Operator
Welcome to Sdiptech Q2 2026 report presentation. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode.
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 CEO Anders Mattson and CFO Bengt Lejdström.
Please go ahead.
Anders Mattson
Hello, and welcome to our quarterly report, the second quarter. My name is Anders Mattson, CEO of Sdiptech, and I will be presenting here today together with our CFO, Bengt Lejdström.
Before we start with the quarter, just a short intro to Sdiptech for any new listener. We acquire, we develop, and we create a long-term home for niche companies within attractive infrastructure segments.
Today we consist of 33 companies. We added two companies during the quarter.
We operate in a decentralized structure, and each company is responsible for the day-to-day operation. We divide the group into four business areas, and each segment has a clear and structural underlying gross trends for the future.
On a rolling 12, Sdiptech as a group has 4.7 billion SEK in revenues, 988 million SEK in adjusted EBITA, and an adjusted EBITA margin of 21.2%. These are numbers for our core operations, excluding the companies that has been divested over the last 12 months.
For today's presentation, highlights of the quarter. On a strategic level, we are happy that we have completed the divestment program that we initiated last year in August.
11 companies plus our remaining elevator business have been sold. We have achieved a multiple around 6.5 times 2025 EBIT for the entire divestment program.
It's important to mention that the logic will be that the proceeds from the divestments will be allocated towards new acquisitions going forward. That means for us that we are allocating capital where we find it more attractive for the future.
From an M&A side, healthy M&A pace, two acquisitions in the quarter. Our pipeline has improved over the last 12 months, and it's now in a good shape for the future.
We also experience a continued solid demand from our diversified portfolio within our attractive infrastructure segments. From a financial perspective, it's a positive momentum with a total adjusted EBITA growth of 11%, organic adjusted EBITA growth of 5%.
Cash conversion in the quarter, 70%. If we're looking at the last 12 months, it is at 90%.
This, of course, is important because we would like our own cash flow to be the primary funding for our continued M&A activity. It's good to see improved momentum in Supply Chain and Transportation.
Energy & Electrification and Safety & Security is having a continued strong demand. Water & Bioeconomy is improving, but still negative development compared to last year.
Coming into the financial development in the quarter, I should also mention here that the numbers we present here are excluding then the divested companies for comparison reason. Net sales in the quarter came in at 1 billion 269 million SEK, which is plus 14% growth in the quarter.
We had a strong organic sales growth of 11%. In the quarter, we had a negative currency effect of minus 2%, and approximately 4.5% is coming from M&A growth.
In the quarter, all our four business areas showed sales growth, and especially strong development from Supply Chain and Transportation, Energy & Electrification, and Safety & Security. The main reason for the solid sales development is not a specific business area or a specific company.
It's more the continued structural trends that we see from our main segments, like electrification in general in the society and also improved safety elements in many different areas. If you look into the right side on the slide there, no significant change in our geographical distribution of sales, with UK as our largest market.
Proprietary products is increasing to 68% of total sales, compared to 67% from last quarter. Then coming into our adjusted EBITA.
We came in at 258 million SEK, which is plus 11% growth in the quarter. We had a solid organic growth of 5%.
In the quarter, we also had a minus 1% currency effect. Then roughly, approximately, or 6.5% is coming from M&A growth.
In the quarter, three out of the four business areas showed growth in adjusted EBITA. Again, the same business areas had a solid development: Supply Chain and Transportation, Energy & Electrification, and Safety & Security.
We still have negative development in Water & Bioeconomy, but improved performance compared to quarter one, and I will come back to that later in the presentation as well. Looking at the margin, adjusted EBITA margin decreased to 20.3% compared to 20.9% last year, and that is primarily due to a growth in Supply Chain and Transportation, which is our largest business area, but also, in relative terms, the business area with lowest margin.
With that, I would like to hand over to Bengt.
Bengt Lejdström
Thank you, Anders. Let's have a look a little bit more in detail on our cash conversion.
On the top chart there, you see our free cash flow per share compared with our earnings per share. Compared to last quarter, we improved the cash flow, and that's not the least from the business and operational side itself.
However, we have the CapEx spending, which is also included in this KPI, the free cash flow has been a little bit higher during the first half of the year compared to our target. We have an internal ceiling or ambition of 3% of sales.
We're at 4% so far, but some of the investments are done in the beginning of the year. We're still aiming for the 3% on the yearly basis.
Still an improvement from last quarter, which is good. The earnings per share improved compared to last year, but quarter-by-quarter it's still a bit affected by some capital losses from the divestments.
All in all, we had roughly about 20 million in net negative effect from these transactions and including adjustments of the earnouts. Looking then at the lower chart, you see the cash flow generation and the cash conversion.
We want to be in that yellow-marked area between 70% and 90%, and we were exactly at the limits of that. Due to the quarter, we were at 70%, but on the last 12 months, we are at 90%.
As typically it is during the quarter two, it's a little bit weaker than the average. We often see is inventories, even though that this year it was lower than last year, but still the buildup was roughly about 30 million SEK to be prepared for deliveries to customers during the second half of the year.
You also saw increased accounts receivables from the increased sales. All in all, that part of the working capital increased with 80 million roughly, but the sales again were up 150 million compared to last year.
That number is pretty much what you could expect with that increased sales. All in all, good.
We typically see then an improvement on the quarterly cash conversions during the second half. Looking then on balance sheet debt, the leverage ratio was more or less the same as the previous two quarters, still at 2.8.
That's all in, so that's all debts including the provisions for future earnout payments. We have as a ceiling there to be at or below 3, as you can see on the left-hand side of this picture.
Even though we made two acquisitions in the quarter, we're still at the same level as before those acquisitions because of a strong cash flow coming in from operations and the increased profit EBITA all in all. Solid development there.
Looking at the right-hand side, we see some return KPIs, three different ones. If we start at the top, we have the return on the working capital, which, as you see, during a number of years have been very steady around the 80%.
That's measurement of how efficient we manage our working capital, the inventory and accounts receivables, etc. Then the next line is the return on the capital employed in the companies.
That's excluding any goodwills and other intangible assets in connection with acquisitions that we have on the group level. This is from pure operations.
Also there, very stable around a little bit above the 60%, which is, of course, very good. You will see soon how it is split between the different business areas.
Then the third and the lowest in number then is the total return on the capital employed, including all these goodwill and other things on the group level. That's pretty slow-moving object.
We have as a target to come up to 15%. We're still hurt a bit of having the capital losses from write-downs of goodwill and also from the sales that affects this number.
Once that has been rolled out, these numbers will improve. Even though we will not reach the 15% this year, it's clearly our ambition, even though, as I said, it takes some time, but the direction is clear.
All in all, that looks very good as well. Then I hand back to Anders for the business areas.
Anders Mattson
Yes. Thank you, Bengt.
Coming into the business areas, we start with Supply Chain and Transportation. Momentum with plus 16% in sales and plus 14% in adjusted EBITA.
We experience an improvement from Q1, and it's good to see that we continue on this positive development in the business area. We had a strong performance from our companies, JR Industries, GAH, and ELM.
JR Industries, as you might know, they are designing and offering roller shutter door for the commercial vehicle markets primarily in the UK. They have a very good market position, and we've been working with spare part, improving availability, but also with pricing of that.
That's part of the good development for JR Industries. GAH they is still one of the largest companies in the group.
They are producing units for primarily delivery vans in the UK. We had a slower last year for them, but we saw the orders coming in and we were building up a good order backlog, and now we can see that we are delivering on that order backlog.
That's a stable business for us. It's continuously you need to replace, and you need to update your fleets, and you can work with the service element and the spare parts between those replacement cycles as well.
That's good to see for GAH. ELM, just to mention that as well, ELM is our Danish company producing specific attachment to the forklift industries.
They've been having a very good half-year 2026, and they have seen a bigger and larger demand for even more customized attachment. They have been quite bold in pricing those quite large customized solutions.
That's also what we see here. We see good development both in EBIT margin and also in revenue for ELM.
That's positive. On an adjusted EBITA margin for the total business area, we see a slight decrease, and that's primarily as a result of a product mix, GAH having lower margins in the business area and they've been growing in the quarter.
You can also see return on capital employed is below the target of 50% for the operating units here, and that's mainly due to the acquisition in quarter two. When we calculate that KPI, we use the full balance sheet effect, but only one quarter of the profit.
That's how we do it. That's affecting in quarter two.
Then we're coming in to the new acquisitions, and they belong into the Supply Chain and Transportation business area. RSS, or Rail Safety System, we mentioned it already in the Q1 report, but since April they are now part of the group.
They are based in the Netherlands and revenue 6.6 million euro. The company develops and supplies specific patented magnetic safety barriers.
As you can see on the picture, instead of digging or interfering with the ground, they have a magnetic system that you put on the rail itself. They have a strong position in the European market and sell primarily to different kind of rail operators.
We own a company already, Mecno in Italy, and they are making rail grinding solutions. We see here potential opportunities to actually open door for each other because they have different customers around the world, which could be something to work on for the future.
The other new company is GLM, and GLM design and produces specific industrial lifting equipment, and they are especially targeting vacuum lifters and smaller cranes. The company is based, as I said, in Denmark and annual turnover roughly 50 million Danish kroner.
GLM is strengthening our offering within efficient material solutions. We've been looking into that thanks to a lot to ELM making the attachments that I described, and all kind of material handling equipment could be interesting for the future to look more into as well.
Then we are moving on to Energy & Electrification. Energy & Electrification had a solid quarter with plus 16% in sales and plus 14% in adjusted EBITA.
We see a continued strong underlying market drivers which create more good momentum or gross drivers for the majority of the businesses in this business area. Especially around electrification in general in the society and also energy efficiency is driving many of the companies in the business area.
Phase 3, which are producing specific connectors to all kinds of applications, and also Rolec who's our EV charging company, EV charging primarily towards business-to-business customers, a fleet manager changing or improving EV charging for their fleet in especially in the UK. Both of these two companies have performed well in quarter two with both sales and profit growth.
We also see slight margin decrease year-over-year, but that's primarily due to the product mix, but it's still at a solid level around 25% for this area. Then we're coming into Water & Bioeconomy.
We achieved an improved net sales development in the second quarter with plus 5% sales growth. On the positive side, we see good demand from purified water solutions, especially for cooling applications.
We have three companies somehow attached to these kind of strong trends. The business areas, we also said last quarter, continues to undergo operational investments to improve the businesses, and that has a negative effect on the adjusted EBITA of minus 9% compared to the second quarter last year.
Some of these investments are not just temporary. Instead, we see these improvements that are needed to secure a long-term development.
One example is that we're upgrading a plant in the UK to meet the increased regulatory demands for how to treat chemicals, for example. That's nothing that's going to be a quick fix.
That's more improving for the future, which will drive some cost to that specific business. Then we're coming into Safety & Security.
This business area showed again a strong momentum with plus 15% in sales and plus 20% in adjusted EBITA. We experience a strong demand in all safety verticals, as we call it.
Clean air in hospitals, we have our Swedish company Medicvent performing strongly. They've been successfully moving into new geographies in Europe as well, which is good to see.
We have security around data center with our company Eagle that continue to developing very good. We have secure communication from our Swedish company Cryptify, which is also having a good quarter.
Margin, as you can see, is at high 30% and improved profitability versus last year. The primarily reason for that is a favorable product mix, but also a higher proportion of service and software compared to the previous year.
I think it's also worth to mention the high return on capital employed in the business area, and that's highest in the group. It's, of course, one reason is that we have some software sales, but many of the companies here are quite disciplined in capital efficiency as well, as we can learn from these companies within this business area to other companies in the group as well.
Then we are coming in to M&A. From an M&A perspective, we are on track to increase our M&A activity for the year.
As already described, we had a two acquisition that we closed in quarter two, total EBITA of around 35 million SEK. Our current cash position and also credit facilities are strong, but of course it's important for us to continue to be selective and very disciplined in valuations going forward.
I also mentioned that we have been working hard on strengthening our pipeline over the last 12 months, and we feel now we are in a good position that we need to be to accelerate M&A for the full year. To end this presentation, I would like to summarize the quarter.
We achieved a solid growth of 14% in net sales and 11% adjusted EBITA, and that's including the organic growth as we described. We have completed our divestments, and we can now fully focus on creating value for the businesses going forward.
We also have an ambition to increase our M&A activity for the full year 2026, and we feel we are on track on that. If you can see to the right here, I also would like to make a final remark on our strategic roadmap that we presented at our Capital Markets Day last year.
What we said was that in 2025, we wanted to define new priorities and decided also to streamline our current portfolio. Now in 2026, we wanted to come back on the growth track with an improved balance sheet and new priorities for the group.
With new priorities, that was more focus on return on capital employed as a key metric in all decisions going forward. Then we also said that in 2027, we as a group should be performing according to our full potential and coming up to the plus 15% growth and slowly then also start to increase our return on capital employed, which is then a slower KPI to change, but definitely starting to improve that one going forward.
Looking then, based on the first six months in 2026, we still find this roadmap valid for us, and we look forward to continue this journey that I just described. With that, we are done with the presentation, and we would like to open up for questions from the audience here today.
Operator
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.
The next question comes from Max Bacco from SEB. Please go ahead.
Max Bacco
Thank you, operator. Hello, Anders and Bengt.
Thank you for taking my questions. Done here in the quarter.
Perhaps starting with the Water & Bioeconomy segment. You said here during the call that it's not a quick fix.
Still, we saw this slight improvement in profitability versus Q1, which was also what you communicated in Q1. Do you still see, despite everything going on, that the profitability should gradually increase throughout the quarter?
Is that still the expectation from your side? Yeah.
Anders Mattson
Hello, Max, and thank you for the question. I think it's not that we're going to see now a gradually improvement of the margin.
We foresee it's going to be around 21%, 22% now as a level going forward. We, of course, then have potential to grow in this segment, and some companies are having a great potential to continue to grow and increase margin.
No, we foresee this more as the level going forward for the business area.
Max Bacco
Okay. Understood.
Then turning to the Safety & Security segment, which saw a nice improvement here in terms of profitability in the quarter. You mentioned it was driven by better product mix with a higher proportion of service or software.
That mix change, would you describe it as temporary, or is it more of a structural change within the segment?
Anders Mattson
No, in this business area, we foresee that we will continue at the higher level. We have done not only improvements in the, let's say, software and service sales, but in general, some of the companies have been coming up to, let's say, a higher level.
That's the aim to continue for this higher level for the business area.
Max Bacco
Yeah. Okay.
Sounds good. Yeah.
Then the final question from my side, you touched upon this partly within Supply Chain and Transportation, that mix is explaining the slight decrease in margins here in the quarter. For the group as a whole, have you seen any impact from cost increases on input materials, freight costs, and so on?
Have that impacted anything so far? On that topic, how do you intend then to potentially adjust with price increases and so on towards customers?
I know we have spoken before about a bit more proactive approach to pricing and so on throughout the group.
Anders Mattson
In supply chain, I think we haven't seen any specific price increases on, let's say, raw materials side, not substantial at least. Of course, freight cost, depending on the oil prices, has been fluctuating a bit.
In general, this business area, quite large, it's important to continuously work with the pricing and the purchasing activities, which I think many of the companies now do in the business area. As you also said that we have been working on pricing initiative, how to price spare part, how to price our service offering better.
With these kind of effects or achievements, let's say, we will try to continue to have a stable margin around this level for the business. Again, of course it's a lot of work that needs to go into protect and to try then to improve the margin.
It's not an easy fix or work here, definitely not.
Max Bacco
Okay. Understood.
That was all from my side at the moment. Thank you very much.
Operator
The next question comes from Simon Jönsson from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Simon Jönsson
Hello, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.
First on the segments here and maybe on Supply Chain and Transport specifically as just a follow-up on JR, the strength that you are seeing right now, should we view that as a new stronger base with orders continuing to develop well, or were deliveries here maybe a bit unusually high to sort of catch up with the backlog, if you understand me?
Anders Mattson
I think JR is one of our most stable companies. They have a strong position in the commercial vehicle market in the UK, and it's all the replacements.
They're getting the orders and when new fleets is coming in and being replaced. JR should not be our star growth company, to say.
It's growing more with inflation and then potentially if we take more market share outside UK, which we then are trying to do together with our company Stor who we acquired earlier this year. They have a strong footprint in Netherlands and Germany, for example.
No, and I think what they have done now on looking at the spare part, improving the margin, that's not likely to continue. They have been, let's say, raising the bar, and now it's more about continue at this a little bit higher level than from a margin perspective.
Simon Jönsson
All right. Thanks for that.
That's clear. Then moving to some more financial questions on the cash flow.
I think you answered part of my question, Bengt, already on the free cash flow. You had some higher CapEx here in the first half.
Was that the main reason, would you say, for the lower generation compared to last year, or was there some impact from you having now a higher organic growth, you would say? Inventory was not a big problem here, though.
What do you see there?
Bengt Lejdström
No, the quarter in itself, I think, was a quite normal quarter. As you said, I think the quarter was better than last year, the quarter in itself, and also on a 12-month basis when it comes to the cash conversion, excluding the CapEx and amortizations.
Including that then affecting and becoming a little bit lower than compared to at least half year ago, but still better free cash flow per share than last year. I wouldn't say it's any specials.
It's more variations within the normal business. When it comes to the buildup of inventories, as I said, it's quite typical this time of year.
Our most seasonal companies, Hilltip, with our road maintenance equipment for winter roads, salt spreaders and snow plows and so on, they need to manufacture their equipment before the season because they cannot catch up with the orders then, which will tick in if they don't. They build up inventories.
Also Heatwork in Norway, which provide this heating solutions to reduce, yeah, for example, frozen ground, some groundwork for roads or buildings or so. That they are also very seasonal.
That has an impact on the whole group level still. I wouldn't say it's any unusual things.
Simon Jönsson
All right, that's clear. If we instead look a bit ahead here to the second half, of course, you had very very strong cash flow last year, and as you also said earlier, it's better season, of course.
What do you feel now, looking into the second half of this year compared to last year for the cash flow generation, and also given that the CapEx levels where they were here in the first half?
Bengt Lejdström
The CapEx should be a little bit more modest second half. When it comes to cash flow from operations, we had a very strong Q4 last year.
That was perhaps not what you could expect for this year, but, of course, that's still to be fairly high. Will be hard to beat that one.
Still, it will be better during the second half than first half.
Simon Jönsson
Clear. Thanks for that.
Just lastly on M&A, very well done with the divestments, and good to hear about the pipeline and recent activity. I also note slightly lower multiples paid here for recent acquisitions compared to history.
You think that multiples will generally be a bit lower going forward, or were those deals a bit temporary? No,
Anders Mattson
I think it's fluctuating a little bit, but when we increase the pipeline and we work, I would say, closer together with the business areas, we create a bigger potential to have better, let's say, valuation, better deals than it's increasing the possibility to be around the six and not coming up to the seven and around there. In multiples then.
I think we prefer to continue like that, but it's nothing that we can guarantee because some of the companies we also see bigger potential to grow with, and then we also are willing to pay a little bit more. Again, it's about discipline and increasing the number of companies you talk to so you have the possibility to be selective in the valuation as well.
Simon Jönsson
All right. Understand.
Very good. Thanks for that, and that's all for me.
Operator
The next question comes from Anton Ingves from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Anton Ingves
Thanks. Hi, and good morning, Anders and Bengt.
Congrats on a strong quarter here. Good questions already, but a bit of a follow-up on this strong organic growth.
Can you elaborate a bit on how much was volume and how much was price? Because you, for example, you allude to ELM being quite aggressive in pricing in certain products.
Anders Mattson
I think it's important that we work or that we have the demand, the increasing demand. We have seen, I think, some previous years that when we have taking out costs, we've been growing the EBIT, but maybe not the revenue, the top line so much.
I think the focus now definitely to make sure that we push hard, that we get the momentum in some of the good trends that we see to continue to sell and to get that revenue growth. That's very healthy for us.
Then I think also the pricing initiative we did, we did it with four companies in the group only, to say. It was larger companies that we did that initiative with.
It was well-performed. I think we have learned a lot from that.
Again, it's not really rocket science. It's about splitting up the different products, the different segments, the different customers, and see where you dare to increase your prices, to be more bold.
I think that's where ELM has been very successful. They have a unique offering.
They are quite fast designing exactly what the customer wants, putting that in production, and deliver that quite fast. You can charge for that.
It's some very specific attachments, for example, that they are selling. It's nothing unusual is being more bold in what the value actually is for what you can deliver for ELM, for example.
Hope that answered the question.
Anton Ingves
Yep. For sure.
It sounds promising as well. Sort of just on the momentum here during the quarter, did you see any change within the quarter and sort of the momentum here heading into H2?
Anders Mattson
I think the general momentum is good, but some companies wanted to reduce the backlog a little bit, they pushed quite hard in Q2 to be able to improve lead times, for example, to get the backlog down. That, of course, we're not going to see in the same for the same companies in Q3, for example.
Then we have other companies that have a good potential. The good thing here is with the portfolio, that some were pushing out because they wanted to reduce the backlog, but other companies have now perhaps a better potential now for Q3.
Again, I think it's the portfolio thinking here that is proven to be good for us as well.
Anton Ingves
Okay. That's very clear, and I think that was all for me.
Thanks for taking my questions.
Anders Mattson
Thank you.
Operator
The next question comes from Stefan Knutsson from Redeye. Please go ahead.
Good
Stefan Knutsson
morning, Anders and Bengt. Good progress here in the quarter.
Just a follow-up on Supply Chain and Transportation, what was the organic development in the quarter? Maybe I missed it, or you didn't mention it.
No,
Anders Mattson
we don't talk about the specific organic development in the different business area. We talk about organic development on the group, but then on total sales and EBIT growth for the business area.
If you're looking at the numbers there, it is a solid organic development in the business area. We had, of course, some M&A coming in as well, but it was also a solid organic performance for supply chain, especially for, as we said, the GAH, the ELM, and the JR.
They were driving the organic part in supply chain.
Stefan Knutsson
Very good. Can you also talk a bit more about the integration process of your two new business units?
Has it been successful? What have you seen so far?
Anders Mattson
Sorry, you said the
Stefan Knutsson
Can you not hear me?
Anders Mattson
I can hear you now, Stefan, again.
Stefan Knutsson
Okay. Just a little bit on the integration process of your two new acquired units in Supply Chain and Transportation.
Anders Mattson
Definitely. I think GLM, the Danish company coming in, we have had a discussion in the group as well.
That can be good that you have other companies in the group supporting. Sometimes it's quite new to coming into the group, or in a new group, for an entrepreneur of smaller businesses.
Then GLM has been a support for them. They also have a sparring or somebody to talk to as well regarding reporting and how they have done stuff, etc.
From that perspective, it's good. Then also I think coming into that and starting the discussion about potential growth areas, we're looking for GLM, for example, coming closer into the Polish market.
That's definitely interesting areas to grow with GLM. If we look at RSS, the rail company, rail protection company, I think it's very interesting to see the opportunities with Mecno.
Mecno has not a completely, but quite a lot different customer base around Europe, but also more international that I think just mentioning that what kind of solutions do you have when you're securing the rails we can open up doors for that for RSS as a smaller company and not that well-known in other markets. No, all in all, good start for these two companies coming into the group.
Stefan Knutsson
Very good. Lastly from me, you mentioned the healthy pipeline.
Just you acquired two companies now in Supply Chain and Transportation. Is that where you see the biggest opportunities, or is that just a coincidence that it happened to be in the same business area?
Anders Mattson
I think we've been successful within the supply chain, and one reason is because it's quite broad, it's easy to find different areas that we could find interesting companies. That's one reason, but it's definitely a push from all business areas that we would like.
From a pipeline perspective, it's not that supply chain is standing out as more than the others. It's quite evenly spread, actually.
About finding the right one to the right valuation, and also that what we talked a lot about is for the entrepreneurs, for the companies to feel that Sdiptech know something about this industry, they know something about how to develop and support in the discussions. I think we are becoming more and more attractive in that sense, and that's, I think, also showing from supply chain that we are having some knowledge around the areas as well.
Stefan Knutsson
Okay. Very good.
Thank you. That was all for me.
Anders Mattson
Thank you.
Operator
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Korsheden Bonnevier from DNB Carnegie.
Please go ahead.
Carl Korsheden
Good day there, Anders and Bengt, and thank you for taking my questions. Just thought I would circle back a little bit more to the Supply Chain and Transportation segment.
Would it be possible to give any sort of numbers on the current, I guess, order backlog? I think you mentioned on a question of it a little bit earlier there that some companies might have been, yeah, quite good in getting deliveries out this quarter and so that eating a bit of the order backlog.
Is that how we should interpret it, that the book-to-bill was maybe, yeah, below one this quarter for that, yeah, segment overall and potentially also on the group level, if you have any comment on that?
Anders Mattson
I think it's not a big risk there that we see. Primarily was ELM and JR that wanted to perhaps reduce the backlog more from a perspective that customer are not happy if the lead times becoming too big.
We don't give any exact numbers for that, but GAH have a very strong backlog or order backlog for the full year. Certus, our company within container terminal automation, have also received some nice orders that will be delivered over the year.
Also Hilltip, we didn't mention Hilltip so much in this call. It's been, as we talked about, they have problems in the US to be able to deliver efficiently from the new factory with higher cost and investments going in there.
They also have a quite strong order backlog, and that's also where it's more and more about how to deliver that in an efficient way going forward in the second half of the year. No, we don't foresee that we've been eating too much and now we have, let's say, less ammunition for the second year.
That's not the feeling in Supply Chain business area.
Carl Korsheden
All right. Got it.
That's clear. Could you say anything about the development of your data center-related businesses in the quarter?
Do you expect to also, I guess, take part in data center projects in the Nordics, or are you predominantly exposed to more of the Irish and the UK markets? I'm referring now to Eagle in particular there.
Anders Mattson
Yeah. No, Eagle, it's nothing specific for them.
I think we talked about it the last quarter, that is interesting with the data center market that many of the contractors and installers, they are based in Ireland, and then they are expanding with the customers globally for the different sites. Eagle is then following along with those contractors that they work closely with.
They are in Asia quite a lot of work at the moment, and that's actually where we see the biggest growth with the data center right now. Again, they are tendering all kind of projects globally where they need these specific solutions for the gates.
Carl Korsheden
Yep, that's clear. On M&A, I think you added roughly 50 million SEK there in EBITDA during '25, and you mentioned that you want to do more in '26, and you are now at roughly 35 million, I think your slide showed there earlier.
How large do you realistically believe that the 2026 number might be when also taking your, I guess, leverage situation into consideration?
Bengt Lejdström
I can step in there. No, I think we have guided somewhat before that since our total target is a 15% profit growth on a 12-month basis, and, yeah, 5%, as we had now, as organic profit growth is perhaps something you could use as a guess.
Then we need to acquire another 10%, and that would mean roughly 100 million for this year. As you mentioned, so far 35, but we're optimistic that we will be able to complete transactions during this year that will end up in a 100 million SEK run-rate basis.
We can manage that still having the balance sheet in good order and not go above this three times in leverage. Even though, as I said, only two acquisitions first half, we're still aiming for reaching that before year-end, for sure.
Carl Korsheden
That's clear. Just finally from my side, not sure if I missed that somewhere in the report, but as for the extraordinary items of the 21 million this quarter, did you provide any breakdown of that, or is it possible to disclose that?
Bengt Lejdström
I think we mentioned in the text that, firstly, it was some capital losses with the divestments when we do summing up everything on the group level with how holding companies, etc., has been affected. Then, on the positive side, we reduced some of the expected earnouts for the future, and then some other smaller items.
All in all, it was a minus 20 million. That should be the last extraordinary items for this year, not going forward, it shouldn't be any.
Carl Korsheden
Yeah. That's clear.
Thank you very much. That was all for me.
Operator
There are no more questions at this time, I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.
Bengt Lejdström
I can continue there. I see we have three questions in the chat so far.
We have touched slightly upon them already, but I can perhaps just add a few things. First, talking about demand from data centers, and Anders mentioned how it is in the Safety & Security with Eagles.
Should also mention then that in Energy & Electrification, we have good demand also for companies like Phase 3 and IDE Systems, which provide temporary electricity solutions or connectors, not the least for backup electricity at, for example, data centers. There are a number of companies within the group that benefit from that demand.
It's not that it would be a strong negative game changer if it wouldn't be there, but so far it looks good. As an additional effect that we're quite late in the processes.
If someone announces that we're going to build a big data center in the Nordics, we are not the first one on site taking the revenues from that. We're quite late during those projects, so that is still to be seen when those data centers are being built and constructed.
Hopefully we will get some more business in the Nordics on those as well. Then we have some questions about Water & Bioeconomy and the current margin, mentioned that you could expect roughly 21%, 22% going forward, some ups and downs.
We said that already last quarter, that the highs that business areas have had in the past, all up to 26% or so, that's not the normal level. You could expect it to be more or less where it is.
Then we had also another question talking about M&A and if we could expect continued M&A activities during second half or if we need to improve the balance sheet. As mentioned just recently, that the balance sheet is in good shape, and we have a strong pipeline, we will achieve the 100 million on a run-rate basis in acquired EBITA for the year.
Then also a fourth question here regarding pro forma net debt-EBITDA level. As Anders also mentioned, that the numbers we report are not pro forma.
We take the full effect on the balance sheet when we acquire something, but then slowly bit by bit the profit is rolling in and improves that. The pro forma should be a little bit stronger than the reported, since we would have more profit then compared to the net debt at that moment.
We have chosen not to use the pro forma. That could be discussed and we can evaluate, but it's because a pro forma is a pro forma.
You never know what will happen in the future. You can also, if you want to do that calculations yourself, see then since we disclose how much the run rate of the companies we have acquired, what they are, you could increase profits with quarter-by-quarter what has not yet been rolling in from that run-rate number.
I hope that was an answer on that question.
Anders Mattson
Yeah. Thank you, Bengt.
Any more questions out there? No more in the feed?
No. Okay.
Then I think I would like to thank you all. Very good questions and good discussions.
I wish all of you a good summer and see you in Q3 then for a new report and hopefully further good discussions going on for us as a group. Okay.
Thank you all.
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