Nyab AB (publ) (NYAB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Nyab's results presentation for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. Today, Nyab has released its year-end report. And with us today in this call, we have CEO, Johan Larsson; and the Group CFO, Klas Rewelj. My name is Erik Petersen, and I'm the VP of Corporate Affairs and Head of Investor Relations at Nyab. [Operator Instructions] And if we have time after teleconference, we will go through some of the questions. And now to get started, I hand over to Johan, who will go through the results.

Thank you, Erik, and welcome, everyone. Yes, I have to state that we have had a solid finish to 2025. Strong full year execution. We built scale. We expanded our operation and our offering and established a Nordic platform. Our growth is driven by a well-balanced product portfolio and increased delivery capacity, healthy profitability and strong cash generation. And -- our markets, the markets we address are very fine. During 2025, we have spent a lot of time to increase our volumes and our future volumes in niches such as water work, rail and more. Our order intake developed well, high-quality order backlog with good visibility and a balanced risk profile. And we entered 2026 with a larger and more diversified business and through a very strong cash flow during 2025, which adds to our strong financial position further. Revenue growth. For the full year, we have a revenue growth of 58% which of 27% were organic and note very well that our organic growth engine where we have our best margin, Sweden has even higher growth than this show organic growth. And in the quarter, we increased by 32%. Our operating profit steadily increasing, been effect for, I would say, close to 12 years. In the quarter, we have 8.2% EBIT margin. Our EBIT as a whole grows with 3% towards a very tough comparison period since we had some project bonuses and other things in Q4 2024. So happy that we managed to grow our EBIT as a whole. And if we exclude the consulting dilution, we are, of course, at even higher levels, not far from the EBIT margin the previous year. And for the full year, we end up with an EBIT margin of 5.6%. And our order intake, positive as always, should be when we are a growing company. We grow in a steady pace year-by-year. Note that 2025, we had a very high growth, a bit too high to margin optimize, but still not risking our margins and still showing healthy margins. And you can see that in our positive order intake that the trend continues. Even my kids expect us to grow during 2026 further. So our order backlog, well balanced and it supports our continued growth. It grows with 18% year-over-year. Here, you can note that we have a couple of Phase 2 projects that, of course, are not booked. But for Svenska kraftnat, we have a Phase 2 of SEK 1.5 billion that we hope to be appointed and signed during May, June. And in our joint venture, we have the Uppsala Tramway of approximately SEK 5 billion. So there's a lot more in the order book than that. And as we've shown recently that we have been assigned by Trafikverket for 2 road maintenance contracts. Those volumes are both higher than we announced and gives a great platform for the coming years. So the development is good. And we, as always, do our best to have a diversified and correct backlog. What market should know is that contracts that we have announced that have quite high margins and are more niche such as rail contracts, the production of those will start in May, June this year. We have won contracts of quite significant size from end of 2025 and early 2026. When it comes to waterworks, we grow our acquisition of [indiscernible] quite heavily. That's also a niche market where we expect a lot of growth. And when it comes to power headlines, same thing. So the percentage of the total order books that are of niche character and has structural higher margins is a fact. And I hope that, that will be clearly visible from May, June 2026. So selection of new contracts, I direct and indirect already mentioned a few of these. We have the Svenska kraftnat transmission lines for Letsi and Svartbyn. Svenska kraftnat is a very good client for us. We have a good cooperation and work very well with them. We are now executing in Phase 1, meaning pretty much planning and projecting. We won through the Swedish Transport Administration, a railway contract of SEK 380 million, EUR 36 million. So looking very much forward to execute on that contract during the summer. It will be completed already in September 2026. So as you see, it's a very high work rate on those type of contracts, high volumes in short time. And with the Swedish Transport Administration, we signed another railway contract of SEK 22 million. It's an upgrade of Silverhojden rail line in Bergslagen. Trafikverket is a quite big client of ours. I think that during 2025 out of our Swedish business, we had 42% of our total revenue towards Trafikverket. And -- here we go, our long-term financial targets. We have a target important for us that we communicate very clearly and follow up. We will have -- we have a long-term goal of a revenue growth exceeding 10%, outcome 2025 is 58%. I must say that I'm happy with that. If you could choose and pinpoint exactly, I would prefer to be on 50% on a year like this with the acquisition we have had. But long-term, I know it's good and great, and I know what we're building. So it's a better and stronger company and 2026 looks very favorable. Our profitability, we have a target of exceeding 7.5% EBIT. We reached 5.6%. As we stated quite early this year or last year, we won't reach our target for 2025 due to our acquisition of Dovre. We have a consulting business that dilutes our margin, very noticeable. And if you exclude our consulting business and only look at our civil work business, we are just above 7%. So we are in the right region. And on a year where we scale things up, where we go for new niche markets, I would say that I'm quite pleased with our EBIT margin anyhow, but we will do our very best to move towards our long-term goal during 2026. Capital structure, less than 1.5 net debt in relation to EBITDA. We have a negative net debt. So demonstrates the strong cash flow from our business. If you all bear in mind, we purchased quite a big company for quite a hefty sum 1 year ago, and we are already back on track and have a negative net debt. So we have an asset-light business model, and we do a lot of things right. So we have a very strong cash flow, have always had and hopefully will always have. We have a goal of a dividend exceeding 35%. And as the Board recommended the outcome for 2025 and what's proposed is a dividend of 47%, just shy of EUR 10 million. Over to you, Klas.

Thank you, Johan. So we reiterate some of the facts on financial and our business segments. And we start with the revenue for the group. As you heard, the fourth quarter revenue was EUR 154 million, and that represents a growth of 32% in relation to the previous year. The organic growth component was 10% and the acquisitive component linked to that is 22% for the fourth quarter. Our full year revenue landed on EUR 547 million, as we said, and that represents a growth of a full 58% from the comparison period. The organic component of that was 27% for 2025 and the acquisitive driver 31%. Additionally, our 2025 revenue was divided in the following way. Including the acquisition of Dovre, we got a split with Civil Engineering representing 79% and Consulting 21%. Between the market segment, Energy was the largest 2025 with 54%, followed by Infrastructure, 35% and Industry 11%. Sweden was the largest geography for us with 67%, followed by Norway and Finland. Private sector represented 65% of the group revenue and the public sector 35%. In summary, 2025 was not only a year of expansion and development, as Johan informed, we can definitely say we also material substantial revenue growth from the activities. So moving to profitability for the group. The fourth quarter operating profit was EUR 12.7 million. That is a small increase over the 2024 very high result. And the quarterly operating margin was 8.2%. Our full year operating profit landed on EUR 30.6 million, which was an increase with 21% over previous year. Net of the IFRS items, the Dovre business contributed to quarterly operating profit increase with EUR 0.6 million and the full year equivalent was EUR 1.2 million for 2025, and that includes the quarter 1 transaction costs, EUR 1.4 million. As expected, consolidating the acquired Dovre business diluted the group operating margin, combined with investments in capacity buildup that we reported on previously, this gave a full year operating margin of 5.6%, and that is still below our financial target. Earnings per share for the full year increased with 27% to EUR 0.03 per share. A particularly strong point, I think, worth stressing continues to be our financial position. The free cash flow for the fourth quarter was EUR 18.6 million. The continued high operational cash conversion results in a cash position much higher than the interest-bearing liabilities. Thus, we ended the year with negative net debt reinstalled. A highlight in 2025 performance was a cash conversion towards EBITDA adjusted for the Dovre acquisition payment of a full 110%, and that should be underpinning the financial health of the business in total. Return on capital employed was 14% and the equity ratio at the end of the year, 68%. We now take a look at our business segment, and we start with Civil Engineering. The financials, the Civil Engineering quarterly revenue increased with 10% to EUR 127 million. The segment's operating margin was 9.9% for the fourth quarter. For the full year, revenue increased with 27% to EUR 435 million, and the operating profit increased with 17% with an operating margin of 7%. In 2025, both Swedish and Finnish operations increased their operating profit. The growth driver for this segment was the Swedish projects, where the activity was high, and we have expanded on the scope and volume and worthwhile mentioning with healthy project margins retained during the year. The Swedish operations have invested in capacity buildup and the costs have partly offset profit increase and margin. A new country manager, Sweden is joining in the first quarter this year. In Finland, we saw increased margins, whereas the revenue declined. After reporting period, we have expanded the operations in the Helsinki area, and the focus will be building an increased order backlog with profitable projects under the new country manager, Petri Kotkansalo. For Civil Engineering, the market activity remained high and new material project wins were secured in the fourth quarter, as we said. Quarterly order intake was EUR 102 million, which is up 77% year-on-year. The full year order intake was an increase of 32% and represents a book-to-bill ratio of 1:1 for 2025. Total order backlog showed increase of 18% over comparison period and includes a well-balanced product portfolio and healthy margins. The strong backlog, combined with multiple large-scale opportunities in the pipeline, sees the Civil Engineering business preparing for new milestone steps towards further profitable growth. Next, the Consulting segment with Dovre and Sitema. Just as for previous quarter, the Norwegian offshore activity showed ease and several large client projects where we are affected reached completion. The Nordic market for renewable energy remained quite soft, while the public sector activity remained stable. The segment order intake increased over previous quarters and full year represented a book-to-bill ratio of 0.8. The Consulting fourth quarter revenue was EUR 27.7 million with an operating margin of 2.6%. After the first year with Dovre, the 2025 full year revenue was EUR 114 million and the operating margin 3.2% for the segment. After the reporting period, we have announced the divestment of the Dovre North American operations. This to focus on our core markets and improve segment margin profile. Under a new leadership and with developed offering, the segment will execute initiatives to realize synergies, profitable growth and increased margin. So that was all from me on the financials and the segments, Johan. So over to you to summarize.

Thank you, Klas. Yes, pretty much goes by itself, but anyhow a solid end to the year. And I'm quite pleased with our full year performance. I'm never really pleased or fully pleased, but -- it's a good year. Important steps has been taken, and we move in the right direction on pretty much all relevant areas. Our full year revenue increased 58% quite heavily. Our operating profit increased with 21% and our margins remained healthy. Order intake developed well and the order backlog increased, providing a robust platform into 2026 and quite astounding numbers in order intake in Q4 towards the comparison period. We have an increase there exceeding 100% or something like that. But then again, the quarter is a quite short time frame. So -- and strong financial position and cash generation, the Board proposes a dividend of EUR 0.014 per share. That's an increase with 40% and amounts to close to EUR 10 million. We are in a very strong financial position and our cash position is really good. So we are quite certain that we will generate a good cash flow also during 2026. And our strengthened market position in 2025 with an expanded Nordic platform and offering. We are reinforcing the segment leadership. We are looking to have the right leaders on the right place and to reach synergies within the Nordics. There will be a lot of further cross-border collaboration. It took like a year or something for Swedish Nyab to start the right cross-border collaboration with our Finnish business, and we are well on our way with Dovre. Related to that, of course, is that we chose to divest our consulting business in North America. So we have a 2026 ahead of us where we will focus on building a better and stronger company.

Thank you, Johan, and thank you, Klas. We will now open up for the teleconference and questions. [Operator Instructions]

The next question comes from Simon Jonsson from ABG Sundal Collier.

First of all, on the larger Phase 1 contracts, you have a few of those ongoing, the Svenska kraftnat power line, for example, and the tram project in Uppsala. On those 2 specifically, can you just reiterate the expected time line for those when they could turn into Phase 2 orders? I think on the power line project, you first wrote Q1 in the press release and now it sounds like we should expect Q2. Is that correct? And what about the Uppsala project? How is that progressing?

Simon, yes, great question. When it comes to Svenska kraftnat, Svartbyn to Letsi, it's expected during Q2 and the most recent we've heard and know from Uppsala that we has really been the time frame all the way is also late Q2.

Okay. Then turning over to the margins. Of course, Dovre is a diluting part here. Looking in the Civil Engineering margins, we had -- you had declining margins in Sweden last year due to strong growth partly. You talked about, Johan, that you have more niche contracts in rail specifically with higher margins maybe coming up this year. Is this something you think could help margins in Sweden to come back up? Or do you think that high growth in general should continue to weigh on margins in Sweden?

I would say that, first of all, we are big fans of EBIT and margins. And of course, when you build a company like this with high organic growth as we do in Sweden and just selective bolt-ons and such, you look for the right projects, the right niches with the right margins. But then again, you have to build it so you have a platform. You have to have a certain amount of collaborative contracts that are safe on volumes. You have to have long-term frame agreements and such while you build it. But what we have done during 2025 is that we have increased our capacity within rail. We have increased our capacity within waterworks. We have increased our capacity within power headlines. And when it comes to rail, we have only had costs, I would say, and the contracts and the production starts May 2026. And that, of course, will have a positive margin effect. And when it comes to our power headlines, that has been quite a big niche segment for us where we have a broad competence and good relation with our clients. We expect that to grow quite heavily as well. And same goes with waterworks. We bought a very small company who had like a revenue of approximately SEK 20 million to SEK 30 million annually. The volume expected for 2026 on that niche is several hundred million SEK. And that is also a niche with higher margins, and it's the same thing there. We are taking the costs first. So 2026 is rigid and the setup is there to improve our margin within Civil Engineering.

All right. So just a follow-up on that on the increased capacity. Would you say that that's partly for -- to gear the company for the upcoming Phase 2 contracts or -- should we expect that maybe there will be more investments for those?

That's a part of it, but it's also in general to manage those kind of contracts.

All right. Makes a lot of sense. Then just a final one from me on Dovre. You did a divestment here of the North American part. It looks like a bit margin dilutive part of the business, and you do more to improve the margins. What are you sort of targeting for that business over the coming year or so?

I can't really say what we're targeting. But I can say that we were well aware when we did this acquisition, what was really interesting for us was, of course, the Norwegian platform and the possibilities that brings with synergies and how we can work together with each other from [indiscernible] Dovre and such. And I mean, in this case, we had the interested buyer who we thought had a decent valuation of that business, and that business was diluting our margins. And we do a lot of activity to increase our margins, though we are moving the right way, even if we have a weak Q4 EBIT-wise, I feel quite confident that we do the right thing. We have the right leader at our business. As we have announced, we will have a group leader for our consulting business joining in June. So we take the right steps. It will surely dilute Nyab's margin during 2026 as well, but not as heavily as it did in 2025. That's our estimate and goal.

All right. Then just a follow-up on that. To unlock higher margins in Dovre, do you think cross-border collaboration that you talked about, is that sort of a key issue, you think?

That's one of them. There are many things and many ways to improve our margins. It's about delivering solutions instead of ours. It's a little shift in culture, a work that's been ongoing pretty much since the get-go. So there are a lot of things to do. And I feel quite comfortable that the market will see what the management sees by the end of this year when it comes to improving our consulting business.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Christoffer Jennel from Inderes.

A couple of questions from my side, and I'll take them one by one. So I start with some follow-up questions on margins. So now you have had 2 quarters to integrate the expanded workforce from H1 last year. The EBIT margin now in Q4 came in at 8.2%, increasing quarter-by-quarter. Can you give us some color on how the utilization of this expanded workforce has developed through Q4? And more importantly, what trajectory should we expect for margin through 2026 as this normalize further?

Thank you, Christoffer. I think when it comes to our Civil Engineering business, we are now at a phase where we can scale the business based on the capacity buildup that we did report on. So the margin outlook there we have as expected is positive, both in terms of the project portfolio we have, as we said already, but also that we are now ready for further growth. So that's the effects we expect for Civil Engineering. As Johan said, for consulting, it's a step-by-step journey. And they're more -- now it's about executing the right actions to build a long-term, highly profitable consulting business within Nyab Group, and that's the only thing that's important there.

All right. And then a follow-up on the Consulting segment, where the margin came in at 2.6%, down from 4.5% in the previous quarter. Is the seasonality in the current operations higher today than in previous year? Or what was behind the quite large drop in margins quarter-on-quarter?

I mean, of course, this is what we have with Dovre and in Norway towards the energy sector is much of a project staffing business. And as such, it depends on the volume development during a specific period. If the volume goes down as we reported on, it will have a negative effect on profit and margin in the short term. So that's what we saw in Q4.

Yes. It was like Klas stated in the presentation that there was a decline in demand from the offshore business, they finalized a lot of projects simultaneously. And historically, Dovre has always been like in the hands of a few big clients. So it's what happens. But I would also say that some of the margin dilution also comes from our investments for the future, rearranging the organization and there are things happening there building for the future Dovre.

All right. Then one question about Finland. So Finland showed a quite big revenue drop in Q3 with a 20% decline, which was attributed to timing effects. And the year-on-year drop in Q4 was about 30%. So my question is, is this timing effects that you mentioned in Q3 moved further away? Or what was the reason behind the weak top line growth in Q4?

Yes. It's same there. It's timing effects. As a whole, the Finnish civil works business or civil engineering business are performing quite well, and the market looks better. We expect growth there. But you must also take into consideration that we have stated quite clearly that one of the reasons why we, in civil engineering in Sweden can have a growth of over 40% during the first 3 quarters and in the region of 33% or something like that for the full year is due to using Finnish workforce. In our key projects, we have Finns working in Sweden, and they don't get the revenue. I mean the projects are owned by Swedish Nyab. So you see that in the loss of revenue. We have been a bit too effective with cross-border collaboration.

All right. Good. And then a final from me. As we now are in 2026, you're facing a different environment than the past year in terms of a bit tougher comparables, no M&A boost and still quite mixed market picture with Sweden strong, Finland quite cautious and Norway more normalized maybe or weak. How are you thinking about top line growth for 2026 and beyond?

Yes. Well, it's quite obvious if you look at our backlog and our order intake, and you know our Phase 2s, you mentioned them yourself. So I mean, it's obvious that we are growing as planned. And I mean, you can never decide the exact growth. But what I've stated quite clearly already since Q2 2025 that I would wish that our growth was a little less than it will be during 2025 and that it eventually became. I mean, we are [indiscernible] the 2 -- we can grow quite hard with healthy margins as we have. Note that what's growing is the civil engineering business in Sweden. And the optimal level for the group as a whole is to have an organic growth in the region of 20% -- 15% to 20%, somewhere there, you can also margin optimize. Then you can go up to like 40% growth. But -- then you come into a situation where you can't optimize your margin, you have to take costs in advance and stuff like that because you are irresponsible otherwise.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.

Okay. Thanks for the teleconference. We have a market-related question from the chat. We have time for that as well. Do you see any AI-related orders coming in, particularly linked to power infrastructure or data center expansion?

Well, we can't disclose too much at this stage. But what we can say is that we see a clear activity when it comes to data centers. We see that the expected growth of AI will lead to a lot of AI investments. And up in the Nordics, you have a reliable grid over time, a decent energy price. So that's a market that's coming. That's like pretty much all we can say at this stage.

Thank you very much, Johan. So I think we will end the question -- the Q&A for now. Nyab will release its interim report for the first quarter of 2026 on the 7th of May. So for now, we will say thank you for participating, and see you again next time.

Thank you very much.