Troax Group AB (publ)

STO:TROAX

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q3

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to today's presentation, quarter 3 report 2020 conference call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.And I would like to hand the conference now to your first speaker today, Mr. Thomas Widstrand. Please go ahead, sir.

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

Thank you and very welcome to Troax Group presentation of the third quarter result development. And as you heard, you will be able to have the Q&A session after I've made a short presentation then of what we have achieved during the third quarter. As usual, I will more or less follow then a presentation that we have already downloaded on our web page. So for those of you who are interested to follow more or less what I'm saying, you can go to the troax.com web page. And on the left-hand side -- on the top of the left-hand side, you will find an assigner for the menu. And if you push that and go see on the menu, on the next page, you will find then a headline, which is called Investor, on the left-hand side. If you push that, you will then have to go to the right-hand side and push the button for financial report. And in financial report, you will find then presentations on the right-hand side. And that's where I will start now with the presentation of today, 28th of October.So as you see here, for those who are following, we normally have some introductory pages. For those who might be new to Troax, I will not dwell a long time on these pages. I would just make a brief introduction that Troax is, as most of you know then, only one in the safety business and mainly then in mass panel or parameter guarding, aimed both in protecting people, processes and also property in certain cases.We try to have safety in the 3 aspects, and we are actually trying then to split our business or increase different customer segments. The main ones from a turnover point of view is called Machine Guarding, 60%, 65% of our turnover. It was then related at least to 2019. As you can see from the picture, this is a typical picture then on where you see that our guarding is installed, large production line, can also be small production, obviously, but these are typical examples.Next one is what we call Warehouse Partitioning. And from the past, this was very much done in traditional warehouses where you needed then protection to prevent then people working in this area or forklift drivers to be hit then by falling objects and coming down from the different shelves or the pellet tracks above them. This is approximately then a 1/4 of our turnover.And 14% is what we call property protection, which is mainly then products and customers which are on the northern part of Europe, not only the Nordic or Scandinavian countries, but also in Germany, et cetera. There is certain market for this.And I normally also, since 1 year or so, try to communicate also that we don't have a segment which is called automated warehouse. But in this page, which I'm trying now to look at, which is the next page there, we are combining then products coming from the Machine Guarding and also from the warehouse part because in some cases then when it comes to moving objects, then the customer needs products, which are actually aimed for then more the machine guarding type of fence. And this segment or I would say then part of the segment, which goes to these other 2 segments, which I was referring to, that is really something which is growing a lot at the moment. They have been doing so for a couple of years. And our understanding -- and we are convinced that it's going to continue to develop very positively for many years to come. I'll come back to this a little bit later.For those who are interested in roughly our split from a geographical point of view, we have in the next page the year in brief summary, which is referring to 2019. And as you know, we are not a really big company. We had last year turnover of EUR 168 million. Euro is our denominator from currency. And from that, roughly 53% was coming from Mainland Europe. We had 16% turnover from the Nordics; 15% in North America; 12% in U.K.; and new markets, which is, of course, the region where we aim long term to substantially increase our presence, was 4%. And we are a growth company by definition, so to speak, because we're working in a market, which over time is growing. Albeit right now, it's difficult to grow with the pandemic consequences from the COVID, which I'll come back to and comment a little bit later. But over time, we are supposed to grow with something which is based on that the market is growing with, 4% to 6% per year. And on top of that, we should take -- continue to take market share.I'll jump very quickly into the next page. First, if you are following me under this called financial targets, and we have these 4 targets that we are communicating externally. First one is sales growth, and we don't really communicate an explicit figure. But as I've said just now, we expect then the market growth to be 4% to 6% per year under normal circumstances over a business cycle. And we have historically been growing with some 8%, 9%, 10%, depending on how you are measuring it. And I would say without giving any forecast that this is probably a good indicator of what could be possible to achieve also in the future if the market then develop in a way that we have expected to be. Right now then, for this third quarter, we didn't have any organic growth at all. And cumulative, we are, I think, now 4% of the last year, being hit then, of course, by the COVID decrease in the second quarter.Regarding profitability, we have a target of an operating margin of 20% or in excess of that. And we are right now, after 3 quarters, at 18.7%, which I think, under the circumstances, is an acceptable figure.Regarding capital structure, our target is to have a net debt in relation to EBITDA, which should be lower than 2.5x. And we have a rather, I would say, stable situation at the moment of 1.1, which means, of course, that we have good financial abilities to continue to grow both organically and also with acquisition, if that possibility would come up.On the dividend, which is the last target I'm referring to here, we normally have the target to pay approximately 50% of the net profit in dividends. Due to the rather, I would say, extraordinary circumstances this year, we decided to be a little bit cautious and pay roughly half of what is normally expected. So in July then we paid approximately 24% of the 2019's net income.Then coming into Q3 and as a summary, you can say that Q3 was a much more stable quarter, especially then if we see it then from where all the turbulence were coming from the beginning of the second quarter or at least in this period of March, April, maybe May. After that, it was starting to stabilize. So I would say that Q3 was more stable.We have achieved a similar EBIT result and margin in Q3 2020 compared to last year. Despite that, of course, we have some negative effects of the coronavirus, specifically relating then to that the market demand is still lower than what it was last year. We see that have been during Q3 good sales levels in most areas. And we are quite pleased then to see that it is a good development in the Nordic area. And on top of that, in North America -- maybe North America is especially rewarding since we've had some struggling period there to integrate our, since a couple of years, acquired a company, Folding Guard. But we've seen now in the last quarters that they have developed much more stable. And actually then, as I will come back to and comment a little bit later, we've had a substantial improvement in the -- both in efficiency and the result development in this area than in the last quarters.Regarding the market. There is a general comment, which I had already in quarter 2, which is still valid in quarter 3, and that probably means something, especially from a pandemic point of view, and that is we see still a reduction of market activities, specifically towards then the smaller- and medium-sized customers. The bigger ones, they seem to continue with their investment plans. And of course, that has an impact, of course, also on their fab supplies, which could be smaller or medium sized. So it's not so that it suddenly disappears. But we have seen a reduction of activities still during the third quarter, albeit maybe this has improved somewhat during the third quarter.Earnings per share was the same as last year. So I would say that this is also a confirmation that this is also rather a stable quarter. I already mentioned that Folding Guard was continuing in a very good way during Q3. And as I said, I can confirm then that the result have been substantially improved compared to 2019.Even if those of you who read our figures in the correct way, so to speak, will find then that, during Q2, we received a subsidy from the American government in order then to prevent us from making a lot of people redundant in our manufacturing unit in Chicago. But that was disappearing during Q2. So in Q3, we have not seen any of those subsidies, and the result is still on a good level, I would say, in Q3 so -- which is a good measurement, hopefully, for the future, even if I think that we still have to get confirmation on these sort of levels for a number of quarters still until I personally is going to say that now we have a very good situation in Folding Guard. We still have some room for improvement there.Working capital is on expected level, even if the inventories still are a little bit on the high side to handle the negative effects of the coronavirus. Regarding our investments. They are ongoing according to plan. And the latest investments that have been ongoing now for, I would say, let's say, a period of 2 years, they are now in the finalization phase.The new factory in Italy is more or less finished, and it's running in a good way despite, of course, that we have some lack of volumes also in the third quarter because of some lack of market demand due to the COVID consequences as far as we can judge. But the factory has been producing during the whole period and -- I mean in Q3. And the same goes for the main production plant in Sweden, Hillerstorp, and also our unit in Chicago, United States. So that's also something, of course, which has a good contribution for our results, that manufacturing units have been running in a good way. Despite then, of course, the volume could be even better during Q3.Talking a little bit by the different subsegments that we're working with. Of course, automotive is still important for us, even if it's much of lower importance today than it was a couple of years ago, but it actually saw it's continuing to be a weak segment. We read, I think all of us, in the newspapers that the automotive is starting to become at least a better segment or the car sales are increasing. There have been some smaller orders during the third quarter. This is clearly not dead. But I would say that from an investment point of view, they are still way behind, I think, expectation from before.Now I'm convinced that we will see more positive figures coming in from the automotive part, but clearly, it won't be then really short term. And then I would be very happy if it start again in 2021. My gut feeling is it might be. So it might take even longer then from a purely investment point of view. Let's see.What, on the other hand, has been quite positive for us, which you already understood probably, is that we've had very good business from the -- what we call the automated warehouse businesses, driven, of course, then by the continuous demand from e-commerce, which was started a couple of years ago.And I would say from this respect, actually, the COVID problem is not really negative because, if anything, we have seen during this COVID time period that these sort of companies who are working with this size are as an integrator or as a big end user, that the interest for creating this kind of warehouses, fully automated or at least semi-automated, is actually increasing even further. So probably the COVID is pushing then these sort of investments, even for, I would say, short term.Then we have also said in the comments that we expect a continued decreased demand in Q4 compared with last year because we still see then some negative impact of the coronavirus. So if you compare with the activities during Q2, Q3, you shouldn't read it as it will be a continued decrease because we are more or less just saying then that if you compare with the demand in Q4 last year, you probably have to expect then a certain reduction in market activities in Q4. And then let's see how good we can do it. There could, of course, be some good orders coming in. But generally speaking, we expect Q4 without giving any real focus to be a little bit on the lower level compared with Q4 last year.Some financial highlights you see on the next page. If you read already, you'll find that on the order intake, we were a few percentages lower than last year, whereas the sales invoice were on the more or less exactly the same level as third quarter last year. And then you should have to remember then that we had a reasonable good buildup of bigger project orders during Q1. And actually, despite the COVID problem, we had a few buildups of that also during Q2, which has been -- to a certain extent been invoiced during Q3. So obviously then, from an invoicing point of view, these are good figures partly coming in from previous quarter. Whereas the order intake, I think, is more representative of the market activity during this period.Gross margin is stable, I would say, not exactly to the same level as last year, which -- but there are no really big deviation as a combination of geographical mix, product mix and a little bit lower volume than in certain areas, but no major impact. So nothing seems, I would say, have been happening there.On the operating profit side, we are slightly lower than last year for the quarter. But the main part, I would say, of this deviation of EUR 0.5 million is coming down from the currency development. Since -- same quarter last year, we had a positive currency development, mainly connected with the U.S. dollar. And this year, it's actually negative. And if you see the U.S. dollar development, you'd probably understand what I'm talking about.So obviously, we can't say that this is not affecting us. I'm just saying then that when you analyze it, you can see that it's a rather stable quarter because with the same type of volumes, the same type of sales invoice, similar gross margin, we get a very similar operating profit. Then we have the earnings per share, which I already said is similar.So I'll then discuss a little bit 9 months the cumulative figures, which obviously then are a little bit lower, especially on orders and sales side. We talk about 4%, 5% cumulative lower, which is not something which we, of course, like. And it has also certain influence, as you can see, on the margin side, even if it's not substantial. So there are still some room for improvement here, I think, when the volume will return a little bit better.So cumulative, we have an operating profit of EUR 22.2 million, which is EUR 2 million below last year. And if you look at the margin, we were at 9 months 10.9% lower in operating margin, which I would say, personally, at least my opinion is that this is quite acceptable bearing in mind then that -- the situation we had just a couple of months ago.Right. I think I'll continue to the regional development, next page, order intake and sales. And I'd like to point out, and especially for the quarter, a few interesting things. Of course then, the Continental Europe, it sits a little bit with the lower activity, mainly, I would say, based on the COVID side. We have not seen any other negative development. And certainly we have not lost any market share. I'm rather convinced that we have increased.You see there is a positive development in Nordic region, and it's negative in United Kingdom. And I'll only say that U.K., you can clearly see that there is a lowering of demand, generally speaking. And now we're approaching another Brexit activity, which we, of course, are a little bit wondering where it's going to be. But we have also some other activities, some export activities from our U.K. region. So it's a bit difficult to say that this 22% for this quarter is representative. I would say that last year, we had some very good project orders in order intake whereas this year, we didn't have to the same extent. So I don't think that 22% should be seen as representative for the market development. But clearly, the real U.K. marketing is still decreasing compared with 2019.Very positive is the next one, North America, with close to 20% in euros, which is a good figure. And we can see that we are actually then growing in both brands, both sales channels. So both Troax and Folding Guard has done quite well, I would say, during the third quarter. So totally, we are down minus 4% or minus 5% depending on how you see it with the currency.On sales side, we are plus/minus 0 for the quarter, with a similar figure, negative, in Continental Europe and a much smaller figure then, negative, in United Kingdom whereas the rest are positive. And also new markets, which is, first, still a rather small one, is increasing, looks very good in percentages, but the absolute increase is perhaps not so impressive. So we still have some way to go there before we have, I would say, a decent figure that we can say now we have really achieved something.On an earning point side, we are minus 5%. So it's a similar page -- similar figure, sorry. Nothing, I would say, which is extraordinary compared to the comments I had before. And on the sales side, it's also a similar picture, as you will see. Obviously then, we expect the North American figures to improve further during the remaining quarter as the order intake has been rather good in the third quarter.Right. Then I go to what I call conclusion. So compared with the very weak activity we noted in the second quarter, which obviously was substantially influenced by the COVID, we have seen a substantially better activity during the third quarter, not being still on the level that you might see then in, so to speak, a normal quarter or a normal level, but it was still substantially better. Could have been somewhat we call catch-up effect from that customers who were putting in some orders in Q3, which normally should have come in, in quarter 2 and was delayed then for whatever reason. But nevertheless, we got a number of, I would say, good project orders. So generally speaking, the activity level was reasonable, I would say, for quarter 3.Still, some smaller and midsized customers were hesitant to commit to new orders. And we expect when things are stabilizing, which it will and coming sooner or later, then, of course, this will slowly come back to us, and of course to others. And as I said, without exaggerating it, but we still expect then that the market activity will be, compared with last year, a little bit weaker during the fourth quarter.Continued low demand from the automotive industry. Don't expect any short-term real improvements there. But positive was -- in the quarter was still the automated warehouse business, and we do expect that to continue. So no real negative signs there as far as we can see today.Regarding the U.S., both the Troax, Inc. and also the Folding Guard operations were continuing to developing well, and they both showed continued improved result, which I'm quite pleased with. We see stable but somewhat lower activity in Continental Europe and also in the home market of Great Britain compared with the same quarter last year. But remember then that I said with Great Britain, you have to see it a little bit more, I would say, long term because we sometimes get some bigger product orders, which are influencing then the figures positive or negatively.All factories in the Troax Group, with maybe one exception, were continuing to develop well, which, of course, gave a good coverage of our fixed costs, no governmental support. So in total, I would say, there were stable development in the quarter, with a similar result as in 2019. I normally comment also a bit in the next page on the growth factors, and they are still remaining. Because if you look at these bullet points that we have there with the increased industrial automation, if anything, I would say that the COVID is probably stressing the fact that the companies have to do even more there in order to be competitive.And I think a number of companies, could be both customers of us or who could be potential customers, have realized then that having suppliers far, far away could be detrimental then for the delivery performance of their own company then if this sort of problem will occur. So I think we're going to see what we have written since a long time ago, this onshoring of manufacturing or that people take back then some manufacturing from faraway countries. This will continue.And then on top of this, we have, of course, the growth in e-commerce, which has now been growing very good in the last couple of years and coming sort of -- this will continue to grow for a number of years to come.The other things lower down on this list are, of course, important longer term, but they are actually of much smaller importance for us short term. So it's primarily the 3 first ones, which were important for us.In this market, we are clearly the market leader. We still have some older figures there of 2018 and '19. We think we have some 25% market share in Europe and close to 15% worldwide. This is, of course, a little bit difficult to assess because there are no formal figures that we can achieve, but this is our best assessment.And you will find in the next page, where we have the competitive situation, our assessment of -- you can see the best assessment of our competitive situation in 2019. Our production units, we have increased in the last couple of years substantially the machine capacity. So right now, it's actually the sales, which is the weak sector, if I can call it like this. And we are continuing to invest for a safe tomorrow where, for instance, we are putting in a lot of efforts of increasing the recycled steels in our products. We try to increase the solar panels, especially then when we do new investments. And of course, we try to utilize the fact that our products are, by definition then, made of more or less 100% recyclable steel.On the Troax innovation side, we just put in one example there that we have this more clever buttons, Smart Post, we call it, where you then directly can build in this sort of smart contactors into the post and then you get connection directly with the locks. Or you could have it connected directly with the robots or whatever machine you have, which you are protecting. Just an example of that. So thank you for this, we try to continue to build a good, safe environment for our customers, which is really the key, what is driving us, and we try to make your world safe, obviously.So with this, I'd like to stop my presentation and take a breath of water here to clear my throat. And I wait for your questions in the meantime. Thank you for listening so far. Q&A, yes.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Jacob Edler.

[Jacob Edler, Analyst]

First of all, big congratulations on a strong Q3 report. I'm here with Herman as well from Handelsbanken. When you talk about North America and describe that you have had better efficiency there, do you primarily -- is it -- does it primarily like derive from gross or operating levels? And is it -- have you had efficiency both in Troax and Folding Guard in NA, in North America?

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

Impressively, yes. But when I talk about efficiency, it's, of course, mainly related to the manufacturing and logistic part. So we've seen a good improvement in productivity from a manufacturing point of view. Also from a logistic point of view, raw materials and what have you, I would say that from a financial point, that is the main part. Then, of course, since the order intake now is growing, both in Troax and in Folding Guard, obviously, you've get a better KPI on the sales side as well. But there, we have not really changed anything. I would say it's more that we get now some profit from a lot of hard work we put in, in the preceding years so it's hitting us now positively in Q3. So financially, it's mainly coming from the manufacturing and supply chain point of view.

[Jacob Edler, Analyst]

Okay. And my second question is regarding -- I mean recently, we've seen some increased risk for secondary lockdowns, primarily in Continental Europe. And given that this is 50% of your sales roughly, do you see any big operating risks if these European countries would go into lockdown again?

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

Your -- it's a very good question, and it's, obviously, which everyone understands, very difficult for me to give you a proper answer. But we came through during the second quarter, which was rather difficult, I would still say, in a good way because we are, of course -- we are living in a good world, so to speak, because we are late in then the investment phase. And even if there will be lockdowns, I'm pretty sure that a number of customers would then pursue still investment programs. So I think that, obviously, if there is more major lockdown, it will, of course, hurt our business negatively. You can look at the second quarter figures and probably see what kind of impact that will give.But I would say that if countries then in Continental Europe continue to strive to keep the industry open and so forth, I don't see a major negative impact on our figures, even, of course, there will be a certain impact of negative nature, that's clear. So what we see today, we are not so concerned, but it could change, as you know, dramatically just during next week.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Kenneth Toll.

[Kenneth Toll Johansson, Financial Analyst]

Yes. So I'm a little bit curious about the development in North America. You say that the profitability has come up now, and it has improved in both the Folding Guard and the Troax situation -- businesses. Are you planning to add more salespeople now in order to push harder for market shares?

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

Under normal circumstances, we should have done that, Kenneth. So your question is absolutely relevant. But I think, to be honest, right now, with the present development in the United States with the COVID and presidential election, we wait a little bit. But otherwise, you're absolutely right. It's a very good timing for us to use this, let's say, better base to go from to continue to invest on the sales side. But short term, we're going to be a bit prudent, unfortunately.

[Kenneth Toll Johansson, Financial Analyst]

And you're happy now with the quality levels of the products and delivery position and so on as well.

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. It is, yes. I think we will still have some upside if I compare it with what we do in Europe. But according to the American levels, it's quite acceptable now. And so we have a good base -- a firm base that we can now continue to improve from.

[Kenneth Toll Johansson, Financial Analyst]

Okay. Then also you have a very strong balance sheet. And you said that you have the strengths to do acquisition if an opportunity would arise. But would it be possible to do acquisitions now? Do you have any more active processes?

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. We have a few ones. I mean I think I already said before the COVID came up that we saw that there were some more activity then -- at least some preliminary activity coming up then on the M&A side. And obviously, there was a certain stop in those activities due to the pandemic situation. But we are, of course, not forgetting about these activities. So we will come back to those either short term or longer term. So there are clearly some possibilities. As you know, there are not so many in our type of business, but there are a few ones, and those we're clearly going to pursue.

[Kenneth Toll Johansson, Financial Analyst]

And then you also say that you are coming to an end in the investment phase, where you have invested both in the U.S., in Sweden and in Italy. So do you think that the annual CapEx levels will come down in 2021, '22?

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. Yes. The simple answer is yes. Because right now, we have good machine capacity, which would be okay under normal circumstances for at least 3, 4 years to go before we start looking into maybe a new extension. And then I mean if we are forced to invest quicker on that, then I'm very happy because it means then that sales is driving this sort of development, which is not negative for us or for the business or for our shareholders. But to calculate, I would say, with what we know today, yes, clearly, there will be lower investments in 2021 and '22.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

Okay. It seems to be rather quiet.

[Operator]

I think we have Kenneth Toll.

[Kenneth Toll Johansson, Financial Analyst]

Just a follow-up then. With the -- you see the softer demand in the U.K. and Continental Europe. But are you doing anything to change your cost base to prepare for somewhat softer demand? Or do you think that demand will come back soon?

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

I think demand will come -- yes. If you don't get these major shutdowns from COVID and so forth, I think demand will continue to stabilize and, over time, come back. Whether we talk about 1 month or 1 year, it's a little bit difficult to assess, but it's clearly coming back. So we are a little bit cautious to reducing customers. But of course, the more variable part of the cost structure, we are very cautious about right now. And we are actually reducing in some markets where we see then that the change in the sales processes drives maybe a slightly different type of a way of going to market. So in some markets, we have reduced a little bit of the external salespeople, waiting then to see how the situation will stabilize.

[Kenneth Toll Johansson, Financial Analyst]

And on the automotive side that has been weak for so long, isn't the automotive industry getting closer to large launches of electric vehicles and so on?

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

Correct.

[Kenneth Toll Johansson, Financial Analyst]

I think that -- yes, so in 2022, there would be higher volumes to produce all the electric vehicles and so on. So when do you think you will get orders for such rebuilding of manufacturing systems and so on?

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

I think we're going to get some during 2021, but I don't think there will be any major turnaround for a bit. But I think, especially during the second half of 2021, I would expect, everything else equal so to speak, to get a reasonable amount of orders from this kind of customer here. So that's absolutely correct.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of [ Stefan Alves ].

[Unknown Analyst]

My question is on currencies. And the Swedish krona has been pretty strong. And obviously, the U.S. dollar has been pretty weak. There's been a dramatic shift, Q2, Q3. And obviously, if we stay here, you have headwinds instead of tailwinds. Can you talk about your hedging strategies or the impacts on top and bottom line? Is there a good rule of thumb for every percent move SEK-dollar or SEK-British pound or SEK-euro, you get x percent moves on...

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. We used to have that. But because we have changed the structure substantially, we don't use those old rules anymore because, in a number of years, we've been trying to decrease then our dependency on the currencies, partly by purchasing more in euros, which is typically then our sales currency. So we get the better balance. We're also hedging, generally speaking, our -- not the balance sheet, but we trade the operating flow of currencies in and out with 18 to 24 months ahead. We cover ourselves, I think it's 70%, 80% of the flow. We try to cover that way. So it's indeed so, as you say, that when you get bigger fluctuations in the currency, it will, of course, have a certain impact on us. But firstly, it's much reduced compared with a number of years before. And then of course, we get some time to adjust to it positively or negative just because we are covered then for 18 to 24 months.Then, of course, I think because United States then is growing in importance for us, I think we have to reevaluate maybe a little bit this because now we have this conversion from a profit in United States, which has a negative impact now when you convert to euro. So I think we still have some changes to do before we say now we have adopted to this sort of situation. But this is how it looks today. So from a total group point of view, it is not so that just because the currency changes, we get a completely different picture. But of course, the currency conversion will change then when we convert everything to euros, especially then from the dollar where we get more and more dependent on.

[Unknown Analyst]

So second question I have. When you look at the consensus for '21 and '22, they have 10% top line growth for you. Is that realistic? Do you have the orders in hand? Do you have the visibility to say it will be double digit? Because, well, you have the currency headwind on top of that. And as you said, there's a lot of question marks about what the impacts are going to be post the elections in the U.S. I'm here in the U.S., and it's a real challenge forecasting things.

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

Yes. You're absolutely right in both of what you're saying. But firstly, we obviously don't have these orders on hand, and we can't see very much further than 1 month or maybe even 2 months ahead so -- that clearly. So we can't see that from the figures. We more or less then judge our basement, what I'm saying, from the operation side, forgetting about currency for a second, on what our customers are saying and what kind of plans they are at least putting forward right now. Then, of course, this could change dramatically because of the COVID or the presidential election or maybe other things. But we have to base our plans on a certain relatively stable situation. Otherwise, you end up in, I think, taking not so good business decisions.So on top of this, we still have a rather low in North America than -- a rather low market share, even if it's growing now nicely in the last year or so. And this means, of course, that even during more tougher period in the U.S., we are supposed to be able to grow because American companies have now realized that they need: a, better safety systems and Troax, especially Troax, less Folding Guard, but especially Troax can supply these to American customers who understand this; and b, we have still a vast amount of potential customers to go and talk about and show them how good solutions we deliver. So without saying that this is piece of cake because it's far away from that, but there are still good potential for us in North America.Going to the currency, as you say, we have now production in the United States also for Troax since what is now 2 years back. So from an operation point of view or pricing point of view, we are not following how the American market is developing. So whether it goes up and down there, it doesn't matter so much. So what you have is this, what I talk about, currency conversion, when we convert on the profitability in the U.S. to euro since we are then reporting in euro. And that, of course, we will have. And let's see what we can do there further to at least smoothen out a little bit these ups and downs that you will get, there's no doubt about that.

[Unknown Analyst]

And have you considered the CapEx cycle for companies? Because what's likely to be the case, if you believe the polls, there's going to be a blue wave. So that means corporate tax rates will be basically increased significantly from 21% to 28%. So there's an impact -- direct impact on your U.S. subsidiary, theoretically. But more importantly, on your clients, there will be less cash flow for clients. And then on top of that, all the e-commerce players that might not be paying anything in taxes now, there's going to be a minimum 20% across the board that they will have to pay based on that. So there could be a very big slowdown in CapEx spending as corporates retrench in '21 or '22. And so what do you think about that?

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

I don't disagree at all what you're saying. I think there's the likelihood of that. I'm still coming back to the same answer I gave you before that seeing the -- sorry, the automated warehouse side, it's a long-term trend. It's a mega trend that will continue regardless who is the President in the United States because the customers are demanding more e-commerce. So there will have to be more investments. And of course, there could be a delay in investment because there will be increased taxes. So I fully buy that. But over time, this will still be a very interesting market with a lot of demand. Well, we, and others, of course, we will fight to take our share. And I'm convinced that Troax has a very good opportunity to continue to take good market shares in the market, which will continue to grow.Then generally speaking, you're absolutely right over the overall economy and the taxes. And I'm sure there could be some dips in demand, which we have had historically and we're going to see coming quarters also. But we are not in this business for 1 or 2 quarters of next year. We're into this long term to continue to grow market share and to continue to grow the turnover and profitability of our customers for the sake of our shareholders, blah, blah. So I mean, we just have to adopt the situation. And as I said, we still have a big market share to gain in the United States over time.So we can talk about this during next year, how it develops. I'm sure we're going to have quarters which are good and some quarters which are worse because of exactly the same reason you were talking about. But longer term, I'm convinced that Troax is going to develop positively also in North America despite these negative things you're talking about.

[Unknown Analyst]

One last quick question for me. I saw that there were some insider sales, but they're a little unusual in the sense that they're really from Handelsbanken fund. Is that because Handelsbanken fund is a -- on your Board or because you yourself have shares in a fund that automatically sell shares? It's almost like perfect timing for the sale -- the recent sale.

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

I can't comment on that because, firstly, I can say that Handelsbanken is not on our Board. So they don't have any inside information. And we are not involving to their funds to that extent that they would, so to speak, take any consideration to that. So I think it's a question you have to put to Handelsbanken and ask them to explain why they did it. I have no information I can share with you.

[Unknown Analyst]

And you have not sold any shares recently?

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

No. I have not sold. No, no. I have not sold any shares.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

[Thomas Widstrand, CEO, President & Director]

That was interesting. I got some good questions here. So if there are maybe a last one before we close, I'm happy to receive that. Okay. If no one else is coming down, I'd like to thank you very sincerely then for your interest and for your questions and interest in listening to me and our development. And I look forward to talk to you again sometime in February when we, of course, and inform about the fourth quarter and the full year situation. And I'm sure we'll come back to some of the questions that have been addressed here today. So thank you very much, and talk to you then. Bye-bye.

[Operator]

Okay. That does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect. Speakers, please stand by.