Ratos AB (publ) (RATOB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So a warm welcome to Ratos Digital Capital Markets Day 2022. We are sending this digital event from the city center of Stockholm, but hence, the COVID restrictions were lifted just the other day, we also have the honor of hosting some guests live also here in the studio, so most welcome to you as well, of course. My name is Josefine Uppling, and I'm the Head of Sustainability and Communication at Ratos, and I will also be your host today. We have a really full agenda. And we can't wait to share a deeper understanding on what's going on in Ratos and our companies with you. Today, we will talk about the fact that our turnaround is completed. We will show you that we are ahead of plan in terms of reaching our financial goals and targets for 2025, and we will give you some insights in how we are positioned towards ongoing megatrends and the ongoing green industrial revolution. Before we start, I will really encourage you to ask us questions. We will ask them in the end of our presentation. If you're with us digitally, you are welcome to submit your written questions, and you will see there is a form on the web page, where you can submit your questions. And if you are here in person, of course, we will answer your questions in person. So we plan to wrap it up around 4:00, so 2 hours approximately. And now I think behind me, if I use the clicker, you can see the agenda. This is the agenda for the day and a brief overview. We will start, of course, with our CEO and President, Jonas Wistrom, go through our financial standings with our CFO, Jonas Agrup, I will give you a glance on the sustainability work at Ratos. Our business area presidents Joakim Twetman, Anders Slettengren, and Christian Johansson Gebauer will walk us through what's going on in the business areas. And last but not least, our President and CEO, Jonas Wistrom, will come back on the stage and give you a few words on what's lying ahead of us. And then the Q&A, of course. So having said that, and with that brief introduction and without further ado, it's time for me to hand over to our first speaker, our President and CEO, Jonas Wistrom. Thank you.

Thank you, Josefine, and thank you for attending here today and behind the screens, you're most welcome. Building companies is all about people. I remember my first job at Philips Defence Electronics in 1983. After some 3, 4 months, I finally understood it wasn't about technology primarily, it's all about people. And this has been confirmed in all the jobs I have since then in all the countries I worked, it's all about people. These people should have authority being able to take speed in execution, take decisions now. Maybe it's a wrong decision, you take a new decision better. I used to say the most important in my job is to recruit the best people, the best group of people. I have to admit I've recruited wrong several times. But I never hesitated on changing that, recruiting a new one. It's best for the company, it's best for the individual. Simplicity should be always there. If something is very complicated to understand or to explain for someone, if it needs a lot of bureaucracy, it's normally bad. Ratos is a company builder, but we want to build market leaders. So the Ratos Group won't be 150 companies. We want to work long term with an eternal horizon basically, for companies that already are or can become market leaders. And we work with an operational focus, and you see it on the screen here, organic growth, margin expansion, and, of course, targeted acquisitions, and we will talk more about that coming later. Our companies are independent from each other. But they are part of a family. I used to call them siblings. And we foster these companies to learn from each other by networks, not network with a hub in Ratos, started maybe by Ratos, but driven by some of the companies. We have networks for purchasing. We have network for cybersecurity, for sustainability and many more. And those networks, we start them if they don't sort of live, they will disappear, they are not of use. During the pandemic, I mean, the HR managers really talked a lot to each other to learn about the different rules and regulations and maybe subsidies in different countries. I mean HL is present in 33 countries. We have 3 companies having production in China. There is so much to learn from each other. We also, again, are obsessed by people, having the right people and to develop people. So together with the Stockholm School of Economics, we tailormade a 1-year program for coming men and women to learn more about leadership, businessmanship and financial understanding. This is a 1-year program. They meet 4 times during 2, 3 days, but they work together actually on spare time all the year with real projects in Ratos. There's 2 things with this. Again, they get better leaders in business, businessmen and women, but they also create this network. And we will hear about some things later on today where companies have come together and getting more profitable and more sustainable. With that, I want to start with saying that 2021, I'm not going to go through the quarters or so, but it was a really great year. But more importantly, it was an important year, very important year. So many things were finished and started in 2021. Our turnaround period was finalized, we went into 2021. I'm going to talk a little bit about that. I've been asked on that on separate investor meetings. 2021 was the year when the growth journey started also with acquisitions. When I started as a CEO here, my first message to the 53 people, we were at that time, was there were no acquisitions. We had no money, and the company didn't perform. But now we can start to -- or we did -- was able to start in 2021. And finally, our journey from an investment company to a group, it was finalized after summer. All these things together may resulted in EPS growth of 79%, pretty good I think. So if we look back on this turnaround journey, and I want to say from the beginning that Bisnode and all the exit gains we got from there. We also divested our property and the shares, yes, related to Bisnode is not here. These are the operational EBITA growth. It's 86%, not for the period, but for each year in average. So we've grown the EBITA from 400 up to 1,500. I'm actually impressed on everything that's been done. This went faster than I thought when I stood there the first day in Ratos as a CEO, we need to change the trend I said. Might take up to 3 years, but it went faster, and we'll come back to why. My first Capital Market Day was 2018 in June -- 4th of June, I think it was. I showed this slide then. We had 13 companies then, 2 of them, if you look at Q1 2018, 2 of them had a better result than the year before. And these were good times. It was not pandemic. I mean it was really good times. And we were out of money. So we said you can't grow a company that is not stable. I mean you can't start to expand your house where you live if you have a small fire on the front of the house or if you have a rotten wood. You need to have the stability before thinking of profitability, which in itself is a pre-acquisition for growth. I've done a lot of acquisitions in my career. In my previous job, I did 65 acquisitions that we thought were big enough to make a press release on. I know what happens if you're not profitable yourself and try to acquire a more profitable company. The culture -- it doesn't work. And one thing to remember always is the customer value. You need even in the difficult times to protect the customer value because by the end of the day, there is where the money comes from. And then there's a lot of basic you all know. But to know your numbers and to trust your numbers, myself, I've said, well, we're down now because of you always sort of find an objection, an excuse, but numbers doesn't lie. The difference is among people and details. Yes, there are many wisdoms here. It's very easy on a manager to focus on what's bad instead of focus on what's good and to do that better is something I learned. So let's -- with that, move into just one slide I sort of hesitated to share with you or not. But stability is, among other things, an ability to sort of reasonably forecast your business. And this is an important document we always use in all the reviews we have, month reviews and so on. And this doesn't just say I've seen in so many companies that you sort of adjust the reality as the year goes on. Here, you can follow the forecast you made for the year, for the quarter, for February. In October, you can see what you said in January. And you can -- it's not just forecast accuracy. It's sort of to which -- where are we trending? Are we trending negatively? Or are we on our way up. Typically, when you're traveling -- trending negatively, you're too optimistic in your forecast and vice versa. So how do you really get into stability, profitability and growth. Well, you start with the structure. I have to admit I learned this in U.S., hard, harder and hardest as they said. It's hard to change the structure. It's much harder to get people to work in a different way with processes. And it's damn hard and it takes a long time to change the culture. But I -- and we always start with the structure. The most important for us it's not to have the right CEO in Ratos, it's I have the right CEO in the companies. That's more important than the Chairman of the Board. In fact, we think the CEO is so important. So when we put the Chairman there, we sort of want to make sure that it works well together. Overtime, we have replaced all external chairman with internal, except for Aibel, which we are not a majority owner in. This is to ensure speed. We have no -- we gladly take in people with competence that we lack in our companies. But the Chairman is from Ratos that ensures speed. I talked about the executive leadership, the business council is a group where all the CEOs comes together and so on. We believe in decentralized P&L. I think no one today says against that or has another opinion, maybe. But we've always had that -- and I've always had that. We don't like matrixes. Some people, it's impossible to avoid them, but we really don't like them. And we want, in a management team that the majority should consist of people with P&L responsibility. It means something for the culture and also for the overhead costs that is always under pressure from people having a P&L responsibility. So the process we introduced was -- and this sounds bureaucratic because we talk a lot on our phones with our people in the companies, but we do have monthly business reviews with the CFO and CEO in each company, every month. And between that, we have choices when necessary. The forecast model I've talked about and the incentive plans, I will come back to, but it's -- since again, people is so important. We must make sure to get the best people to Ratos companies, even in times when Ratos doesn't look so good. Ratos didn't look so good in 2018. And we're more than ever eager to get the best people. So we have attractive incentive plans, and we have been very much inspired by private equity here. So we've taken that from the private equity industry. The network I talked to customers, again, customers' belief in us is our revenues, right? And people again, employee surveys, everywhere and similar key questions in all companies, and then culture. What is culture? Culture is attitude, what happened when the copy machine or the printer doesn't work. But culture is also what is good, what is bad, what is okay in terms of performance? No one wants to be bad. And this level is there and it hasn't so much to do what the CEO says on the slides. It has to do when you have -- what you -- the feeling you have in your stomach when you are in the coffee room with your colleagues. And to raise the level on what is good is maybe the most important in a company. And to do that, you have to work with benchmarking because when you come into 2 larger companies, there are always some people, some groups, some division or section that performs really good. And then you ask, why are you not performing as good as her or him. And then you will hear a lot of objections. Well, the costs for rent are lower there than here and so on. But benchmarking is very efficient and you need to handle the objections. And suddenly you get the profitability level up. February -- '21 was an important year. In February, the beginning, we released our financial targets. We did this EBITA SEK 3 million for 2025 as a target to beat. We presented a leverage target that is sustainable. We have better -- we can get money from the banks at higher leverage, but this is a sustainable level. That doesn't mean we will be exactly in the range all the time. And as you know, maybe we are not in the range today. We have too much too low leverage. And momentarily, we could have higher leverage during a while. We also believe that we have a sustainability -- sustainable dividend policy. The Board's proposal to the shareholders this year is around [ 40% ] right? So take a look at the plan. When we set the plan in February, this would mean 15% EBITA growth per year. It won't be this way, of course. I mean some years will be faster, some slower. The first year, 2021, we did actually 23% EBITA growth in challenging times, especially for some companies. But we do have a diverse portfolio, and that's one of our strengths. Making big problems in one company, even if it's sizable, compensated by the other companies. I think it's important to say today because we're going to talk about acquisitions and acquisitions have sort of been a fashion in the stock market. It seems sometimes to me that just making acquisitions is great. Acquisitions is great if they have a purpose. 30% of our EBITA growth came from the 8 acquisitions we made this year. The rest, 70% was organic. If we take a look at these acquisitions, there are 8, 6 of them were add-ons. We love add-on acquisitions. HL Display was first out because they had really done the journey, and Joakim will come back to this and explain why. But they have went through the stability, profitability level. We realized synergies here and the multiples are decent. We also did a small add-on acquisition in Diab and one in KVD and one in Speed. We also did an adjacent acquisitions. Adjacent acquisitions, those are acquisitions that we think is good for the group, but won't be integrated to another company as an add-on of different reasons, but we look for soft synergies and Vestia was acquired because we thought they had a very interesting model of doing construction. They're not on fixed price. They don't take risks. They have more satisfied clients and they have a higher profitability than the rest of the market. And I'm not going to take this story away from Christian, who will further elaborate on this one. But it has been very, very good for the start for Vestia within the group, but it also created something new. And finally, in the end of the year, we did a platform acquisition, also in the Construction Services division for 9x EBITA. And the platform acquisition for us, that is a company that in itself can do add-ons and grow organically and through acquisitions. We started this acquisition journey in the beginning of last year. We asked our analysts to verify and check out the numbers. We have screened over 200 companies. We submitted 20 bids, and we had 8 acquisitions completed successfully. Why do I show this slide, I want to say that to you that we are very selective. And the fact that we have 20 bids and 8 successful acquisitions, it is not that we didn't -- wasn't prepared to pay the price. After the bid, you meet the management, you learn more about the company, you have maybe commercial advisers. You see things that even if you have a temptating sort of multiple play here, which we again -- I mean, of course, we do it, but we don't require companies because gain a multiple arbitrage. So we stay off, but these 8 were acquired. My final slide in this session or next final is that, well, all this has resulted in EPS increasing 79%. And Jonas, my dear CFO, will talk more about this. I want to end by saying, and I want you to remember this, the turnaround is completed. We will have problems, challenges always somewhere. Right now, Diab, we need to fix things in Diab. We're good in fixing things. But we know how to do a turnaround, and there will be no big turnaround of Ratos for a very long time, I'm sure. But companies -- in all the big groups, you always have so many problems. The acquisition journey started. We acquired actually SEK 400 million EBITA last year, SEK 100 million of them went into '21 results, the rest coming now. And we do have a very strong balance sheet or we have a lot of money to also acquire companies for some SEK 6.5 billion right now. But they're not burning in our pocket and Jonas will talk more about that later. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Jonas. Before letting you off the stage, I actually have a few follow-up questions. I mean you talk a lot about it's all about people. I don't think anyone has missed that's one of your favorite taglines. Couldn't you elaborate a bit more about what does it mean for you and for Ratos?

It means that we're very -- I said that we were selective with acquisitions. We're very selective on who we employ. But it's also -- I mean, when I came in to Ratos as a Chairman, there was a lot of great people, really in Ratos, over 50. But even if you're a great -- great man and woman, it's not -- I mean, it depends on what you're going to do. And we shifted our business a lot. So very skilled people were -- that we had, they didn't fit in, in the new Ratos. They fit in very well in other places. As an example, there was no legal person in Ratos and doing a turnaround with a lot of bad contracts, et cetera, striving for acquiring companies in the future. My first recruitment was actually our General Counsel, Magnus, who's here, who is a top-ranked lawyer from -- also from the international legal firms, but he came to us from MTG, where he was Head of M&A legal there. And Magnus has in its turn recruited another lawyer. That makes us bit special maybe, was General Counsel from my previous job. And the reason for this has turned out so well during the first 4 years is very much people and the mix of people I've managed to get into Ratos. We have a fantastic team. I wish that we could stand everyone on scene. But you need to have also a heterogeneous group. And then people think about gender or religion or ethnicity or so. And yes, they can be important. But I sort of want to have people that stand for different skills, but also may be different personalities. Let's go for it. No, it's maybe a big risk, and you sort of get a balance there.

Yes. And another question, I mean, there is no doubt that Ratos is in the new phase. The turnaround is completed, right? Well, how did this happen? I mean you talked a bit about it, but could you elaborate a bit more how was it possible?

No, I think it's a boring answer, but I tried to show it on the slides. Again, it starts with the people. Why is the CEO so important? No, it's not a one man's job or one woman's job. But it is to select the -- to build these groups, and we changed the governance system completely. I mean we had external -- it was a rule to have an external chairman to have external board members. We don't talk so much strategy. We are very operational focused. I used to say we're 90% operational excellence, 10% strategy. That doesn't mean that strategy is something you can skip. It's important and it's important to have targets and visions and [indiscernible] for your business. But if you and I should sail together from Copenhagen to Sturegatan, we have a strategy. We have planned this. We should have this heading and so on, but the weather is shifting and you need to change strategy to reach Sturegatan and so is the reality, and I can show you so many examples on that. Also from respectable management firms that had said this is what's going to happen. Take Norwegian offshore with [indiscernible] in 2012, they were lacking 13,000 engineers. Everyone went there. Ratos bought Aibel. I'm not surprised by that, but because the big management consulting firms all said that, but it didn't went that way. Luckily Aibel was such a super company so they could survive and it's now really transform, but we will hear more about that later.

Yes. Last follow-up questions...

Best strategy is to stay close to the market, let the people who meet the clients because they hear from the clients, what the competitors are doing. And yes.

Yes, very interesting. And my last follow-up question is actually about the environment we are operating in at the moment. I mean, we have 2 years with the Corona pandemic and to say the least, quite troubled geopolitical situation that is causing the stock market to tremble right now. Well, how is Ratos navigating through all this? And I mean a lot of the companies they were showing all-time high results, even though we have these challenges around us?

Yes. First, good -- I mean, I should have mentioned that, right? I mean, last year, in this -- 9 of our companies actually did all time high ever. And all companies -- or 11 companies did a better result than last year. Well, I do believe that corona, I mean, knock on wood that it's actually going away. Now the geopolitical situation is scary, I think. However, I think our way to work, we get stronger then. I mean the way we work make those times better for us than for many others, I think.

Okay. Thank you so much, Jonas, you will come back later on. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

So thank you, Jonas. It's time for our next speaker, and I'm actually going to try to look in the camera actually because I had an SMS from someone looking who said, all of you are looking down in the floor. So I have to remind myself and my colleagues that we actually have a lot of people watching us digitally as well. So our next speaker is a very experienced CFO with extensive knowledge from many of Ratos relevant industries. Before he joined Ratos, he held several senior positions at companies such as WM Data, Cardo and Atlas Copco. He used to be the CFO of Munters, the CFO of AFRY and he has been the CFO of Ratos since 2020. Already, he and his team has made a huge difference cutting costs through central financing and new treasury function at Ratos. A warm welcome to Jonas Agrup, the CFO of Ratos.

Thank you, Josefine. So I will go through the financial standing of Ratos. And we have seen a strong financial development over these last 4 years, as you can see here in the slide. Net sales has increased roughly 5% per year, so that's a good performance. And if we look at 2020 and '22, when we had the pandemic, we were actually growing organically in the group, which I think is with good organic growth rates. If we look at adjusted EBITA, we are up 62% on a yearly basis. So it's a good growth, and Jonas has talked about that a little bit, from SEK 400 million to SEK 1.8 billion in 2021. And if we look at the results for last year, EBITA was up 23%. As Jonas said, 11 out of 13 companies increased EBITA. Actually, 9 companies were record -- posted record high EBITA in the year. And we also saw a good growth. And the growth was actually fueled mainly from organic growth. So 70% of the growth was organic and the 30% was coming from acquisitions of the SEK 334 million in increase. And then we had the unrealized effect of the Dun & Bradstreet shares that was SEK 116 million for the full year. If we look at the operating cash flow, and I will come back a little bit to the profile that we have. We have seen good operating cash flows in Ratos. We posted in 2020, SEK 2.4 billion in operating cash flow. Last year, it was SEK 2.2 billion in operating cash flow. And you can see that we have a negative effect on the net working capital, SEK 774 million, and that is actually the effect that we planned to build inventory before disease have seen. Plantasjen, for example, but we also decided to have a new business model in KVD and we decided to have cars in stock and have started to build stock in that way. So that's why we have -- basically why we have this large negative effect. If you look at the cash conversion, it's also on the high level. If you look at the last 3 years, cash conversion has been actually above 150%, which is, I think, is a good number. So let's look at the cash flow dynamics. If we look at net working capital, we have been around 5% in sales, in net working capital, which I think is a low number. And you can see there is a spike in 2021, we're at 9%, and this spike is because of this planned inventory buildup. So if I adjust for Plantasjen and KVD, we are roughly at 6%, 6.5%. We are also CapEx light. You can see CapEx around 2%. We have made quite large investments in '19 and '20 in new production equipment facilities for PET production. And if I adjust for those investments, we're actually CapEx -- the CapEx level is below 2%. So the cash flow dynamics here is quite interesting, I think. We have a strong balance sheet. Jonas talked about that. Leverage is down from 2.4x down to 0.2x. We have the target level, and we can, of course, exceed that target level occasionally if we acquire companies. And we have SEK 6.5 billion in funds -- available funds to make acquisitions, and then still stay at 2.5% -- 2.5x or below 2.5x in leverage. I will also talk a little bit about how we follow up our companies. We have business reviews on a monthly basis, and we focus on gross profit, basic things, OpEx, EBITA, net working capital, we focus a lot on cash flow, which we think is very important. We also look at return on capital employed. We have a common format. So all the companies have the same format, the same P&L, same balance sheet so that we can recognize exactly what we're looking at. And then we update forecasts on a monthly basis. In many cases, we actually start with the forecast ladder that Jonas showed. So how did you perform this month compared to your forecast? We do a lot of benchmarking, both internally and external benchmarking because we would like to understand the companies that are the best, what do they look like? And we -- in some cases, we are the best, but we -- and if we're not, we would like to be the best. As Josefine said, we have the central financing now in place. So we have created a treasury function, which we didn't have in the past. We financed the company centrally. We have savings from this centralized financing and also the cash pool that we have in place is roughly SEK 85 million per year. And then, of course, going forward, making more acquisitions and so on, we will borrow even further. So we will have additional savings going forward as well. If you look at the interest expense, including fees, you can see here from '19 to run rate 2021, we are down roughly 2 and 2.7 percentage points. And we also have a new tax status since July last year. We're not an investment company anymore. We are taxed as an ordinary company. And we have this loss carryforward in Ratos AB, which is roughly SEK 14 billion. And this will have an impact on taxes paid going forward, and we saw it already in 2021 where we had a tax rate of 13% roughly. Return on capital employed has increased, so we had 12% last year. We have seen a good development over these years. And why we have this increase is mainly because of increased earnings in our companies. Jonas showed this slide, earnings per share. You can see, if you go back to 2018, we were actually making a loss, I mean, per share, excluding Bisnode. And last year, we had SEK 283 per share. So it's a quite good increase, fueled by the good performance in our business areas, but also central financing and that we pay lower taxes. And the financial net has improved from -- between 2021 to 2020 by 40% roughly. And as I said before, the effective tax rate is 13%. Our financial targets remains the same. We would like to have SEK 3 billion EBITA, at least by 2025. The leverage, 1.5 to 2.5x could be higher if we make acquisitions and dividend payout 30% to 40% and the proposed dividend for 2021 was at 42%, I think, roughly. So let's look at some key priorities. Going forward, we will simplify a little bit how we present the company and start to report segments. As you know, we report all the companies today. Going forward, we will report the business areas. So in our quarterly report, we will present the results for the business areas. We will continue to centralize and look at the processes within treasury. We think there is much more to do, we have just started. So we will save costs going forward. And we will also look into the capital structure and the tax efficiency in our companies. And what I would like to do is to try to get as much profits and funds up to Ratos AB in order to utilize the tax loss carryforward that we have. We will continue to focus on ROCE, which I think is very important. And then, of course, we will have the focus on earnings per share. And this will, I think, improve because of the improved financial net, but also we will reduce tax costs going forward. So that was basically all I would like to say today. And I would like to introduce our next speaker. She's the newest member of the management team of Ratos and joined us in September last year. She is bringing extensive knowledge from plus 10 years in senior positions within communication, public affairs, crisis management and sustainability within banking industry into Ratos. Today, she will give us an update on sustainability at Ratos and also share some really inspiring examples. Welcome back on stage, Josefine Uppling.

Thank you. Thank you, Jonas. And before I sort of change my hat, I actually have a follow-up question to you. You were mentioning our new way of reporting, the segment reporting going forward. Just to make it super clear, when will it start? And if you, for an example, are an analyst following Ratos, what difference will it make?

I think, as I said, it will be simpler for the analysts to follow Ratos and for all investors because today, we have 13 companies, and it's a complicated way to present the company, I think. So it will be simplified and then. So we will present the 3 business areas, and the results for them, and we will make the comments in the quarterly report, and there will be as of first -- the first quarter this year, actually. So I think that will be a very good step forward.

Okay. Thank you so much. A big hand...

Thank you. Thanks.

So I will give you a glance, as I say, initially about sustainability at Ratos. I joined in September, as Jonas mentioned, and I must say I am impressed when I look at what is happening in our company, sustainability-wise. I mean it's systematic, it's action-oriented. It's incremental improvement actually that really makes a difference in the long run in the companies. And we have a way at Ratos, how we see sustainability, first of all, but I think that's hygiene. These days, I mean, sustainability is an integrated part of our business. And we believe that what is sustainable in the long run is also profitable in the long run. And I mean, of course, everyone thinks like us. The difference is that Ratos has been around 150 years plus, and we wouldn't have if we didn't understand this. I mean, in the core of our business model. We focus, as I said, on incremental improvement that really makes a difference in the long run. And I think we only have seen actually the start of this. This is going to be the focus going forward. And I am so happy to share some really inspiring examples with you going on in this presentation. But before I do so, I would like to just give you some sort of bits and pieces on hygiene and what's needed for all big companies today. I mean, the ESG way of describing, sustainability, I think, is the common way of describing it these days, both environmental, social and governance part of it. I will give you some bits on how we work on these 3 parts of sustainability and of course, I mean, the development goals in Agenda 2030 is also sort of the starting point for our sustainability work. Yes, I should also mention that we, at Ratos -- no, sorry, I mixed my slides. Yes, ESG at Ratos. If you look at the environmental part of the ESG way of describing sustainability, we, of course, measure annual carbon footprints and do climate reports for all our 13 companies, also for the mother company. We used the GRI index. We have done our first measurement in line with the new EU taxonomy. I will show you a quite busy slide on that in a bit. And we absolutely -- we're super proud that a lot of our companies are really innovative and they collaborate both internally and externally and some of our business area presidents will come back to that. If we look at the social part, Ratos has, for many, many years, been very engaged in scientific research. I mean, I'm really proud to remind you that a lot of -- a large part of the dividend every year from Ratos goes back to Ragnar Soderberg and Torsten Soderberg Foundation, and they really, really make a difference out there, I can assure you. Education is also something that's really important for us, and we have a long, long relationship with the Stockholm School of Economics. Last but definitely not least, we are engaged in Inkludera Invest because we really believe in social inclusion and that everyone in society should be able to participate and to contribute. The governance side, I mean, of course, we have our required policies and guidelines in place, and they are available for you analysts and everyone else who's interested in Ratos to find on our external website. We have, since some years, external whistleblowing system. Personally, I believe if it's not external, you can -- I mean, there is no use of a whistleblower function. And we do a really serious screening for an anticorruption screening of all our companies yearly. And this is definitely not the full picture. This is pieces -- bits and pieces just to give you a glance on the hygiene factors and what we do in this topic. EU taxonomy, I managed, mentioned before, I mean, to be honest, right now, it's only 2 of 6 goals or major points in this new taxonomy that is up and running. So I mean, this doesn't say much. The reason why I'm showing you this slide today, and I will bring it in the appendix is to sort of tell you that we are up and running, and we think this is a very good sort of common language coming up, and we will definitely keep on looking at a liability for Ratos in line with the EU taxonomy. So busy slide will not deep dive in it, but feel free to have a broader look at it afterwards. So sustainability is, as I said, an integrated part of all our business and of course, also in our acquisition process. We screen, we evaluate, we onboard. We make sure that the new companies have the right strategy and policies. And we -- as I also mentioned, make sure they have each other. They can talk to each other. They can -- they can share best practice. They can share knowledge. That's a very, very important part of the Ratos family and being part of something larger, as Jonas Wistrom mentioned before. And of course, reporting and follow-up is super important. If you don't measure, you can't see the improvement. But most important of all, it's action. Action speaks louder than words, you need to take action and you need to keep on working because sustainability work, you are never done. You need to keep on working all the time. So over to the examples, which I personally think is the most exciting part actually to see what's really happening out there in our companies. Maybe some of you have seen that we try to -- we try to be better about telling you about all the fantastic things that are happening out in the company, sustainability-wise. A couple of business slides. Also here, you can find all the slides in the appendix. And if you look at us digitally, you can also, of course, download the presentation material and have a closer look to these pictures afterwards. But just to mention a few. I mean look at Aibel, Aibel is a really large company. 64% of their order book these days are renewables and electrification. That's quite amazing. They have done this journey in 5 years. And the latest electrification contracts they were awarded are actually going to help to take down the carbon footprint in Norway. And with Norway, I mean the state of Norway's total carbon emission footprint by 1.5%. I think that's quite amazing. HENT, amazing building. I don't know if you have been to lately. No one has. You should definitely go there because this is an amazing building that our company, which is called SSE today, but used to be called HENT Sweden. They have built the tallest wooden building in Sweden. And as you might not know, now you will know, building in wood is the most sustainable way of building you can do actually. So this is quite amazing. Diab, I mean, they're in the plastics industry, to be frank. They have reduced their carbon footprint by 46% last year. 46%, sorry, from 2016. They have reduced their carbon footprint by 46% in 5 years, quite amazing development. Speed, they are in logistics, mainly even if they also do recruitment reduced their carbon footprint by 40% last year. By simply, I say simply, I don't think it was simple, but they simply divested some property that wasn't good enough, and they sort of changed their cars to electrical vehicles instead and then they reduced their carbon footprint by 40%, amazing. Last but not least, fantastic journey in Plantasjen as well. I mean -- they are using 100% green energy since 2021. 35% of all the plants sold in a Plantasjen store is actually locally sourced. So this was a few examples. We are very proud to share them. There are many, many more, but this was some bits and pieces. To wrap it up going forward, what can you expect in the sustainability area at Ratos going forward? Well, we will continue our focus on incremental improvement where it really makes a difference in the long run. I mean if a company is able do this amazing shift that they are into, it really makes a difference for real. We're going to continue to be science-based. As I said, you are never done. Happily enough to new research coming up all the time, and of course, the necessity of measurements and reporting you are never done. Last but definitely not least, action. I mean Ratos company should be ESG leader in their industry. Doesn't mean you have to be it when we welcome you into the family, but you definitely need to have the ambition to be. So I'll stop there. Thank you very much. So and over to my other job as host of the day, I am going to introduce our next speaker, and I'm just going to find my right card. There we go. So our next speaker is a colleague with a really international background. He has lived and worked in Kenya, South Africa, France and in the U.S., studied at Berkeley. To mention some of his earlier experience. Before he joined Ratos in 2016, he worked at Bain & Company, mainly with strategy in private equity, and he was helping all the big players in the industry. Luckily for us, he stopped with that. Today, he is heading our business area industry. Joakim Twetman, please welcome on the stage. Thank you.

Thank you. So I think it's supposed to be this one, right? So for those of you who haven't met me, I'm Joakim Twetman and I head up our industry practice. Industry is essentially a group of market leaders that are based in the Nordics, but export to the world. If you look at this picture, you can see that all of our companies -- we have 4 companies in the group and we're very international. LEDiL is a world leader in terms of optics. We have HL Display is a European market leader in terms of in-store communication. Diab is a leader in lightweight material. And then TFS is about to become a market leader in the midsize CRO in Europe. And we have industry-leading margins in LEDiL and in HL. We talk a lot about margins at Ratos. It's simply because we believe that margins essentially reflect how much value you're adding to your customers and if you're running it efficiently. If you got better margins than your peers, it essentially means that you're adding more value to your customers and you're running it more efficiently, you are the definition of a better company. We started the acquisition journey in 2021. Since then, we've been able to make 4 acquisitions. We've started the journey in HL and Diab. I'm hoping next time I show this slide that we would have done acquisitions in TFS and LEDiL, we're just about to start those journeys as we speak. And this year, we had all-time high earnings in LEDiL and in HL Display. And we're just on the brink of having all-time high earnings in TFS. Give it a couple of months, and we'll be there. Let's look at how this has gone. So this started out to be the smallest business area. It's still the smallest business area, but at least we're 10x the size we were when we started out. It's been a pretty fantastic development upwards, although we have when it comes to 2020 to '21. This is obviously driven by Diab, which I think most of you know. And let's spend a couple of seconds talking about Diab. Diab this year is -- they operate in the wind industry and the wind industry has essentially been very down this year, as seen by Vestas and all the competition that they have. At the same time, in 2018, we started to work on the technology shift that is happening in the industry. And this year, we're seeing that technology shift accelerate. We announced in Q4 that we're going to take some actions. So we're introducing a cost program to get this company back on track, which we will. If we look at I said that we were export driven and so on. We have 85% of sales outside of the Nordics, which balance -- which is a nice balance compared to some of the other companies that we have in the group. 40% of our sales in the industry is outside of Europe. We are truly global. We have subsidiaries in 33 countries. We have sales in 50 countries and more than that. And were pretty sizable, about 5 billion in revenue, 3,000 employees and 13 production sites. One of the things that we think works well for Ratos, but also works well in industry is essentially our diverse market exposure. We're always -- like Jonas said, we're always going to have issues. Right now, we have a market issue amongst other things in renewable energy or in wind segment. But during that time, we have other stronger markets, and this gives us a sort of strength to the group. If we look at the exposures that we have, it is essentially a couple of segments that are ripe for growth long term, like renewable energy. I think everyone believes that this will recover and we'll do very, very well going forward. Like sustainable lights, we're talking about LEDs, we're talking about producing, energy consumption and therefore, efficiency and life science, for instance. I was told to talk about HL Display. I love to talk about HL Display. So it's a privilege to get to do that. HL is one of those companies has actually been through all parts of our journey. When we started this, and Jonas talked about stability, profitability and the growth, right? When we started this journey, and we came into HL, they were talking a lot about growth, but their margins wasn't really there. And to grow a company with low margins, you're not going to get the benefits of that growth, right? So we started working through the business with the management started to decentralize, started to make sure that the decisions happen close to the customers and starting to get that stability in the business, which came pretty quickly. Second step was to talk about stability -- profitability, sorry. And we brought the margins up from 3% to some 10% and so -- or so, right? We talked about culture and culture what's good, right? It comes down to what's good. If you go home, you sleep, you have a good glass of red wine, everything is great because you delivered some good results, right? In HL, good was 10% when we entered in margin. We've been able to move that threshold. We've been able to move what is considered good through the benchmarks, through what Jonas was talking about the sort of walking the walk, making sure that sort of we can do this even better. So it's not surprising that HL is one of the first of our companies that are stable enough to start growing. So last year, we started and we set out on the growth journey, right? And we set up a team with the help from Ratos in the beginning. Now they're driving everything decentralized. And we started out to identify the targets that we could acquire, started to look at are the synergies in this, and it turns out there it's great synergies in this. It's a market that is ripe for consolidation, many small local competitors that exist there. And HL is the natural part or natural party to consolidate that market. They also happen to have a very, very strong brand in the market, while some of you might never have heard them. I heard about them. I think you meet them every day. But -- yes. In every grocery store, you are in, I'm sure you touch HL's merchandises. But in their market, they're the brand. And therefore, people want to -- people and companies want to be part of them. So this year, we've been able to do 3 acquisitions. Those acquisitions has been in Poland, in Italy and in U.K. It's about $200 million in sales. We acquired them for about 5% in EBITA. And we've been able to identify and sort of start taking out 8% in cost synergies here. We're only talking cost synergies. Those are the hard ones. Those are the ones that I count. On top of that, obviously, we're going to see revenue synergies and essentially pricing power, which comes next, right? I think HL is one of those good examples of, with the help of us, our companies can become very self-sufficient in their M&A journeys and the team at HL at this point, they're negotiating, they're identifying, they're writing the proposals, they're doing it, and we're essentially sitting and approving it, which is exactly how we want it to work when it comes to the add-on acquisitions. We've talked a lot about part of something larger. But what does it mean? This is one of my favorite examples. It's got to do with sustainability. It's got to do with part of something larger and so on, right? So for those of you who don't know, HL, and we're talking about HL and Diab, that's doing something at this point, right? HL does the small -- I don't know if everyone see this, but these black dividers, amongst other things, right? You come across them in your everyday grocery store. And one of the things HL had an issue, right, or they have an issue where their customers want recycled PET for these kind of dividers. But the market for recycled PET, it's really difficult to get a hold of recycled PET, although you guys all go and recycle your PET bottles. It's difficult to get a hold of and it's very expensive and the customers aren't willing to pay for it. So what happened was Diab and HL, their separate teams actually met at this business leadership executive program that we talked about. And some of them even liked each other, so they kept in contact. Now when HL actually had a problem, they picked up the phone, they know that the Diab is working a lot with PET. So they picked up the phone to talk about, well, can we get something on sort of purchasing synergies, wasn't the same PET, so it didn't work? All right. Do you guys have any recycled PET or access to recycled PET? Well, they didn't. But we have this waste. And after a little bit of research, they discovered that the waste that Diab produce that they can't recirculate themselves can actually be used in HL. And you can't produce the -- what do you call that. The coloring was an issue. And so therefore, they decided to make it a black line. And they have just introduced the back line to the grocery retailers like the Tescos of the world, and they're loving it. And this is just one of the examples where that your part of the group makes it a little bit stronger and it's just about picking up the phone, testing, and we can see some benefits, right? We're hoping this will be a commercial success. It's starting to have very, very strong promises, and it's definitely one of the sustainability successes because you're sort of creating the circle loop in between them. We have 4 companies, like I said, in the industry, right? We have and we see great potential for those 4 companies, but to be able to meet our targets and to sort of make sure that I'm not the smallest business segment in the world -- in Ratos, we need to continue to acquire new platforms to grow. So what are we looking for, right? I think the key here is customers -- customer relationships, right? The stronger customer relationships you have, the more profitable you will be over time. You will solve your customers' problems, and there, you can actually gain profitability and they're willing to pay for it. The stronger our customer relationships, you are, the more likely they are to shift you out. And if you're looking for a long-term winner in industry, this is exactly what you're looking for. Tons of different ways to look at this, but this is our main criteria that we look for. We like companies who champion a niche simply because we like them to be global and global of the size that we have, you need to champion a niche, you can't be the sort of biggest player in the world. Today, a lot of the businesses that we look at, they have a hockey stick. It's trending down, but it's a hockey stick upwards with great promises about the future and so on. We value long-term profitability. We value the history more than we potentially value the future promises. This comes down to culture. This comes down to sort of have you been able to take a downturn. I mean most of us or some of us haven't -- some of us have lived through a downturn. Some of us are younger. But if you've been through a downturn, then you have a culture of reducing costs. You have a culture of working with price. You're not just flying when everything is soaring, you're actually making sure that you're flying, right? There are companies that have done shifts, there are companies that have done that are exceptions to this. But then something must have happened in the company for us to find it attractive. And like I said, coming back to this point of strong margins compared to peers, it is about -- it's one of those key indicators that you're doing something better, and it's about sustainable, stronger margins than your peers, right? one year, great. But then you can have just done the sort of let's cut cost for now, and let's see what happens, right? That's sustainable, stronger margin than peers, you are doing something right, even if you can't articulate yourself what it is. Given the fact that we're investing without an exit horizon, we need to have a look at the companies in a different way than potentially some of the competition that we see for the great companies that are out there. And therefore, we're looking sort of to invest with the megatrends, not the fabs at the moment, not -- this is super cool right now, but rather sort of urbanization, the bigger moves in society. And this is something that we're spending time, sometimes discussing if this is a megatrend or if this is a fad. We hope we'll get it right, but this is also something that we find important when we look at new acquisitions. So what will happen? What's my focus going forward in industry, right? What creates the most value for our shareholders is essentially organic growth and margin expansion? There's no more magic than that. That will always be top priority. We are, at the moment, starting up 2 new acquisition journeys. Like I said, we want to make TFS, one of those market leaders. We're going to have to make a couple of acquisitions to get there. We're starting up that journey as we speak. We are starting up a journey in LEDiL as well to make sure that we can consolidate that market. It's not going to be the exact same journey as for HL. It's not the same market dynamics. But we're starting up. We're starting to see, we're starting to identify the synergies and hopefully, we can get this going pretty soon. We will continue to look for new platforms to find new essentially industrial market leaders that have their base in the Nordics. Thank you.

Thank you. Joakim, and you will come back shortly actually to answer some questions, but I think we should have all the 3 business area president's presentations first, and then we will see if there are any questions. So it's time for me to introduce the next speaker. It's a very experienced executive and Board member. In his early career, he was 10-plus years in operative roles in Unilever and Microsoft. And the last 20 years, he has been working as an investor. He was the CEO of Industrifonden for over 3 years. He spent 13 years at Novax where he also was the CEO for 8 years. He joined Ratos as Executive Vice President in 2018, and now he is heading our Business Area Consumer. It's time Anders Slettengren, the big hand.

Thank you, Josefine, for those kind words. So we're going to spend some time talking about Ratos consumer companies and that are companies that most people are familiar with and some even have almost a personal relationship, too. It's strong company brands such as Plantasjen, Oase Outdoors and KVD. We want our companies, our consumer companies to provide a better and easier life for consumers. That could mean time saving. It could mean more sustainable. It could mean healthier. We invest and own market leaders. We've heard that today. And if they're not market leaders today, they have the ambition to become market-leading. In the Consumer Group, they are benefiting from underlying strong megatrends, all our companies, I would say. The outdoor living trend for Oase obviously, the green living trend for Plantasjen and the overall digital transformation trend goes for all the companies, but especially for KVD. Looking at the business group of consumer companies, they have an annual compounded turnover of approximately $7 billion. It's 1,500 employees in the companies and the products and services that they provide meet over 12 million customers annually. I think that's a pretty impressive figure, and it's probably on the short side. Looking at the performance profit-wise, the last 4 years have been very good. A compounded annual growth rate of 86%, excluding Bisnode, Jonas and Jonas' previous slides. Last year, EBITDA grew with 37%. We've heard about the all-time highs in Ratos. These 3 companies actually made their all-time highs, all 3 of them. Oase grew their EBITA with almost 65% during '21, record high sales, also profit. And that also goes for the order book that they have now moving into the high season of 2022. KVD, also a good year. The EBITA growth, mostly fueled by the acquisition of Forsbergs Fritidscenter that we acquired in June 2021. And I will come back to that acquisition in a while. Then Plantasjen, of course. I think that requires or deserves, I would rather say, a short deep dive. Plantasjen had a record high year in EBITA 2021. But more importantly, I think, is that we've seen a steady growth of EBITA in Plantasjen for 4 consecutive years. They're actually gaining market share on a growing market. According to the company's estimation, the real pickup or boost in the market was during 2020. Then the market with tailwind from the pandemic grew approximately 10%. Plantasjen grew 20% during that year, gaining market share. Last year, the market was slightly up, Plantasjen was flat. But despite that, Plantasjen increased its profitability. And I really think that it's a sign of strength for Plantasjen. They increased their gross margins because of a better product mix. They increased their productivity because of better logistic costs but also as simple as OpEx as a percentage of sales was lower. So good OpEx control, resulting in growing EBITA, growing profitability. I hope, at least if your customers have Plantasjen, when you enter the stores, you can feel a difference. We have invested in an upgraded store concept. We have spent a lot of time to renew the assortment to have a more appealing consumer experience, all in all, when we think Plantasjen. But we've also worked and I feel pretty confident to say that the store network today has a better quality. We've actually closed net-net 13 unprofitable stores during the recent years in Plantasjen. I also feel confident or I dare to say that with the current structures in place and not to list with the current management in place, in Plantasjen, we have increased control and stability in this important company. And that's a sign of strength, I think, as we had for all of Ratos. So to elaborate on the add-on acquisition. We made 1 in this business unit during 2021 as KVD acquired Forsbergs Fritidscenter, Forsbergs is the leading reseller of caravans and camper vans in Sweden. A turnover of approximately 1 billion and an EBITDA margin of approximately 5%, i.e., around 50 million in EBITA, 50 million, 52 million. This is a synergy-driven acquisition. We leverage KVD's digital footprint. KVD has a digital footprint of approximately 800,000 customers in their database. So transforming a true brick-and-mortar reseller as Forsbergs into more of an omnichannel player creates value. We also see additional synergies in co-locations for the different establishments that we have in both companies. Management estimates the synergies to approximately 10% to 20% of Forsbergs annual EBITA, corresponding to 10 million to 20 million, something like that going forward on an annual basis over time. So also looking at the acquisition multiple here, the high 5s, 5.6%. We think it's an attractive multiple. And of course, I have to mention the latest acquisition, add-on acquisition that we actually released today. Plantasjen acquires Flyinge Plantshop. Flyinge is high-end garden center and plant school, situated in Southern Sweden in Flyinge, not far from Lund. They -- it's important for mainly 2 reasons: the acquisition for Plantasjen. First one, being that their premium range, i.e., their assortment and their expertise can further, so to say, infuse Plantasjen's offering towards their core customers today, being a silver bullet in the assortment for private end users. The other, not the less important reason is that it is accelerating Plantasjen's market expansion towards the business-to-business market. They have -- Flyinge have approximately or more than I could say, 50% of their sales to the business-to-business customers, private and public corporate basically. And that is a great opportunity with the support of Plantasjen to accelerate the growth into that market. So a very good day for Plantasjen and a very good day for Flyinge. Also, this acquisition was made at a decent or even attractive EBITA multiple of 5.2. So wrapping it up for the consumer company side of things we will keep the ongoing focus. You've heard it from Jonas. You've heard it from Jonas, you've heard it from Joakim and this is not only talk. We really like that organic growth and margin expansions, the fundamentals. And that is what we preach and drill and even are impatient about when we sit down with management in our follow-ups, in our monthly reviews and in our board meetings. That's where it all starts. Without that, no acquisition base to build on. But we will also see selective acquisitions, not the list, synergy-driven ones that we've seen with Flyinge and Forsbergs in Plantasjen and KVD. Then we also have the radar on and are looking for strong household brands, market leaders that have shown a resistant and stability in growing profitability over time. That's all for me. Thank you.

Thank you, Anders. Thank you so much. You will also come back soon on the stage, but thank you so much for now. So it's time for our last but definitely not least, business area President. He is actually the member of our management team, has been at Ratos for the longest. He started already in 2014. He has a long experience from both management consulting industry and from operational roles, both in the car industry and in the construction industry. Before he joined Ratos, he worked at the Toyota McKinsey and Skanska. It's time to listen to you -- sorry, Christian Johansson Gebauer and he's also goes under the synonym construction King of Ratos. Take it away.

Thank you so much, Josefine. We only have one construction guy at Ratos. So I guess that's me though. Thank you so much for the kind words. So I'm going to introduce this one. I'm going to introduce to you the Construction and Services business area. And I'm going to go to this slide. And this is actually what we are doing the companies in the business area. So we build and maintain a sustainable society. And this goes for all the companies. So this house or this building you have heard about before, this is Sara Kulturhus. That is actually the Sweden's tallest wooden building. And if you count the floors, I also learned that it's the world's tallest wooden building with 20 floors. And this was done by SSEA that is now [ SCA ] a that used to be HENT Sweden operation. And then for such a fantastic building, you need also an energy-efficient ventilation, right? And that can be provided by our team, our ventilation company in Ratos. The energy that comes into this building, it should be sustainable. It should be offshore wind energy. And there, we have Aibel that they have 64% of their order backlog in offshore wind and electrification. So maybe that's the energy that goes to this building. Then this building is in left to you, it's in the northern part of Sweden, and you see a lot of snow here. And if there is snow and such a building, you need to access, you need to maintain the infrastructure around the building. And there, we have Presis Infra, our new acquisition from last year. They are maintaining roads and things related to roads in Norway. Then finally, the material flow to such a construction site. We have Speed Group in the business area. They are actually working today with Vestia in the project in at Volvo, where speed is providing. You have a congested construction site, you need to have small, a lot high frequent deliveries. They are providing that deliveries just in time to the construction site. So you can -- in this picture, you can capture all the things that we're doing in the business area. You see, we have SEK 46 billion order book in total in the business area, about 7,000 employees and more than 1,000 projects ongoing. Let's look into the financials. We used in 2018, 2019 and 2020 to stabilize the business area. In 2019, we had some issues with a few HENT's projects that was impacting the EBITA. But what you also see is that from 2020 to 2021, we have a 68% increase in the EBITA. And you know that we did this Presis Infra acquisition, only December result is in these figures for 2021, so about SEK 30 million, meaning that we have quite a lot of EBITA that will come into 2022 on top of what you see here. We talked about trends previously. And in this business area, we have, I would say, very strong underlying trends, we have urbanization, which is on trend. We have a growing population. We have infrastructure in the Nordics that certainly needs upgrading. And then we have the climate change -- and we have like resource scarity that we need to take care of. And there, we also have solutions within the business area. We talked about record years. 5 out of 6 companies in the business area has record years 2021. So we did, in Ratos, the first platform acquisition during 2021. Platform acquisition for us, that's a sizable business. In the case of Presis Infra is close to SEK 300 million in EBITA. It needs to be a platform for further growth. It can be organically, but it can also be through additional add-on acquisitions. In Presis Infra, we have also a noncyclical business. And as a matter of fact, Plantasjen, we have Q2 and Q3, which is strong quarters. With Presis Infra, we have Q4 and Q1 that are strong quarters. So this makes a more kind of smooth results for all -- total Ratos during the year. And then we have best-in-class profitability in Presis Infra. And I would say, a very strong culture that we look a lot into the culture when we do acquisitions and buy companies that have a good culture, decentralized culture. So these we're certainly getting in the Presis Infra acquisition. Finally, about the multiple. The ones of you that read our press release when we acquired this company, you could see that we said 11x EBITA as a multiple. But now we came in really strong in the end of 2021, and it looks really good. So actually, when we summarize the year, what we paid is 9x the full year EBITA. And that we are very happy with. Moving on to the next kind of larger acquisition that we did in the business area that is Vestia and that's an adjacent acquisition. When we say adjacent acquisition that needs to have some soft synergies with one or more of our existing platforms. In this case, this is a company working in area in Gothenburg in Sweden. They are a partnering contractor, and they have a very interesting business model. They are very adjacent to HENT that had a business in Norway and in other parts of Sweden where Vestia were not present. So we thought, okay, here, we can have some knowledge exchange, and we can sort of say, be greater together. They also have a 5% margin on EBITA, which is very strong for the construction industry, and that's due to this partnering model. And then the acquisition multiple here was 6x EBITA. And then what happened when we acquired this company, we put the CEO of Vestia into the Board of HENT and we put the CEO of HENT into the Board of Vestia and we started to collaborate. And then we -- initially, we had soft synergies. We put in some bids together. Vestia and HENT Sweden was very successful. And then after why we thought, shouldn't we do something even more here? So we created Svensk Samverkansentreprenad, which we call SSEA. And that is actually the umbrella company for the construction operations in Sweden. So we took the Swedish business of HENT and Vestia. And we said, you will work together, 2 companies still, but under one CEO, that is the previous CEO of Vestia, Christian Wieland. And we put a target for this group. We say, you should, within 5 years, have SEK 5 billion of revenue with 5% margin. So it went from soft synergies to kind of hard synergies. That was not planned in the beginning, but it ended up this way. And I think this is truly exciting for the future. And I think also it strengthened HENT's Norwegian operations. They have a focus now in Norway, and they have the ability to outperform the market in the coming years. So going forward, I have talked a lot about the business area, not so much about the companies. I think we want to build here a sizable group of companies within infrastructure and urban development. I think what we start to see is when you -- now we have 6 companies. When we get a new company, they have some connections with -- if you buy within this infrastructure and urban development, they have some connections to other companies. They start to cooperate. And soon, they will feel that, yes, you're right. It's not only that we are a great company ourselves, but we are part of something larger. We have friends here. We have siblings in the different countries, doing kind of the same as what we are doing. And all of a sudden, you get like a positive spiral here that they start cooperating. They find acquisitions down in the structure that comes up. So it's a very positive kind of development that we see ongoing in this business group. And we want to accelerate the growth even further. We want to do more platforms. We want to do more adjacent acquisitions. And then we will do add-on acquisitions, as I said, that are feeded from the different companies. And then organic growth, obviously, fueled by what we call soft synergies, the extra positive momentum that you get by being part of this business group. Thank you.

Thank you, Christian. Please stay on the stage because I think we should -- I mean, live as we learn our own impatient way at Ratos. I think we should sort of prestart the Q&A session before we let our CEO wrap this session up. So Joakim and Anders, please join me on stage, and we will have a couple of questions to our business area Presidents before we wrap up.

Starting off with you, Christian, hence, you were the last one. A question to you is, I mean, it's a really broad question, so you can sort of this -- I am curious too on your answer. How will construction and services look in 3 years?

Thank you for the question, Josefine. You didn't give me no time to -- for a break here. But when I think about this, one more company to the group will add some more skills within this building and maintaining a sustainable society. It will add additional great people into the business area. The [ spiral ] will start kind of going even quicker where you do soft synergies. All of a sudden, you have a hard synergy to utilize. And additionally, we get a lot of feeding of add-on acquisitions from the different companies, from the different people in the business area. Our team is cooperating with HENT in some projects. Speed is doing logistics for HENT. Presis Infra is going into Sweden. We have a lot of friends in Sweden that can help them. So very exciting. And I think it's kind of [indiscernible] on the piano.

Please, can someone help...

[indiscernible] that kind of grow by itself when you get kind of things to move. So a very exciting future, I think.

Yes, I can't wait to see what's going to happen. Thank you so much, Christian. And if someone knows how [indiscernible] on the piano is translated to English, please let us know. Well, a question to you also, Anders. Actually, a couple of listeners and viewers have sent in the same question, and it's about trends basically. And for your business area consumer, it's -- I mean we know there is an increased digitalization out there. Now I sounded like I was 200 years old, but you get me. This makes customers change their behavior. Could you please elaborate how are the companies in the consumer area positioned towards this trend?

Well, I would say that the answer differs from company to company. And in my mind thinking out loud, they do that for a reason as well. If you look at KVD, I mean that's truly a digital marketplace and actually the leading digital marketplace for used cars in Sweden. The whole idea of buying Forsbergs or acquiring Forsbergs is leveraging that digital platform. So they are truly digital in their business setup. If I go on to Oase, they are a business-to-business company, but they have both retail and e-tail customers. So they have to understand the need of the retailers and e-tailers in U.K., Germany, Nordics, which are their biggest markets. But already, if you look from a consumer perspective, a big chunk of their sales goes through e-tail, e-commerce to their end users. So they are already on that trade. Coming to Plantasjen. Well, they are actually moving from physical sales 100% onto something more omnichannel-wise. There, the pandemic was really a kickstart for them and fast forwarded that development. From a retail perspective, I think that Plantasjen, you know, Plantasjen is a destination shopping retailer, which means that they have a good position with their physical establishments, but were investing heavily in e-comm in Plantasjen. Their sales online, direct sales online today is SEK 150 million to SEK 200 million, something like that. That part will grow over the years with the investments we make. So I think all are well positioned in the digital transformation trend, but in different ways.

Thank you, Anders. Actually, in this very phase of the Q&A, there were no questions to the industry segment. But what a heck, Joakim, I think you can choose your own question. What question would you...

There are no questions?

Not at this stage.

I'm very disappointed by everyone that's listening. I think there's lots of interesting stuff to talk about when it comes to the industry piece. Yes, so one of the things that we never talk about or we seldom talk about is actually sort of -- we talk about the tool book -- the toolbox or so that we're using. We don't actually talk about how it's being applied and what it results in. If you look in TFS, one of the most important pieces there has been the decentralization, making sure that the people that actually are close to the customers need to make the decisions that are possible. We needed to rip out some costs in that process, and we've actually grown TFS from sort of being read for 2 years in a row and pretty significantly read to a company that last year made EUR 6.5 million. It's starting to become sizable. It's 600 people and we're going to grow from there, right? That's one of those examples. And in LEDiL, we actually moved -- in LEDiL, it was partly about pushing down responsibilities, but it was also about -- it was about getting closer to your customers, right? It's about moving that -- LEDiL was Finland based. They're based in Salo. It was about moving Salo out in the world, making sure they talk to their customers. And just that, call it very simple, going from an inside-out to an outside-in resulted in growth of 50-plus percent EBITDA growth last year. And we saw all-time high sales and all-time high earnings. We pushed down responsibility there, too. But these examples, you pick for different country -- companies, different pieces of these kind of playbooks and it actually has a large impact.

Thank you so much. So even though he doesn't get questions, he is like [indiscernible] on the piano. Amazing. So thank you so much for this sort of hostile Q&A start -- takeover of the stage. Now it's time for our dear President and CEO, Jonas Wistrom, to wrap this presentation up. Warm welcome back on the stage, Jonas Wistrom.

Thank you, Josefine. I think we've covered 60 slides now, and I have just another 30. No, I have 2 slides, so don't be afraid. But listening in to our business area managers or presidents, I think you know what I'm talking about when I say it's all about people. I can honestly say that I've never worked with such a great team. And not everyone has been on stage today as here in Ratos, and I'm immensely proud of that. I think attached this a little bit, but some asked me, what is Ratos? What sets you apart? I think one thing I didn't cover is that -- I mean, we have, I think, 80,000 shareholders. But we have a main shareholder that's been with us for a long time, and it's represented by our Chairman, Per-Olof Soderberg. We think the same, and they are very long term, very long term. They've been around for 150-plus years, been stock listed since '94 -- '54. But another thing that sets us apart is, again, that we try to take the best from the industrial companies and the private equity companies. I've been working in many industrial companies. I've been approached by different roles in private equity companies. We have the impatience that many has alluded to, but we are not impatient just the first 2 years, adding on CapEx and sort of planning to divest it in 5, 7 years or so. We're impatient all the time. I'm not going to repeat what everyone of the rest here on stage has said about the fundamental in business. We are operational focused, very much so. And the incentives is important. And I thought -- I said in the beginning, we use them to attract the best people. But maybe the difference from private equity is that we make this incentive, restructure them in a way that they're also a way of keeping great people with us for a long time. And that is also very important. And in those days, I think it's more important than ever to say that everything we do is based on fundamental value creation for all of our shareholders. So again, we are ahead of plan. We have -- we will see, coming forward, we will see in 2022, SEK 400 million coming into the EBITA or SEK 300 million compared to 2021. But that's not enough, of course. We have a strong pipeline on acquisitions as we speak, much stronger than we had in the beginning of 2021. And we have the headroom for the financing, but we will continue to be as selective. I think the business areas you have seen in 3 years will be more streamlined. There will be -- I mean, let's face it, these companies were the companies we had when we started, except for Presis Infra. And now with the financial muscles we have and the financial competence we have, I should have said that, I think what separates us is also we just don't have the operational competence. I never worked earlier in a company that has some strong financial capabilities. So all these things together makes the future looking very bright for Ratos. Thank you very much for listening in. And now we are in the Q&A session. And have you already taken all the questions from the audience or...

No, there are still a few questions left for you. And hopefully, we will have even more questions. So now it's time for you, sitting here in the studio, and you, who are watching us to send in your questions. We'll see. We have a good start here, Jonas. I think if you -- I'll stay here and you stay there and then if we need any help from our business area presidents or CFO, you will call them up on stage, right?

Yes.

Perfect. So starting up with -- it's a question about Plantasjen and it's co -- let's see. It's [ Adam Ladin ], and he is asking, let's see here. Well, he said, Anders alluded to it, but how should one view the growth trajectory in Plantasjen in the coming years? To an outsider, it seems like a lot of tailwind from the pandemic and through comps going forward.

And to? Comps, comps.

Going forward.

Yes, yes. This is something we discuss all the time. I mean the answer is we really don't know how we -- as Anders said, we have gained market share during this pandemic. If we look at 2021, I'm not sure that Anders said that -- he said that the sales was flat last year, right? But we also had 50% of the Norwegian stores closed in March and April or parts of March and parts of April, yes. But still, the profit increased because the profitability increased. So there is something fundamental that has happened in Plantasjen. And talking about people, these fundamental things actually happened after we changed CEO in Plantasjen to Nina Jonsson, who I -- and you should read her CV too, but I learned to know her in HL Display because I was the Chairman for HL Display between 2019 and now for the last 3 years. And when she came in there, I mean, she really shifted the management team. I mean, of course, not new -- people that have been there for long is still there, some of them. But in very important positions, they've changed that. So it's a fundamental new company. Personally, I think it's a big difference on being a -- what is that in English? Like selling material to you for building a new veranda on your house, et cetera, et cetera. That business has also grown quite a lot. I don't want to mention any brands here, but you all know what I'm talking about. I mean, you don't do that every year. And we should remember that even in the tough years for Plantasjen before Nina's time, Plantasjen was growing because the market is growing. The market was growing before the pandemic. Every year, the green living is something that is here to stay, but how much the tailwind has been is hard to analyze. But -- as Anders said, we have a much higher -- lowest level, if I could say so. I'm absolutely sure of that.

Okay. So Anders, do you want to add something or are you happy with our CEO's answer?

I'm very happy with our CEO's answer.

Oh, that was a good answer from you.

They're instructed to always say so when I say something.

Thank you very much. Another question on actually megatrends, which we have touched upon a lot today. It's [ Gustav Anderson ]. He has 2 questions. Which megatrend do you find the most interesting when looking at new potential targets, segment specific and overall? And are we to expect M&A within existing segments, consumer industry and Construction & Services? Or are we also thinking about branching out into new business segments outside the existing ones? So 2 questions in 1.

All right. So what's the most important megatrend? I actually think it's sustainability. Joakim mentioned urbanization. During the pandemic, it sort of went down a bit. But for sure. I mean, in the future, I think we will talk more about cities than countries, to be honest. And digitalization is, of course, I mean, a very strong trend. But I would point out sustainability as the most important. And it's so well connected with profitability. So that's why I like it so much. The second question was, would we expand outside our business areas? I don't think so. I think we will have a more streamlined business going forward in general.

Okay. Thank you. So maybe we should...

Because we want to invest what we understand. And we understand quite a lot in Ratos and all CEOs and other key people in our group. But to go outside that, I'm hesitating around that.

Okay. Thank you so much. Do any of the gentlemen here in the studio have a question in person? We have a runner with the mic. So just lift your hand and please introduce yourself and the company you are representing before you ask your questions. Please go ahead.

Rasmus Engberg with Handelsbanken. I had a couple of questions. Some of them are boring financial stuff, so maybe we'll have Jonas the second...

You can test me.

Maybe the CFO should join the stage.

I was just wondering, you talked briefly about the tax losses. Can you sort of elaborate a little bit on what that means and how it can be used and so?

We have the SEK 14 billion in Ratos AB, which means that when we make profits in Ratos AB, we basically don't have to pay taxes. So what we will focus on going forward is to, you know, the centralized financing will make money in the parent company. We will also make sure that we get group contributions from Swedish companies into Ratos AB in order to pay less taxes. So that's really the name of the game that we're looking at.

Do you have some sort of soft estimate on what were the paid tax would be?

Yes. I think going 13% was very low for 2021. I think going forward, we will be maybe around 17%, 18%, 19%, something like that.

And then I had another question just briefly on -- there are a lot of leases in the balance sheet, at least. Is that only Plantasjen or where...

No. Plantasjen is the biggest part for sure. I think in total, we have SEK 5.5 billion, and Plantasjen is the biggest one. But then, we also have Speed that rents big warehouses and so on. Then we have roughly SEK 700 million, SEK 800 million in Speed as well, but those 2 are the big ones.

I think I'll never let go this mic now. But I had one question actually for Anders on the network.

Jonas, may I just ask? Regarding the tax, it also has to do a little bit where we invest, right?

Sure. Yes.

So in Sweden, taking...

No, I mean the sweet spot for us when it comes to investment is investing in Swedish companies where we own more than 90%. So we can get the cash flow into Ratos AB and group contributions. And then you have this -- sometimes you have to wait 5 years before you can sort of use the group contributions. But we have several companies where we can already now start to use it.

Just a question for Anders. On the inventory build that you had in, is that only in KVD? Or is it the new Forsberg? Or is it a combination?

The overall net working capital increase?

Yes.

It basically consists of 3 main parts: one is KVD, to a larger extent, buying cars in their own book used cars because there has been a scarcity of inflow of cars. So they actually left the 100% auction model building cars in their own stock. The other part, which is also related to KVD is the fact that they purchased Forsbergs. And Forsbergs is a reseller. So they have a stock. I would say that the risk of the stock in Forsbergs theoretically is lower because it's more of a build-to-order model, so they have preorders on the caravans they're selling. We're taking a risk, but a proactive conscious risk with building the stock in KVD because we want to secure the supply because the demand is so high, basically.

This is a pandemic effect, Anders, basically. I mean there was a shortage of semiconductors making there was no used cars to get. So...

Absolutely. And it has been good. And the third part is, of course, Plantasjen, where we've also taken a proactive decision in order to secure deliveries for high season to have a stronger buildup of stock earlier in the season.

Again, the pandemic effect. I mean you never dreamed of that before, but you know how the supplies -- both the costs. The costs has been up to 1,000% from China to Europe, but also the uncertainty in getting the goods. So this is nothing sort of we will continue to do. Hopefully, the pandemic is over and maybe we get other problems. But this is not the strategy we have, I mean, for a long time. But the stock has been king this 2021, for sure.

Okay. Were you happy with those questions, yes? Maybe we should stick in one question from someone who's looking at us digitally. And it's actually a question about Diab. Diab, how will you do the turnaround? And what's the time frame? Maybe you should start and see if Joakim have something to add.

Yes. No, Diab has really -- and Diab's peers, one should know Diab has actually performed better than their peers in this perfect storm that Joakim talked about with a simultaneous shift of technology and wind market going down due to the subsidies in China. We can't go into the details because we're, right now, in negotiations and discussions with the unions in different places. But it's all up to get the cost savings and the balance of our offer. This is not a 2-year project or so. We take -- we took costs already in Q4, actually, for those who read our report. We took SEK 11 million there, and we will take much more in Q1, but all should be realized within this year. And actually, our plan is to make it quite long -- time before the year is over. So I think we'll see this already in Q3.

Okay. Something to add from Joakim's side?

Well, the one thing to add was sort of this shift that we've been talking about. We started the shift in 2018. This other piece of the wind market sort of came as a surprise for us this year. Otherwise, these parts have been part of the plan. So yes, we will take out cost to adjust, and we'll get it back on track.

Okay. Thank you. Is there any more questions from you here in the audience? Yes, perfect. Georg from Pareto.

So starting with Diab, you said the demand for PET is really increasing and you can't really supply. Do you feel like your competitors can supply this demand and maybe taking market share? Is that something you're worried about? Or do they face the same problems with not being able to supply the demand?

It depends on who you ask. I think some of our competitors are able to supply, whereas, they don't have the customer relationships that we do. Therefore, they are sort of sub supplying at this point, whereas, we cannot. But as soon as we get our PET up and running, we'll be the main supplier for some of those OEMs. And there are parts of the market that we choose not to supply. If you look at the Chinese market at this point than the local OEMs, we simply don't see the profitability in supplying them. Therefore, we decline. And there, we are losing market share, but we're not trying to build the biggest company. We're trying to build a profitable company. It doesn't make any sense for us, I think, to sell that kind of margin. We're not going to go chase volumes. Over time and over this period of time, I think, once we've sort of done the shift, we would have gained market share compared to previously, and we would also have gained spread in terms of which customers we do supply. So we'll be more balanced in between the sort of larger OEMs than we were before, and the total market share would have increased. We're more aggressive than our competitors are.

Okay. And the wind OEMs still struggle to hold up the margins lately, is that something that you're feeling they are pushing the prices on to you? Or how do you view that going forward if the trend of the decrease in margins for wind OEMs persist?

This is something that we discuss. I think historically, this is exactly what we would expect. We do -- we are seeing a shift when we sit with our OEMs that they also realize that you need sub suppliers that are profitable long term. So they're avoiding shifting. We actually see some of them that are avoiding building out at this point. They are avoiding taking on new contracts. They're trying to break their contracts to increase prices and doing that to make sure that it becomes a sustainable industry over time. So -- let's face it, yes, you will always be pushed. But as long as you continue to add more value than your customers, which I do believe we are or your competitors, we will be able to sustain margins. So we're not expecting increased pressure by any means.

Okay. And a question for you, Anders, on Plantasjen and the new acquisition. Very strong in the B2B segment, can you talk a little bit on how you're planning to lever Plantasjen's offering to the B2B segment? And also how that market differentiates from the B2C market in terms of growth and margins?

Growth in margins or -- start with the B2C market. I mean this is a market opportunity that the management team in Plantasjen has identified. We will -- and we have established a group inside Plantasjen working on the offering in B2B from Plantasjen's point of view. So we actually have opened some stores earlier in order to meet the B2B markets need. Looking at the total market, and this is the company's estimations, it's approximately SEK 2.5 billion to SEK 3 billion in Sweden and Norway. It's a pretty diversified market. So the biggest supplier is maybe SEK 150 million to SEK 200 million, i.e., a market share of 5% to 10% or something like that of the total market. Typically, family-owned growers, nurseries, garden centers, plant schools that are good acquisition targets, of course, for us, but we will only do that if we see that there are clear synergies. We will keep on expanding our own organic offer towards the business-to-business segment. The margins, I mean, this is a value chain that differs very much whether you sell directly to the corporate customers or if you go with distributors or construction services companies. So that's a little bit hard to comment in detail.

Okay. And final question for let's not say the wrong name. But Christian, on SSEA, it seems like you're trying to build something larger here with Vestia's model. Could you elaborate on a longer-term plan in terms of adding new companies to the group and how you think the -- their strategy is going to develop in the coming years? Do you think it's going to be the new go-to model for construction? Or what's your view on that?

Yes. Thank you for the question. So I mean, the partnering, I don't want to do a lecture about partnering, but instead of having a fixed price contract, when you do partnering, you, together with the customer, you agree on a target budget. And then you kind of work together with the customer in the construction, always finding the best solutions for the project in different phases. And then you have agreed margin basically on the total contract from the beginning. So you are -- it's a team play between the customer and the Vestia in this case. So this -- when I was at Skanska, 10 years ago, we already started this type of project, but it has been growing over the years. Also in Norway, with HENT, they are now 65% circa, that is kind of in the order backlog of this type of some work and in partnering contracts. So it's also growing in the HENT business. My conviction and our CEO, Christian Wieland, who has been working with this model for 10-plus years, we are convinced that this will grow in attractiveness going forward. There is too many disputes in this industry, right? Too many negotiations, court things and I mean no one benefits from those. So I think this will grow in attractiveness. I mean we have now Vestia covering West of Sweden and the HENT Sweden covering, basically, Stockholm North and they have an office in Malmo. I don't think that we necessarily need to add another acquisition. I mean when I look for acquisitions, it's really about finding the right culture in a company, the right management. The company that are doing something different. They are thinking different and therefore, they can find a profit pocket and get happy customers and good margins. So I think we can expand this organically across Sweden. We have footprints across Sweden today. It's about finding the right people. Again, back to the -- it's all about people, finding the right regional manager in North or Stockholm that can kind of organically grow the business, that should be the target. So I think the 555, as you remember, that we can reach organically. But then, I mean, if a company like Vestia would pop up in an area where we don't have a presence, yes, why not?

Christian, you used to say, I mean, there are others doing partnering, but we are just doing partnering business. And I think, isn't that the thing?

Yes.

Because even I hear about stories where they say it's a partnering project, but it's not really. It's not really where you -- I mean, you invested, you start a long time before even starting the construction work to plan on which consultants use which suppliers, so and so, and you're strict with this business model. And I think that's -- I don't think so many are that actually, Christian.

No, you're right. I mean I think these different cultures, depending on what model you use, if you do fixed prices, it's more about following the contract. If you do partnering, it's more about collaboration. I was, yesterday, with Ersta. They are building a new hospital, SSEA group, in -- on Sodermalm in Stockholm. And we met with Stefan, the Director at Ersta and he said, this is the best -- this is a partnering project. This is the best project that I have been experiencing. We are working as a team. I mean if one person from SSEA are off a day, the Ersta guy can take that meeting instead because we are working together, and it's all about finding the right solutions together. So I agree with you. I mean...

It's an open book policy.

Yes. If you -- I think there should be, more or less, 100% of partnering.

Okay. So I mean I think you noticed that king Christian, he took the opportunity to enter the stage. That was good. Thank you so much. Well, we actually were a bit ahead of time, but we started a bit late. So if there is one final question from someone, we are happy to help out. There are 2 people who want to ask questions. Let's make room for both. Go ahead, Max.

This is Max from ABG. Just a quick one on Aibel and the potential listing. If you could give us an update on that one.

Thank you, Max. Yes, I mean, when, always, Aibel comes up, I say, it's a fantastic company, great management, great capabilities. In spite of that, we won't increase our shareholding in Aibel. We don't want any company to dominate sort of the -- one of our strengths is that we have this diversified portfolio. And we talked publicly about that we are evaluating a potential spread of owners or an IPO. And I think we also talked about, by the end of the year, we sent this out in spring last year, if I remember correctly. Now what happened was that the IPO market in Oslo, also in Stockholm, were really bad in the end of the year. And Aibel is going very strong. So we might do that 2022, but we're not in a hurry. And the message from us is that we want to be a larger owner to Aibel and we are -- we will continue to evaluate the pros and cons with an IPO or other types of spreading the ownership.

Thank you. So please go ahead.

Final question. Victor Hansen, Nordea Equity Research. So I'm wondering if you could share any details on what type of companies you are looking to acquire, and I'm talking about product companies or e-commerce players or distribution service and whatnot?

We look for, as Joakim said, and I'm glad he said that, we're looking for stable companies with a history rather than a fantastic hockey-stick forecast. We are looking for companies that we do understand, and we're looking for asset-light companies. So that -- it's still quite a big -- or it's a big spread, but it's framed within basically the business areas we have.

Thank you so much. So if there are no more questions, I think actually what's left is to wrap this presentation up. And thank you so much, both you, who has been here in person and to all of you who has been looking at us through the camera digitally. Thank you so much for being with us, Ratos Capital Markets Day 2022.

Thank you.