Ncc AB

STO:NCC B

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Tomas Carlsson, executive]

Good morning, and welcome to this presentation of the first quarter for the NCC Group. I'm Tomas Carlsson. And here, I have our CFO, Susanne Lithander. And together with me, she will be presenting this report. But before we start, let's look at some of our key figures.

In the first quarter of 2024, NCC had orders received of SEK 13.4 billion. It is down compared to last year with 2 large orders in Denmark registered. NCC also had strong orders received in Q4 2023. Order backlog was SEK 56.3 billion. Net sales in the quarter was SEK 11.6 billion. Operating profit was seasonally low due to lower activity during the winter months, especially in business area Industry at minus SEK 100 million.

That was some of the key figures. We have a stable quarter where we continue to perform in a really divided market. And to put that into context, there are 2 things. I think it's important to remember. One is the strong and really pronounced seasonal impact that we have on earnings. Most impacted is Infrastructure business area Industry with the asphalt and stone business impacted but also the other contracting business areas are impacted by winter. The exact size of this impact varies from year to year depending on exactly what project and where the winter has been but the variation that we have this year is well within normal variation. The thing that can counter that in a year is whether we sell a Property Development project or not. Last year, we sold a big one in Denmark. This year, we have only sold a small one logistic property in Gothenburg.

But what we see is that Infrastructure continues to perform and improving their performance for the 22nd quarter -- consecutive quarters. We have -- despite the seasonally low earnings for Industry, we have really strong orders received and what we see a higher proportion of orders sold for their sustainability properties. And then Building Nordics and Building Sweden, they are not immune to the lower residential and office markets, but they holding up well and compensating with other types of buildings, that's the highlight. Performing well in the divided market with the normal strong seasonal impact and only one PD project sold. If we then look at orders received, it's down compared to last year, mainly because last year, we had 2 exceptionally large projects in Denmark. It was part of the hospital in Hellerup than the hotel in orders that we order -- that we got last year.

But we still have good orders received this year. We have a book-to-bill to 1.2, that is 20% higher than revenue. Infrastructure increasing and building in -- Building Sweden a little bit down. Industry up more than 20% in the quarter. What I've said on many occasions is that you can't look at orders received in an individual quarter or even in 2 consecutive quarters. You have to look at it over a longer period of time. And if you look at the chart showing the orders received on the rolling 12 basis for the last 2 years, you see it's remarkably stable regardless -- independent of the market. Couple of examples of projects that we have won in the quarter. We have more asphalt contracts, and it's in all countries. We've won a school in Sweden, in Västerås. And our largest project is the tunnel and the roads in Ålesund in Norway for SEK 1.5 billion.

We have normal seasonal variations in net sales and EBIT. And if you look at net sales, remember that PD only sold a small project this year compared to last year, and that explains more than half of the difference here. And then you have seasonal variations in net sales for the rest of the business. Earnings, minus SEK 100 million, impacted by the lower sales in PD but also a slightly higher loss than compared to in Industry, all within normal variation boundaries. What we can see is that we have a stable trend on net sales. And if you compare them, we have a stable trend when it comes to earnings. And just to highlight, if you look at earnings on the chart to the right, without Property Development, you see the effect once we sell one project or not. And since we haven't really sold any large projects in a while now, the contribution from PD is low, while the contracting units are holding at the same level or actually improving towards them.

And that's what you will see on the next slide. where the contracting EBIT is on par with 2023. Industry down within normal variations and the difference in PD depending on the sales of a small project this year and a large project last year. And then other and eliminations and Susanne will go into the details of that going forward. So overall, a pretty normal earnings in a stable quarter, continuing to perform in this market. Financial targets. Earnings per share, we still have the target of SEK 16. We were at -- just short of SEK 14 depending on the PD earnings mainly. Net debt well below our targets. Susanne will get into that more. And then we have a dividend policy, and the Board proposed to the AGM and the AGM decided that we will distribute SEK 8. And the first part of that, SEK 4 was distributed to shareholders a couple of weeks ago.

A couple of other things, environmental -- environment and climate targets. These are the numbers from the year-end, we -- end of quarter 4 Scope 1 and 2 emissions, we have a target of minus 60% to 2030. We are by now at minus 56%. Very close to that target, and we'll get back to that once we meet 60%. And then Scope 3 and admittedly, this is way harder to actually find the right metrics. We're getting better and better and getting more and more reliable data on that. But we see that we have improvements in three of our chosen big topics, ready-made concrete, rebar steel and asphalt, we do not have any comparisons for transportation. So we'll get back to that later. And then health and safety, which is perhaps where we don't see the development that I would like to see, we have a target of going below 2.0, lost time injury frequency 4.

We are now at 4.5, which is higher than what we've seen before. Fortunately, it's mainly more or less benign accidents in terms of slipping on ice, jumping from low heights, things like that with short absence from work. But we're having programs for this, and we're working with it. So finally, a divided but fundamentally good market. Infrastructure, large industrial projects and public buildings remain strong. Residential buildings and office and commercial offices are weaker like it has been for some time. If we compare this quarter to the quarter -- first quarter of last year, the market is sort of the same, the big difference is that what we see now is signs of positive development in the future, mainly connected to in future interest rate cuts. But it's too early to see any impact on the business in this. NCC is generally well positioned to handle this market.

And with that, I hand over to Susanne.

[Susanne Lithander, executive]

Thank you, Tomas. So for our business area update, we start with the 3 old contracting units. And as Tomas already said, there is variations in orders received between the areas. But we have a strong order backlog in all 3 of these units, well above or in line with 12 months invoicing or net sales. The building units have been very successful in adjusting the residential -- the portfolio from residential and office market moved into public buildings and refurbishment. And as you see, in Building Sweden, we also have a large share of other, which constitutes of mostly industrial buildings. On the sales and earnings side, we can see that net sales are down slightly in all 3 units, but it's very much a Q1 normal variation and also the Infrastructure and Building Nordics, they have increased their earnings. Sweden is on a fairly stable level.

And here, we see the margins on a trend, historic trend chart. And you can see that Infrastructure is increasing and improving as Tomas said, for the 22nd quarter in a row with their margin. Building Nordics improving and are back on a better trajectory. Building Sweden is fairly stable on a tough market. Moving on with Industry. They have had good orders received and they're up 20% versus Q1 last year. And we have secured important contracts for the upcoming season. And what is very good for us, there is an increased share in the asphalt contracts with higher climate requirements. Asphalt volumes are always insignificant in the first quarter. We see a slight down or -- stone materials are slightly down compared to previous 2 quarters. That is impact from the general market but also from cold and long winter this year.

We, as Tomas said, Industry is always negative in the first quarter. They are a little more negative this year due to a bit higher maintenance costs, but also due to the lower volumes in stone but very much within normal variation and it's really difficult to draw any conclusions from this result in the first quarter. Their capital employed is slightly down to SEK 4.2 billion, and the return is 8%. Property Development portfolio, we have sold one logistics facility in Gothenburg. We have 5 ongoing property projects, 2 of which are sold. We have 5 completed property projects and 3 of those are fully let. We have no projects sold or started during the first quarter. We had a letting of around 10,000 square meters in the first quarter, which we think is an okay level under this market situation. We have a letting ratio of 70% and a completion ratio of 79%.

And as we've said earlier, we had only one project profit recognized, a small project in Gothenburg compared to last year, where we had a large project in Denmark on [indiscernible] recognized to profits. And also, we had land sales that we took earnings on last -- in the quarter last year. Our capital employed is now up to SEK 9.6 billion in Property Development. And here, in the middle here, you can see the time line on where we have our expected or profit recognition for our 2 sold projects, MIMO and Park Central. And of course, we are looking at opportunities to divest our completed projects. Now our new business area, Green Industry Transformation. We have the new head of the business area in place and she has put her new initial team is also in place, and there are intensive business dialogues ongoing that's as much as we can say today.

And finally, the last segment other and elimination, which last year had a positive impact on earnings with SEK 12 million this year, a negative impact of SEK 35 million. This comes from the first line in this table, the headquarter and the group functions, basically. And that cost increase there is really driven by IT investments. It is a timing effect in our insurance company. That has nothing to do with Oceana and that is really not that material. Also a very slight impact from the new business area in cost. The other items in this segment is on par with previous year. So that brings us to the last part of our income statement after the SEK 100 million loss in earnings. We have financial items.

Financial net has changed significantly from last year. We now have a negative SEK 17 million due to the fact that we have a higher corporate net debt, we have higher interest cost, and we cannot capitalize on our -- capitalize the interest on our completed project. So we have less capitalization of interest. We have a calculated tax percentage of 20%. That brings us to EPS of negative SEK 0.95. And as Tomas showed on rolling 12 slightly under SEK 14. Our cash flow is seasonally low and in spite of the fact that we have actually it is improving compared to last year, but it is in spite of the lower results we have a better cash flow and that's, of course, because we don't invest as much in property projects. And finally, our corporate net debt has increased to SEK 2.5 billion, but we are still well within our limits of a net debt-to-EBITDA 2.5x. We are at 1.13x.

And with that, Tomas, back to you.

[Tomas Carlsson, executive]

Thank you, Susanne. And I will just wrap this up. The summary of this quarter, strong seasonality. It's a good quarter in this market but it's strong seasonality. The market is divided. We see a fundamentally good market, but with the vision being residential homes and commercial buildings, positive signals, but too early for business impact now, good performance in most market segments, compensating for the residential and property market situation in Building Nordics and Sweden, Property Development, the transaction market is still very slow and hesitating while the letting situation is quite good. And with that, we open -- operator, we open up for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]. There are no questions from the phone right now.

[Tomas Carlsson, executive]

Well, we have -- if there's no questions from the phones, we have several meetings planned for this rest of the day. And if you want to reach out to us, do that, and we'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. So thank you very much for listening in, and see you around. Thank you.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.