Luotea Oyj (LUOTEA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Luotea's Q2 2026 Results Webcast. Thank you for joining us today. In this session, we will walk you through our second quarter performance and key financials and take a look at Luotea's strategic direction going forward. I will deliver the presentation together with our CFO, Mika Stirkkinen. And throughout the presentation, you can submit questions in the comment field, and we will address them in a Q&A session at the end of the webcast. I will start with some highlights from the second quarter. In Q2, our group net sales increased by 1.5% from the second quarter of last year. Our adjusted EBITA was EUR 2.5 million, up from EUR 1.9 million in the corresponding quarter last year. And the adjusted EBIT was EUR 2.2 million, up from EUR 1.5 million last year. This year, we expect reported group cost to normalize and group cost to decrease. Another positive development has been seen in our contract portfolio. Thanks to positive contract intake, it's up from the end of 2025. There are also some significant current news. We announced the CEO for Luotea Sweden, Rikard Nyhrén, and he will start latest by February 5 of next year. More on this shortly in this presentation. And as for our guidance, it remains unchanged. In 2026, our adjusted EBITA is expected to adjusted EBITA EUR 7 million in 2025. On this slide, we've seen the development of Luotea's net sales and our adjusted EBITA. In the second quarter of 2026, our group net sales were EUR 88.1 million, up by EUR 1.3 million from the corresponding quarter in 2025. If you wonder why the sales are still down slightly from Q4 '25, that is a question of normal seasonality, and the last quarter of the year is always the busiest of the year. And the group's adjusted EBITA also increased by EUR 0.7 million and is now EUR 2.5 million. In sales and adjusted EBITA from our operations in Finland, the sales were EUR 55.7 million in the second quarter, down by EUR 1.3 million from the corresponding quarter in 2025. The adjusted EBITA also decreased by EUR 0.7 million from the second quarter of 2025 and was now EUR 3.4 million. On a positive, and it's very positive note, it was considerably better than in the previous 2 quarters. The decrease in sales in Finland was largely due to intense price competition in the cleaning market, where our sales decreased by 7%. And many companies have ongoing cost-saving measures, which affect our add-on sales especially. And we are not engaging in margin undercutting in our contract sales. As a result, our net sales in Finland decreased by 2.3% -- and it's, however, really important to note that in property maintenance and technical services, we saw a very robust sales growth of 5%, which is really good. And our Luotea Smart Service is also making some promising inroads, more on those later in this presentation. And we also see several other opportunities for a positive contract sales growth in Finland. Our new contract intake has been positive both in the last quarter in 2025 and in both quarters of this year, and it's really good also. And also, our customer satisfaction remains very high, which means that we expect the sales in Finland to improve as our clients' outlook improves. Another opportunity lies in Public Procurement Act, [Hankintalaki] in Finnish, which is expected to open a large number of public and municipal contracts for competitive bidding. This is likely to favor large players like Luotea as we can offer comprehensive and cost-effective services. We also expect further opportunities to emerge the public sector, particularly within the well-being service counties, [hyvinvointialueet] in Finnish. As the Finnish health care system faces increasing financial pressure, these counties are likely to turn more to private service providers to achieve cost savings. And this development is also expected to favor companies like us. We also believe that our data-driven services provide a really strong competitive advantage and enable us to consistently outperform market growth. Then to Sweden. Sweden comprises roughly 1/3 of our businesses, and there, the market is very different from that in Finland. Correspondingly in Sweden, where our sales increased quite significantly. The main reason for that is increased customer satisfaction, which has resulted in strong growth in add-on sales. Sales were up by EUR 2.6 million from the second quarter of last year and were now EUR 32.5 million. And at the same time, the turnaround in Sweden is still ongoing. And the Swedish operations registered a loss of EUR 0.6 million in adjusted EBITA. But as you can see, we are now on the way correcting this as the loss was less than half of what it was a year ago and EUR 0.7 million smaller than corresponding quarter in 2025. And as you saw from the results in Finland, we have managed to turn our operations in Finland around and make them profitable in the last few years. And in Sweden, we are executing exactly the same playbook, and I'm really confident that we will be just as successful in Sweden. And as I mentioned, another positive sign is that customer satisfaction is up in Sweden, and that has already led to higher add-on sales. And also mentioned, we announced a change in leadership in Sweden yesterday. Mikko Taipale, former CEO of Sweden, has done excellent work, and I want to thank him for his important contribution. However, we need to take the next step, and we have now appointed Rikard Nyhrén as the new CEO. And Rikard has extensive experience in leadership, business development and real estate value creation. And I'm really confident that he is the right person to execute the next phase of our strategy in Sweden. And those were the key figures from Q2. And our CFO, Mika will continue with the financials in more detail shortly. But before that, I will say a few words about our strategy. And it's important to understand what our goals are, but it's just as important how we plan to achieve them. This image is Luotea's strategy in a nutshell. The foundation of our strategy are our missions and our values. Our mission is to create value for people, companies and society, value that goes beyond the surface. All this is guided by our values, courage, down-to-earth attitude and collaboration. And these are very Nordic values define how we work together both with our customers and with each other every day. And on the next level of the house are our success factors and then our strategic focus areas, and I will shortly cover them in more detail. And at the top of the house is our vision to navigate the way toward a smarter tomorrow. And this is the direction in which we want to take Luotea. And there are also more concrete midterm goals, and this can be seen in 2028 financial targets on the right side of the house. And of course, the world around also affects us. And in the clouds, you can see the major societal shifts that affect our businesses. These large-scale mega-trends such as climate change and growing repair debt and urbanization increase the need for predictive maintenance, energy efficiency and intelligent facility management. And our services are designed to address these needs. And as you can see, Luotea is a next-generation facility services company that navigates the way toward a smarter tomorrow. And we developed services where technology and human expertise complement one another, making buildings more sustainable, intelligent and more functional for their users. And in doing so, we help keep the infrastructure of businesses and the whole society running smoothly. And our ambition is to create deeper impact by improving our customers' everyday lives and by helping them to do business and by contributing to a better society. But let's take a closer look inside the house and open the door and start with our success factors. We have specified 4 success factors that enable Luotea's growth. We provide a full service offering that makes facility services smooth and cost efficient. And our data-driven services provide real-time insights and help allocate resources precisely where they are needed. And our expertise in sustainability is reflected in our commitment to biodiversity and energy-efficient solutions. In addition, our Smart service enables intelligent and climate smart energy management in buildings. And next, let's look at our strategic focus areas. And here are the most important strategic focus areas we will concentrate in 2026 of which we have OKR measures and KPIs to all our employees so that technicians and cleaners and property maintenance technicians knows what their part of executing the strategy is, and that's also important. And everything starts with our first focus area, our services. We plan to drive growth in our core business areas through highly high-quality sustainable services, services that create real value for our customers. And we aim to achieve market leadership in selected business segments. Our success, of course, depends on customer satisfaction. We plan to deliver the best customer experience in the industry. We are already on the right track as we can see from our improved NPS scores, both in Finland and Sweden. And the key to profitability is not just sales, but also efficiency, our second focus area. And as I mentioned earlier, we are in the process of turning around our businesses in Sweden by executing our playbook, which proved highly successful in Finland. And the goal is to ensure operational efficiency through effective management and cost control. And the third focus area is our goal to be the best place to work in the industry. This is the people's business, especially. And we want our people to be safe, happy and motivated because that is the only way to ensure that our customers are happy, too. And as I mentioned, we are already on the right track on both counts as both our employee satisfaction and our customer satisfaction figures have improved significantly. But we still have the work to do. Luotea is still a relatively new company. So we have to continue building our own Luotea culture and implementing our values, brave, feet on the ground and cooperation. And we continue leading and developing our personnel's skills and capabilities. And we will also continue building the Luotea employer brand to ensure that we attract the best people. Digital services and AI are our fourth strategic focus area. Our office workers increasingly use AI to support their everyday work and improve efficiency. Just as important is that we use data and AI in our maintenance and cleaning services as a standard way of working, and by developing new services like Smartti. And it's important to note also that we don't just use data and AI to make ourselves more efficient. They also save money and create value for our customers. I believe that these 4 focus areas form a coherent framework and they guide our decisions and support our ambition to operate more efficiently, grow in a disciplined way and continue leading development of modern facility services. To illustrate our strategy and practice, I would like to highlight a couple of customer stories, and let's start with the Port of Helsinki. Our cooperation with the port illustrates perfectly how a long-term strategic partnership creates value for both sides. It's also an example of how our work helps keep helps keep society's most critical infrastructure running and doing so helps maintain Finland's security of supply. And the Port of Helsinki is one of the Europe's busiest passenger ports, handling around 9.5 million passengers and over 13 million tonnes of cargo annually. That makes it Finland's main hub for foreign trade. And it's hard to overestimate how important this port is for the country. Luotea serves the Port of Helsinki's partner as Port of Helsinki's partner for property maintenance and technical fire safety services at the Olympic Terminal, West Terminal and also in at the Katajanokka Terminal. And in addition, Luotea provides cleaning and assistance services at the West Terminal. Reliable terminal maintenance and safety services are, of course, essential to port's daily operations for such critical infrastructure. It's also understandable that the port also values a long-standing strategic partnership. Then the second one, Jumbo, located in Vantaa in the Greater Helsinki area, is the largest shopping center in Finland. And Jumbo has very ambitious sustainability goals and aims to achieve carbon positivity by year 2030. And last year, they chose us Luotea, as their partner in this emissions reduction journey. We provide Jumbo with comprehensive energy management services and continuous energy saving proposals. And at the same time, we help them to optimize their ventilation systems and build better technical capabilities but also improve their energy efficiency. And this has already resulted in continuous emission reductions and considerable cost savings. In the long run, this will also increase the value of their properties and extend their lifespan. But that's not all. Jumbo has started a pilot with our data-driven Luotea Smartti services, which combines energy conditions and operations in a single dashboard view. And Luotea Smartti makes predictive energy optimizations possible, which will result in the future savings. And this illustrates -- this illustrates how we provide services where technology and human expertise complement one another, making buildings more sustainable, intelligent and more functional for their users. It also shows how partnership provides opportunities for add-on sales that benefit both sides. Since Jumbo is the largest shopping center in Finland and provides services for hundreds of thousands of people, our work here is another example of how we help keep businesses and services running, creating value not just for the client but for society as a whole. I hope these client cases give you a clearer idea about our strategy and how we plan to execute it. But now on to our financials and guidance, and I will hand over to our CFO, Mika Stirkkinen.

Thank you, Antti. Here, you can see our adjusted EBITDA figures. The Q2 this year figures are EUR 4.3 million, identical with last year's adjusted EBITDA figures. And on the right-hand side, you can see the rolling 12-month figures, which stood at EUR 17.4 million. And as you can see, the level is solid and the EBITDA has stayed really, really at the solid level during the early part of the year. On the cash flow, our cash flow after investments stood at minus EUR 1.3 million during the first half of the year. There were a couple of highlights on that. Net working capital change was negative of EUR 2.7 million. Historically, end of June is the low point or the weak point of -- in terms of seasonality and the net working capital change is expected to improve during the latter part of the year. Another highlight is the income taxes. We were a bit upfront in terms of income tax payments, and those are expected to be materially lower in the second half of the year. And then on the financing cash flows, we repaid EUR 5 million term loan during the first half of the year as well as paid a dividend of EUR 2.7 million. And then on top of that, we repaid leases. So those totaled EUR 10.5 million altogether. On the capital structure, we have a really, really strong balance sheet. Our cash and cash equivalents stood at EUR 3.9 million. We don't have any traditional bank loans in the balance sheet, hence, balance is 0. We have IFRS 16 lease liabilities of EUR 13.2 million. These together result in a net debt of EUR 9.3 million. And when you compare EUR 9.3 million with the rolling 12-month adjusted EBITDA of EUR 17.4 million, our ratio net debt to adjusted EBITDA is 0.5. In connection with the repayment of the EUR 5 million term loan, we upsized our revolving credit facility from EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million, and this facility is fully unutilized, i.e., we have a strong financial muscle. On the financial targets, these haven't changed since the Capital Markets Day last November. Our midterm organic growth target is 4% to 5%. Adjusted EBITDA margin target 5%. Our cash conversion target, 90% and then dividend policy is to deliver more than 50% of net profit as dividend. And to repeat our guidance, guidance is unchanged from Q1. We expect our adjusted EBITA in 2026 to be better or materially better than the adjusted EBITA of EUR 7 million in 2025. And now it's time for your questions.

Hello. My name is Antti Isokangas. I'm the Interim Communications Director, and I'm here with your questions. There have been quite a few of them, actually 10, all of them from the same person, someone called Raymond, who is -- who types very, very fast. These are very long and very detailed questions. Some of them overlapping. Let's start with the first one. With quarterly revenue showing very limited growth, how much of the EBITDA improvement is based on permanent productivity gains and better contract margins? And how much comes from timing, seasonal effects or temporary cost reductions? When should this improvement begin to translate into sustainable free cash flow, earnings per share and higher shareholder returns?

Multiple questions at the same time.

This is only the first one.

Okay. If I start from the end, which I can now remember. On the cash flow, when you look at last year's EBITDA figures and the cash flow, so our cash flow is more taking place in the second half of the year, deriving from the seasonality of net working capital and EBITDA seasonality-wise. Then there were some other questions on the.

I can answer also with [indiscernible].

This is the first one. How much of the EBITDA improvement is based on permanent productivity gains? That's basically the first question.

I think in Sweden, all of the EBITDA improvements are from efficiency programs. And in Finland, of course, the cleaning business has suffered of low add-on sales rates and so on. But in property maintenance and the Technical Services, the improvements come from efficiency programs and of course, the higher net sales levels.

Okay. Well, Raymond's next question is even longer and also contains multiple questions. Luotea describes Smartti as its strategic spearhead and emphasizes the transition from schedule-based services to data-driven need-based operations. Has Smart and Energy Management now moved to the center of Luotea's strategy, replacing the earlier ambition to build Finland's largest cleaning services business? Cleaning still represents a major part of Luotea's operations and workforce, yet the half year report provides very little information on how data automation and artificial intelligence are being applied to cleaning services. What is Luotea's concrete strategy for data-driven cleaning? And how will it support revenue growth, productivity and improved margins in its core business?

Yes. To be the biggest cleaning company has never been Luotea's strategic goal, first of all, -- and we want to use data to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction within our customers. And then we want to also use data to accelerate our growth in our basic services. So these are the 2 key points of using data in our services.

And then there was a question on Smartti, which is not on clean.

Smartti also works is like a spearhead services for us to how we can enter to the customer side with Smartti and then create real value for our customers with Smartti and then customers start to trust us and then we can sell more of our basic cleaning and support services and property maintenance and technical services.

Okay. Next question from Raymond. You state that the turnaround in Sweden continues according to plan. However, the CEO of Luotea Sweden stepped down with immediate effect, while the newly appointed CEO may not start until February 2027. What caused this abrupt leadership transition? How will you maintain the turnaround momentum during the interim period? And what EBITDA margin should shareholders realistically expect from Sweden in 2027 and 2028?

We don't publish separately our targets to Sweden. But the reason behind the change in CEO is that we want to accelerate our growth and accelerate our profitability improvement in Sweden. And within the interim period, I nominated our CFO, Sweden, Saman Khalilian as acting CEO of Sweden until Rikard starts. Saman has worked around our efficiency program all the time during this turnaround program. He is really in on top of those efficiency program measures, he will know what to do.

Okay. Raymond's next question largely overlaps with the previous one regarding the cleaning services. The short version is, do you still consider becoming Finland's largest cleaning business a valid strategic target? If so, what is the timetable? And how will you reverse the current decline in both contract sales and additional sales?

Our contract sales has not declined. As I said, our contract intake has improved since the beginning of the year. And being -- we want to grow -- our strategic target is to grow 4% to 5% yearly. So that's our target, and it concerns the whole facility services in Luotea in Finland and Sweden. We don't have separate targets to be biggest or second biggest in different services.

Okay. Back to Sweden and this one yet again from Raymond. Sweden delivered strong net sales growth of 8.7%, improved customer satisfaction and higher add-on sales, yet adjusted EBITDA remained negative of EUR 0.6 million. What is the concrete timetable for reaching sustainable breakeven and a positive EBITA margin? And what further operational improvements are still required to get there?

We rely on our plans, which has been made earlier, and we execute those plans consistently. And then also, we don't publish the date or the month where the EBITDA is permanently at the positive level, but we do everything we can to make the turnaround to that point that our EBITDA is at a positive level.