited.

We're extending, we're building the organization, and it's growing a lot. It because it's also a great product priced at a good place.

For us, it's more within this 30% of business that we think we can transact 100% with our Sinclair product as we go through the next three to five years.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I wanted to ask also, Rheem has obviously been quite active in Europe over the last couple of quarters with the consolidation of Atlantic and so forth. I know we talked about this last quarter as well, but that was quite early days back then.

I just wanted to hear, is that opening up any incremental opportunities for you in Europe? I guess, historically, you haven't had that had done much with Rheem in the European market, right?

No, and it did. Our agreements together with Rheem is global agreements, we always have that part of the business.

As we work with their global management team, that is the US team, both Fujitsu and Atlantic will roll in under that management team. Fujitsu, of course, have good distribution across Europe.

Atlantic, of course, a little bit related to Fujitsu as well, more in the heat pump side. They also have water heaters in Australia, where we have a good platform.

It's part of the strategy, and it's also Fujitsu in the US, that's part of the strategy as well. These are the strategic meetings we do talk and also have incentive to drive because, of course, more we do together with them, the better our overall portfolio becomes, and also on the pricing side.

It is part of it, but it is early still early days, and it's still more plans on how we could help each other in different territories, but no significant impact, at least as of yet. It is a good partner for us, and we are happy when they're expanding because we do have a very strong relationship in the US.

Great. Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning.

My first question is on the measures that you previously announced targeting improved profitability and also on the backend side of things in Europe. How is that program progressing, and has there been any changes to the scope in terms of financial impact?

All right. Morning, Karl.

No, the restructuring program is progressing according to plan. Obviously, as mentioned during the call, very high activities on some of the markets here involved, which is a good problem, but overall everything is no changes to estimates and so on.

In line with plan.

All right. Then on the I know you did talk about it a little bit here earlier, but in North America on the branch initiatives, that kind of dilutive effect on margins, can you kind of say a rough timeline on how you think about this dilutive effects, is it something that as you continuously expand your branches, it will have every branch will have this dilutive impact for 6 to 12 months, or how are you thinking about it compared to the well now announced efficiency measures in North America and the ability to perhaps extract synergies from previous acquisitions and so on?

Obviously, if you look at the quarter here, you have, on the acquisition side, it it's fairly straightforward. I guess on the branches, there is always differences in how quickly you ramp up and so on, but I think the assumption of around 12 months dilution from a branch opening is on average relatively correct.

All right. That's all from my side.

Thank you.

Thanks, Karl.

Yes, good morning. Good morning, all.

I have got four questions, hopefully quick ones. First one is for Joel.

Maybe you could add some color on the build-up of accounts receivable that you reported at the end of second quarter. Was it related to a specific product or region, and do you expect it to normalize during the second half?

It's a bit of a combination, of course. US we talked about.

We had a turbulent start to the quarter in April and May, which obviously tilted more sales to June. Then you have equal, but for different reasons, in Europe, where you have sort of a hotter weather coming in June to a larger extent.

It's just a question of growth profile within the quarter, which pushed accounts receivable higher at the ending balance compared to how it came together last year. Obviously, accounts receivable will be paid back here in the next quarter, nothing to worry about.

Very clear. The second one is around M&A activity.

I see there is a change in wording on the slide from good to very good. Should we read that as indicative of an acceleration in the second half?

I'm glad you picked that up. No, I think it was me who did it last night.

No, it was just relating to that we were actually hoping to have a couple of really nice strategic ones, as I spoke to, signed here before the report, it's more imminent in next couple of weeks. We will have a, I talked about it for quite some time, it's just that some dragged out for different reasons.

Now, we're putting crossing the T's, getting financing ready, and etc. I feel comfortable to use the word very good.

It's more at short term, you'll have some nice acquisitions falling into Beijer Ref, so, yeah.

Great. The third one is on price increases.

Do you see any scope for mid-year increases driven by rising inflation?

I would explain it because we talked about this before, right? You had some of those areas in the US as we said, a messy April, May on price increase and price decrease and, etc.

I don't expect any more price expansion in the US, but you never know, right? Right now, I think that should be settled.

EMEA, of course, when you have high development and expectation here in HVAC, there's also always opportunities for us to work with price, what happens when you have we have countries where we're almost not accepting any new external customers, we're just working with the one that's our strategic customers, and then you could have prices if a new customer comes on board, they will be on a different price level in this area. In general, I think pricing in Europe is more related to anything from 1 to 2 2%.

What we have seen to finish off that is that on the HVAC side in Australia, New Zealand, which is our main markets, we do expect price increases as we roll into end of Q3 of 3 to 4% on HVAC equipment. That's what we're seeing from the OEM.

In general, positive on APAC, hasn't been price increased for a couple of years. US, you probably know the story, and pretty stable in EMEA as per what we see right now.

Got it, very clear. Last one for you, Chris.

We've had some shareholders asking about what EQT's exit means for your individual alignment with Beijer Ref. I hope there is no reason to see any change there.

Sorry, I missed the last part of the question.

Just hope to see there is no change with your individual alignment with Beijer Ref with EQT's exit.

No, I think we have those things part of the journey, and we always had an ambition to keep those things separate for the long-term benefit of Beijer Ref as well.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good morning. Sorry to come back to Viktor's question on the pace there in US for June, July.

I think my line broke up a bit, not sure if I got it correctly. Did you say that sales was flattish in June with it say a 3, 4% price contribution?

Thank you.

No, I'm not that clear on an individual month. What I said nothing around flattish.

I think I addressed the full quarter, and we said that we, finally had a nice trajectory in June, and July was positive from a sales perspective. What I did say when we talked about prices in general and the US market, what we see as a pricing effect on the HVAC side is the 3 to 4% in general, but that's nothing new and it hasn't changed.

The noise we had in May was that there were two announcement on tariffs going up and then tariffs going down from Mexico, which is a big platform of manufacturing for some of the OEMs. Rheem, who is our main partner, has the majority of theirs, they went up with prices.

Some of the other OEMs did not, and then they went down, and it was a messy May for us on the pricing and customer, and I'm sure we lost some sales short term because of pricing issues from our OEM, and that's settled now. We feel like we're in line with the market as we move into June and July, so that's a little bit what I explain the situation in the US.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for all the questions. I was debating with Joel if everybody has gone holiday or would have questions for us, but I appreciate the discussion.

Of course, as always, if there's any specific questions, we're still around, and we wish you a hopefully some summer holiday when it comes, and we, as like that it's hot, and, yeah, that's all for me. Thank you very much, and we'll talk soon.

Thank you very much.