Indutrade AB

STO:INDT

Earnings Call Analysis

Stable Demand, Acquisition Growth Amid Challenges

Despite a challenging Q1 marked by fewer working days and strong prior-year references, demand remained stable with an organic order intake decline of 3% and total sales decline of 4%. The EBITA margin fell to 13.3% from 15.2%. The company completed 7 acquisitions, contributing SEK 775 million in annual sales. Optimism persists for the coming quarters due to a solid order backlog and acquisition pace. The team anticipates improved profitability and organic sales in Q2, driven by favorable macroeconomic factors and strategic cost management.

Stable Demand in a Challenging Quarter

The first quarter of 2024 presented a challenging environment for the company, primarily due to a strong comparative quarter in 2023, seasonal effects such as Easter, and headwinds in specific segments. Despite these challenges, the company maintained stable demand, with overall order intake growth remaining flat and organic order intake down by 3%. Sales decreased by 4%, and organic sales fell by 6%. The company successfully completed five acquisitions in Q1, with a total of seven for the year so far, highlighting an inflow of promising acquisition opportunities.

Financial Performance Overview

In terms of financial performance, total growth for orders and sales were flat and declined by 4%, respectively. The decrease in sales was attributed to strong references and fewer working days. The positive aspect is that the book-to-bill ratio remained above 1 in all business areas, with orders being 4% higher than sales in the quarter. Gross margin improved to 35% from last year's 34.6%. However, the EBITA margin dropped to 13.3% from 15.2% last year, driven by lower organic sales and slightly higher expenses.

Impacts on Profitability

The company's EBITA decreased by 16% in the quarter, and EPS dropped by 22%. Return on capital employed declined but remained at a solid 20%. Operational cash flow was seasonally weaker, amounting to SEK 487 million, down from last year, mainly due to lower earnings. Net debt to EBITDA was stable at 1.5, compared to 1.8 last year. The decline in cash flow was driven by lower results, although inventory levels remained stable.

Sector Performance and Outlook

The life science sector witnessed 1% organic growth in order intake, showing some signs of a pickup. However, the single-use segment within life sciences saw a significant decline in sales, which was partially attributed to stock build-ups by customers. The company expects significant improvements in this segment later in the year. The Process, Energy & Water business area grew organically, driven by robust demand in the process industry and energy segments, particularly in the Nordic region. Conversely, the Infrastructure & Construction segments faced challenges due to weaker markets and divestitures.

Acquisition and Organizational Strategy

The company made seven acquisitions in 2024, adding SEK 775 million in annual sales. The management has strengthened acquisition resources and expects positive impacts from these moves. The new group structure from eight to five business areas aims to fuel long-term growth. This reorganization is designed to be more market-driven and outside-in focused, grouping companies into 30 relevant segments to drive positive acquisition activity and growth. Despite this restructuring, the individual company remains central to the strategy.

Geographical Performance

In terms of geographical performance, the Nordic region showed relatively stronger market conditions compared to Central Europe. Norway, in particular, performed well, driven by the energy segment. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland showed varied performance, with life science strong in Sweden but weakness in the construction sector across these countries. Central Europe faced weaker demand, particularly in the single-use life sciences sector, while North America experienced stronger business conditions.

Future Outlook and Margin Management

Looking ahead, the company anticipates a positive impact in Q2 from the Easter effect and more working days. Despite the weak Q1 profitability, the company plans to improve cost management. Organic sales growth projections remain cautious due to tough comparisons, but the improved order backlog and acquisition pace bring optimism for future earnings. The management emphasized the importance of pricing strategies to manage cost inflation and continue driving growth in key sectors like life sciences and process energy.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Welcome to the Indutrade Q1 Presentation for 2024. [Operator Instructions]Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Bo Annvik; and CFO, Patrik Johnson. Please go ahead.

[Bo Annvik, executive]

Welcome, and good morning on our behalf as well.We will directly go into some of the overall highlights, as usual. And we have -- we gave this quarterly report the headline: stable demand in a challenging quarter. And with challenging, we refer to -- that Q1 in 2023 was a very strong quarter and is now a difficult reference. We have some Easter effect and also some headwind in certain segments. And all of this, I will obviously elaborate more on.But back to the highlights and the comments. So there was a stable order intake, growth of plus/minus 0% in total, whereof minus 3% organically. And to comment some of the sectors and segments, we saw good demand in the medtech area, pharmaceutical area and also in terms of energy and the process industry.In terms of sales, we were down 4% and organically minus 6%. And again, this was mainly due to strong references and fewer working days. This led to an EBITA margin of 13.3%; not a level where we want to be, but again, I will talk a bit more about this later on here. The inventory was -- inventory level was quite stable from Q4 2023, so sequentially flat.And a very good acquisition pace; 5 acquisitions completed in quarter 1 and 7 so far in the year here. And I would say that the inflow of interesting companies to acquire is strong.But I'm sure many of you are keen to understand more about the market perspective. And on this slide here, you see both order intake and sales next to each other. And the bars refer to the absolute numbers and the yellow line is the growth line organically. And you can see now in terms of the bars there that we have had a growing order intake and a fairly good order intake in Q4 last year and Q1 of this year in relation to sales, which has been a little bit weaker there. And hence, we have built some order book. But I would say continued aggregated stable high demand and order intake, as I said, in line with previous year and Q4 '23.And just to give some context to '23, order intake at that point in quarter 1 was, in total, up 14% and organically plus 3%. And as usual for Indutrade, we have seen variation between companies, segments and countries. And we have had a positive book-to-bill now 2 quarters in a row where orders now were 4% higher than sales. So just to take the numbers, plus/minus 0% in total, minus 3% organically, plus 3% from acquisitions, minus 1% from divestments and plus 1% related to currency.And talking a bit about sectors and segments. As I said, companies with customers in the pharmaceutical production had the strongest order intake, but demand was also good within the process industry and the energy segment. As many of you know, we have a cluster of companies linked to the Novo Nordisk capacity increases. And that's still obviously ongoing to a very large extent, but the projects are large and complex, and there are some delays being experienced there. So I would say that we weren't able really to invoice and ship to the extent which we planned some months ago.In general -- I've said this many times before, in general, the green transformation is still driving a lot of investments and also business activity in general, which is positive for a large part of our companies, not least the Process, Energy & Water business area. The organic order intake in Infrastructure & Construction was still weak and has been weak now for some quarters, predominantly in the construction area. This quarter, we have also experienced a bit weaker demand from the Engineering segment.If we then turn into sales. Again, strong references, and it was even stronger on the sales side than the order intake side. Q1 2023 sales increased 26% in total and plus 13% organically. So it is really difficult comparisons here. And we came in this quarter, minus 4% in total and minus 6% organically, plus 3% from acquisitions, minus 1% from divestments and currency was -- the impact from currency was basically flat. And this time, only 1 of our 5 business areas were able to grow organically, and that was Process, Energy & Water. And again, based on -- to a large extent, I would say, the green transformation and predominantly the Nordic region.Life Science had very strong references, a lot of all-time highs in our companies in terms of sales last year. And again, as I said, a little bit of delays linked to the Novo Nordisk potential invoicing, shipping and also lower activity in terms of single-use in the pharma production. We had a great business linked to that a year ago and now it's dramatically lower and part of that can be explained by [Technical Difficulty]. And again, a continued challenging market situation for the Infrastructure & Construction area.If we look at sales more in a market perspective, what markets, countries we sell into, you see that we have divided this in a Nordic cluster, something we call Rest of Europe and then Rest of the world.And we are, since several quarters back, stronger or we are experiencing a stronger market situation in the Nordics versus the more Central European countries. And within the Nordics, it's actually this quarter been Norway, which has been the best market. And in Norway, I would say that the Energy segment stands out positively. And otherwise, it's a rather okay situation overall. Otherwise, Sweden, Denmark, Finland was more flattish. Obviously, differences between sectors in these countries. In Sweden, we have had a good life science situation, but the weak construction sector, the rest has been more flattish in Denmark. It's been quite okay in terms of Process, Energy & Water. Some of our companies there have built new business in Iceland, where we really haven't been strongly present before, which has been positive. And as I said, Denmark would probably have been a little bit stronger with an arrow up if there had been more invoicing linked to this Novo Nordisk cluster. In Finland, we also see a weaker construction area, also a slightly weaker Engineering segment. And obviously, there has been a strike, as you all know, in Finland this quarter, and that has also had some impact there.And if we turn to the Rest of Europe, it is somewhat weaker in the Benelux area in Germany, we see weaker single-use invoicing and that's sort of driving the arrows down; otherwise fairly flattish situations in the U.K., energy defense or positive construction weaker in Switzerland and to some extent, Austria, we have also seen a weaker situation in the Construction segment, also Life Science and Process, Energy & Water. And we are not really present in the other sectors in Switzerland or Austria.We're fairly relatively small in North America and Asia. So large individual orders can have some impact. But in general, the business climate is stronger in North America, and that's why the arrow is up there and Asia, prominently China, a bit of a weaker business situation.If we then turn to our financial performance in terms of EBITA, obviously, the organic sales development is the main driver for the EBITA decline. Again, the strong references and the Easter effect had impact there. In absolute terms, our EBITA came in at SEK 1.1 billion, a decrease of 16% and 19% organically and plus 3% from acquisitions, 0% from divestments and 0% linked to currency. It was actually comforting to see that our gross margin was improving in this quarter. It's actually been our best gross margin level since Q4 '21. So good work in terms of that. However, we also experienced higher expense levels. And here, we are not equally proud. And I could just say that cost management will be important going forward. I think we were a little bit too much on our heels versus on our toes in this quarter linked to the cost side.All of you basically know that from the beginning of the year, we introduced a new group structure. We went from 8 business areas to 5 international business areas. And the intention with this is basically to fuel growth medium-term, long-term, not any expected short-term impact. And the organization is obviously launched and implemented, and the structure is based on being more outside-in market-driven in terms of these new sectors and all the sectors are then divided into approximately 30 segments. We have definitely still kept the individual company at the core of Indutrade.So we are more building a -- you can say, a support and development structure around the companies and the companies are now grouped into more relevant segments where they can learn from each other and gain knowledge from each other in a better way. We also think that this can and should drive positive acquisition activity. We can more clearly see now where we potentially have, what we call, white spot areas in these 30 segments and build acquisition plans in a structured way linked to that. I also think this structure provides more clarity about the Indutrade in an external perspective. It's intuitively more easy, I would say, to understand what we are all about and in what sectors where we are present.So if we then turn into the performance in the 5 different business areas, I would say that all of them were obviously impacted by fewer working days and strong references, but in particular, the Life Science area. They had an extremely strong quarter 1 last year and not least then linked to this single-use area. Infrastructure & Construction continues to have a challenging market situation. And in this business area, total sales were also affected negatively by the divestment of the Dutch company, QbiQ, which we made late last year, and that had an impact of minus 8%. And this is not new. There has been headwind in the construction sector for some quarters now. And I would also say that the winter this quarter over the quarter, first quarter of this year in the Nordics have been quite challenging in terms of construction work.The weaker general engineering and also construction markets had impact in Industrial & Engineering and also Technology & Systems Solutions more broadly and I would say, more evidently this quarter than in 2023. But Process, Energy & Water managed to grow organically and driven mainly by the process industry and the energy segments in the Nordic area.And if we look at the EBITA in a business area perspective, all areas were impacted by the weak organic sales development and EBITA margin declined for all business areas, but only very marginally for Process, Energy & Water. Life Science, as discussed before, had the most challenging references and the lower organic sales for companies selling to the pharma production, single-use had a really stronger impact on the margin here. Good pricing work and impacting the gross margin positively. And again, it came in at 35% versus 34.6% a year ago. So a strong level here. But the margin -- the EBITA margin was reduced or dampened by our increased expense level. And we have obviously experienced cost inflation in general and this needs to be managed. And I'm not completely satisfied with our performance here this quarter.If we then leave the financials and the business areas and turn to acquisitions, a more happy phase, happy situation. I would say a really good start in 2024. And we have now been able to acquire 7 well-managed successful companies. And if we add their total sales annually, it adds up to SEK 775 million and 4 out of 5 business areas have been engaged in acquisitions. And we have a number of projects right now in different phases ongoing, which is positive for coming quarters. And as we have said before, we have generally strengthened our acquisition resources since some quarters now, and we have built also some professional resource in the Northern Italy and hope to see positive effects of that going forward. Also the general pipeline remains strong, and the inflow of new companies is positive. So all in all, I'm quite optimistic that 2024 will be a good acquisition year.On this slide here, you can see our performance in terms of number of companies acquired and also the quarterly financial effects from acquisitions, how much -- basically, how much EBITA we have added in a single quarter here. And in the slide towards the right there, you see that we have added around SEK 30 million in quarter 1, and that's in relation to the previous years here at fairly low level. We have been more around [ 60, 70 ] or even above that, some quarters. So we didn't have effects from previous quarters into this first quarter to a very large extent now. And the acquisitions we have made this quarter haven't really added enough yet. So in this perspective, quarter 2 will have a better effect, more effect. But you know that our goal is to really acquire around 20 companies per year. And I would say that we are at that pace this year now. And in general, it's wise to basically follow up our acquisition progress over a longer period of time since it can shift between quarters quite significantly.By that, I will leave the word over to Patrik to elaborate a little bit more about the financial performance.

[Patrik Johnson, executive]

Yes. Thank you, Bo, and summarizing a little bit of the financial performance then and maybe repeating a little bit important key points.Total growth for orders and sales were 0% and minus 4%, respectively, in the quarter. And as Bo already talked about on the organic side, strong references and day effects -- fewer working days had a negative impact on the development. And also on the acquisition side, the addition on -- from acquisitions were relatively low compared to previous quarters as the new acquisitions have not really started to give effect. So slightly lower than we are used to, but it will increase during the coming quarters.Positive is that book-to-bill was above 1 in all business areas and also then aggregated, of course, 4% higher orders than sales in the quarter. Continued good pricing work gave this higher gross margin, as we also mentioned then 35% versus 34.6% last year. EBITA was down 16% in the quarter, driven by the lower organic sales, I would say, and slightly higher expenses. EBITA margin, 13.3% versus 15.2% last year, and Q1 is -- has historically been a seasonally low margin quarter. So the 15.2% last year really stands out, I must say then.And looking in detail in the results a little bit more, we had some positive earn-out revaluations in the quarter as we sometimes have. But then they were basically offset then by some other negative one-offs, for instance, connected to the divestment Bo mentioned. So net, there are no sort of one-off effects in the result, I would say. Finance net, up 17% versus last year because of the higher interest rates. Tax costs decreased with 23%, so basically in line with the results. The underlying tax rate is also then basically in line with last year. EPS decreased with 22% in the quarter, and I will elaborate on the next slide a little bit more on that. Return on capital employed declined, but is still on a good level of 20%, in line with our target. Cash flow -- operational cash seasonally weaker in Q1 and amounted to SEK 487 million, which is lower than last year, also that's affected mainly by the lower earnings. Net debt to EBITDA was stable on a relatively low level, 1.5 versus 1.8 last year.So moving on and looking at the cash flow. And as I said then, it is also clear from this chart and Q1 is a seasonally low quarter. But it was also then down versus previous years and amounted to SEK 487 million. And the decrease is driven totally by the lower result. Working capital movements were actually more favorable this quarter than last year. Inventories more specifically, they were sequentially stable from end of last year. Of course, a bit of headwind when the organic sales has a sort of a slow development. But our companies are working hard to get the inventories further down. And then maybe also important to note that Q1 is normally a quarter where working capital is increasing slightly. And then that's part of the reason why cash flow is normally seasonally a bit low in Q1.So moving on to looking -- to look at the earnings per share development in a trend perspective and EPS amounted to SEK 1.61 in this quarter then compared to SEK 2.06 per share in Q1 last year. And this was mainly driven by the lower operational results, but also then, of course, the increased finance cost also impacted this in a negative way as well. Looking at the more longer-term perspective, the 3-year and the 5-year growth is 16% and 14%, respectively.And ending then with the debt situation. To summarize, we still have a strong financial position. The interest-bearing net debt decreased versus last year and was around SEK 8.5 billion versus SEK 9.4 billion last year. And the reduction there comes mainly from the very strong cash flow we had last year. Then the lower -- seasonally lower Q1 cash flow then in combination with the increased acquisition pace made the debt move up sequentially slightly. But in the net debt ratios, they are still stable and low from a historical perspective. Net debt to equity 55% versus 69%, and net debt to EBITDA, as I mentioned before, 1.5x versus 1.8x last year. And if you exclude the earn-outs, it's 1.4x versus 1.6x last year.So again, in conclusion, despite increasing our acquisition pace, the financial position is strong.So then, I leave back over to you, Bo, to summarize.

[Bo Annvik, executive]

Thank you, Patrik.So the key takeaways from this presentation here should be that there has been stable demand in a challenging quarter and a positive book-to-bill 2 quarters in a row now. We have a portfolio of companies in different situations and companies experiencing better market situations. They obviously continue to pursue growth initiatives while companies with more declining order intake are actively working on defending their margins.There is still some uncertainty in terms of the macroeconomic situation. However, it seems like we are coming closer and closer to reduced interest rates, but there is also geopolitical risks, which provide uncertainty. And we also faced strong references, particularly now in quarter 2, in quarter 3 and 4, they will be more reasonable.However, the slightly improved order backlog and the good acquisition pace contribute to some optimism about the earnings trend in the coming quarters. Seven acquisitions in 2024 with combined annual sales of SEK 775 million, and we have established and implemented a new group structure for future growth.I would say towards the end here that we are not happy with the Q1 profitability, and we will work towards improving this level going forward.By that, we end the presentation -- the formal presentation and leave the word back to the facilitator.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Zino Engdalen Ricciuti from Handelsbanken.

[Zino Engdalen Ricciuti, analyst]

Just to start off there on the margins. As you said, there are strong comps and maybe a bit higher cost than you had wanted. But would you then -- would you say that it's -- given the volumes that you have that the EBITA margins are kind of on a normalized level for Q1? Or is there more -- would there be more to -- that you could trim away on the cost side in a material way, I should say?

[Bo Annvik, executive]

I would say that there is -- should be more to do on the cost side. But I can't give you like a number or what type of impact that should have, but there is more to do there.

[Patrik Johnson, executive]

And input is also that sales, of course, the strong -- you have the strong reference, but you also have the working days. So that lowers total sales, of course, and we will get back that in quarter 2. So that will also impact the margin, of course.

[Zino Engdalen Ricciuti, analyst]

Okay. And would you say that there -- is there a material difference between the trading companies and those with proprietary products that's worth highlighting?

[Bo Annvik, executive]

No. No, I think it's -- that categorization is not key here. It's more, I would say, the different sectors and the cost is more of a broader situation than linked to a certain category of companies, I would say.

[Patrik Johnson, executive]

Also the stable gross margin indicates also that there's no sort of bigger under-absorption or so in the production companies that impacts.

[Zino Engdalen Ricciuti, analyst]

Very good. And just lastly on Life Science. On the projects, which you were not maybe able to invoice as much as you had anticipated, is it possible to get some kind of idea of the impact it had in the quarter?

[Bo Annvik, executive]

No, I can't give you a number there, but it had some impact. And if it wasn't, to some extent, interesting and significant, I wouldn't have mentioned it.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Carl Ragnerstam from Nordea.

[Carl Ragnerstam, analyst]

It's Carl from Nordea. Coming back a bit on the SG&A level. I mean looking at both selling and admin expense up 8%; as you said, sales came down due to working days, which impacts obviously the relation to sales. But could you help us a bit on the walk-through of the components here? I mean it looks a little bit steep in our view. I guess, wage inflation is a little bit of it, but it cannot obviously explain the whole SG&A uplift here. So -- and also on that note, I guess you mentioned a bit on cost-out. Could you explain a bit how you will communicate and work with the companies on the back of it? And also will you work a little bit more with pricing because you have a good pricing? I mean, you could likely work with pricing in some companies as well, I guess.

[Bo Annvik, executive]

Yes. No, as you say yourself, it's a general cost inflation increase, as we all know, and also linked to salaries and people-related costs. I would also say that since we have experienced quite good growth for several years now, some of our companies have engaged in facility changes and for the right reasons, they've been growing, and they've been outgrowing some of their old facilities and leased new facilities and so on. So there is, to some extent, I think, a cost increase linked to that. And otherwise, I can't really say that I have any specific comments.I don't know, Patrick, if you have a...

[Patrik Johnson, executive]

No, if you -- I mean there's net, not that -- there's no increase in employees net, I would say, year-over-year. So there's no big increase in employees. There is a structural cost, as Bo describes on the facility side, that's driving a little bit -- companies have moved into -- a few companies have moved into a bigger structure, so that's part of it. Inflation -- I would say the main other reason is the inflation. Now you mentioned then 7%, 8%. That's on the total and including acquisition and currency. So looking at the organic, it's -- I would say, it's half of that, which is also a lot of money, but yes, not as high as you described.

[Bo Annvik, executive]

And I think how we work with it, you have fixed costs, you have semi-fixed and you have cost you can get more easily, sort of decide on yourself in terms of activity-oriented cost basically. And here, I think companies could have done a little bit better job. When they are expecting perhaps a lower top line, they need to be a little bit more on their toes to protect their profit margins.

[Carl Ragnerstam, analyst]

And in Indutrade, I mean, if you look at historical context, you've been extremely good in managing costs, being very agile. Would you say that the reshuffling of companies is the reason behind the sort of maybe -- maybe the reason not that you've taken out costs that quickly as before? Or could it be that you have too many companies to manage is the reason why or is it just bad luck this quarter? Or how should we look at it?

[Bo Annvik, executive]

I think it's not primarily the reasons you bring up because business areas or head office or so are not drivers for cost reductions. It should be the local managing directors who -- and with their management teams who manage this. And I perhaps think it's a little bit more linked to that we have had quite a long journey of growth now. And yes, perhaps a little bit slow reaction here and there more than usual, but it's -- I'm still confident that with some sort of discussions internally now, we will very quickly come back to the DNA we have in the group here to manage costs in a good way. So I'm actually not really worried, but I think it's more of a onetime setback a little bit here now. And then we will come back to managing this in a good way. But the responsibility lies locally and should do so. So it's not really linked to a new organization.

[Carl Ragnerstam, analyst]

Okay. Very good. And also on Life Science here, we have very little historical numbers, obviously. But from historical data, I mean the margin looks a tad soft, but obviously, you had good demand in the quarters, we actually can see from your reporting. So what is sort of -- could you help us with the historical margin, what is normalized, I mean, for you? [ Is this sort of boosted years here] margin level? And could you also help us on the year-over-year development here in the margin of Life Sciences? What is the mix effect with lower single-use demand currently?

[Bo Annvik, executive]

Yes. It's a super relevant question, obviously. And I will say that we will come back to that with a more structured answer at the right time. We are in a phase actually detailing this out ourselves. Obviously, we know a lot more than you do, but rather than saying something prematurely now, I think we will come back more, yes, at the right time when we have an overview, which we can explain in a good way. But briefly, the single-use segment has been very accretive for us. And within single-use, there was a clear COVID spike and that is now basically gone, and it's difficult to short-term offset that spike with other types of single-use orders that quickly. So I think that is the main explanation, I would say. And the single-use companies have been quite profitable. So when they, in absolute terms, have lower both top line and bottom line, there is a mix effect in the Life Science business area impacting the total area negatively.I don't know, do you want to add, Patrik, anything linked to that?

[Patrik Johnson, executive]

No, maybe repeating a little bit, but there were fantastic order growth in this segment, not only specific COVID orders, but the whole -- that whole area grew fantastically during '21, '22; built up a very big backlog with relatively long lead times, and that was delivered out in a very good way then late '22 and beginning of '23, contributing to the good results of Life Science last year. And now those orders are -- the backlog is more normalized or lower, it's, I would say, not normalized, it's low on the single-use side. We see some slight signs of pickup, but it will take some more quarters before it comes back more in good pace. So in general, I think the Life Science margin is -- there is a potential to that. But we need to come back with maybe a more detailed answer on that. But I think there is, for sure, a potential to that up to something more similar to what they had before. But exactly what, let's come back to that.

[Carl Ragnerstam, analyst]

And the follow-up, if I may, sorry. On the order intake, in Life Science, you grew by 1% organically. And you said that you see some signs of a pickup. Do you have positive organic order intake growth in single-use currently? Or is it more an ambition in -- perhaps in a few quarters? Or was it a statement related to sales that you have a pickup in orders now and sales might improve in second half when you deliver or...

[Patrik Johnson, executive]

But if you look at the order intake, there is -- I don't have the aggregated number, to be honest, on the single-use, but it's picking up sequentially at least. It is on the order side, but the sales side, it's a big negative in the quarter.

[Carl Ragnerstam, analyst]

And what is the time difference between order and delivery typically?

[Bo Annvik, executive]

But I would say, Carl, that a more sort of really significant uptick both in orders to start with and sales is a couple of quarters away in single-use. There has been quite a lot of stock buildup by these customers. And so there's not going to be a really dramatic effect, I don't think, in Q2, perhaps not even in Q3, but more towards the end of [ last ] year. There is, as Patrik says, a positive trending, but it's going to be borne significant later on in the year.

[Patrik Johnson, executive]

Then to zoom out, I mean this is only one of the areas we have in the Life Science area. Then you have the more -- then the cluster working with also pharma production, but more stainless steel-oriented pharma production, which has had a fantastic order growth last year. And even if there's maybe a flattening out this quarter because of a bit delay in Novo Nordisk, that will -- yes, that will continue to grow. So there are other areas. This is -- the single-use is, of course, not an insignificant area, but only one of the areas within Life Science.

[Carl Ragnerstam, analyst]

For sure, I can totally agree. But from the look of the margin, it looks to be quite important, right? That's the reason behind the questions, I guess. But super, if you could come back at some point, it would be very helpful.

[Bo Annvik, executive]

Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Karl Bokvist from ABG Sundal Collier.

[Karl Bokvist, analyst]

My first question is on the organic sales deceleration if we compare to the level we had now in Q4 '23, just to understand the dynamics on a group level more in terms of orders and sales and what you see and also the comments you made about 2 quarters of positive book-to-bill and then encouraging earnings trend going forward. Two quarters in a row now good orders, how quickly could this help organic sales?

[Bo Annvik, executive]

Yes, it's -- if we look at quarter 2 to be a little bit more specific then I think the Easter effect will definitely obviously have a very positive impact and the number of days -- number of working days effect and so even if we are basically flat at the level where we have been invoicing on a daily basis in March now, there will, in absolute terms, be a positive effect in quarter 2, which is probably quite significant. And then we will see a little bit month-by-month now. I think at some point in this year, the Construction segment will turn. It's perhaps not in quarter 2, maybe more quarter 3, quarter 4. At the same time, the general Engineering segment slowed a little bit now in Q1. I don't expect that to be very dramatic. I think it's going to be more of a soft landing or a short period of decline there, but it's likely to be a little bit softer in quarter 2 as well. And then you still have improvements, I think, in Life Science, you have Process, Energy & Water, which will continue to be in a good mode. So it's -- yes, difficult to sum this up and give a very detailed answer. But there will be not least from just the Easter effect, a positive impact on quarter 2.

[Patrik Johnson, executive]

So saying it in a few other words, I think sequentially, Q2 from Q1 will -- if we don't have any sort of significant changes in the sort of general macro environment, Q2 will pick up from Q1. But there's still these tough references from last year. So it will be difficult, of course, to show really good organic growth levels also in quarter 2. But sequentially, there will be a pickup if you don't have any dramatic changes, macro changes.

[Karl Bokvist, analyst]

Understood. And then on the M&A side, if we look at the acquisitions made year-to-date, there has been 3 out of 6 within Life Science. You, of course, have an ambition that all divisions should contribute to the M&A targets. But right now, based on what you see in the market, are there any particular areas where you feel that, first of all, there are more opportunities, and second of all, from your side where you find things more interesting?

[Bo Annvik, executive]

Even if we have had a setback in quarter 1 now in terms of Life Science margins, that is a very interesting area. It's usually healthy profitability levels in the sector, good gross margins in the sector and usually less volatile environment, I would say, as well. So that's absolutely interesting and important, but we are broadly opportunistic in terms of our acquisition approach. So we look for really nice good companies in all these sectors and don't really put a certain sector as a priority. It's more to find really good individual companies, I would say. And that should be possible in all areas based on the geographical scope we have.

[Karl Bokvist, analyst]

Understood. And then my final one, getting back to the subject we've already discussed quite a bit. But in -- when it comes to the matter of the expense levels, historically, how quickly, would you assess that your businesses can, well, get back to being on their toes, if we put it in that way?

[Bo Annvik, executive]

Yes. rather quickly, I would say, more quickly than a large big industrial company with integrated product ranges. So they can impact their activity-based costs very quickly, I would say, and a little bit more slowly their semi-fixed, but they can also impact that. So hopefully, some effect quite quickly.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Johan Dahl from Danske Bank. [Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.

[Bo Annvik, executive]

Thank you. As we haven't received any written questions, we say thank you for listening in. And please turn to us if you have complementing questions later on today, and we wish you a good day. Thank you so much.