Relais Group Oyj ($RELAIS)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this presentation of Relais Group's Interim Report for the First Quarter of 2026. As presenting today is myself, Christian Gebauer, the Group CEO, together with Thomas Ekstrom, the Group CFO.

Good morning.

So we are off to a solid start of the year. In the first quarter, we reported net sales growth of 44%, up to EUR 119 million, including a 7% organic growth. With regards to the adjusted EBITDA growth, it was 40% in the quarter, up to EUR 12.8 million, including 16% organic growth. The operating cash flow in the quarter was increased to EUR 10.4 million with a cash conversion of 67%. The adjusted EBITA margin in the quarter remained on a solid level of 10.8%. We continued to have good progress in the onboarding of our recent acquisitions as well as the operational value creation. Jumping to the net sales in the first quarter. We came from EUR 82.8 million in the first quarter of 2025, up to EUR 119 million this quarter, an increase of 44%. Out of that, a healthy 7% organic growth. The organic growth in the quarter was primarily driven by the Technical Wholesale and Products and Solutions business areas. In general, the demand across our markets was relatively stable in the quarter. Of course, a large part of that growth was also related to the acquisitions done during 2025. Moving to the adjusted EBITA in the first quarter, it came up from EUR 9.2 million to EUR 12.8 million. This was a 40% increase with a healthy 16% organic growth. We are happy to conclude that we had organic EBITA growth across all 3 business areas. The margin was 10.8%, slightly down from the last year's first quarter, reflecting a higher share of commercial vehicle services business in the group as a total. As communicated earlier this year, we have moved to a segment structure concluding of 3 different segments. The first one is the Commercial Vehicle Services. Here, we have the leading companies within the repair and maintenance and service solutions for commercial vehicles. We have Raskone in Finland. We have Team Verkstad in Sweden and Team Verkstad in Norway as leading national chains within this segment. Second segment is Products and Solutions. Here, we have the scalable branded products and Strands Group is one of the companies that are excelling in this area, and we have also Matro and QPax as recent acquisitions. Finally, Technical Wholesale, leading distributors of spare parts and equipment to workshops. Here, we have companies like ABR in Sweden and Startax in Finland as well as Huzells Tunga Delar and several other strong companies. The reason for moving to this new structure is to increase the clarity and the accountability across the group to improve the capital allocation possibilities and to be able for the companies within a certain segment to compare notes, to learn from each other, to exchange experiences. So then let's move to the first segment, Commercial Vehicle Services. In the first quarter, we saw a healthy growth of 74%. This was almost entirely driven by the acquisitions that we have done during the last 12 months. However, regarding the EBITA increase of 90%, a significant part of that is organic profit improvements done in the companies and especially in Team Verkstad Sweden that had a somewhat soft net sales as well in this quarter, but are posting a big profitability improvement. With regards to the demand across this business area, we see stable demand in Finland and Norway, while as I said, the Swedish market is remaining somewhat softer. Raskone posted yet another strong quarter in this period. Moving to the second segment, Products and Solutions. We have an increase of 69% in the net sales, supported by the acquisitions of Matro Group and QPax, but also supported by strong demand for our premium lightning products that we are providing in Strands Group. The profitability here is coming in at 24%, a bit down from the Q1 2025, but this is due to the acquisitions of Matro Group, and we're now working on operational scalability and profitability to support long-term growth in this business area. Finally, Technical Wholesale. We had a sales increase of 21%. 12 out of 14 companies were posting net sales increase. The weather conditions in the first quarter, especially January and February, was favorable for some of the companies in this business area, but it is also due to the organic investment initiatives that we have done during the last year that are showing off in the figures in this quarter. Coming into the profitability, we had a profitability increase in the quarter of 19%. We also had organic profit improvement in this business area. Worth noting is the Startax streamlining of product assortment, increasing focus on the high-margin, high-return products. As we have said before, we are looking into reallocating capital from product groups and companies that we don't have the good returns on to put that into other opportunities in the group where we have good returns. And this is an example of that, and this will increase the profitability in Startax and the return on the capital that we have in Startax. Then moving on to acquisitions. We have had a strong acquisition pace during the last 12 months. We talked about the 8 acquisitions that we did during 2025. 2 of them closed during the first quarter of this year, QPax and Landstroms Bygg & Plat. And we have done an additional acquisition in April of Service-Ekspressen into the Technical Wholesale business area in Norway. Looking into QPax, it demonstrates the characteristics that we like on a company that we are acquiring. First of all, the entrepreneurs that have been doing the great development so far are continuing in the business and reinvesting with us in the development of the future QPax. We see that this company is a leading company in their niche. We see that they have had a healthy financial development during the last years. And we think it fits perfectly into the Products and Solutions business area. So very much looking forward to the further development of QPax. And with that, I would like to hand over to Thomas for the financials.

Thank you, Christian. I will now a bit complement on and add on to what Christian already said. And starting with the cash flow, which as said, was really strong in the first quarter. Cash from operations was EUR 10.4 million, so that's even four-fold from the corresponding period in last year. And you see here, the components were -- the biggest component was the contribution from EBITDA, so the improvement in profitability. But also which is key here is that the net working capital increase was much lower than last year. Usually, we have a slight increase in Q1 here in the cash flow from the year-end to end of March. So really good development and a really good process control here from our side. And also, of course, in the cash conversion improved in the quarter. So all in all, a healthy development on top of the good profitability development in the quarter. Then looking at the net working capital component here a bit more in detail. Of course, we had a big increase from acquired companies during '25 and '26. But then when you take out those acquired companies, you see that net working capital decreased by EUR 2 million for comparable companies and also the inventory level was unchanged. So given the kind of a cost inflation and an increased top line, we still had in absolute terms, a good development in net working capital and inventory. So both these components were really good. Looking at the cash flow statement as a whole, you see that basically only cash flow from investing activities was the 2 acquisitions that we did. I mean, Land Landstroms Bygg & Plat, a repair and maintenance company in Sweden, and then also QPax, as Christian said. So those 2, we used cash funds for these amounting to EUR 4.8 million. And then as we have acquired more workshops and have a bigger kind of mass of companies, also the CapEx increased to EUR 2.1 million from EUR 0.9 million. On the cash flow from financing activities, basically nothing happened only the normal repayments of lease liabilities according to IFRS. So no surprises here. Then going to the net debt side. Here also, no events in the quarter. The leverage, however, was lower. And I want to emphasize here that the leverage number here still does not include all the full LTM EBITDA impact of the acquired companies. So this still a bit exaggerates the leverage level what it should be. And then again, stable cash position despite that we used about EUR 5 million for acquisitions. Then going to the financials and the income statement. Here, I guess, the key takeaway is that even though we had increased floating interest rates, our net interest expense came down a bit. And here, we also have now as a difference from Q1 last year, we have floating to fixed interest swaps, which then have contributed positively when the floating rates have increased. Then also, I want to emphasize that the interest on leases have, of course, increased, but that comes from the almost doubled IFRS 16 leases in the balance sheet. But all in all, here also a fairly controlled and expected outcome. Then here is a summary of all the balance sheet and financial position KPIs. I won't go through them. But in most numbers, you see the result of us acquiring a lot of companies. That is visible, of course, in total assets, right-of-use assets, inventories, goodwill, basically all measures. So this is basically a summary of the balance sheet items. With that said, do you want Christian to take over and talk about the capital employed?

I can do that. Thank you, Thomas. So you can see here that the return on net working capital as well as return on capital employed and return on equity is coming down in the quarter versus last year. This is an effect of the acquisitions that we did during last year, where we haven't -- we don't have yet the 12 months period of the returns in these figures. And this will also be something that we are going to focus on during 2026 and going forward. So we are confident that these numbers will come back up. In the -- after the review period, we did the acquisitions of Service-Ekspressen in Norway. This is a company that we acquired in the Technical Wholesale business area that are working closely with AutoMateriell in Norway. It's a very solid team in the company. They have a strong presence in parts of Norway, and we are really looking forward to leverage their skills to further strengthen our operations across Norway in this field. And then we had the Annual General Meeting. We had a direct share issue related to acquisitions of Service-Ekspressen. We had an announcement that we have a change in the management team upcoming, that Thomas is leaving Relais Group, and we have initiated a search. We have published the comparison figures for the segments that we presented today. And last night, the Board of Directors resolved on a new stock option plan. And with that, I talked last time in the Q4 presentation about our focus for 2026. It remains the same, profitable growth and stronger cash flow. We do this through operational discipline. We have speed in execution. We are doing measures and actions where it's needed. We look into pricing, we look into assortment, we look into where to allocate capital. We have a strong focus on the profitability as well. For the working capital discipline, it's basically about the inventory levels to have the right inventory levels to ensure the availability, but not have too much stock at hand. To work with receivables and payables and have a tight control of the capital. And together with this, we also do disciplined capital deployment. We are looking into acquisition opportunities. We have done already a few this year, and we hope to be able to present additional ones during 2026. And that leads me to the outlook for the year. The focus is clear, remains the same, EBITA growth, cash flow focus and working on improving the capital efficiency. We see potential here, and we will improve this during 2026. We maintained a disciplined approach to capital allocation. We continue to evaluate interesting opportunities, large and small, but we are disciplined, and it has to be a good fit. And finally, following the acquisitions done in 2025, especially the Team Verkstad in Norway that came into the Commercial Vehicle Service business area. This business area now represents a larger share of the total net sales for the group. And please be aware that this increases the quarter-to-quarter seasonality, and that comes particularly in the second quarter, where the number of working days is typically fewer than in the other quarters. So to summarize the first quarter, we are off to a solid start of the year, stable demand across most key markets. We have growth in the quarter supported by acquisitions, but also importantly, supported by organic growth, both on the top line and as well on the profit across all business areas. We improved the cash flow. We worked hard on the working capital management. We see that the margins are remaining on a stable level despite the increase of the Commercial Vehicle Service share of the group. We see still opportunities for improvements in this area. And finally, continued focus on EBITA growth, capital efficiency and disciplined execution. We are happy to see the strong interest in our Capital Markets Day that is taking place in this studio next week, 20th of May, 14:00 Finnish time, 13:00 Central European summertime. Please tune in. Looking forward to see all of you there online or physical in this studio. And with that, we open up for questions.

Very good. Let's kick off with the first question from Petri from Inderes. Can you talk about the growth in Strands? From which markets is the growth coming from? Is it the Nordics or outside your home markets?

For Strands, the Nordics is, of course, important market, but I would say they are global in their distribution. And their customers are not isolated to a certain region, but we have a global reach. We see due to the great products and the development of the brand in Strands, they see strong demand for their premium products across most or basically all of the key markets.

Good. Petri continues. Can you talk more about the organic investments in Technical Wholesale that pushed organic growth higher? What have you invested in and where?

Yes. I -- if I remember correctly, I talked about this in the fourth quarter results. And we have opened new depots and new shops in -- for example, in ABR. We have expanded. They are now present or soon becoming present in both Gothenburg and Malmo. We see in Huzells Tunga Delar, we also do expansion of our presence in the local markets across Sweden. We also see in Norway that we are doing such initiatives in LVD. So that is happening across the group of companies.

Good. Then Harri Kaikkonen wants to know, are you seeing any signs of increased competitive pressure in distribution or spare parts pricing, particularly in Sweden?

No. We are happy to welcome competition, and we think we have a strong position in the markets. We are aiming to have leading companies providing leading services and leading products, and we are confident about our positions.

Good. Then Markku Moilanen wants to know, can you discuss about your view on working capital development in the coming quarters?

I don't want to go into a forecast in that area. We have talked about our focus during this year in terms of growing EBITA, in terms of being disciplined in the -- where we allocate capital and as well to focus on return on operating net working capital. We have put targets on all our companies in -- with regards to this KPI. And we are confident that we're going to reach to healthy levels of working capital in all companies.

Then Stefan Knutsson from Redeye. Congrats on a solid report. I would like to hear a bit more about the dynamics between margins and return on capital employed as my high-level analysis was that recent acquisitions that you have added had lower margins but high returns on capital.

Yes. Thank you. It's -- I mean we are working both on improving the margins and improving the return on the capital that we deploy. We believe that we are going to focus on improving and increasing the actual EBITA in the group that we can do through margin improvements and through growth on the top line. But we also need to ensure that we have the right returns so that we don't run out of fuel, so to say, in the -- when we are increasing the speed here in the coming years. So it's a combination, and we look forward to see the development in the coming years.

Next one comes from Pia Rosqvist-Heinsalmi from DNB Carnegie. Repair and maintenance market in Sweden has been soft for a longer time, particularly the fleet business. What do you expect the situation -- or when do you expect the situation to ease and driven by what?

Yes. I -- we have said that many quarters that we expect it to increase soon and that we see signs of improvement. It's a situation where we have to have a healthy economy in the market as a general. Of course, inflation rates coming down is positive. Increased transportation is positive. We don't know when we will have increased demand, but we will be ready when the demand is increasing. And as I said, we are, in the meanwhile, improving profitability in Sweden. So we have a healthy EBITA growth in that business in the first quarter, which is satisfactory to see.

Very good. That's all the questions we had for now. No more questions.

Okay. Then we would like to say thank you very much for tuning in today and looking forward to see all of you in the Capital Markets Day next week.

Thank you.