Ambea AB (publ) ($AMBEA)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ambea Interim Report First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mark Jensen, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you so much, and welcome to Ambea's presentation of the first quarter 2026. I am Mark Jensen, CEO; and with me today is Benno Eliasson, CFO. We will start with a brief group overview and our growth drivers, and then Benno will take you through the financials and business areas before we wrap up with concluding remarks and the Q&A. Ambea is the leading care provider in the Nordics with operations across Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. We operate through strong local brands and business areas covering elderly care, social care and staffing and competent solutions. This breadth and scale create resilience and long-term growth potential. In the last 12 months, we reached over SEK 16.6 billion in sales and delivered an adjusted EBITA margin of 9.7% on group level, and we continue to grow through both organic expansion and acquisitions. Let's go straight to the highlights of the first quarter. Quarter 1 was characterized by strong growth with several new care homes opened and 1 acquisition closed. Net sales increased by 16%, mainly driven by acquisitions, but also solid organic growth. To support growing needs in society, we continue to build our pipeline of new care places and expand capacity across business areas. At group level, adjusted EBITA amounted to SEK 380 million with an adjusted EBITA margin of 9%. The improved result is driven by higher occupancy, operational improvements and acquisitions. At the next slide, we will look at how we build our organic pipeline. On this slide, we show the high pace we have entered the year with. Already in the first quarter, we have signed more new care places than we did in any of the years from 2021 to 2023. 2026 will, for sure, become a record-breaking year in terms of pipeline additions. When needs in society increase, it is important that all operators, public and private step up and do their utmost to find relevant new projects when demand forecasts are showing a clear need for additional supply of modern and qualitative care places. At Ambea, we take this responsibility extremely serious and won't rest before we know everyone in need of care will have a fair chance of receiving qualitative care at the right place and at the right time. We are active and collaborate closely with all Nordic municipalities, where we are welcome. With more municipalities open for private operators to help them overcome the care challenge, we could do even more. To us, it has no intrinsic value who adds the needed supply if it gets done. But we worry that many municipalities have no plans for needed future supply and also no plans to use private sector in their supply model. And this is a threat to the fabric of society, which we urge politicians regardless of party to address with more urgency and determination. Turning the page, let's review the total organic pipeline. Organic growth is a cornerstone of our strategy. Now we have almost 2,000 care places in our growing pipeline, and this is an industry-leading number in the Nordic care sector. During the quarter, Vardaga was the most expansive business area, but it's also promising to see Altiden in Denmark being back building organic pipeline with own managed residential elderly care with 2 newly signed contracts for nursing homes to open 2028 and 2029. We have had an expansive first quarter with several openings. And looking 12 months ahead, we will add another 304 care places to the Nordic market, which supports continued growth and improved economies of scale. Quantifying the revenue growth from the own management pipeline can be somewhat difficult, but we have this quarter added expected revenue, assuming all new homes fully ramped up. A ramp-up would normally take 12 to 24 months from opening date depending on size and type of care home as well as local demand. In 2026 prices, the expected total pipeline revenue will accumulate to approximately SEK 2.5 billion. The pipeline covers openings in 2026 to 2029, where more projects will be added to the later years during the remaining part of this year. With this level of mid-single-digit organic growth from pipeline expansion, it is important to maintain and develop our position as an employer of choice, which we will continue -- while we will continue to invest in our workplaces, work environment, career opportunities and competence and leadership development. And we will now have a look at acquired growth. Acquisitions are an important complement to organic growth building to the overall 8% to 10% growth target. And we have maintained a high level of M&A activity with a focus on bolt-on acquisitions. During the quarter, Validia in Finland expanded and closed the second strategic acquisition within child welfare services, adding SEK 118 million in annual net sales. We continue to see an active pipeline across markets, and we remain selective, focusing on quality assets, strong operational fit and value creation through integration. Let's have a closer look at total revenue growth on the next slide. Revenue growth remains above our long-term target, driven primarily by strong acquired growth combined with solid organic development. This reflects the strength of our business model. We grow by improved occupancy, expanding capacity in our existing operations, signing contracts for new care units and by successfully integrating acquisitions. Overall, this creates a balanced and sustainable growth profile. At the core of our model is quality in care, strong local leadership and high employee engagement, which I will talk about on the following slide. During the quarter, we presented Ambea's Quality Award, an annual recognition given to one unit in each business area. The award highlights units that combine high quality, strong alignment with our values, concepts and working methods and also solid financial performance, illustrating the strong correlation between high care quality and healthy financial results. Local leadership remains critical to ensuring consistent quality across our operations. In the quarter, we conducted the first leadership index survey of the year, resulting in a score of 77 out of 100, a stable and encouraging result that reflects our long-term focus on present and supportive leadership. We continue to invest in leadership development. And during the quarter, managers across the organization started new leadership programs at different levels. Finally, Validia brought together 250 managers and employees in an initiative aimed at strengthening leadership and quality while ensuring that everyone can influence their daily life and the support they receive. And you can read more about our quality and sustainability work in the quarterly report and also in the newly published annual report for 2025, which include plenty of new information and additional transparency through the new CSRD requirements. And now I would like to hand over the presentation to Benno for a financial summary.

Thank you, Mark. Net sales grew with 16% and were primarily driven by the acquisition of Validia, but we also saw solid contributions from Nytida and Vardaga. And the growth -- the good growth we have seen in the recent quarters continued driven by both acquisition in Nytida and organic growth in Nytida and Vardaga. Validia this quarter added SEK 420 million to net sales. Stendi and Altiden still face some currency headwind in SEK of 3% to 5% because of the strong Swedish currency. They both showed steady growth in local currency, and Klara still faces tough market conditions with a 13% decline in sales. And now the EBITA. This slide shows how the different business areas have contributed to the adjusted EBITA of the group. The acquisition of Validia, of course, affected the EBITA most. The strong performance added SEK 42 million to the group. Stendi faced tough comparison from a strong Q1 last year, and EBITA margin was down 1.3 percentage points. Vardaga grew both EBITA and EBITA margin despite all new openings the last quarter, which is really strong. Nytida continued EBITA growth with more steady occupancy that led to higher margins. This quarter, Nytida added SEK 17 million more to the group EBITA. And lastly, Altiden, which delivered a really strong Q1 with more than double EBITA margin versus last year. Adjusted EBITA in total increased by 24% to SEK 380 million, and the adjusted EBITA margin in the group was 9.0%, up from 8.4% last year. Operating cash flow was in line with Q1 last year, but much lower than last quarter. Q1 is the weakest cash flow quarter of the year and seasonality effects get even larger over the years. And since this quarter also followed by an extremely strong Q4, this was shown more obvious this year. Cash conversion is still over 91%, rolling 12. This slide shows the way from the EBITA, excluding IFRS 16, down to the free cash flow post tax. The rolling 12 numbers are now at SEK 713 million. The numbers are still affected by the one-off effects of the Validia acquisition and the settlement of the old Norwegian dispute last year. We expect the full year figure to increase when these effects are out of the rolling 12 numbers. The underlying solid cash generation gives us both flexibility and strength to continue investing in quality and in growth. Now to the utilization. This is how we have used the generated SEK 713 million. SEK 185 million was distributed to our shareholders as dividend, SEK 1.312 billion was spent on the 5 acquisitions and SEK 521 million was spent on the share buyback programs. Net debt was -- has increased by SEK 1.375 billion, mostly driven, of course, by the strategic acquisition of Validia, which mainly was financed by external loans. The increased debt has led to an increased leverage from 1.8x EBITA to 2.5x, still with much headroom to our financial target at below 3.25x. Now to the earnings per share. The strong development in sales and profitability, together with the share buyback programs conducted have produced a strong growth in earnings per share over the last years. This quarter, reported EPS grew by 45% compared to last year, and the growth pace over the last years is very high. The compound annual growth rate the last 2 years are 24% in reported EPS. And if we adjust EPS for the IFRS 16 and items related to acquisitions, the growth rate is at 20% per year. And now to the different business areas, we start as always with Nytida. Net sales increased by 5%, driven both by acquisition and start-up units. EBITA rose by 14% to SEK 135 million compared to SEK 118 million last year, thanks to the continued good performance in previously completed acquisitions, together with improved occupancy for start-up units and some adjustment made in the service offering. We have continued to adapt our service offerings in favor of those services with expected high demand going forward as well as successfully adjusting the capacity. This is the third consecutive quarter with a higher margin than previous year, and the rolling 12 margin now increased up to 12.9%. And then turning to Vardaga and Vardaga continues to deliver a solid growth. Net sales increased by 8%, driven by higher occupancy and by the AvAsta acquisition. Sales in own management grew by 11%, reaching SEK 997 million due to higher occupancy in new as well as established nursing homes. During the quarter, we have opened 3 new nursing homes with a total of 176 care places, adding to the 2 new nursing homes we opened in Q4 last year. The occupancy in these recently opened facilities showed a better than planned development in the first quarter. Net sales in contract management increased by 3%. EBITA increased by 13% to SEK 125 million, and the profitability development in mature units continue to be strong and the negative effect that normally comes from newly established units was lower than expected. In total, the EBITA margin increased by 0.3 percentage points to 8.8% in the quarter and to 9.6% rolling 12. We expect the strong growth in the own management portfolio to continue in the coming quarters, but the sales in contract management will turn to negative growth since contracts with a total revenue of SEK 204 million is set to end in the coming 12 months. And then we turn to Norway to overview of Stendi. Stendi had a quarter, where occupancy for care services for adults was slightly lower than last year, while our services for children and youth had more stable occupancy in the quarter. In local currency, total net sales increased by 2%, but in SEK, net sales decreased by 1%. EBITA amounted to SEK 57 million, and EBITA margin was 7.0%, which was 1.3 percentage points lower than the strong Q1 last year. This is an underlying trend that is a bit stronger than the previous 2 quarters. The weaker earnings performance versus last year was mainly due to the lower occupancy in our social care service for adults, which led to lower staffing efficiency in the quarter. We are constantly working towards units with high capacity and better operational efficiency and are phasing out smaller units. We expect to gradually see the clearer effect of this in the second quarter -- in the second half of the year. And now we are turning to our Finnish business area, Validia. Validia is now reporting its fourth quarter as a new business area and has been consolidated into Ambea's account from April 1st, 2025. Validia showed continued solid performance together with the completion of the second acquisition in the new segment of Child and Youth Welfare. That latest acquisition was closed 21st of January this year. Net sales in the quarter amounted to SEK 420 million and EBITA reached SEK 42 million, corresponding to a margin of 10%. In total, for the first 12 months in Ambea, Validia has reported SEK 1.593 billion in sales and an EBITA margin of 10.8%. Validia was acquired as a growth platform in Finland, and we will continue to create growth through new establishments, bolt-on acquisitions and continued development of the existing operations. And now turning down to Denmark and Altiden. Altiden delivered an overall very strong quarter with continued strong revenue growth in local currency, driven by higher occupancy across both elderly and social care. Net sales increased by 6% in local currency. In SEK, however, net sales were only 1% up. Net sales in own management increased by 10% in local currency. The decline in contract management was due to the termination of one social care contract last year. The profitability improvement continues at a high pace. This quarter, EBITA increased to SEK 19 million, corresponding to a margin of 5.7%, up from 2.4% last year, and the positive earnings development was driven by the higher occupancy and by operational improvements. We have now 8 consecutive quarters with margin improvement and the rolling 12 margin has gone from negative 3.3% to positive 5.2%. Our extensive work on new projects in Denmark resulted in signing of 2 new nursing homes with a total of 184 places scheduled to open for care receivers in 2028 and 2029. The contract demonstrates the improved market condition in Denmark following the 2025 elderly care reform and additional contracts for new care homes are expected during the year. And now to Klara. Finally, Klara saw lower net sales due to the weaker demand of several of their services. Net sales decreased by 13% to SEK 87 million. Historically, strong supply of nurses in the labor market has led to some customers to employ their own staff instead of purchasing external services from companies like Klara. EBITA amounted to SEK 9 million, which -- with a margin of 10.3% compared to 8% last year. The good margin development reflects well-managed cost adjustments and continued focus on profitability even in a softer market environment. And with that, back to you, Mark.

Thank you, Benno. Our financial targets remain as we drive profitable growth, strong margins and disciplined leverage. And we remain committed to consistently deliver on all 3 financial targets, which we have also done in the first quarter of the year. The rolling 12 months growth rate is now at 16%, which is well above our growth target, thanks to the high pace in acquisitions and good organic growth. Rolling 12 profitability landed at 9.7%, which is above the target of 9.5%. We will continue to invest in people, quality and growth. Our leverage is slightly up to a ratio of 2.5x net debt to EBITDA, below our target of 3.25x. We maintain our financial capacity to engage in the right bolt-on acquisitions. And before we open for questions, I would like to provide an outlook post quarter 1. Ambea is the only Nordic care provider with a brand-new tailor-made and group-wide quality management system, which was ready for launch at the end of the first quarter. The system named [ Meraqui ] has been launched in the first business area after the quarter ended. We will continue the rollout of the new system to all business areas during the remaining part of the year. With Meraqui, we have further optimized and standardized operational quality work, improved system performance and features as well as data quality and access to predictive analysis and cross-country quality improvements. Care needs are increasing, and we remain committed to sign contracts for more care homes across markets, adding to further organic growth, supporting society and further growing our market share. Validia will continue to build our new Finnish segment within child welfare services, and we are actively working with all aspects, ramping up the business segment. And we will also see more bolt-on acquisitions and in more markets throughout the year. The adjustments in Stendi are progressing well and will deliver margin improvements in the second half of the year, leading to full year margins above last year. We are more people giving care to more care receivers in need. I am proud of what we do, and we will employ and train thousands of new care professionals in the coming years, as we grow and support society. In a world of conflicts and division, our wish is that politicians and civil servants can unite with us behind the core challenge of a functioning and respective welfare system. We strive to make the world a better place one person at a time. With this greater focus on each individual care receiver, our team strongly contribute to the attractive of a society with equal rights for all. And this concludes our presentation, and we will now open for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question from the line of Julia Angeli Strand from Handelsbanken.

My first one relates to Vardaga. And I know ahead of this quarter, there was some caution around the pace of openings and that was expected to weigh on margins. This has not been the case, rather the opposite. So I was wondering, can you say a few words on what drove the margin or sort of what changed compared to before this?

Yes. Thank you for the question. I mean what drove the margins and what changed according to our own expectations also was the pace of ramp-up in the newly opened Vardaga units. As a total, the average was faster than expected. We have opened 3 new care homes or nursing homes in this quarter and 2 in the last quarter. And at the end of the third quarter, we opened also 1. So it's a lot of new openings in the last 6, 7 months, and they have ramped up faster than we anticipated. And that has, together with the good development and continued strong performance in our mature care homes delivered the strong performance of Vardaga this quarter.

Okay. Understood. And just as a follow-up there. Yesterday, one of your peers reported and it seems like they noted that the demand for Swedish elderly care picked up a little bit. Would you also agree on that?

There is an increasing demand in the years to come for more elderly care, and that is driven by demographics. And we will continue to see that for many years to come. The issue is here that the society needs more capacity. And therefore, we are also very focused on building additional capacity in our already strong pipeline. And one could think, and that will, of course, depend on local demand, and it's a little different from case to case that ramp-up could be somewhat faster in the future than they have been in the past as needs are increasing.

Okay. Understood. And then secondly, on Validia, could you say something about the underlying margin because there was some start-up costs in this quarter? And also maybe say how this quarter seasonally can be compared to Q2?

I can take that. In the total year of Validia, we have now a rolling 12 margin on 10.8%. And we have had a transaction and integration cost of the 2 acquisitions, both in Q4, more in Q4 than I would say than in Q1. This quarter, it was not so much. We have a more -- a little bit more effect on the Q4 numbers than Q1 numbers. But for sure, the margin would have been below -- above 11% if we haven't these transaction costs in the rolling 12 numbers. Going to the Q2, the Q2 is the weakest quarter, I would say, in all business areas because of the seasonality of the number of invoicing days and the Easter holiday and other banking holidays. This is also in Finland. Maybe the seasonality effect is a little bit lower in Finland than in rest of the countries.

Okay. I understand. And if I may squeeze in a follow-up questions before I get back in the queue. Can you say something about the organic growth for Validia. I know we don't have historical quarters, but can you give us some guidance on how that developed?

When we bought Validia 1 year ago, the occupancy levels was really high in the existing unit. So it's not so much to gain -- to increase occupancy in the existing unit. But of course, we are planning to open new units, and we have planned 4 new openings to open in the second half of this year. And we, of course, want them to be part of the organic growth situation in Finland going forward.

We will now take the next question from the line of Bjorn Olsson from SEB.

First on Stendi, how much do you think we could extrapolate additional margin improvements from potentially increasing occupancy and staff improvements in addition to the ones you delivered this far?

Sorry, once again, how much we can expect to -- sorry. Please repeat.

No, it was a poor question. You said you had a lower occupancy, and it was not fully offset by the lower personnel costs. So for the trend ahead, how should we think about the curve for the year in terms of rightsizing the staff?

Okay. I get that. So in Stendi, I mean, we operate 2 main segments. One is childcare that is progressing well with stable occupancy and with good results. The segment where we have lower occupancy is in social care for [indiscernible]. And here, we are doing some adjustments both to capacity and to staffing, as you allude to. They will have an increasing positive effect throughout the year. There will be some improvements in quarter 2. They will not be material as it takes time to right size also in Norway. There will be more improvements in quarter 3 and even more in quarter 4. And as we said, we expect the full year margins of Stendi to be above last year's margins for the full year, but the impact will come as we move into the remaining quarters of the year.

And just a follow-up on Julia's question on Vardaga as well with the -- for the coming openings because it sounds like we were all a bit positively surprised that there wasn't really a margin pressure from the new openings. And I guess you sort of guide that they were -- they had a higher-than-expected occupancy faster than you would expect. And the [indiscernible] of the old homes had also increasing occupancy. Do you think we could extrapolate this trend to the coming openings as well? Or could those sort of pressure a bit more on margin?

It's difficult to say because all markets are local. I mean if you look at elderly care, care receivers, they come from the local municipality and even from the city or the area of the city, where the nursing home is located. So it can differ from place to place. Now we have the care homes we have -- nursing homes we have opened now in the last quarters have been well located compared to local demand. But of course, going forward, as also the size of the nursing homes differ a bit and we build somewhat larger nursing homes now what we did like 2, 3 years ago, I don't think we can extrapolate any trends into the future that it will be faster or as fast as we have seen in the last 2 quarters because it is very local. So between 12 and 24 months, we still think it's a reasonable time for ramp-up of a new nursing home. But of course, it depends on local demand and what the municipalities are doing with their own portfolio of homes.

We will now take the next question from the line of Adrian Elmlund from Nordea.

I just have one question really here regarding the sales decline in Klara. Like do you view the shift here in customers basically hiring their own nurses as cyclical? Or is this more of a permanent shift in demand? And is there anything that could be similar in the other countries as well?

I would say that this has -- we thought it was more temporarily a year ago or so because it's all -- the reason behind is that the Swedish health care region are no longer taking in nurses -- rent nurses. That made the labor market shift totally. So there are much more nurses out in the labor market now, and that has also reduced the staffing services from other companies and the municipalities. And I think that will probably be -- it's not a trend that we see will shift back towards, where we were, say, 2, 3, 5 years ago.

Right. So this sounds more of a permanent shift and kind of like are you expecting to change your operations there? And is there a similar shift in any of the other countries like Norway or Denmark?

We don't have these services in other countries. Klara is only active in Sweden for these services. And we have the share of, you can say, all traditional staffing services are really low now in Klara. It was the most -- the largest subsegment a couple of years ago. Now it's really low. And now it is the student health care services and the patrol -- nursing patrol services, the 2 most important in Klara and will be so for the future.

We will now take the next question from the line of Filip Wetterqvist from SB 1 Markets.

I have a couple of questions. I start with Vardaga, and you currently have approximately SEK 200 million of ending contracts that are expected to end in the coming 12 months. Are they expected to end evenly throughout the period? Or are they front or back loaded? Or how should we think about that?

Rather evenly. We have some now in the second quarter. We have -- I think we have some in each quarter. I'm not fully have the exact dates of all the ones, but you can expect them to leave evenly. I think it's 8 different smaller nursing homes.

All right. And I assume these are margin dilutive, right? So it will help the margin when you have exited those contracts?

Normally, contract management homes are a little bit lower margin over time than own management. I won't -- I don't say something about the margin of these specific ones. But normally, over time, the margins are lower in contract management.

And then a question on Denmark. Denmark keeps showing great volatility quarter-to-quarter. Do you think this 6% margin you reported today is something we can extrapolate going forward? Or do you expect continued volatility? Or how should we think about the margins in Denmark?

The margins in Denmark and Norway are very seasonal differences. where the Q3 is by far the strongest and Q2 is by far the weakest. And that is because of the high extra payment for the banking holidays that are in Q2, and that won't shift going forward. So we can expect lower margins in Q2 than in Q1, especially in these 2 countries that are really the stronger seasonal effects.

And but year-on-year, you expect improvement.

Yes, year-on-year, you can -- when 2025 and 2026 is the same calendar, you can say the Easter is in the same quarter. 2024 was a different story. But 2025 and 2026, we have the same calendar throughout the years. So you can compare the quarter year-on-year, of course.

Yes. And then one last question still on Denmark. What has changed the dynamic that you now feel comfortable to add a lot more capacity there.

So what has changed is, first of all, that we have a much more stable business now, performing better with good management and good control, also taking leverage of the systems and methods that the Ambea Group can provide. So that's, of course, the foundation for future growth. The second thing is that last year was the new elderly care reform in Denmark put in place and voted to parliament. And that new reform basically gives private operators freedom to establish across the country and a full freedom of choice for the care receivers also across the country with a good revenue model, which we think is attractive also to private operators. So since then, we have, of course, been looking actively in the market for new projects for nursing homes. We have signed 2 so far this year for opening in 2028 and 2029, and we will sign more contracts as we move into the year for nursing homes to open in '29 and onwards -- sorry, '28 and onwards. We also see opportunities for organic growth in the social care segment, both for children and for adults, and we're also looking for opportunities there. So there will be more pipeline expansion from the organic side in Denmark as we move into the remaining part of the year.

We will now take the next question from the line of Jacob Andersson from Danske Bank.

I hope you can hear me. So I just have a few follow-up questions. If we start with Stendi, on the ongoing capacity adjustments here, where are you in that process? And how large has the margin headwind been from these restructuring efforts?

So we have said that we believe a good margin level in Norway is between 8% to 9%. We have also said we will get closer to that range this year, but most likely not all the way. But I will reiterate that we expect higher margins for the full year than we had for the full year 2025. The capacity adjustments are ongoing and they're progressing well, but capacity adjustments takes a bit of time. We are not talking about hundreds of placements. It's some handfuls of placements that we are shifting around. We are moving some between the segments. So some of the care homes we can rebuild to child care, which we are doing and some of them we are leaving. And the ones that we are leaving are the smaller units with lower efficiency and the ones we are signing and entering are larger units with higher efficiency and where we can also offer more competitive prices to the Norwegian municipalities without impacting care quality or work environment. And the effects will come gradually throughout the year with more as we move into the year. So you will see some improvement next quarter, but the majority will come in the second half of the year.

Yes. Perfect. And just a follow-up question. So you mentioned in the Q4 report that demand was kind of stabilizing towards the end of that quarter. But how do you view the market conditions now in Norway over the next, say, 6 to 12 months?

We believe they look good in child welfare. I mean it's -- we are a strong supplier to the Norwegian society in child welfare, and we continue to be so. We are also developing our services in line with the needs and demands from the state and from the municipalities. So we expect that to be stable to slightly growing. Whereas in adult care, we expect a demand situation which will be stable, flattish throughout the year and where it's more about adjusting capacity to make sure that we have the capacity in the right parts of Norway and where we can also offer capacity at competitive prices with good quality and good work environment.

Okay. Perfect. And just the last one there. And you also in Q4, you flagged those investments in your broader operational structure. But can you give us some sort of update on the magnitude of these investments in Q1? And at what point should we expect these to start declining?

We continue to invest, and we will continue to do so for many quarters to come. I mean it's very important for us as we grow that we maintain high investments in systems, processes, people and leadership because this is a people business, and we are very depending on high-quality care in our operations. And we will employ, as I said, thousands of new employees for -- just looking at the organic pipeline we have, it's thousands of new employees coming in just for the pipeline we have now. And as we will add more to the pipeline, we will, of course, also add the need for more care professionals coming into us. They need training, they need development. We need to invest in new care homes. We need to invest in our systems and processes. So this is not a kind of a 1 quarter or 2-quarter effort. This is an effort, which is ongoing and which will continue. And we think that also correlates to our financial targets, where we have a high growth ambition, but we have maintained also our target on profitability target of 9.5%. Now we are a bit above, but we think with an increased pace in our growth and continued investment in our people and operations, it's a good level to be at and reflects also the quality of operations. So it's not like that investments have come down or will come down next quarter. We will continue to invest in those things.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the next question from the line of Kristofer Liljeberg from Carnegie.

Three questions. First on Denmark, surprisingly strong margin for being a first quarter. Was any type of one-offs or positive events that impacted this?

No, nothing at all at that kind. So it's the underlying margin is as they reported.

And if I just compare with last year, of course, you had a pretty weak -- it gradually become better. But Q1 last year, you did 2.4% EBITA margin in Q1 and then you ended up for the full year, 2 percentage points higher than that. Is that the type of extrapolation you could do also for this quarter? Or is that maybe too aggressive?

I think that most of the profitability improvement the large one is do we have behind us as of now. We still expect the margins to increase going forward as we see there are still occupancy improvements to gain, and we think there are also more operational efficiency to gain, but it won't be percentage points per quarter as we have seen this quarter and some quarters last year.

Okay. That's fair. Then on the new openings in Finland, is it possible to quantify the size of them and how much growth they could add?

Yes. We have around -- I think it's 88 new places, total number in front of me, but it's -- I think it's -- we have one large unit, a large home and then we have 3 smaller units, where 2 are part of the acquisitions that we made now in child welfare. So this is how it looks like to open up in the second half of the year. It is [ 88 new care places. ]

Okay. And then finally, on the group margin. And I think if I remember correctly, you indicated even that EBITA margin could be slightly down this year with a lot of openings, et cetera. I think that seems pretty cautious now given the strong start of the year and you talk about further improvements in Norway, for example. So how do you view now the full year margin for 2026?

We are not changing the margin target, but you're, of course, right that we have seen a stronger start to the year than one could have expected at the back end of 2025 with good operational efficiency, good increase in occupancy and well-performing business units and teams. And going forward, we have, of course, more openings and more acquisitions to conduct this year, but it has been a good start indeed. So one could think that we would perform slightly better than the profitability target, but I will leave that to you and your analysis to determine what you think. But it's looking definitely positive from the start of the year.

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Mark Jensen for closing remarks.

So thank you all for joining us today and for your continued interest in Ambea. Thanks for all the good questions from all of you. The report from the second quarter will be published on August 19th this year. So I wish you all a very nice day. Stay safe and healthy. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.