Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Before we get into the financials, let me briefly highlight a few key developments from the quarter.

First and foremost, we finalized our strategy for 2027 to 2029. I will come back to that later in this presentation.

We also took an important step in Germany through the acquisition that provides access to an AÜG license, a prerequisite for us to get access to attractive agreements. Continued to see encouraging signs from our commercial activities with more business opportunities, tenders, and a growing sales pipeline.

Also and importantly, AI continues to reshape the labor market and represents a significant opportunity for Ework in more ways than one. AI-related demand increased by 134% over the rolling 12-month period, making it our fastest-growing competence area.

We see more organizations are moving from exploration to implementation, increasing demand for specialized expertise and workforce transformation. Finally, while the market remains cautious overall, we are seeing signs of stabilization.

Norway delivered growth, the decline in Sweden slowed, and we continue to strengthen customer relationships, including the important agreement with Tetra Pak. At the same time, our gross margin reached 4.3%, the highest level in five years.

With that overview, let's look at the quarter in more detail. The most significant development during the quarter was, as mentioned, the expansion of our long-standing partnership with Tetra Pak.

Building on more than a decade of collaboration, Ework has been appointed the exclusive MSP partner for interim consultants across all competency areas in Sweden. The agreement significantly broadens our role and positions Ework as a strategic partner in managing external talent for one of the world's leading industrial companies.

We're also pleased to have renewed and expanded our relationships with several important customers, including Husqvarna, SKF, Ellevio, Malmö stad, Öresundskraft, and Telemark fylkeskommune. These agreements reflect continued trust in Ework's ability to deliver specialized competence through efficient supplier management.

At the same time, we secured new business at Nobia, further broadening our customer base and creating opportunities for future growth. Taken together, these wins demonstrate the strength of our customer relationship, the relevance of our offering, and our ability to create value for organizations.

We look forward to building on these partnerships in the quarters ahead, all the while further strengthening our sales efforts. Regional development was mixed, but with several positive signals.

Norway delivered growth, while the decline in Sweden slowed and was largely concentrated to the private sector. Denmark saw a stronger pipeline, while Finland, Poland, and Slovakia continued to be affected by the previously ended consulting contract.

Manufacturing, public sector, and energy increased their share of business during the quarter, while automotive and consulting remained weaker. Meanwhile, our expansion in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands continues according to plan.

Let's also spend some time on the omnipresent topic of AI, which is becoming a significant growth opportunity for Ework. Demand for AI-related skills is increasing at a fast pace.

This growth accelerated during the Q3, as more organizations move from experimentation to implementation. We also continue to see a rapid expansion of AI talent in our network.

The number of newly registered consultant profiles with AI competence increased by 11% compared with Q2. Today, more than one in six new profiles joining Ework have AI-related skills.

This development is also accelerating. Through our tools, SkillShift Lens and SkillShift Temp, both accessible via our website, as well as expert provider AI and our specialist network, we support customers in securing critical AI capabilities and navigating the fast-changing talent landscape.

Ework is especially well positioned to capture the growing demand for AI competence. Connecting clients with specialist is what we have always done.

Cutting-edge knowledge within the field of AI increasingly sits with specialist who are freelancers or work in niche consultancies. Our access to these specialists via our vast network and our ability to match demands at large clients with a dispersed supply is, and will remain, a real competitive advantage for us.

During the quarter, as I said earlier, we finalized our strategy for 2027 through '29. The strategy builds on the long-term shifts shaping our market and provides a clear direction for the next phase of Ework's development.

The forces shown here reflect some of the most important changes affecting Ework. Firstly, it's clear that in the last few years, we have lost business volumes, whereas margin levels have held or even improved.

With expected effects of AI and automation, however, we do expect to see margin pressure going forward. This means recapturing volumes will be to our resurgence, as will lowering our cost to serve.

AI will change how we deliver faster than it will change what we deliver. We expect that automation will be a keen theme for us in the near term.

That said, though, the impact of AI does not stop there. We see very intriguing opportunities to launch new AI-related and enabled services in the near- to medium-term.

No, I will not tell you what they are. Finally, a key shift that we see is accelerating across our markets is the move into outcome-based delivery and payment models, which in itself is a natural extension effect from the AI tools becoming an increasingly important component in how consultants deliver their services.

We see an opportunity to further develop our services to accommodate this development. Our strategic priorities are set to both adapt Ework to these new circumstances, but also to utilize these forces to realize new business opportunities.

We will develop our offering to allow for multiple service levels, allowing us to serve more varied client preferences, and also smaller organizations. Similarly, we will strengthen our offering within projects or so-called statement of work.

This will be done in combination with strengthening our network selectively. Prioritized skill areas are engineering, cybersecurity, and multiple AI-related fields.

Geographically, we specifically aim to grow our network in Poland, Germany, and Benelux. AI will allow us to both automate core repetitive processes to a greater degree, and to build new revenue opportunities.

Automating the boring and administrative tasks will allow us to invest in value-building activities, such as proactively advising our clients on what talent to source, how, and from where. In short, being a true strategic advisor within the field of talent management.

Combined with the commercial and operational improvements already implemented during 2026, this provides a strong foundation for long-term profitable growth. With that, I will hand over to Johanna to take us through the financial performance for the quarter.

Thank you, Daniel. Then we will move over to Q3 financials, and start with the financial overview.

For the third quarter, we reported a revenue of 2.8 billion versus 3 last year. That represents a decline of about 8%.

This is due to lower consultant volumes in all our markets except for Norway. As Daniel mentioned, Norway grew during the third quarter, and that is driven by telecom and the public sector.

Denmark continues to decline and is working hard on building a new sales pipeline. Poland and Finland were impacted by an ending client contract that we have reported about earlier.

This is the trend that we've seen the last quarters. However, it's really positive to see the stabilization in Sweden, which is our largest market with the highest impact.

It is too early still to talk about a broad market recovery, but we see some positive signs. Gross profit decreased by 7%, but gross margin increased to 4.3%.

We have reported before, and mentioned today, that volume is our top priority, and that might impact the gross margins going forward. However, long client contracts create resilience in gross margins and this effect will take time.

EBIT was roughly in line with last year, and this is due to lower cost and depreciation that partly mitigates the volume drop. We have maintained cost discipline throughout the year, and we've also reported of cost initiatives that will have full year impact from 2027.

Net financial items improved, -4 versus last year's 6.9, and this is due to lower interest and favorable currency effects. EPS grew by 14% during the quarter, and this is due to the higher net profit.

Order intake decreased by some 9%. We saw some increased volumes in Finland, and the largest decline was in Denmark and Poland.

Public and private sector was both down. Automotive grew, tech consulting and life science were weaker.

We could see a pick-up in demand in September, and requests in Q3 was up 12%, which is really positive. We also see a trend in the market that clients tend to sign longer contracts to secure expertise.

Looking at the key drivers for net sales and EBIT. In terms of net sales, the lower consultant volumes are the key drivers.

This is partly offset by higher average rates in the market. It is, as mentioned, our top priority to grow the business volumes.

We are doing sales investments, but it will take some time to see that effect. Also, we've seen more opportunities after the summer and a larger sales pipeline, which is really positive.

EBIT key drivers is also volume, which has the highest negative effect, and that is partly offset by the lower cost and depreciation. With that, I will hand over back to Daniel to sum up.

Thank you. As we conclude, the third quarter developed in line with our expectations.

Activity levels increased after the summer and we're seeing encouraging signs across several markets. At the same time, and somewhat frustratingly, it is still too early to talk about a broader market recovery, and lead times remain long.

During the year, we have strengthened our commercial capacity, increased customer engagement, and built a larger pipeline of opportunities. Our focus is now on converting that activity into new businesses and sustainable growth.

We are also positioned to capture growing demand in areas such as AI, data, and cybersecurity, where we continue to see strong momentum. Finally, during the quarter, we established our strategic direction for the coming three years.

With the strategy in place and an increasingly effective organization, our focus is now on execution. While the market remains difficult to predict, we continue to focus on what we can influence, and on building a stronger, more competitive, and scalable Ework.

With that, we are happy to take your questions.

Should I?

One part is that we have had a long focus on gross margins, and we do have long client contracts. That work has paid off.

We've seen increase, and have for some time, in the gross margin. On top of that, we have had a cost focus, and also had some initiatives to decrease our cost base.

There are the two main drivers, I would say.

Yes. Of course, but as mentioned, we are focusing more on building volumes again, and that might lead to lower gross margins going forward, but the cost discipline will remain.

We will be very careful with investments and the right ones.

Yes. Good morning.

Thank you for the presentation. Just a question on the market position.

As a dominant player in a weaker market, does your scale help you win share or does it make you more exposed when clients cut back on the consultants?

I think what we've seen historically, and this time around for the past few years is no exception, the broker role that Ework has is more subjected to sort of macro trends than pure consultancies. At least that's my take on it.

On the flip side, that should also work in our favor on the way up in sort of a more favorable macro environment.

Yes. Thank you for that.

How do price and pricing discussions with clients look right now? Is that driven by actual price increases, mix or better margins on new contracts just that the sales per consultant rose in Q3?

Do you want to take that one?

I would say it's a mix of everything. We have seen surprisingly increasing average rates, and I assume that is partly based on our mix with more senior competence and expertise, and those prices tend to be more resilient than the general consultants.

A mix of all the things you mentioned.

Yes. Thank you for that.

Just curious on the AI demand you mentioned. What kind of roles and skills are clients asking for, and is it mainly in new AI initiatives or existing roles being adapted?

Yeah. You can actually have a real-time view of how the demand develops on our newly relaunched website in our tool SkillShift Temp.

The latest report is from Q2, but the Q3 one should be quite shortly forthcoming. We can see that the highest demand right now, or in Q2, was for LLM application development.

While demand is increasing for AI agent development, and really specific roles or skills such as retrieval-augmented generation and vector search, which please don't ask me to explain what that is. We have a real-time view of how that sort of demand is developing, and also how the network is developing.

That is, I think, one of the most exciting things about Ework, is that we're one of the few players who can actually do that. We can see both sides at once.

Thus act to sort of inform the network, and also grow the network where it matters most.

Thank you. Just lastly on cost savings, could you clarify the annual cost savings from the restructuring, and just how much of that is visible now in Q3 and how much remains to come through?

We have seen gradual effect of the cost initiatives during this year. The full effect, however, will be seen in 2027, the full year effect, and that is 18 million from the reorganization, and additional 5 from reduction in facilities.

Those are the main items.

Great. Thank you so much.

I can start with the first one and leave to Daniel on the AI. If we compare to last year, we had some shorter assignments and part-time assignments in the consultant assignments.

The reported number of consultants is head count. That's part of the explanation why it deviates from year-to-year.

That can be kind of tricky to follow, of course. Then also we had an increase in prices, that is also explaining the deviation.

Since it's head count, it could depend on how much the consultant is working. Mhm.

Yeah.

In general, we're seeing a trend towards higher average hourly rates, and I think specifically to AI, if you have sort of bleeding-edge specialist knowledge within AI, you can charge a lot per hour or per project for sharing that knowledge. The main effect, I would say, is a shift from sort of a mix of junior and mid-year and senior resources, that is skewing more towards the mid-year and senior resources and less towards the junior.

As an effect of that, hourly rates on average rise.

As Dafina asked as well, you can have a look for yourself, if you go into the website and look at the SkillShift Temp. What we see is a move, on top of what I said to Dafina, away from the more sort of generic and early AI skills like chatbot development and LLM training to more specific roles and sort of next-gen AI skills.

I think that's sort of generic to what we do, and it's one thing coming from the consumer industry that's frustrated me a little bit, that in the consumer industry, you can get really quick results out of commercial changes and a new strategy. Here, the lead times are longer.

You need to sort of identify and cultivate a potential new client. Often times that takes years, and when you get into sort of an agreement situation, it's often a competitive bid situation in the public sector all times.

In the private sector, they tend to sort of go that route, even though they don't have to. It's a sort of a formal process, and that can span a couple of months.

Then eventually when you're awarded the agreement, that usually takes a few months before it comes into effect. Maybe there's a migration of resources, maybe there's not.

If you're starting from zero, then you need to start talking with all the sort of responsible managers in the client, and make them aware of how we work and make them use us as their sort of broker for talent. All of that can take some time, I've learned.

No, I wouldn't say so. Not specifically.

I don't know if you agree, but that's sort of generic to our industry. It's just that If you've been on a downward trajectory, it takes a while to get onto an upward trajectory.

Hopefully once you're on that upward trajectory, it's equally sort of difficult, if you put it that way, to break the positive momentum.

Yes and no. Within sort of existing frame agreements, yes.

The lead times don't really exist in that way because if we're in an agreement, then they can start hiring from us if they need the skill and we can offer it then that's really quick. Outside, yes.

I would say that's accelerating some of the dialogues that we're having, sort of a right to play, to speak, that we can offer those types of competencies.

Oh, this is delicate territory. I'll let Johanna answer that one.

No comments.

No comments.

No, but of course, if this activity continues, which is really positive, of course, it will have a gradual effect, but it's hard to say, and also back to the lead times, how fast that will go.

First off, I wouldn't describe it as a wish list. It's the result of quite a robust process stretching over the lion's share of this year, involving everyone from our back office staff to our board of directors.

That said, I would say that the sort of different activities that's included in our strategy, they're all connected one way or the other. AI, for example, is a double-edged sword in a positive sense that we will see a lot of benefits from the possibilities with automation.

At the same time, it opens up possibilities on the commercial side. When we utilize the automation potential, that will allow us to serve clients in different ways than we do today, and be more open to varying client demands of how we deliver the services, and also reach new types of clients, smaller clients than we have been able to profitably serve in the past.

That in turn allows us to deepen client relationships, and so on. I could spend the rest of the day talking about this, but I think I'll stop there.

On what you should be looking for, I'd say our primary focus is on absolute GP going forward. That is a measurement to keep your eye on, and also the ratio between EBIT or with IFRS 18.

I've understood that that might not be the KPI anymore, but net results the ratio between GP and net results.

I think what they share in characteristics, both Denmark and Norway is that they have a high degree of client concentration. A lot of the revenue sits with a very limited number of accounts.

We are sort of dependent on the performance and the strategy of the clients. It is very clear to me, at least, that in Norway, we've been in a situation with a client that has a strategy that benefits us and that is, generally speaking, booming in their own right.

The situation has been the reverse in Denmark. We will only sort of get out of that dependency on a few selected accounts when we establish a broader client base in both countries, I would say.

We've spent the majority of this year, again, in sort of restructuring, in getting to sort of the results of a cost-saving effort in getting a few quick tactical initiatives in place, and then formulating a longer-term strategy. Now we're done with the thinking, I hope, and we will start moving into execution.

That I'm looking forward to.

Yes. Very much.

Our pleasure.

Thank you.

Thank you

very much.