Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our financial report for April-September 2026. My name is Magnus Söderlind, I'm the CEO, and on my side here I have Peter Schön, our CFO.

Hello, everyone.

Let's dig into the highlight of the quarter. Starting with the market conditions, we perceived still that the market within the construction and industry is recovering, but it's not in a kind of exponential way.

It goes slowly but surely upwards. However, the summer was actually quite slow for many of our companies, but we had a visible pickup in September.

Overall, it was kind of an increase in the quarter, but despite a very tough start of the quarter as such. We talked about it in the previous quarter, and that's also affecting this quarter.

We have still increased cost in many of our companies in terms of raw material, energy, and freight. Also one quite new component with the CBAM that is affecting some of our companies.

It's not cost that is cash out, but we have made reservation for the expected cost in the CBAM area in the coming future. However, we have been able to compensate for the cost increases, both in terms of the CBAM and other costs.

As you can see on the gross margin, we have maintained the current level as such. I don't expect any impact on the gross margin going forward based on this, as we have been able to compensate for the price increases.

Financially, we continue to increase earnings, margins, and returns, and also the earnings per share. The turnover increase for this quarter was 8%, whereas the organic growth adjusted for currency exchange was 0%, and I will come back to that.

The adjusted EBITA was up 9%, and we now have 27 consecutive quarters with improved profits. We also increased the EBITA margin 0.1% units to 11.9%.

We continue to improve our working capital efficiency in combination with profit expansion, we increased our profit over working capital with 2%. It's now 38%, and actually this is an increase from the previous quarter.

If we look at the Q2 last year, it's an improvement of 5% units. The earnings per share adjusted improved to 8.85 compared with 8.30 after dilution.

Overall, I think it was a decent quarter. Acquisition is an integrated part of our business model.

This is five acquisitions we made the last 12 months. We made one acquisition in the Q2 quarter, Hova Skiltar, that is an add-on acquisition to a company within the Safety Technology division named Collinder, and that's part of our signage cluster.

As you can see on the right slide, we continue to acquire highly profitable companies with good returns, this is a company well above 15% profit margin and well above a profit over working capital of 45%. If we look at the fiscal year, this is the second acquisition we have done, and both of those acquisitions has been quite small companies, and both of them are add-on acquisitions.

You shouldn't see this as a sign that we have lowered our ambition in terms of acquisitions going forward. It is more a result that we really focus to make sure we buy high-quality companies within the multiple range we have set, and so the main reason for not having more than those two add-on acquisitions is that we have not been able to close high-quality deals within the multiple range that we have set.

I mentioned initially, we now have 27 consecutive quarters with increased EBITA, and as you can see also the red line here is the EBITA margin is also going upwards, and our ambition and is, of course, to continue this path in the next coming quarters. The net sales, I briefly talked that organically it was a zero.

However, all our divisions had an organic growth, except one of the divisions, the PPE & Utilities, that actually had a decline, and I will come back to that later on in the presentation. Overall, we had a 8% growth in top line, whereas 6% was then acquisition-related growth.

The gross margin remains on a good level. We are now around the 50%.

I communicated earlier that we had done a lot of work, as you can see historically, to increase the gross margin. It's close to 10% units since Q1 2021/2022.

The main reason for this improvement is that we have phased out low-margin businesses in terms of low-margin products, low-margin customers. The majority of that work has been concluded.

Acquisition has been a minor kind of contributed to the improved gross margin, as even if all the companies we acquired had a profit margin above 15%, per definition that doesn't imply that they actually have a gross margin above 50% and by that helped to increase the average margin on the group level. We are quite happy with remaining this 50% gross margin level on a group level, despite all the cost increases that our companies has been facing during the last quarters.

If we look at the kind of key target levels, we continue to improve in all these areas. The profit to working capital, as mentioned, is heading for the 45, even if I'd hoped and expected the path to be a little bit more higher speed than we have.

However, the rolling 3 figure is higher than this rolling 12 figure, we have a positive momentum in the improvement of profit to working capital. The EBIT in absolute terms to 500 million.

We are now just around 430 million rolling 12, we continue to aim for the 500. Also the EBIT margin is improving.

We are still behind the 10%, but we are moving towards that target as well. We haven't changed anything in the targets.

I will then hand over to Peter talking about the earnings per share and some other topics.

Thank you, Magnus. If we look at the earnings per share, it's been a steady improvement, and also in this quarter.

Quite a large improvement, even though we were a bit helped by lower financial costs, according to plan more or less. When it comes to inventory level, we do have some organic increase in inventory levels.

It's around 50 million SEK, and it's mainly within companies that are starting to see a market upturn. Trying to make sure that they can take advantage of a stronger market going forward.

As you see, the ITO still are increasing, so that's a good sign as well. The cash flow from operating activity was yeah, slightly above plan, it was a very good cash flow.

Next quarter will, however, be a bit slower, partly due to the increase in inventory and also some other supplier payments that we have to do, a bit slower cash flow for the next quarter. On the long term, it's a good cash flow situation.

The net debt increased, mainly due to the dividend, of course, and yeah, we had some small acquisitions in the quarter as well, it's now 1.6 billion. Net debt/EBITDA is yeah, 2.6, it's yeah, steady around that level.

Important to say, the acquisition target remains intact here as well, even though we haven't made any acquisitions this quarter. It's been more like Magnus said, it's a timing question.

Yeah. Good.

Back to Magnus.

We have since October last year four divisions, and if you look into the figures, you can see that three of those divisions have some common themes: they are all increasing revenue, they are including organically, and they are increasing profit, profit margin, and and returns. I would say we have three divisions now that performs on a good level, and then we have one division that has some strugglings.

If we then start with the Core Solutions divisions, we have a revenue increase of 5% here, and and six out of eight is then improving revenues. We can see, if we look at the different geographies they're operating, the Nordic region is typically picking up in terms of revenue, whereas some of our companies still has a kind of sluggish market in the UK.

As an example, Spraylat that is very exposed to the construction sector is is is affected of the slow construction market in in the UK currently. Overall, on on the kind of top, we have good kind of revenue increase here with the 5%.

The profit is improving even more: we have 4% sorry, 16% profit growth in in this division. Here Essve is a very strong contributor to profit growth.

Essve has starts to feel a bit stronger market, but also the activities with improving the the margins, phasing out low margins customers and products, and also improve the efficiency in the organization has contributed to this profit improvement that we have had in Essve during the quarter. The EBITA margin continued to increase, we're now close to 16% compared with 14.2% comparable period.

Here in in the in the in the division, we have six companies that actually have a EBIT margin above the group level as such. If you look on the on kind of lower end on the slide, you can see here that we have had a very good steady EBITA development rolling 12 in this division.

The margin has increased over time, and also the revenue has increased. The revenue increase historically has been mainly driven by acquisitions, but we we hope and expect we should see some better organic growth in in the next coming quarter, based on what I said about the the the underlying market development.

If we look at the Safety Technology division, once again, they also increased revenue, including organically, and they increased profit, profit margin, and and returns. Revenue increased 25% in this division, is driven primarily by acquisitions.

The organic performance is a little bit mixed in the division as such, but the Fire Safety, the signage cluster, and the Safety Equipment had double-digit growth in this quarter. And 10 out of 12 companies had revenue growth, overall there is a kind of pick up here in in in the companies in the Safety Technology division.

The EBIT EBITA increased 38%, so that's quite a significant high number, and seven out of nine had a double-digit profit growth in this quarter, and all the three latest acquisitions we made in this division is is performing according to expectation or even above expectation, so that's positive. Cresto is the biggest organic profit growth contributor in this quarter, so that's organic driven.

Also here we have a margin increase, close to 15%, up from the 13.2% with a comparable quarter. As already said, the Collinder, a subsidiary within the signage cluster here, acquired Hova Skiltar in the quarter during the quarter.

On the lower hand here, you can see we had a steady revenue improvement here, mainly driven through acquisitions, and that has also be a big contributor to the good profit development you can see on the very right side here of the EBITA. This is a rolling 12 figure number.

The EBITA margin has increased from 12% now to the the close to 15% over a period of two years, mainly driven also through acquisitions. I would say a very strong performance.

If we look at the Machinery & Equipment, that division has been a disappointment during the last two quarters. I have said that my expectation is that this division should start to pick up, and that is something that we can see in this quarter.

This is also a division that improved the revenue, including organic growth and and profit, profit margin, and returns, even if it's coming from a a lower level. Here we have a revenue increase of 13%, and that is a recovery from a weak first quarter.

Here the sheet metal, the heat and welding, and measuring equipment had some good growth in the quarter, but the building equipment segment is here not doing having an organic growth, and that is, I would say, mainly a reflection of of the on the construction market as such. The EBITA increased 44% here, and and all companies are now profitable in this division.

This is a division that have equipment and machineries, so that's investment products. This division has faced the kind of slow investments kind of path at their customers, and we see some signals now that they start to invest, start to willing to make investments, and that has now turned all the companies in this division profitable.

We had some companies here actually showing minus results for some quarters, so that's very positive that they're all on the right side now, sort of. The EBITA margin has increased to 11.3%, and here the majority of the companies in this division is still below the group margin level, but my there are opportunities and expectation that that margin should improve over time in in the next coming quarters.

You can see the development in this division during the last quarters on on the lower end here with the graphs. The revenue has kind of been quite steady, there are and no acquisition made in this division in in the last fiscal year, a rolling 12 months, and and we had had a declining EBITA margin and also an EBITA trend, and my expectation is, as said before, that this should kind of level out now, and and we should see a pick up in this division in the next coming quarters.

We have three divisions performing, making improvement in in in all our KPIs during this quarter, but the PPE & Utilities is is kind of still lacking, with lower earnings, lower margins, and lower returns, this is actually 180° compared with other divisions. Here we had a decline in revenue, not a big number, 6 million, but if you look and compensate for the divestment we made, it's flat.

Luna and Tengtools is is is held back by weak demand, and particularly in Norway. We perceive, generally on on on a high level as said initially, the interest rates has gone up in Norway, and we see a little bit higher, the customer is a little bit less willing to to buy things currently in in many in the normal Norway customer base, and and that has partly reflected Luna and Tengtools.

When we sold off Skydda in in summertime last year, we temporarily kept the the the stock in our warehouse with within the group, at our company Logistic Partner. The the acquirer of Skydda then for a period had stock in in our kind of facilities as well in in their facilities, and when those was merged, they have moved all the stock to their facilities now, they they had overstock in some products, they have made some sell-off and reduced stock.

As a result of this, that has been affecting some of our PPE sales, personal protection equipment sales. On the other hand, the PPE product companies has recruited new direct customers that long term will be beneficial for for our companies within that space.

We had some temporary effect of this reduction of of warehouses at the acquirer of Skydda that we don't expect any future effect of that in the next coming quarters. The EBIT was here down from 30 million to 18 million, but still most of our PPE product companies continues to perform well.

We also had, going back to this transaction, we had some restructuring costs in in the Skydda business, is now relabeled BB Safety, of 7 million in this quarter. That is some costs we will have in in in the next coming quarter as well, some restructuring costs, but after that we should be have a kind of concluded on on that restructuring as well.

The EBITA margin was down from 8.6 to 5.2. Luna is still profitable, but it's a low single-digit margin here we are talking about.

The majority of division companies are at or above the group level in terms of margins, here of course Luna is a big portion revenue-wise on the group level, and that is then reflected in in in the performance level on on on the division. As you can see on on the lower end here, we have had a steady revenue going down.

It's mainly due to phase out of low-margin businesses, and that has kept up the EBITA margin despite this rapid decrease in revenue. We had had an EBITA going down here, rolling 12.

This is not a quick fix, I said it before. We have some challenges within this division.

We are working on that on a continuous basis, but you shouldn't expect any rapid kind of change in in this division in the next coming quarter. It we will have some improvement long term, we will see some improvements over time, but once again, it it will will take some quarters to to have this division on a on a high level.

Overall, we continue to to aim for the 500, 10, and 45 targets. The underlying market is still uncertain, unpredictable, even if we see some good kind of indications.

My expectation is, as I said earlier, that we should see a slow pick up in our underlying markets, but we don't expect any rapid recovery here. I talked about the increased cost that we had, and and as as it looks now, we are able to compensate for that, so that shouldn't have any any negative effect on on the margin going forward.

We will continue to do what we've always been doing: focus on profit expansion over revenue growth. We continue to allocate capital based on our capital capital allocation model that we call focus model.

It's really company by company approach, dependent on on where we would like to allocate growth capital. We continue to sort support our companies with our BBB toolbox.

One very important and and kind of focused theme we have now is around AI, we have resources and knowledge available for our companies to to drive AI activities across the group. We, I would say, had made a lot of progress in many of our companies on that topic: improving efficiency, but also enhance our product offerings to to our customers using AI as a tool to to kind of change the way we're operating things.

That's one very important topic for the group going forward as well. We will continue to acquire companies.

We talked about it before, we're focused to acquire companies with a profit margin above 15%, and of course a profit to working capital of 45%, and and companies having a leading position in in a in a growth niche. We also have some current themes: except for the AI theme I mentioned earlier, we we continue to work on on improving the ITO, the inventory turnover rate, to get back to the pre-corona level that was 2.5 in ITO.

We continue to focus on the profit expansion. Gross margin is on a healthy level, but it's a lot of work required to keep up that, both on on the kind of keep up the the price levels towards customers, but also to work on the supplier base.

That is a theme that is is very important now, also based on the on the price increases that we are facing based on the things that is happening in the market mentioned before. Of course, we we aim to capitalize on on the now hopefully stronger underlying market that we are facing in in the in the in the next coming quarters.

Overall, we have now three divisions that is performing on a very good level, I think. They are improving in in all the kind of dimensions, and we have one division, the PPE & Utilities, that is still struggling.

We have a lot of activities going there to improve the performance on the divisions, but as I said before, it's not a quick quick fix, but you should expect over time some improvements in that division as well. With that said, we hand over to some Q&A.

Hi. Good morning, Magnus and Peter.

Thanks for taking my questions. If we start off on the sort of organic growth, you've said that we will see some price increases here in the last couple of quarters.

How much did that affect the organic growth here in this quarter?

I don't have that number, but it's a few percent units. It's not kind of a big number.

Okay. Then volumes are down by roughly the same amount then?

Yeah.

Yep. Okay.

That's clear. Sort of on the price hikes going forward, is that still a few percent, or in terms of organic growth, or should we expect sort of a more price-driven growth going ahead?

If you look at our portfolio, we have different companies having different type of ability to change prices. I would say the majority of our companies is able to adjust prices as immediately as they quote new offerings.

Some companies have windows where they can increase prices, and some of them even have only two times per year they can increase or change the prices. It's not kind of an immediate effect.

You will have some companies that have some price increases that will be effected in the next coming month, and some of the companies having immediate effect as of last month. With that said, I don't have an exact number of this, but yes, you could expect maybe some percent units price effect in the next coming quarter as well, as an effect of price adjustments.

Yep, okay. That's very clear.

On the sort of inventory dynamic in PPE that you mentioned of the acquired inventory, are you able to quantify this sort of negative effect in the quarter in terms of growth?

Could you rephrase that? I'm not sure I followed.

You mentioned in the report and you also mentioned here during the call that sales from your PPE companies have temporarily

been

held back by the integration of Skydda. Are you sort of able to quantify this effect a bit more?

No.

No, we don't get that detail. As said, it's a result of merging two inventory locations and to kind of sort out what is the effect of a sell-off of overstock and underlying market, it's even impossible for the company who acquired Skydda to sort out.

Sorry, we don't have that information.

Yep. Okay.

One final one from me here. You flagged some restructuring costs here in the remaining part of Skydda.

Are we looking for sort of similar levels in the coming quarters as seen here in this quarter, i.e. 7 7 million roughly?

I think the cost is mainly related to the discontinuing of one of the brands that Skydda had at Bauhaus in Germany, it's a lot of inventory write-offs. I think we expect that we still have one quarter left of that job, to say, and roughly the same amount.

I don't think any higher, yeah. One more quarter, I think.

Yep. That's very clear, and that's all for me.

Thanks a lot.

Yep, thanks.

Good morning, Magnus and Peter. Hope you can hear me.

Yes, good morning. Good

morning.

Good morning. If we start off with demand, you mentioned a visible pickup in September and around 50 million of organic inventory build.

How much of that inventory is backed by firm orders, and how much reflects an expected recovery from your side?

Normally, the companies that have increased the inventories, they don't have firm orders in that sense. They have not next-day delivery, but very short times between order and delivery, it's more an expectation going forward.

Essve is one of those companies, for example.

I understand. What gives you then confidence that September was more than a catch-up after a slow summer?

If we talk about September, it's the revenue figures that picked up.

Yeah. The revenue picked up at later stage of September, September was fairly strong.

Yeah.

Perfect. Thank you.

That's good to hear. Also looking at then the margins, very very solid execution on the gross margin per se, but you also said that most of the work to exit low-margin business is now complete.

Are you comfortable with gross margin around 50% going forward, and what are the main drivers of further margin improvements from here? Is it acquisition-made or yeah?

If we talk profit margin, acquisition will continue to be a driver for improving the profit margin over time, as we only acquire companies above 15% margins. Then I also expect a profit margin increase organically as the volume starts to pick up.

As said, we have now a much higher gross margin level in most of our companies, and we're also more efficient in terms of what type of cost base we have. We don't need to rebuild that cost base when the volume picks up to the level it was before.

That will also be an enhancement of the profit margin going forward. In terms of the gross margin then, you shouldn't expect, as said before, that future acquisitions will help to improve that margin, and also organically you shouldn't expect a kind of a gross margin improvement over time.

That's kind of the frame that we can give.

Perfect. That's very clear.

On the M&A side here, obviously you have not changed your acquisition ambition, but have you been able to close enough high-quality deals within your valuation range? Is that the main reason behind the slow development for the M&A pace?

Yes, I would say so. That's the main reason.

I think it's very important, running the business model that we're doing, to not acquire companies [laughs] for the sake. You need to make sure that you acquire high-quality company, you don't overpay.

That's kind of a criteria that you have to have to have this model to run long term. We had a target to acquire 50 to 80 million in profit per annum, but I'm not willing to do that at any cost.

I'm very occupied with maintaining to the acquisitions criteria that we have set, to make sure we acquire quality within the valuation range that we have set. There have been some, I would say, less high-quality cases available in the market during the last quarters.

I recognize this pattern, since this has been kind of a slow economy for many many quarters now, I think many of those high-quality company owners wait to sell up until the market start to pick up. I perceive that it's fewer high-quality cases in the market, and the few that has been, we have lost many of those in the bidding, because we have perceived that the valuation has been higher than in the range where we're willing to pay.

Would you say that there is a risk that the same valuation discipline means a lower acquisition pace for a longer period?

I've been in this industry for 20 years. I have experience this type of pattern historically as well.

I'm quite confident, when the market starts to pick up, the deal flow will be significantly better than we have today. I'm still confident that we over time, maybe not this fiscal year, but over time we will be able to deliver on the target level we have set in terms of acquisitions.

Perfect. That's clear.

Given at least my feeling is that you have been quite positive on the gradual improvement of demand and potential pickup, and also we're likely to see some price increases also affecting top line and earnings growth the coming quarters, you think that the organic growth story and pricing could potentially offset a potentially slower M&A agenda in the near term?

We've had an organic decline for many quarters. Some of this was by purpose, facing out low-margin businesses.

I perceive that we are in a very good shape now to leverage a top-line improvement here in our companies. For example, I mentioned Essve, that is a great profit contributor in this quarter, profit increase contributor as well as profit contributor, and they don't have had a very strong market, but still they are performing very very well.

When we get bigger volumes, we will have a very good bottom-line effect of that. That could actually compensate for a slower acquisition path.

Perfect. Sounds very interesting.

Thank you so much, Magnus and Peter. That was all my questions for now.

Thank you. Thank you.

We have received one written question only, and it was about the 7 million restructuring costs that we I think covered here in the questions as well. The 7 million restructuring in the Skydda business is a discontinuing of one of the Skydda brands that we now don't own anymore within the Bauhaus chain in Germany.

It's inventory write-offs, you can say, it's not a cash-out restructuring. Good.

Okay. With that said, if we don't have any further questions, thank you very much for listening, and looking forward to present the Q3 quarter here.

When is that? That is in

In February.

February. Thank you very much.