Lifco AB (publ)

STO:LIFCO B

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q1

[Operator]

Hello, and welcome to the Lifco Q1 Report 2019 Call. [Operator Instructions] And just to remind you, this conference call is being recorded.Today, I'm pleased to present Per Waldemarson, the CEO; and Thérese Hoffman, the CFO. Please go ahead with your meeting.

[Per Waldemarson]

Thank you. Hello, everyone, this is Per Waldemarson. I would like to just give a few short comments about the quarterly results and we can turn directly into Page 2 in the presentation. And as everyone can see, we hit the quarter that can be summarized of growth organically also through exchange rates and acquisitions. So all 3 areas is contributing to our sales results development.It's also worthwhile mentioning that this quarter contains onetime costs, nonrecurring costs of SEK 66 million. That is being adjusted for in the EBITA numbers, and that relates to the management change we have in this quarter. So everyone is aware of that effect.I can then turn to Page 3, where we go through the different business areas very briefly. And Dental is having a good quarter, partly thanks to the Easter effect. Last year, the Easter was in March, early April. This year, it came fully in April, which has a positive effect in this year for Dental especially in the parts of the Nordic region. And then we have also contribution from acquisitions made during last year that contributes to our sales and results development in this quarter.In the Demolition & Tools area, we have an improvement from a rather weak 2018 first quarter, as some of you might remember. So we have some organic development there in this quarter as well as acquisitions that has been carried out in the beginning of Q1 in this business area. And in Systems Solution, it's strong organic development pretty much in all divisions and a slight -- we assume or expect a slight positive effect of Easter in certain parts of Systems Solution where working days makes a difference. And now we can turn in to Page 4, which is just a short reminder, and it is a more of a historical -- looking back at historical numbers, that I want to remind everyone that the value creation at Lifco has been and hopefully will be coming from 2 areas: the acquisition part, which has been giving us historical growth in the range of 10% to 14%; and also from organic development, which you can see is more volatile depending on the business cycle [ announcings ]. And as you can see there, the organic growth has been good in the last 4 years and also in this quarter, thanks to the business cycle overall being positive.We then turn to Page 5. Just want to highlight in the balance sheet that we have now implemented the IFRS 16, which has an impact on the tangible assets -- tangible fixed assets of about -- actually of SEK 447 million and the same effect also in the interest-bearing liabilities of SEK 447 million, just to highlight that. Also here, you can see that our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is going up from year-end due to acquisitions and also partly due to a little bit higher working capital in Q1, which is partly a normal effect and partly an effect of the business cycle being very strong, which ties up capital being in inventory and receivables mainly.And then, actually, I will just slip all the way over to Page 26. Just skip the other pages. And just a short comments on the recent acquisitions that we made. We have already in the first -- in the presentation of Q4, we already have Indexator and Hammer being published. Indexator is a leading supplier of rotators for forest industry, but also the general, so to say, construction market. And then we have acquired Hammer in Italy, which is focused on the hydraulic breaker segment. Both of these acquisition falls into demolition tools. And then we have after the closing of Q1 acquired a company in U.K., which is in the System Solution area that is an asset-light business selling to various customer group, different display solutions mainly through catalog, telephone and also a lot through Internet mainly in the U.K. This was a very short introduction for the quarter, and I would like to open up for any questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And we have a question from the line of Oskar Vikström of ABG.

[Oskar Vikström, Research Analyst]

So I have a question regarding Demolition & Tools. You mentioned in the text there that the market situation was generally good. Could you help define a bit what you mean by generally? Is that a comment on the year or just the quarter? Or how should we look at Demolition & Tools going forward?

[Per Waldemarson]

Well, first of all, we don't give any forecasts. So it's a historical preclusion of what we saw in Q1 and also a lot in 2018. So we are speaking about the current situation in the quarter.

[Oskar Vikström, Research Analyst]

And generally good. What -- could you help define that?

[Per Waldemarson]

I think the organic -- as you can see, we have organic growth in the segment, which is referring to this generally good business plan.

[Oskar Vikström, Research Analyst]

All right. And so -- okay, so following up on that, so the Systems Solutions has a very, very strong performance this quarter and especially on EBITA level. Was that supported largely by volumes or the profitability in the segment?

[Per Waldemarson]

Yes. So we had the effect on good organic growth being translated into good results.

[Oskar Vikström, Research Analyst]

But there hasn't been -- so there is no pricing increases or anything like that, it's mainly driven by volume.

[Per Waldemarson]

The Systems Solutions area is such a diversified area, but I can only say that we speak to different division, and all our divisions are performing well in the first quarter. Some of them having, I think, some positive effects on the Easter as I mentioned initially, and some others may be less so. But in overall, it's a very strong quarter for the organic development, Systems Solutions, for the quarter.

[Operator]

And there are no further questions at this time. Please go ahead.

[Per Waldemarson]

So if there are no further questions, I would like to thank everyone for listening, and I'll leave it over to -- with that. Thank you.

[Operator]

This now concludes our conference call. Thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your line.