Luotea Plc

Luotea Plc

1.74
EUR
+0.00
(-0.17%)
-0.04EPS
0.47P/E
67.68MMarket Cap
Oct 28Next Earn

Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 6, 2026

Antti Niitynpää

Thank you for joining us today. In this session, we will walk you through our second-quarter performance and key financials and take a look at Luotea's strategic direction going forward.

I will deliver the presentation together with our CFO, Mika Stirkkinen, and throughout the presentation, you can submit questions into the comment field, and we will address them in the Q&A session at the end of the webcast. I will start with some highlights from the second quarter.

In Q2, our group net sales increased by 1.5% from the second quarter of last year. Our adjusted EBITDA was €2.5 million, up from €1.9 million in the corresponding quarter last year, and the adjusted EBIT was €2.2 million, up from €1.5 million last year.

This year, we expect reported group costs to normalize and group costs to decrease. Another positive development has been seen in our contract portfolio.

Thanks to positive contract intake, it's ups from the second end of 2025. There are also some significant current news.

We announced yesterday that we have appointed a new CEO for Luotea Sweden, Rikard Nyhrén, and he will start latest by February 1st of next year. More on this shortly in this presentation.

As for our guidance, it remains unchanged. In 2026, our adjusted EBITDA is expected to be better or materially better than the adjusted EBITDA €7 million in 2025.

On this slide, we see the development of Luotea's net sales and our adjusted EBITDA. In the second quarter of 2026, our group net sales were €88.1 million, up by €1.3 million from the corresponding quarter in 2025.

If you wonder why the sales are still down slightly from Q4 '25, that is a question of normal seasonality, and the last quarter of the year is always the busiest of the year. The group's adjusted EBITDA also increased by €0.7 million and is now €2.5 million.

Here we see the development in sales and adjusted EBITDA from our operations in Finland. The sales were €55.7 million in the second quarter, down by €1.3 million from the corresponding quarter in 2025.

The adjusted EBITDA also decreased by €0.7 million from the second quarter of 2025 and was now €3.4 million. On a positive, and it's very positive note, it was considerably better than in the previous two quarters.

The decrease in sales in Finland was largely due to intense price competition in the cleaning market where our sales decreased by 7%. Many companies have ongoing cost-saving measures which affect our add-on sales especially, and we are not engaging in margin undercutting in our contract sales.

As a result, our net sales in Finland decreased by 2.3%, and it's, however, really important to note that in property maintenance and technical services, we saw very robust sales growth of 5%, which is really good. Our Luotea Smartti services is also making some promising inroads; more on those later in this presentation.

We also see several other opportunities for positive contract sales growth in Finland. Our new contract intake has been positive both in the last quarter in 2025 and in both quarters of this year, and it's really good also.

Also our customer satisfaction remains very high, which means that we expect the sales in Finland to improve as our clients' outlook improves. Another opportunity lies in Public Procurement Act, hankintalaki in Finnish, which is expected to open large number of public and municipal contracts for competitive bidding.

This is likely to favor large players like Luotea as we can offer comprehensive and cost-effective services. We also expect further opportunities to emerge the public sector, particularly within the wellbeing services counties, hyvinvointialueet in Finnish.

As the Finnish healthcare system faces increasing financial pressure, these counties are likely to turn more to private service providers to achieve cost savings, and this development is also expected to favor companies like us. We also believe that our data-driven services provide a really strong competitive advantage and enable us to consistently outperform market growth.

Then to Sweden. Sweden comprises roughly a third of our businesses, and there the market is very different from that in Finland.

Correspondingly, in Sweden where our sales increased quite significantly, the main reason for that is increased customer satisfaction, which has resulted in strong growth in add-on sales. Sales were up by €2.6 million from the second quarter of last year and were now €32.5 million.

At the same time, the turnaround in Sweden is still ongoing, and the Swedish operations registered a loss of €0.6 million in adjusted EBITDA. As you can see, we are now on the way correcting this as the loss was less than half of what it was a year ago and €0.7 million smaller than corresponding quarter in 2025.

As you saw from the results in Finland, we have managed to turn our operations in Finland around and make them profitable in last few years, and in Sweden we are executing exactly the same playbook, and I'm really confident that we will be just as successful in Sweden. As I mentioned, another positive sign is that customer satisfaction is up in Sweden, and that has already led to higher add-on sales.

Also mentioned, we announced a change in leadership in Sweden yesterday. Mikko Taipale, former CEO Sweden, has done excellent work, and I want to thank him for his important contribution.

However, we need to take the next step, and we have now appointed Rikard Nyhrén as the new CEO. Rikard has extensive experience in leadership, business development, and real estate value creation.

I'm really confident that he is the right person to execute the next phase of our strategy in Sweden. Those were the key figures from Q2, and our CFO Mika will continue with the financials in more detail shortly.

Before that, I will say a few words about our strategy, and it's important to understand what our goals are, but it's just as important how we plan to achieve them. This image is Luotea strategy in a nutshell.

The foundation of our strategy are our missions and our values. Our mission is to create value for people, companies, and society, value that goes beyond the surface.

All this is guided by our values: courage, a down-to-earth attitude, and collaboration. These are very Nordic values define how we work together both with our customers and with each other every day.

On the next level of the house are our success factors, and then our strategic focus areas, and I will shortly cover them in more detail. At the top of the house is our vision: to navigate the way toward a smarter tomorrow.

This is the direction in which we want to take Luotea. There are also more concrete mid-term goals, and these can be seen in 2028 financial targets on the right side of the house.

Of course, the world around also affects us, and in the clouds, you can see the major societal shifts that affect our businesses. These large-scale megatrends such as climate change and growing repair debt and urbanization increase the need for predictive maintenance, energy efficiency, and intelligent facility management.

Our services are designed to address these needs. As you can see, Luotea is the next-generation facility services company that navigates the way toward a smarter tomorrow.

We develop services where technology and human expertise complement one another, making buildings more sustainable, intelligent, and more functional for their users. In doing so, we help keep the infrastructure of businesses and the whole society running smoothly.

Our ambition is to create deeper impact by improving our customers' everyday lives and by helping them to do business and by contributing to a better society. Let's take a closer look inside the house and open the door and start with our success factors.

We have specified four success factors that enable Luotea's growth. We provide a full service offering that makes facility services smooth and cost-efficient.

Our data-driven services provide real-time insights and help allocate resources precisely where they are needed. Our expertise in sustainability is reflected in our commitment to biodiversity and energy-efficient solutions.

In addition, our Smartti service enables intelligent and climate-smart energy management in buildings. Next, let's look at our strategic focus areas.

Here are the most important strategic focus areas we will concentrate in 2026, and of which we have OKR measures and KPIs to all our employees so that technicians and cleaners and property maintenance technicians knows what their part of executing the strategy is, and that's also important. Everything starts with our first focus area: our services.

We plan to drive growth in our core business areas through high-quality, sustainable services, services that create real value for our customers, and we aim to achieve market leadership in selected business segments. Our success, of course, depends on customer satisfaction.

We plan to deliver the best customer experience in the industry. We are already on the right track as we can see from our improved NPS scores both in Finland and Sweden.

The key to profitability is not just sales, but also efficiency, our second focus area. As I mentioned earlier, we are in the process of turning around our businesses in Sweden by executing our playbook, which proved highly successful in Finland.

The goal is to ensure operational efficiency through effective management and cost control. The third focus area is our goal to be the best place to work in the industry.

This is a people's business especially, and we want our people to be safe, happy, and motivated because that is the only way to ensure that our customers are happy too. As I mentioned, we are already on the right track on both counts as both our employee satisfaction and our customer satisfaction figures have improved significantly.

We still have work to do. Luotea is still relatively new company, we have to continue building our own Luotea culture and implementing our values: brave, feet on the ground, and cooperation.

We continue leading and developing our personal skills and capabilities, and we will also continue building the Luotea employer brand to ensure that we attract the best people. Digital services and AI are our fourth strategic focus area.

Our office workers increasingly use AI to support their everyday work and improve efficiency. Just as important is that we use data and AI in our maintenance and cleaning services as a standard way of working and by developing new services like Smartti.

It's important to note also that we don't just use data and AI to make ourselves more efficient; they also save money and create value for our customers. I believe that these four focus areas form a coherent framework, and they guide our decisions and support our ambition to operate more efficiently, grow in a disciplined way, and continue leading development of modern facility services.

To illustrate our strategy in practice, I would like to highlight a couple of customer stories, and let's start with the Port of Helsinki. Our cooperation with the port illustrates perfectly how a long-term strategic partnership creates value for both sides.

It's also an example of how our work helps keep society's most critical infrastructure running, and doing so helps maintain Finland's security of supply. The Port of Helsinki is one of the Europe's busiest passenger ports, handling around 9.5 million passengers and over 13 million tonnes of cargo annually.

That makes it Finland's main hub for foreign trade, and it's hard to overestimate how important this port is for the country. Luotea serves the Port of Helsinki's partner as Luotea Port of Helsinki's partner for property maintenance and technical fire safety services at the Olympic Terminal, West Terminal, and also at the Katajanokka Terminal, and in addition, Luotea provides cleaning and assistant services at the West Terminal.

Reliable terminal maintenance and safety services are, of course, essential to port's daily operations. For such critical structure, it's also understandable that the port also values a long-standing strategic partnership.

Then the second one: Jumbo, located in Vantaa in the Greater Helsinki area, is the largest shopping center in Finland. Jumbo has very ambitious sustainability goals and aims to achieve carbon positivity by year 2030, and last year they chose us, Luotea, as their partner in this emissions reduction journey.

We provide Jumbo with comprehensive energy management services and continuous energy-saving proposals. At the same time, we help them to optimize their ventilation systems and build better technical capabilities.

We also improve their energy efficiency, and this has already resulted in continuous emission reductions and considerable cost savings. In long run, this will also increase the value of their properties and extend their lifespan.

That's not all. Jumbo has started a pilot with our data-driven Luotea Smartti services, which combines energy, conditions, and operations into a single dashboard view.

Luotea Smartti makes predictive energy optimizations possible, which will result in future savings. This illustrates how we provide services where technology and human expertise complement one another, making buildings more sustainable, intelligent, and more functional for their users.

It also shows how partnerships provide opportunities for add-on sales that benefit both sides. Since Jumbo is the largest shopping center in Finland and provides services for hundreds of thousands of people, our work here is another example of how we help keep businesses and services running, creating value not just for the client, but for society as a whole.

I hope these clients' cases give you a clearer idea about our strategy and how we plan to execute it. Now onto our financials and guidance, and I will hand over to our CFO, Mika Stirkkinen.

Mika Stirkkinen

Thank you, Antti. Here you can see our adjusted EBITDA figures.

The Q2 this year figures are 4.3 million, identical with last year's adjusted EBITDA figures. On the right-hand side, you can see the rolling 12-month figures, which stood at 17.4 million, and as you can see, the level is solid, and the EBITDA has stayed really really at the solid level during the early part of the year.

On the cash flow, our cash flow after investments stood at -1.3 million during the first half of the year. There were a couple of highlights on that.

Net working capital change was negative of 2.7 million euros. Historically, end of June is the low point or the weak point in terms of seasonality, and the net working capital change is expected to improve during the latter part of the year.

Another highlight is the income taxes. We were a bit upfront in terms of income tax payments, and those are expected to be materially lower in the second half of the year.

Then on the financing cash flows, we repaid 5 million euro term loan during the first half of the year as well as paid a dividend of 2.7 million, and then on top of that, we repaid leases, those totaled 10.5 million all together. On the capital structure, we have a really really strong balance sheet.

Our cash and cash equivalents stood at 3.9 million. We don't have any traditional bank loans in the balance sheet, hence balance is zero.

We have IFRS 16 lease liabilities of 13.2 million euros. These together result in a net debt of 9.3 million euros, and when you compare 9.3 million euros with the rolling 12-month adjusted EBITDA of 17.4, our ratio net debt to adjusted EBITDA is 0.5.

In connection with the repayment of the 5 million euros term loan, we upsized our revolving credit facility from 10 million to 15 million, and this facility is fully unutilized, i.e., we have a strong financial muscle. On the financial targets, these haven't changed since the Capital Markets Day last November.

Our mid-term organic growth target is 4% to 5%, adjusted EBITDA margin target 5%, our cash conversion target 90%, and then dividend policy is to deliver more than 50% of net profit as dividends. To repeat our guidance, guidance is unchanged from Q1.

We expect our adjusted EBITDA in 2026 to be better or materially better than the adjusted EBITDA of 7 million euros in 2025. Now it's time for your questions.

Antti Isokangas

Hello, my name is Antti Isokangas, I'm the interim communications director, and I'm here with your questions. There have been quite a few of them, actually 10, all of them from the same person, someone called Raymond, who types very, very fast.

These are very long and very detailed questions, some of them overlapping. Let's start with the first one.

With quarterly revenue showing very limited growth, how much of the EBITDA improvement is based on permanent productivity gains and better contract margins, and how much comes from timing, seasonal effects, or temporary cost reductions? When should this improvement begin to translate into sustainable free cash flow, earnings per share, and higher shareholder returns?

Mika Stirkkinen

Multiple questions at the same time.

Antti Isokangas

This is only the first one.

Mika Stirkkinen

If I start from the end, which I can now remember. On the cash flow, when you look at last year's EBITDA figures and the cash flow, our cash flow is more taking place in the second half of the year, deriving from the seasonality of net working capital and EBITDA seasonality-wise.

Then there were some other questions on the—

Antti Niitynpää

I can answer also. Was it

Antti Isokangas

so that— Which is the first one. How much of the EBITDA improvement is based on permanent productivity gains is basically the first question.

Antti Niitynpää

I think in Sweden, all of the EBITDA improvements are from efficiency programs. In Finland, of course, the cleaning business has suffered of low add-on sales rates and so on, but in property maintenance and the technical services, the improvements come from efficiency programs and, of course, the higher net sales levels.

Antti Isokangas

Okay. Raymond's next question is even longer and also contains multiple questions.

Luotea describes Smartti as its strategic spearhead and emphasizes the transition from schedule-based services to data-driven, need-based operations. Has Smartti and energy management now moved to the center of Luotea's strategy, replacing the earlier ambition to build Finland's largest cleaning services business?

Cleaning still represents a major part of Luotea's operations and workforce, yet the half-year report provides very little information on how data, automation, and artificial intelligence are being applied to cleaning services. What is Luotea's concrete strategy for data-driven cleaning, and how will it support revenue growth, productivity, and improved margins in its core business?

Antti Niitynpää

Yeah. To be the biggest cleaning company has never been Luotea's strategic goal, first of all.

We want to use data to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction within our customers. Then we want to also use data to accelerate our growth in our basic services.

These are the two key points of the using data in our services. Then

Antti Isokangas

there was a quick question on Smartti, which is not on cleaning.

Antti Niitynpää

Smartti also works like a spearhead services for us to how we can enter to the customer side with Smartti, and then create real value for our customers with Smartti, and then customers start to trust us, and then we can sell more of our basic cleaning and support services and property maintenance and technical services.

Antti Isokangas

Okay. Next question from Raymond.

You state that the turnaround in Sweden continues according to plan. However, the CEO of Luotea Sweden stepped down with immediate effect, while the newly appointed CEO may not start until February 2027.

What caused this abrupt leadership transition, how will you maintain the turnaround momentum during the interim period, and what EBITDA margins should shareholders realistically expect from Sweden in 2027 and 2028?

Antti Niitynpää

We don't publish separately our targets to Sweden, but the reason behind the change in CEO is that we want to accelerate our growth and accelerate our profitability improvement in Sweden. Within the interim period, I have nominated our CFO of Sweden, Saman Khalilian, as acting CEO of Sweden until the Rikard starts.

Saman has worked around our efficiency program all the time during this turnaround program, he's the really on top of those efficiency program in efficiency measures, he will know what to do.

Antti Isokangas

Okay. Raymond's next question largely overlaps with the previous one regarding the cleaning services.

The short version is, do you still consider becoming Finland's largest cleaning business a valid strategic target? If so, what is the timetable, and how will you reverse the current decline in both contract sales and additional sales?

Antti Niitynpää

Our contract sales has not declined. As I said, our contract intake has improved since the beginning of the year.

We want to grow, our strategic target is to grow 4% to 5% yearly, so that's our target, and it concerns the whole facility services in Luotea in Finland and Sweden. We don't have separate targets to be biggest or second biggest in different services.

Antti Isokangas

Okay. Back to Sweden, and this one yet again from Raymond.

Sweden delivered strong net sales growth of 8.7%, improved customer satisfaction, and higher add-on sales, yet adjusted EBITDA remained negative of €0.6 million. What is the concrete timetable for reaching sustainable break-even and a positive EBITDA margin, and what further operational improvements are still required to get there?

Antti Niitynpää

We rely on our plans which has been made earlier, and we execute those plans consistently. Then also we don't publish the date or the month where the EBITDA is permanently at the positive level, but we do everything we can to make the turnaround to that point that our EBITDA is at the positive level.

Antti Isokangas

Okay. Raymond's next question once again centers on the cleaning business, and this is basically the same question once again.

Has the previous cleaning growth ambition been formally abandoned or replaced? If so, when was this strategic change made and why?

Antti Niitynpää

As I said, we have never published that kind of strategy where we want to be the biggest cleaning company. Then our strategic target is to grow 4% to 5% in our businesses, and it concerns also cleaning and all of our services.

Antti Isokangas

Yet again from Raymond. Your strategy identifies data-driven services as a key success factor, using real-time building data for smarter resourcing and faster response.

However, the only concrete technology example you presented is Smartti energy management, while data-driven cleaning is not mentioned. How specifically will Luotea use occupancy, utilization, and other real-time building data in cleaning services, and what measurable impacts do you expect on cleaning productivity, revenue, and EBITDA margin by 2028?

Antti Niitynpää

I say again, our target is for over 5% EBITDA, and, of course, we want to have that kind of profitability level also in cleaning and all of our services. That was a choice for this webcast that we talk about Smartti.

Data-driven cleaning is as strong as Smartti in our strategy, and we want to utilize data-driven cleaning to our customers as fast as possible. We don't publish the specific timetables for ambition levels about that.

We have these strategic targets which Mika told earlier in this presentation, and I come again back to those.

Antti Isokangas

Okay. We have a couple of more questions from Raymond, and at this point, I would like to remind that we also welcome questions from people not called Raymond.

This is about customer or client cases. The Port of Helsinki partnership has continued for more than 10 years and combines property maintenance, technical services, and at the West Terminal, cleaning and assistant services.

How scalable is this full-service model across other major customers, and what concrete cross-selling potential do you see in expanding existing property maintenance contracts into cleaning, technical, and data-driven services?

Antti Niitynpää

It's scalable, and I see really big opportunities in cross-sales in whole Luotea. As I said in Capital Markets Day, only under 6% of our customers buys all our services, and roughly 20% buys at least two services, from those figures, you can understand that there is lots of potential in scaling those services.

Antti Isokangas

Raymond also has a question about Jumbo. The Jumbo case highlights energy savings equivalent to the annual consumption of 190 detached houses, but no concrete financial figures are provided.

Could you quantify the actual energy savings in megawatt-hours and euros, the customer's payback period, Luotea's revenue and EBITDA contribution from the project,

Antti Niitynpää

and

Antti Isokangas

whether this model can be scaled profitably across existing customer base? I believe the last part is the most important part.

Antti Niitynpää

Yes, what was the last?

Antti Isokangas

Can it be scaled?

Antti Niitynpää

It is

Antti Isokangas

scalable.

Mika Stirkkinen

It is scalable, yeah.

Antti Niitynpää

Maybe next time we can publish megawatt-hours and so on, but not today.

Antti Isokangas

Okay. One last question, this is probably to Mika.

What annual free cash flow level does management consider sustainable once the current turnaround and efficiency measures have been completed?

Mika Stirkkinen

It can be derived from our cash conversion targets to be over 90%, and when you look at our low invest capex levels and then when you look at our balance sheet, we don't have any net debt, you can figure out you have all the components basically. We have the published targets: revenue growth target, EBITDA target, and so on and so forth, but we won't go any deeper.

Then, naturally, the last component is the guidance.

Antti Isokangas

Okay. That concludes the questions.

Hope this answered Raymond's questions, and hopefully any other questions you

Antti Niitynpää

other

Antti Isokangas

viewers might have. Yeah.

Antti Niitynpää

Thank you to Raymond for several questions. Thank you to all of you for taking time to join us to our today's webcast, and we appreciate your interest in Luotea and your continued engagement with us.

Our next webcast will take place in October 2026, when we will review the third quarter. We look forward to updating you then.

Thank you all, and have a good day.