Good morning, and a warm welcome to the presentation of Skanska's first quarter report for 2026. I'm Antonia Junelind, Senior Vice President for Skanska Investor Relations, and here in the studio I've got our President and CEO Anders Danielsson, and Group EVP and CFO Pontus Winqvist.

They will take you through the first quarter results in just a minute, and they will also provide you with a general business update and a market outlook. After the initial presentation, we will move over to questions.

We're expecting questions from our invited guests, both from the online audience, if you do have a question, please use the telephone conference number provided. If we got questions in the room, we will also accept them, of course.

I will ask you to start by stating your name and organization. We will get back with more information on that.

Now we're moving over to a comment on the first quarter performance. Anders, on the first page here we see a beautiful bridge, and this is an order that we booked in the first quarter, Vincent Thomas Bridge.

Yes, indeed. You can see it on the picture here to the right, and it's a proof of the very solid market we see now, especially in the US when it comes to traditional infrastructure.

We are well positioned to take advantage of that market. I'm sure you have noticed the press releases we have sent out the last week.

One of them, a bridge replacement in Boston, which was booked for 9.3 billion Swedish. Solid market indeed.

Fantastic. Okay.

Go ahead with Q1 then.

Yes, let's move into the first quarter. We have had a solid start of the year, very encouraging.

Construction started the year on good performance, and we had come back to that, but good margin in the first quarter. Residential Development, with a strong performance in Central Europe, and a bit softer still in the Nordic operation.

We started two two projects and divested two, it was in Commercial Property Development. Investment property portfolio was delivered very stable margin and good performance there.

The operating margin in Construction, 3% in the isolated quarter. You can see it's above last year comparison.

If you look at the rolling 12-months basis, we had 4.2%, really encouraging and also above our recently increased target. Return on capital employed in Project Development ended up at 2.1% on a rolling 12.

Return on capital employed in Investment Property, decent, 4.7% rolling 12, same as the last time. Return on equity, 10.4%.

We have also robust financial position. That's very important for us because that gives us a competitive advantage where we can start project when we think it's right.

We managed to reduce the carbon emission with 66% so far compared to the baseline the year in 2015. I will go into each and every stream now.

I will start with Construction. Revenue here is slightly decreased compared to last year.

We go into details. Order bookings is good.

Here you can see we have a book-to-build of 107% on a rolling 12-months basis, which means we winning more order than we produce, which is important for the future. If you look at the backlog, order backlog in Construction, it's on a record-high level still.

Historically very very good position here. Operating income, 1.1 billion Swedish, which represent again 3.0% operating margin.

Healthy result in a seasonally slower first quarter, and very encouraging to see that all geographies are performing. That's important as well.

The order intake was good and backlog remains on a high level. Let's go into Residential Development.

Here we have pretty much the same revenue as last year. It's still slow in the Nordic market, but very good performance in the Central European market.

We're selling a lot of apartments and we have a really good profitability from those. That's very very encouraging for the future.

We started one project in Central Europe and one in Finland, a smaller one. We also had strategic land acquisition both in Sweden and in Poland.

That's also depending on we have a really good financial position to be able to do that. I will walk into Commercial Property Development.

They had the operating income in the quarter of 71 million. Also gain on sale of 174 million, which represent a return on capital employed of 1.4%.

We have 17 ongoing project, and which represent about 15 billion Swedish upon completion in total investment. We have 18 completed projects right now, and the value of those is 18.4 billion in total investment, and decent leasing ratio in those completed project of 72%, which means that we get some positive cash flow from those assets.

Two divestment in the first quarter, and we also started two new projects. Several projects was handed over to external buyers during the quarter.

We have a good average leasing ratio both in the ongoing and in the completed, as I said earlier. Investment Properties.

Operating income, 81 million, and economic occupancy rate is stable, 84% right now. Pretty much the same level as last quarter and also compared to last year.

The portfolio consists of seven high-quality office building properties in the three largest cities in Sweden, which represent a value of 8.3 billion. Solid performance in the first quarter.

I will now move back into the Construction stream again and look at the order bookings. Here you can see the order backlog over time on the blue bar.

As I said earlier, we are on record-high level and you can also see it here in the slide. Here you can see also the rolling 12-months basis, the lines here on book-to-build, revenue, order bookings, and order bookings per quarter.

I can say, as I said, record-high level and when you look at the first quarter, we were able to book data center and semiconductor facility of 6.9 billion Swedish in the first quarter. It's strong market and contribution here.

When I look into the different geographies, you can see that we are on a very high level when it comes to book-to-build, 107%. We have a good duration, we have 19 months of production.

Tendencies here that the duration of the project is getting more extended, takes longer time, and so we have a good position here. Basically in all geographies has contributed to this order backlog, which is good.

With that, I hand over to Pontus.

Thank you, Anders. Then going a little bit deeper into the numbers, and you heard from Anders regarding the order situation.

You can also see that we have a slightly decline in revenue during the first quarter. It's also the case that we have had a tough winter in many of our markets that to some extent is impacting the revenue.

It's also so that we in some cases, especially in US, we have an uneven profit or revenue recognition of the backlog, cuz some projects are moving faster through revenue, and that could be a little bit different between the different quarter, and it was quite significant such an effect in the first quarter. If you then go down and looking into the operating income, it's basically in line with the level that we saw the same period last year, but it is an increase if we go to the local currency.

Actually, the operating profit increased by 5%. Then going more into the different geographies within Construction, there you can see that we had improvement or same margin level that we had last year, and we had an average margin of 3%, which I must say is quite strong for a first quarter with normal winter and seasonal effect, but in this quarter, as I said, it was a little bit more than normal.

You can also see there that the operating income is on healthy level on all units. Going then into RD, you can see that the revenue here is on a similar level as we saw last year, and also that the margin is increasing.

You heard from Anders that our European residential development business is performing on a high level, while there are some challenges, I would say, in the Nordic businesses. We keep the selling and administrative costs on the same level as we did last year, and you can also see that that is impacting an increase in our gross margin.

Looking then into the different geographies, and here you can see that we had a negative result in the first quarter in the Nordics, while the Central European business, again, is contributing with a strong margin, above 20%, and a result then of 138 million. This is, of course, I would say, probably stronger than what you can expect going forward from that business, but on the other hand, we should expect better development from our Nordic operations.

If we then look into the number of sold and started units, you can see that we started 212 units, and the absolute majority, 176 of those, was started in the Central European units. We had a smaller project and that was started in Finland.

If you look into the number of sold, we are on basically the same levels that we have been last year, which you also can see on the rolling 12-months basis that we are hovering around 1,500 units for the moment when it comes both to started and sold units. Then looking into what we have in production, you can say that we have around 3,000 units in production, also this a stable level.

You can also see that it's slightly improvement of the number of sold and a slight decrease on the number of unsold completed homes. Worth to mention there is that we see that we are selling more of this uncompleted homes in the Nordic, which is good cuz they are the low-margin units that we have, and it's actually increasing somewhat of the unsold units within the Central European business, and that is good cuz we have a very strong market there, there it's more a potential to have units to sell, which haven't really been the case in the Nordics.

Going then into CD with a revenue of 1.2 billion, we divested two projects during the first quarter. You can see there the gains coming out from this business have been 174 million.

We also have an impact there from previously divested projects that we have sold, but they are not really completed, then we are recognizing profit gradually when we are, to say, reducing the construction risk from a development perspective on that divestments. Having said that, we have said that a couple of times before, but sometimes that is a part of the business that we are releasing gradually profits from divested projects that still are under some kind of construction.

There have also been a small land divestment included in that number. Looking into this slide, the unrealized gain from our Commercial Development business, you can see it's very stable, not very much has happened since the first quarter.

What you can see and what I also think is important to highlight is that the absolute majority of the unrealized gain is from the ongoing projects, and it's quite little of unrealized gain that we have in our completed portfolio within our CD business. This is normally a popular slide, where you can see our profile when to complete and what is completed.

The dots there that you see, they are representing the occupancy rate in those projects. You see that we have a completed portfolio within CD of 17.6 or 17.6 or something billions, with an occupancy rate there of 71%.

Then you can see that we will complete here during Q2, nothing in Q3, and so on with the different leasing ratios. If you're following this and comparing this with previous slide, you can also see that there are slight improvements in some of those future completing projects.

Leasing in CD during the quarter was 18,000 square meters, of which three came from 3,000 came from rental residentials. You can see on a stable level, but of course, we would like to lease out even more.

You can also see that there's a healthy difference here between the occupancy rate and the completion rate, we continue to have a higher occupancy rate in our portfolio than the completion ratio. Going then into Investment Properties, I think it was a very stable quarter here.

You can say that the revenue operating net is basically on right now a very stable level and same level as we have seen the last quarter. Also the occupancy rate is basically on the same level, 84%, that we have seen during the last quarter.

There has been no revaluation in this portfolio, and the yield for the portfolio is 4.7% as we have seen then for a couple of quarters. Going then into the total group statement, here you can see that the operating income from the businesses is actually increasing.

It's up 18% if you go into local currencies. That will be 5% in Swedish kronas.

Looking into central costs here, you have a slight increase. It's also a slight lower contribution from our PPP business that's included in that.

It's also, I think, cuz here we see something that sometimes the estimations regarding our central items is not perfectly correct, but I think the rolling 12-months basis is what you should expect on an annual level when it comes to central. Then there will be some effects during the different quarters, and that is especially if you see a major impact from the PPP portfolio in that line.

Otherwise, elimination, they will also vary a little bit dependent on which project we are starting and selling, cuz the majority there is, of course, the profit that is coming from construction for our internal projects that is then eliminated on group level, and that will then be reversed when we are selling those properties. Taxes, 316 million, 24%, quite representative, I would say, both for the quarter and what we could expect going forward with the business mix that we have right now.

Cash flow, we had an operating cash from the businesses of -1.3 in the quarter. That is mainly because we have some development in the working capital, and we also have net investments in our Residential Development business that is impacting this.

Looking into our free working capital within Construction, and as you can see, it's also here on a very stable level. It's an underlying outflow of 1.1 billion, but that is met by a positive currency effect of the same amount, you can see it's the same as we had during the fourth quarter, which also take us up when it comes to the relative number.

If we compare this with the revenue, it's up from 18.3 to 18.6%, which, of course, from an historical perspective is a very strong and high number. Then if we look into our group investments and divestments and capital employed, I said that we had some slight outflow from our investments in RD.

If you also dig a little bit deeper into this, you see that we had actually a net divestment situation from CD, but you see that the capital employed is increasing somewhat, and that's because of currency effects. We had 1.1 billion in, you can say, increased value in Swedish krona in the capital employed, and that's basically our US properties because this relative strong currency or strong US dollar during the first quarter.

Our liquidity situation is continued strong, I would say, as you can see here. We have available funds of 27.7 billion, and we can draw funds of above or around 20 billion within one week if that would be necessary.

Then the financial position of the group is, as you can see here, on a high and stable level. You can see that our adjusted interest-bearing net receivable that we following here is going down by around 2 billion.

The reason for that is, first, we had, as I said, 1.1 billion in cash outflow, but also then that we are increasing the number of restricted cash, and that's cash that we have in our joint ventures together with other partners. It's our cash, but we deduct that number from our adjusted net cash position.

It's actually that we are getting more and are reducing that in this measurement that we are following. By that, Anders, I leave it to you to talk a little bit about markets.

Sure. Thank you.

Look at the market stream by stream, starting with Construction. We we continue to have a strong civil market in the US.

We we don't see any slowdown there, and it's very encouraging. A stable market when it comes to the building sector.

We are we are in the so-called social infrastructure, if you will. We are building schools, university, hospitals, airports, and, of course, data centers.

If I go to the European market, the civil market in Europe is stronger than building because we are more exposed to the residential market and commercial market in in Europe. We do see a strong civil market and stable in most countries driven by infrastructure investment, investment in defense facilities, and also the energy sector.

That's encouraging. In the short term, we don't have we don't see any impact from the Middle East conflict, but it's, of course, something we watch very carefully going forward.

Residential Development, again, strong market and activity in Central Europe. In the Nordics, the fundamentals are there.

There there is a demand and underlying need for apartments. There have been some regulation easing up, the mortgage and the amortization rules and so on, so that helps, of course.

What need to happen, the consumer needs to get their confidence back. We need to see some stability in the world, and also that the economy is growing more than it's doing right now.

Commercial Property Development. Transaction market is gradually improving, especially in in Central Europe and in the Nordics.

It's still slow. Investors are still hesitating in the US US market.

We can see that also the leasing activity is higher in Central Europe, in Nordics, but we also see that our asset in the US market is attractive, we lease out there as well and have a decent healthy leasing ratio in US as well. Investment Properties.

It's a polarized occupier market. You need to have Class A buildings in the right location, and that's exactly what we can offer the market.

We have a stable leasing ratio, as you have seen, and we also have a stable performance. That's about the market.

I just want before I leave it to hand over to Antonia to open up Q&A, just summarize. Solid start of the year.

Construction started in a very good way of good performance. Residential, split splitted picture here, as we have been talking about.

We started two projects and divested two projects in Commercial Property Development. Again, Investment Property, still stable stable result.

Of course, we are maintaining our financially very strong position. With that, I hand over to Antonia.

Thank you very much. It's time now for your questions.

First to the online audience, if you have a question for us here, then just use the telephone conference number provided, and follow the instructions by the operator, and we will come back to you soon. We will start with questions from our guests here in the studio, and I will ask you to limit your questions to maximum two at the beginning, and then if you have time for more, we will come back.

I can see that we have a question up front here, can you please start by stating your name and organization?

Stefan from Danske Bank. The first question is on CD.

You made two divestments there, and I was surprised about the realization profit there because looking at the Bucharest building, the biggest one, it seemed like you made a loss there of a 50, 60 million or something like that, given the press release when you started the project. I'm just trying to understand was it a dramatic profit on the elderly care center that you sold, or is there some one-offs that I need to understand?

That, Stefan, we are not commenting project for project, but I think you are not really correct if you're assuming a big loss on that divestment. It wasn't.

When your press release that you started, you said 450 million in investment and you sold at 400, so that's why I had a question. Then

I don't know exactly what stand in the press release and the outcome, but what I know that it wasn't a big loss. Then things has happened, and that's quite common that the project change a little bit after you have released the press release from the project start.

It might be some different areas, etc. You shouldn't have expected a big loss on that, cuz it wasn't.

Thank you.

Wasn't a loss at all.

The second question there is on IP. You had ambitions when you started that to grow that, and we haven't seen growth in a while.

Could you maybe just elaborate a little bit on that if we should see something coming through, or this is the level we should expect for some time now?

We're still aiming at the range to build up a portfolio between 12 to 18 billion. We definitely have the pipeline to do that in the three largest cities in Sweden.

The market has been tougher the last three years, and so we haven't been able to start and complete projects in the recent time. We have a very firm rules when we can have a transaction to investment properties.

That is when we have at least 80% should be completed first of all, and then at least 80% leased out, and also at least 60% occupied. Then we take a decision.

I'm not concerned that we don't have the pipeline. We have ongoing project, and the pipeline today definitely support the upper part of that range.

Very good. We got another question up front here.

Hello, thank you. Albin Sandberg from SB1 Markets.

Looking at the drop in sales in the Construction division, you're referring to weather and also conversion from the backlog, as I understand it. Does that mean there should be a catch-up of the sales?

That sales is not lost forever, or is that how we should view it, just postponed to coming quarters?

Yes, you are right. We are referring to that.

I would say you can also see that we have announced quite a lot of orders, we have a positive book-to-build, I think that should give some kind of indication that it's reasonable to believe that there will at least be some catch-up.

Good. The other question is on just general capital allocation.

Now, obviously, you mentioned the FX effect, but also higher investments in RD. You still have your net cash position.

Is your target to be a net investor for this year in your development stream? Is that what you want to use your cash flow, or anything else?

We don't give any forecast. We have said that we have enough capital in the project development overall.

Then, of course, it can be difference between different quarters, and, of course, we plan to release some capital from completed project.

Thank you.

Very good. Then I believe that we're ready to move over to questions from our online audience.

I will ask, please, Operator, if you can introduce our first caller here.

Yes, hi, and good morning. I would like to start asking a question about the construction and the US part.

We see a decline year-over-year, and you say it's on FX. Is there something you see in the trends over there, any softening in the US public infrastructure activity, or any other trend, or is it purely FX and timing?

Yes, we don't see any slowdown in the US market. It's more and the order intake supports that, and talked about the recent week as well.

What we have seen in the first quarter is more the combination of the current backlog Some projects take a little bit longer time to get rolling and get up to speed. It's more that if you compare to previous quarter when you look at single one.

I'm not concerned over the market per se.

A follow-up. Why does the project take some longer time to start up?

It could be that we are in a design phase. We need to do some preparation, mobilization work before we can get going, so that's a typical example why it can take a little bit longer time than other projects.

Perfect. Then a question on the Europe construction.

The margin jumped quite a bit from 0.6 to 1.4 in the quarter year-over-year. Is this a jump that we should extrapolate further on in the year?

Is it some one-off effect, or what do you see here?

I think you should look more on a rolling 12-months basis when it comes to profitability. It can be quite a lot of differences between if you look year-over-year in a single quarter.

That it's not a specific reason for that.

Perfect. I will jump back in the queue.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Moving on to the next person in line.

Good morning. I have a couple of questions.

The first question relates to the unrealized gain for the CD portfolio, completions versus ongoing projects. You state here the unrealized development gain of 23% for your ongoing projects, but the completed project gain is down to 3%.

Could you maybe elaborate on the difference between the ongoing projects and the completed projects, and what does that imply for the margins in the completed units?

Yes. I think it's quite easy.

The reason is that we within our completed portfolio has during now a couple of quarters and years adjusted the value in order to reflect the market values of that portfolio. It has in some cases, as you have seen in last time in Q3, resulted in writedowns.

Of course, if you're writing down a project or you have first adjusted down the surplus value, which means that from a total portfolio, it is a very little headroom between the market value and the book value. On the other hand, in the ongoing projects portfolio, this is when we are starting up new projects and we are not starting up projects with a 3% margin.

Therefore, we need to have the profitability that is good enough for us, and therefore you see above 20% on the ongoing projects. That's, of course, based on the assumptions at this time.

Things can change in both directions.

Okay. What make you so comfortable in achieving above 20% gain on this new product?

What is the difference other than that you have adjusted the development gains in the completed units?

It's from a project-by-project basis, and we have a view on how much it will cost to build. We have our land that we are putting into this.

We have potential costs for financing, and we add all this in together, and then we get to compare it with the current market prices, and then we get to a value. That difference then should be strong enough in order for us to support a start of project.

That's always the case. We are not starting a project if that's not supporting our targets.

Then I just have a final question, and that is what can you say about the potential divestment activity in the US for the completed projects? Do you have any type of ongoing dialogues, or such, or do you believe that you would be able to make some divestments from that portfolio this year, or given that you haven't made any divestment above 1 billion in over four years now?

The market activity is slowly recovering, but what we see is more opportunistic investors, and we see mostly so-called fireselling. We are not interested in that.

We know the value of our asset. We have a positive cash flow.

We want to get the full value out of those. We have good relationship with our investors that we have done business with for many years.

Right now, they are waiting at the sideline, but they are ready. They have the capital, they're ready to step in when the conditions are right for them.

When that happens, we have really good asset to offer the market. I won't stand there and say when that will happen.

Thanks. Those were my questions.

Thank you very much. Moving over to Jefferies, right?

Thanks very much, guys. I think just two questions from me.

First one, if I could just go back to US construction, you've seen some really large orders signed in Q2. I just like to get your sense, Anders, as to whether that's kind of a sign of things to come, what you're seeing in the pipeline beyond what you've announced, just kind of in the awarded but not contracted stage, and I think some of your peers have talked to a really positive outlook through Q1 from the federal side, and just wondering if you're seeing that as well, and if that's making you confident on your margin target.

Then second question, if I could just ask a little bit, if you can give us any color on what you've seen through the first month of Q2 in resi, in particularly I suppose Sweden, where the market's been weak for some time, but just if you have any color on recent trading, and if you can give us any snippets there, that would be super interesting. Thank you.

I can start with the US, and Pontus can give some color on the resi market. The construction market in US, the civil market is really strong.

You can see the order backlog is great. We have a book-to-build way above 100%.

To your point, we have announced massive order the the last week here in in the beginning of Q2. We haven't changed our outlook.

I have said the quarter many quarters now that we strongly believe in the US infrastructure market, and we are well positioned there. We see good pipeline.

We are in the right location. We are strong on the on the coast where the most of the investment takes place.

We are have a fantastic organization that they are ready to go and take on those orders. The performance is is great, I'm very confident in in that operation going forward.

Maybe some color on the resi market then.

Yeah. Obviously, we are commenting the first quarter and not the second quarter right now, but what we are seeing, from a general market perspective, we have seen some positive, you probably have seen that as well, when it comes to numbers from external parting that is looking into the residential market, especially in Sweden.

I think that it looks a little bit more positive in Sweden compared to Norway and Finland where we also are. Having said that, there's still a lot of uncertainty.

There is a lot of people that has the potential or possibility to invest in new homes, but on the same time, there are many sitting on the sideline and waiting what will happen in the external economy. That might not give you any good answer, but we are following it closely, and yeah.

Very helpful. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. Next one.

Thanks. Good morning.

Firstly, on US construction, you called out in Q1 that revenues were negatively impacted by uneven order book conversion. Has the same been for the margin in terms of the project mix going through the year?

Could that have an impact, and can we extrapolate the margin improvement in Q1 in the US through the rest of the year? Secondly, in terms of the commercial property business, interesting to note there were minimal writedowns in the quarter despite rates having gone up.

I wonder whether you think the disposal yields and values have changed at all since the start of the year. Thanks very much.

I start with the US construction. Margin, we have seen very good performance last few years in US.

I don't see any reason why we should not perform going forward, but we don't give any forecast, and I think you should look more again not the single quarter, look more on the rolling 12-months basis when you sort of look into our performance here. Hand over to Pontus.

Regarding writedowns, we are following the values of our assets every quarter quite in detail, and we haven't seen any reasons to do any adjustments of those values during this quarter. Of course, we are following that all the time, and you can never rule out what will happen in the future.

Of course, we are impacted if the war is dragging out, especially if that impacts interest rates and they will go up and stay on high levels, it's the best I can say.

Thank you. That's helpful.

Very good. To me it looks like we've sort of reached the bottom of the list of people that wanted to ask questions here.

I'm going to ask the question now if we have any sort of returning callers, and before we let them in, I'm going to turn to the audience here in the room and just double-check if we got any more questions here. We got one up here.

Albin Sandberg, SB1 Markets again. Question on the Nordic residential margins.

One way is the way you recognize the profit in your segment accounting, I guess you need to start a little bit more project to get some margins up. I just wonder is there any adverse impact from the sales you carrying out at discounted prices or anything like that in Q1 because, obviously, the unsold home went down, and also whether your overall cost base, is that assuming the current production rate, or do you see that you can ramp it up with the same cost base, or do you need to adjust that cost base in order for the margins to, let's say, improve?

First, when it comes to the cost base, yes, I think we have a cost base. We have working through the Nordic residential development business for quite a while, and I think we have a stable cost base, and there is room for expansion within that current cost base.

The other question when it comes to the relative low gross margin that we have had in our Nordic projects is, of course, that we have been trying to sell out from our completed project portfolio in RD, as you saw, we have also sold out more from the Nordic business, and with that comes, of course, some kind of marketing efforts that is impacting the gross margin. Yeah.

Very good. Turning one last time to the online audience and operator, do we have anyone else waiting in the line now?

Very good. That means that we have answered all the questions that the audience had for us here today.

Thank you, Anders and Pontus, for all of your answers and presentation. Thank you to everyone that joined us here in the studio for the first quarter report presentation.

Of course, thank you for everyone watching online. A recorded version of this will be provided and ready on our webpage later today, and we will be back with more comments on the second quarter report in July.

Thank you very much.