Boreo Oyj (BOREO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So good morning, and welcome to Boreo's Quarter 2 2026 Results Webcast. We're sitting here in Vantaa at Boreo's headquarters, and I have here with me our Head of Financing and M&A, Rafael Osmanov. Rafael is here to support me with the questions and facilitate the answering of those in a little bit. As an agenda today, we are covering 3 main items. So first, we start with the highlights, and I'll go through a little bit of our strategic focus areas for the year. Then we'll look at the second quarter and the first half of '26, both from the group perspective and from the business areas. And then we'll have a Q&A session at the end of the session today. As maybe kind of highlighting where we are today, it's the seventh consecutive quarter that we have organic growth. Our operational EBIT grew by 19% during the -- from comparing to the last year's same quarter. We had a strong cash flow. Cash flow actually increased quite significantly. And at the same time, we've been able to decrease our leverage, so i.e., to get some of our debt levels going -- to go down. That allows us to focus on the business and to, in the future, focus more and more on M&A activities and developing our balance sheet to become even stronger than what we are today. So maybe that's kind of the highlights of the presentation today, but let's go through it in a little bit more detail. Sales grew by 12% to EUR 45.1 million. Out of that, 7% was organic. Our operational EBIT increased by 19% comparing to quarter 2 2025, and it was EUR 2.6 million. And that takes the margin up to 5.7% comparing to the comparison period when it was 5.4%. I'll talk about return on capital in the next slide a little bit more and also the leverage a bit. So then let's look at the operating net cash flow, which was EUR 1.6 million, and that's a significant change from last year's same quarter when it was minus EUR 0.5 million. The rolling 12-month cash flow is EUR 11.4 million, and that compares to EUR 7.6 million in '25. So a significant improvement on the cash flow. And then if we look at the order books, the order books are growing well, I would say. If we compare it to the second quarter of '25, we are over 25% above those levels in the order books overall. We see that the demand is somewhat improving in the industrial businesses and of course, in the defense sector, which has been the case already for some time. And the construction industry is still the one where we have a, let's say, more subdued situation. But it's also there showing some slight kind of signs of improvement. So then if we look at this from the perspective of the strategic financial targets, let's start with the minimum annual average of operating EBIT growth, where the target is to go above 15%. The result in that today is 18%, meaning that we have turned this into a green indicator at this point. On the return of capital employed, that grew to 9.6%, where the target is to be minimum 15%. And therefore, that's still an area where we are not getting to the target level and even the number grew fairly nicely compared to the last year's situation. And then the third strategic target that we have is the net debt to operational EBITDA. And there, our score is now well within the kind of the targeted range, which is between 2 and 3. However, we kept this as -- we are at 2.1 today, and we kept that number still yellow because of the fact that it doesn't include the hybrid loan that we have in that calculation. So in reality, we are a bit higher in the measurement. But how it's being calculated or how it's been reported, we are at 2.1 today. So then if we look at how do we, as management, spend our time and how do we plan to increase the result of the company going forward. We have 3 main areas that we are spending a lot of time at this point. The first one being disciplined M&A. Second one being making sure that we have very clear roles for all the companies that -- all of the operating companies that we own. And thirdly, strengthening our balance sheet. Those are the 3 items where we spend a lot of our focus as the group management. If we go through these one by one, the first one, the disciplined M&A. We have done some updates in our process. So that just supports us that we have the right information and the right approach to the companies that are potential targets for us. That was done during the quarter 1, quarter 2. And while that was done, we've also substantially increased the level of activity of meeting potential acquisition targets, et cetera. And that activity increase is now bringing some results. We have several processes that are kind of going forward, and we are looking into closing some deals still this year. Let's hope everything goes well, and we can report that soon. Where we are focusing our M&A activities at this point is very much looking into the businesses or industries where we are already active at this point. So once we've done the clustering work, we have also defined several of these clusters to be ready for add-on acquiring and add-on M&A. And that's where we're mostly focusing at this point. And the reason for that being is that we understand those businesses. We understand the -- or we would be able to get some kind of operational synergies out of those companies. And also, thirdly, we understand the price level and the pricing of those assets. So that's the area #1. The second area is the clarifying the company roles, where, as mentioned, we have clustered all the operating companies into the clusters and made sure that each and every one of the companies knows what is their role in the business. And what we're doing there as an example is what we published 31st of July. We actually divested one operating company, Lackmästarn in Sweden, which was a fairly small business, and we felt that it is a better home with the entrepreneur who is close to the business and who can personally run it, whereas we couldn't offer that as a part of Boreo. So that's just one example how the roles are being clarified within the operating companies. We're also sharing all the best practices among the clusters and the operating companies. Some examples on that area is, of course, when you have clustered your company around, let's say, customers or products or business model. Then of course, it's easy to share best practices in sales or best practices in customer service. And that's one area which we are very much focusing on now. And also the ERP projects that we've been running this year and which are now basically all live. So those are, of course, also bringing kind of a share best practice sharing among companies. All in all, both technical trade and Electronics have strong order books. And since the ERP projects are bringing the results towards the end of the year, we feel that we have a very strong base in the -- from the first half to continue our growth towards the end of the year. Then the third area is the strengthening of our balance sheet. And of course, the strong earnings and the strong cash flow have been enabling us to -- we continue the deleveraging of the company as was planned. Also, the cash flow will allow us to complete the acquisitions that we are currently looking into. And we have EUR 4 million in our M&A facility still available for us. So we see that the ability to complete the M&As that we have planned for this year is good unless something, of course, happens in the projects or so on. At the same time, the declining or lowering leverage also enables us to look into the alternatives of in a little bit longer term to decrease the cost of our financing, and we are looking into different solutions for capital structure development, and that's very much in the focus of the management for the year. Then if we continue with the quarter 2 highlights, some notes on that. Let's start with the sales growth. As mentioned, we had a 7% organic growth. We grew by 12%, and we brought roughly EUR 4 million, EUR 5 million more sales compared to second quarter in '25. This brings us up to EUR 164 million in terms of sales. The nonorganic growth -- inorganic growth was coming from the 2 acquisitions we made in '25. So acquisition of Spetselektroodi in Estonia and Elfa Distrelec operations, the business that we call YE RS going forward that brought us about 5% of the total sales increase in the first half. Both businesses continue -- or both business areas continue with a strong growth this year. Then if we look at the gross margin, and this picture is a little bit more kind of a mixed in a sense that the slide -- the curves are going up and down here, especially on the gross margin. But it's really about actually mixes. It's about the mix between the 2 business areas. It's about the mix within the business areas, and it's about the mix within the operating companies. So therefore, kind of the total picture here highlights a little bit of the increase of the -- of certain businesses and the product mix within those businesses. However, we are at the gross margin level of 29% currently, and we continue to focus on gross margin also as a tool of making sure that we can continue the profitability of the business. EBIT, as we mentioned here, showing some improvement in the group level. Regarding cash flow, we have a strong cash flow generation in a rolling 12-month picture here. We're up to EUR 10.8 million in cash flow at the end of second quarter, 124%. So cash flow strongly supporting or we are getting the cash out of the business. And that, of course, then strongly supports us in deleveraging and also enabling us to continue to look at the M&A opportunities. All in all, maybe worth saying that the good sales development and the margin development has shown overall that the operational leverage or gearing of whatever works extremely well. So once the sales go up, we have been able to increase the profitability. And if we then come to the return on trade working capital, which is at 29% currently at the end of quarter 2. It's been going up, and it tells that we are able to -- despite the fact that we have businesses that are growing, we've been able to manage the trade working capital quite well during this year. Then if we move on to the business areas. So a quick update on both of them. Let's start with the Electronics business area, where we saw sales increase by 15%. And organically, that's mostly driven by Milcon. And maybe worth mentioning the large order that Milcon received roughly EUR 1 million from a defense sector partner, which is a first order in a fairly large program that is expected to continue until way until 2030. So the defense sector and Milcon's role in the sector is showing good signs of continued growth. On inorganic side, the YE RS business is bringing its contribution to the growth in Electronics business area. Operational EBIT grew to EUR 1.2 million from EUR 0.8 million during the comparison period. And the EBIT margin is currently at 6.8%. The return on trade working capital is a little bit down from the last year's comparison period. And within electronics, that's driven by the growth of Milcon. Of course, when you are growing a lot in a large program like they are currently doing, that ties a little bit more working capital. And also during the ERP project that we have in YE companies, we temporarily increased or had an increase of trade working capital, which should then decline quite soon now once the new ERP system is in place. Order books in the Electronics business area are developing well, and they are notably higher than during the last year. So they were roughly a little bit over 20% above last year's level. So also there, good development. Then the technical trade business area, where the sales grew by 10%, and that is mainly driven by the performance of Filterit and also the welding equipment companies, Pronius and Spetselektroodi are experiencing good growth and the businesses they are serving are kind of turning into a positive growth even in Finland. The return on trade working capital increased to 32%, and that's mainly driven by the continued profit improvement that we have in the business. As already mentioned earlier, the process and manufacturing industries are driving our growth in the technical trade area. And let's keep our fingers crossed that the construction industry also starts to grow that would support even further the technical trade business overall. Order books, and we discussed that during the last quarter also are developing very nicely. They are almost 30% up from last year's level. However, a little bit lower than at the beginning of this year, our quarter 1, but still holding on a very high level and continuing to grow compared to the comparison period. And the delivery times, as we mentioned already in the quarter 1 are still fairly much kind of weighted towards the end of this year. So that should give us a fairly positive traction on the second half also. That wraps up my prepared presentation. So maybe as a kind of a reminder. So seventh quarter of continued organic growth, 19% operational EBIT growth, strong cash flow and that is enabling us to look into both M&A and really continuing to deleverage the company. I'll turn over to Rafael for the facilitation of the questions, please.

All right. Thank you, Tuomas. We have some questions come in through the platform, and let me read out those. All right. First one, have you identified what will be needed to close in on your ROCE target? Higher EBIT margins versus lower working capital? Is it structurally possible to reach 15% with current set of companies? Or will you need to do selective disposals, acquire new companies with higher return profile? Maybe I will take that. So how we see is that our current company portfolio has, in reality, meaningful potential for improvement. Mainly, we see that the operational leverage is now working for us. So we see that ROCE target will be achieved primarily through improved profitability, but also we are aiming to maintain very disciplined working capital management. Nevertheless, when we look at new M&A targets, we look more to companies on companies which have sustainable pricing edge, with profitability. So although with the current portfolio, there is no need for bigger reshuffle, what we will acquire in the future is likely to be, on average, more profitable than what we are holding right now. I hope this answers very good question. So let's go to the next one. This was already a bit touched by Tuomas, but let's recap through this question. Can you talk a bit more about the decline in gross margins in technical trade? Any effect of rising input costs that has not fully been offset by price increases or other factors behind the decline? Any planned initiative in H2, Tuomas?

I would say that there is no kind of trend happening in the technical trade regarding the gross margins. It's more about the fact that when we have large deliveries, large deals, they tend to have a little bit slower -- lower gross margin. So we don't see in a micro level, any kind of changes where the gross margin levels would have changed. So it's more of a mix within companies and especially between the companies. So different companies have a little bit of a different gross margin levels. Yes, then also we are -- we need to, as a management, continuously look into our pricing and make sure that the input prices are also reflected in the prices of the goods and the services that we have. So that continues. We've done a lot of work in that area already this year, and we'll continue to work on the pricing, making sure that we actually get the input prices to our pricing.

Then another comment. Given the stronger cash generation and deleveraging, how do you currently prioritize capital allocation between acquisitions, debt reduction and dividend growth? I'm going to take this. So what we are trying to achieve here is to balance between acquisitions and debt reduction. So strong cash flow allows us to do both. But in terms of acquisitions, we are being very selective. And also going for targets where we see that we have advantage compared to other buyers. And we strive to be very disciplined in terms of pricing of these acquisitions. So in that sense, we right now feel that we're in a position where we can slowly but surely pick up the pace with acquisitions, while at the same time, we see our debt levels to go lower. At this point, we do not prioritize dividends.

And maybe if I continue a little bit on that, that allows us to look into alternatives where the balance sheet. We look into the different forms of how we structure our balance sheet on the pricing of different kind of instruments and also the amount of the instruments. So we are actively working on developing our balance sheet still this year. So that's very much in our focus.

Right. Then we have some company-specific comments. Let me -- all right. Could you comment on the performance and outlook in Machinery and Delfin?