Operator
Welcome to the Dustin Q3 presentation for 2026. 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 the CEO, Samuel Skott, and CFO, Julia Lagerqvist. Please begin your meeting.
Samuel Skott
Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Dustin's presentation of our third quarter results. My name is Samuel, and I'm joined here today by our CFO, Julia Lagerqvist, and together we will take you through the highlights of the quarter before we open up for questions.
I'm pleased to report yet another quarter with organic growth, improved margins, strong cash flow, and reduced leverage, while continuing to sharpen our commercial focus and the efficiency of our operations. Net sales development was positive in the quarter, with organic growth of 2.6%.
Growth was driven by continued strong performance from the public sector and supported by orders brought forward to secure pricing and availability in the light of the component shortage. The gross margin increased to 14.4% compared with 13.4% last year, and is also a sequential improvement compared to the second quarter.
The higher margin is mainly explained by higher market pricing and improvements within large corporate and public. Adjusted EBITA improved to 118 million compared to 72 million a year ago, explained by the stronger gross margin and earlier implemented efficiency measures.
The margin increased to 2.3% compared to 1.4% last year. Cash flow from operating activities increased to 259 million compared to -139 million last year.
This is primarily driven by improved net working capital. Leverage, measured as net debt to EBITDA, dropped to 2.3 times and is now well within our target range of 2 to 3 times, and significantly improved compared to 4.1 times last year.
Turning then to operational highlights for the quarter. During the quarter, we completed several important initiatives that strengthen both our commercial ability and financial performance.
First, we completed implementation of our new sales organization. Regional leadership is now fully in place across the Nordics and Benelux, including the appointment of Anne Nillesen as EVP Relational Sales Benelux and member of Dustin's Group Management Team.
The new organization and stronger local leadership bring us closer to our customers and partners and create better conditions to deliver customer value and profitable growth. Second, we have completed efficiency measures announced last quarter.
These measures are expected to deliver annual savings of approximately 80 million SEK, with the full run-rate effect expected from the fourth quarter. We also took an important strategic step by defining a clear exit plan for our non-standardized services business.
This supports our continued transformation towards our standardized service offering, and as a part of this, we recognized an 800 million SEK non-cash impairment during the quarter. On the balance sheet, targeted efforts to improve systems and processes to reduce trade receivables in Benelux have paid off, and the receivable levels have now returned to a normalized level, contributing to stronger cash flow and lower leverage.
Finally, we're pleased to receive several important partner awards during the quarter from Nvidia, Dell, and HPE, and these recognitions reinforce our strong market position and demonstrate the value we create together with our partners. By this, I hand over to our CFO, Julia, to give you some more details on our results and financials.
Julia Lagerqvist
Thank you, Samuel. If we then move to page 4, we will look more closely at the LCP segment, the Large Corporate and Public.
The sales in LCP was 4.0 billion SEK in the quarter, or 8.1% higher than last year. The organic growth was also 8.1%, basically no forex effect this quarter.
The growth was mainly driven by increased demand in the public sector, leading to larger rollouts, and also customer orders brought forward in the light of the memory component shortage and customers wanting to secure volumes. From a geographic perspective, it's a strong growth in Sweden and Belgium, driven then by the larger rollouts in the public sector.
We also saw growing demand within our lifecycle services offering. As said before, we can see some large volatilities in sales between the quarters in LCP.
Gross margin improved versus previous year and versus previous quarter, which is, of course, encouraging to see. The margin benefited from higher market prices, coupled with a slightly more selective approach to new businesses.
In addition, margin was also supported by a more mature contract portfolio in Belgium, where we last year had low initial margins on new frame agreements. The improved profitability in takeback also had a positive impact on margin and EBITDA.
The growing volumes and margin led to segment result of 170 million versus 63 million last year, and the segment margin ended at 2.9% versus 1.7% last year. We then move to the overview of the SMB segment on page 5, where sales landed at 1.2 billion SEK, or 11.7% below last year.
The organic growth was -11.9%, very little forex effect. Adjusted for the exit from B2C, the organic growth was -5.3%.
As explained earlier, this is a strategic move to better focus on our core business, and we always expected some sales headwind coming from this. We see some signs of stabilization, but customers remain cautious due to the ongoing economic uncertainty.
Looking at the business development, the hardware and software business in the Nordics developed positively and remains a key focus area going forward for us. The gross margin improved versus previous year, supported again by the higher market prices and a continued strong price discipline.
This was partly offset by weak performance within non-standard services, which has burdened the profitability, even though we see some improvement versus previous quarter. The improved cost base from efficiency measures partly protected the segment result, but could not fully offset the lower volumes and weak performance in non-standard services.
The segment result landed at 34 million SEK versus 37 million SEK last year. This corresponded to a segment margin of 2.8% versus 2.7% last year.
We have now established a clear exit plan for our non-standard services, as Samuel explained, and we begin to execute. This cleanup plan has also led to an impairment of the SMB segment of 800 million SEK carried out in this quarter.
The impairment has no cash impact. Moving then to look at the cash flow on slide 6, we see that cash flow for the period was +167 million SEK versus a little bit over 1 billion last year, where last year was then impacted by the completed new rights issue.
Looking at the details, you can see that cash flow from operating activities was +259 million SEK, a clear improvement versus last year, and driven by both improved operational results as well as targeted work on tax management, and also improvement in net working capital. I will talk more about net working capital on the next slide.
Cash flow from investing activities was -40 million SEK and mainly related to development of different IT platforms. The cash flow from financing activities was at normal level and mainly linked to leasing, while last year was impacted again then by the completed new rights issue.
The combination of the improved operational results and improved cash flow led to further improved leverage, now at 2.3 times, and well within the target range of being between 2 to 3. Overall, we are, of course, very proud of the cash development year-to-date versus a poor development last year.
Coming then to page 7, looking at net working capital, you see that net working capital landed at 182 million SEK, an improvement versus last year where we were at +261 million SEK. Inventory increased this quarter, roughly 44 million versus last year, and this was expected and part of managing the ongoing shortages in memory components, putting pressure on inventory levels to make sure we can deliver.
Accounts receivable in opposite decreased, driven by, as Samuel has talked about, continued active efforts to settle receivables from previous periods. In addition, we had some positive timing effects of receivables at the end of the quarter, which all in all led to this positive development of net working capital.
We note that Q4 is usually seasonally weaker in terms of net working capital level due to timing of large rollouts at the end of the quarter driving higher receivables. As said before, we will always have some of these timing effects between quarters, but our long-term target for net working capital remains to be around -100 million SEK.
With that, I will hand back the word to Samuel.
Samuel Skott
Thank you, Julia. To summarize the quarter, we report continued organic growth supported by strong development within the public sector.
Gross margin increased, supported by higher market pricing and improvements within the large corporate and public segment. The adjusted EBITA margin increased, benefiting from the gross margin improvement and earlier performed efficiency measures.
Cash flow from operations was strong, and our leverage decreased to well within our target range. If we then turn to the market outlook, component shortages remain a key factor in the market.
This have already resulted in higher pricing and limitations in supply, and we expect both higher prices and tighter product availability, particularly in the low and mid-range PC segments, to continue well into 2027. At the same time, these supply constraints have made some customers to bring forward purchases, and while this has supported demand during the third quarter, it also creates some uncertainty around the timing of demand going forward.
Then looking ahead, our priorities remain very clear. We made progress and are beginning to see effects on the organizational and strategic initiatives we have initiated.
The focus is now to continue our execution, improving profitability, and delivering sustainable growth. First, we will continue to build on our position as the trusted IT partner for B2B customers.
The new sales organization and regional leadership are now fully in place, and our priority is to leverage this to strengthen our local go-to-market execution and improve commercial performance. At the same time, we will continue to execute on our transformation of our services portfolio.
We have defined a clear exit plan for our non-standard services and will accelerate the transition towards our standardized service offering, where we see strong customer demand and attractive margins. In parallel to this, we will develop the SMB business going forward through a more focused approach on the services and customer segments where we see the strongest potential.
Besides improving our commercial execution, efficiency remains an important priority. Following the completed cost measures, we will finalize our review of indirect spend to further improve our cost base and operational efficiency going forward.
Finally, while the market environment remains somewhat uncertain due to component shortages and pricing dynamics, we are well-positioned to support our customers through our strong supplier relationships, high delivery capabilities, and broad product availability. We believe we're on the right path.
While there is still a lot more work ahead, our priorities are clear, and we remain fully focused on building a new, stronger Dustin by executing our strategy, improving profitability, and delivering sustainable long-term growth. With that, we conclude the presentation and open up for Q&A.
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 Jesper Stugemo from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Jesper Stugemo
Yes, good morning, Samuel and Julia. I hope you can hear me.
Julia Lagerqvist
Yes.
Samuel Skott
Yes, we can.
Jesper Stugemo
Great. I have a few questions here if I may.
Beginning with LCP, we saw 8% organic growth. How much was price relative to volume in this growth number?
Julia Lagerqvist
It's a bit hard to say exactly what is driving the different factors, but I would say the larger part is still volume-related, as I said, coming from these larger rollouts, and a much smaller part is from the pricing increases in that sense. If you look at the big picture, of course, we have had some, as we all know, large price increases in the market in general, but that's the way that we have split it up.
Jesper Stugemo
You think that you still have benefit from price increases going forward in this segment then?
Julia Lagerqvist
You mean for the following quarters?
Jesper Stugemo
Although you said it was uncertain, but was thinking that you said the pre-buying and volumes, and less from pricing, shouldn't that mean that you have some more benefit on pricing then?
Samuel Skott
There is of course some benefit of pricing, but if we look at the results in the quarter, the majority of the growth, and also the gross margin improvements come from volume where we had some really good rollouts and sales. Then from a margin perspective, of course, pricing is a part of it, but it's also that we have been a bit more prudent, given the uncertainty in the market, on pricing and on the deals we take.
We've also had an improvement in Belgium where we had very new, customer contracts last year, and now are at more normalized level from a contract and margin perspective. Those are the main explanations.
Jesper Stugemo
Thank you for the clarification. If we look at hardware in the SMB, it fell 7% year-on-year, and then I guess it's mostly volume-driven here as well then.
Julia Lagerqvist
Yes. Of course, here you can maybe see a bit more pricing on the smaller customers, I would say, but it's also volume-driven.
Jesper Stugemo
Okay. On the pre-buying effect, do you have any estimate how much it was in the quarter, like 3, 4% of the growth, or yeah?
If
Julia Lagerqvist
we talked about this last quarter as well, and then we said we saw pre-buying in the area roughly 200 million. I think in this quarter, we have seen pre-buying of roughly, I would say around 300 million.
It's of course very hard to say. As I talked about LCP before, volumes can move between the quarters, but these are the volumes that we have identified as clear pre-buying linked to pricing.
Jesper Stugemo
Thanks. One last question from my side.
When do you expect the non-standardized services to be fully phased out? How much is the percentage of sales related to non-standard services, and what kind of margin do you have on these contracts versus the standardized?
Samuel Skott
We're expecting a full phase-out to take roughly a maximum 2 years. It's a minor part of the full managed services portfolio, and it's today an area where we're not making money.
With this fully phased out, we definitely foresee an improvement in profitability going forward.
Jesper Stugemo
Thank you.
Operator
The next question comes from Thomas Nilsson from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Thomas Nilsson
Thank you for taking my question. I wonder if you can talk a bit about the long-term target for margins in SMB.
You still have a 6.5% long-term margin, and we saw a 2.8% margin in SMB this quarter. After exiting non-standardized services, what are the key levers to rebuild margins, and what timeframe do you view as realistic for margins in the SMB segment to get near to your long-term target?
Julia Lagerqvist
In terms of long-term targets, it's obviously the board that aligns and approves on what the long-term target is for Dustin, and we as the management work towards those ones. Obviously, as you point out, at the moment, we're quite far away from our long-term target, and we have a journey to go there, specifically on the SMB side, I would say.
Maybe, Samuel, you want to add a bit more on what we want to do?
Samuel Skott
Yes. If we look into the different buckets of our SMB business, if we start with the services part, as we've said, we've now taken a strategic decision to fully focus on our standardized portfolio, where we see good customer demand and where the margins are attractive and where we have good profitability already today in that business.
With that decision also comes the clear exit plan on the non-standard services, which will take up to 2 years to get fully out of, and then we expect clear profitability improvements of that. Growth in the managed services in the standard portfolio coupled with completely exiting the non-standard is one lever.
The other one is if we look at the Nordic hardware/software business, there we are starting to see underlying improvements, and this is something we will fuel and continue to work with because here we have a very strong position and a very strong online engine and brand. That is one aspect.
The third aspect is if we look into the Benelux, and specifically Netherlands, where we will take a slightly different approach going forward and not focus at all at the smallest B2B customers, but rather go after the opportunity we see in mid-sized to slightly larger-sized companies, which also plays much better to the local strength and the local positioning we have as Dustin in that market. Those are the three main areas we will work with going forward.
Thomas Nilsson
Thank you. Perhaps one final question for me, the gross margin in Q3 was 14.4%.
Do you view this as a sustainable level? You saw some benefits from higher pricing and also maturing Belgium contract portfolio.
What effects did you see in Q3 that were structural and which may be temporary that helped lift the gross margin?
Julia Lagerqvist
Obviously, those benefits will not go on forever. Those, let's say, are a little bit more temporary.
The Belgium one, hopefully that will at least during the contract periods for these big framework contracts be a bit more stable now. Of course, that can always change.
We have contracts coming and going all the time. For those specific areas, I would say that the contract maturity in Belgium is hopefully a bit more stable, and the other one is a bit more temporary.
Thomas Nilsson
Okay. With your balance sheet now much stronger, what do you think in terms of capital allocation now that leverage is down to 2.3 times EBITDA?
Should we expect further deleveraging, perhaps resumed M&A or dividends once profitability stabilizes in Dustin?
Julia Lagerqvist
For us, of course, we always have M&A on our long-term agenda, but it's not something that we are looking at right now. We're focusing, as Samuel said, on turning around the business that we have.
We still have a long journey to go to be where we want to be. I would say that's the main focus for us as a company right now.
In terms of dividend, that's not something that the management decides on, that's also a board and ultimately an AGM decision, I would say. Hopefully that answers your question.
Thomas Nilsson
Yes, thank you very much. Thank you.
Samuel Skott
Thank you.
Operator
The next question comes from Mikael Laséen from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Mikael Laséen
Yes, good morning. A few follow-ups here.
On the LCP area, and if you can comment on how much of the pre-buying that you saw was sort of concentrated to a few large public sector contracts or countries, or if it was broad-based?
Samuel Skott
No, it was related to a few larger customers, predominantly in the public space.
Julia Lagerqvist
For those ones that we have defined, of course, like I said, it's hard to say exactly what is pre-buying and what is else, but the ones that we have defined is related to LCP, yes.
Mikael Laséen
I saw that Sweden was clearly stronger in this quarter than prior quarters, while Netherlands was weaker. Is this sort of an effect of this pre-buying situation?
No,
Samuel Skott
I think it's more variance between quarters. We had some really larger rollouts with some customers in Sweden and slightly lower, in seasonality terms, in the Netherlands.
I think nothing to read into that in terms of pre-buying.
Mikael Laséen
Okay. Moving over to SMB, I was wondering if you can comment on what you're seeing in underlying SMB demand currently in the markets?
Samuel Skott
As I said, I think in the Nordic hardware/software business, we are starting to see slight improvement, but from very low levels. Still a lot of uncertainty and a lot of the SMB customers that I talk to and meet are still very cautious and they're still postponing purchase decisions.
I would still say it's still a cautious market with some slight improving trends, but still fragile, I would say.
Mikael Laséen
Just a general question on the pricing situation here when we see that hardware vendors are increasing prices by 10 to 20%, something like that, depends of course. What do you expect in your business?
How will this impact you? You have a demand side as well and you have a pricing side as well.
Just curious the net effect, how we should think about it.
Samuel Skott
If we look at what some external analysis firms are saying, and I think we're seeing and saying the same, is that we expect the volume, i.e., the number of units to come down, especially in the low-end segment, and we're seeing that happened already now. Of course, with prices going up, the value still stays flat or slightly positive.
I think IDC is projecting 2% growth or something like that. All in all, it seems to be netting out quite much.
Mikael Laséen
That makes sense. Going over to the non-standardized services, just to understand this situation here going forward as well, can you explain first of all what the services consist of, and again, maybe comment on how much revenue you have currently?
Samuel Skott
Yes, if I start with the first part of it and then hand over to Julia. This is a legacy portfolio, a portfolio of older solutions and older customer contracts in the managed services space.
Where we manage networks and services and workplaces. It is, as I said, legacy.
It's very hard to scale, a lot of them are customer-unique, built on legacy platforms, etc., they don't have a very long future. It's an area and a portfolio of customers and services where we see very limited possibilities to build scale and profitability over time.
That's why we've taken the deliberate decision to instead exit this portfolio completely. Instead focus on the standardized portfolio, which is the majority of our managed services business, where we see a demand and where we see attractive margins going forward.
Julia, if you want to elaborate on the size? Obviously,
Julia Lagerqvist
we don't share those specific sales numbers by department, but I could say it's a very small part of our business, what is remaining sort of of the legacy of the non-standard segment. Also if you look at the total sales of managed services, for example, it's not a huge part of the sales, but from a profitability point of view, the managed services where we have standardized services is a big contributor to the profitability.
Again, on the non-standard, where we have been declining over time and we are stuck with some fixed costs there, we have very, very poor profitability, like you said before, not making money basically.
Samuel Skott
When this exit is completely done, to give you some view of the size of the price, to say, we do expect a run-rate improvement of profitability in tens of millions on the yearly run rate.
Mikael Laséen
That's helpful. In annual terms, right?
Samuel Skott
In annual terms, exactly. It's not huge,
Mikael Laséen
but
Samuel Skott
it is impacting, and it's an important step for us to get more focused, more profitable, and focus on the scalable parts of our business.
Mikael Laséen
With this 80 million cost adjustment that you announced last quarter, will you have managed the overall cost structure in that non-standardized part of your business, or will you have remaining cost effects? You mentioned 2-year in reduction.
Julia Lagerqvist
The 80 million is not linked to non-standardized, sort of cost efficiencies. It's the rest of the business.
We have, of course, sized down a bit on personnel, also on non-standard, but it's two separate projects, I would say, in that sense, if that answers your question.
Mikael Laséen
Yeah. Another thing here related to this is the 800 million impairment.
Can you explain this, what is it stemming from? As you did 2.5 billion impairment last year, goodwill impairment, I guess this is primarily goodwill.
What sort of triggered this right now?
Samuel Skott
It is primarily goodwill. As I said, I think the trigger for this was the decision that we've now taken to clearly exit this part of our business.
Already before, we had the focus on the standardized services, and we had a plan of transforming with the majority of our business into the standardized portfolio. During this quarter, we took the decision to drive complete exit of the non-standardized services, and then that led to the need of a writedown in goodwill, primarily.
Julia Lagerqvist
Maybe to add a little bit of...
Mikael Laséen
This is... Oh,
Julia Lagerqvist
sorry, go ahead.
Mikael Laséen
This is the Benelux part because the Nordic side seems to be developing well.
Julia Lagerqvist
If you know about our history of acquisitions, we have acquired service companies also in Finland, and historically in Denmark, that are not performing according to plan. If I add a little bit of perspective on the accounting side, as written in our annual report, when we did the impairment last year, it obviously means that we have quite low headroom versus the impairment.
When then businesses like our non-standard underperforms, an impairment need can appear, basically. That is what we've seen happening here.
I would say it's quite linked to the accounting setup. Okay.
Mikael Laséen
Can I just ask one final on the cost savings that you announced last quarter, how much did you have in the P&L this quarter of this 80 million? How much did you see and how much do you expect in Q3?
Q4, sorry.
Julia Lagerqvist
We had a small part this year because we have, obviously, the first part of it, but the full effect is going to come in Q4.
Mikael Laséen
Thanks.
Samuel Skott
The new organization including this was implemented on the 1st of May, I think. Basically 1 month out of 3, maximum, for this quarter.
Operator
The next question comes from Daniel Thorsson from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Daniel Thorsson
Yes, thank you very much. First one on LCP, do you expect to see a reverse of pre-buying activity in LCP to the extent that it could turn negative organic growth already in Q4, or is that more likely to happen in the next fiscal year?
Samuel Skott
I think with the uncertainty we're seeing in the market, it's impossible to project that in a perfect way. I think we just want to be transparent with what we're seeing in the quarter and to provide clarity, and we are saying that, of course, pre-buying from some customers now can of course affect Q4, Q1 demand, but it's very hard, very hard to predict given the market circumstances right now.
Daniel Thorsson
Fair, fair enough. On the gross margin, that was particularly good here in the quarter, it sounds like it was driven by higher prices and maybe a lag effect on delivering on your inventory.
Is there a risk that the gross margin contracts in the coming quarters due to higher market prices?
Julia Lagerqvist
Just to build on what Samuel said before, since we have this volatility in the market and also within the LCP segment, it can vary. Yes, as I said before, there are some positive effects this quarter from the pricing, which we are not expecting to see to the same level in Q4.
Overall, we don't guide on the margins.
Daniel Thorsson
Mhm. I see.
You talked about the inventory management a bit as well, but what's your strategy at the moment? Are you a bit cautious to see how the market develops or are you building inventory faster than historically, for example?
Julia Lagerqvist
I think we took some decisions in this quarter to build a bit of inventory, but going forward, we are not planning to do any sort of further increases, but being a bit more cautious. Obviously, we don't want to start building inventory to new heights.
Daniel Thorsson
I see. Final one on SMB, then, were there any regions standing out with positive organic growth in Q3, or did you see declining markets across all the segments?
Samuel Skott
I would say across all segments, but of course in a varying degree, and as said, we are starting to see some underlying positive developments in the Nordic business, and predominantly in Sweden. As said, they're early, they're from a low level and fairly fragile in a cautious market, we do not want to kind of overpromise on that, but it's definitely something we will closely monitor and focus on building going forward.
Daniel Thorsson
Perfect. Thank you very much.
That's all for me.
Samuel Skott
Thank you.
Julia Lagerqvist
Thank you.
Operator
The next question comes from Martin Wahlström from SB1 Markets. Please go ahead.
Martin Wahlström
Yes, good morning. I hope you can hear me.
Samuel Skott
Yes, good morning.
Julia Lagerqvist
Thank you.
Martin Wahlström
Great. Just have one additional question and that's related to what you've been speaking about that units in the market can be down, but prices more than compensate.
In terms of do you feel that customers get the sufficient volume here, or is there some form of pent-up demand building in terms of underlying units, or are they happy with what they're able to buy?
Samuel Skott
I think in the low and mid-range segments, we are seeing a limited supply, of course there could be some pent-up demand. We know there is a pent-up demand in the SMB market, but customers are still very cautious there.
Besides that, no major trends or anything that we've seen out of the ordinary. Of course, low and mid, and there we see an impact, and we know there is a pent-up demand in SMB where customers are still very cautious.
Martin Wahlström
Great. That was all I had.
Thank you.
Samuel Skott
Thank you.
Operator
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.
Samuel Skott
Thank you very much. That concludes our third quarter result presentation and Q&A.
Thank you very much for listening in. Thank you for all the questions, and as said, it concludes this presentation.
Thank you, and have a great day.
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