Samhällsbyggnadsbolaget i Norden AB (publ) ($SBBB)

Welcome to SBB Q1 Earnings Call 2026.[Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to Treasury Director and Head of IR, Sebastian Westberg. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our presentation for the first quarter of 2026. My name is Sebastian Westberg. I'm the Treasury Director and Head of IR at SBB. And here with me today, I have our CEO, Leiv Synnes, who will walk you through our assets and our strategy, the highlights for the quarter, the financials and finally, the key investment highlights of SBB. Myself and our Finance Director, Daniel Tellberg, will join Leiv in the Q&A session after the presentation to answer any and all questions that you might have. With that said, I would now like to hand over to Leiv. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sebastian. SBB has a diversified asset base across listed and nonlisted companies in the Nordic social infrastructure market. We aim for higher risk-adjusted return by helping our companies become leaders in their markets. Assets splits into two buckets. First, we have the core holdings that anchor recurring cash flows and are managed on long term. Second, we have noncore assets carrying significant value but are managed with a more flexible holding period. The property exposure in SBB amounts to close to SEK 80 billion, built around social infrastructure and residential, asset classes with stable and growing cash flows. SBB is well positioned for long-term value creation, guided by our financial targets of minimum 12% growth in annual net asset value. A few things work together to get us there. First, we have a strong platform on its own, scalable, defensive long-duration cash flow assets with diversified exposure across residential, social infrastructure and educational infrastructure. The group structure adds further upside. We have meaningful stakes in the portfolio companies, which give us direct influence on the strategy and capital allocation. We can optimize the cost of funding. And one key point here that all the key core holdings have investment-grade rating. Further, SBB has a proven management team that has created three market-leading brands. So what has actually happened across our assets. In Sveafastigheter , they have established our EMTN program and issued a NOK 300 million bond. The terms were favorable, and they increased the capital duration. That is very good. Further, the income growth in Sveafastigheter is strong. The income growth in the like-for-like portfolio was 5%. [indiscernible] also after the quarter, sold a newly constructed property for SEK 438 million, and that was 24% higher than the construction cost. If we move to Public Property Invest, the properties and the organization that were moved from SBB are now fully integrated into Public Property Invest. They have issued bonds for EUR 900 million and refinanced the bridge that they took when acquiring assets from SBB. We will get a primary listing on the stock on NASDAQ in Stockholm, the 20th of May. If we move to Nordic, it's very good, I think, that Nordic made a strategic acquisition of 14 modern educational properties in Stockholm and Gothenburg for a total value of SEK 1.8 billion. And Nordic were able to receive very good terms in a U.S. private placement with investment-grade notes. And finally, in the SPV development, we succeeded to sign a lease for 10 years for 9,000 square meter with SBB and the property was before that totally vacant. So that was very good. This slide bridges from gross asset value to reported net asset value. The waterfall works from cash to core and non holdings to gross asset value of SEK 48.4 billion at the end of Q1, then the deduct debt and hybrids to arrive at a net asset value of SEK 14.5 billion. The core holdings amounts to SEK 33.4 billion. And in the core holdings, the further -- the following assets are including Sveafastigheter, Public Property Invest Nordic equity and also loan to Nordic. The noncore holdings amounts to SEK 12.7 billion. And the main assets are SBB, Recycling, SBB Residential. Deducting SEK 25.3 billion of bonds and bank loans and the SEK 8.5 billion of hybrids and other reserves, these are reported net asset value of SEK 14.5 billion or SEK 8.22 per share. It's very good, I think, that SBB now has a strong liquidity position of SEK 4.7 billion. The current liquidity position exceeds all debt maturing in 2026. Beyond our reported liquidity, we also have additional capital available through our holding in listed shares. These shares are traded on a regulated market and with good liquidity, which gives us additional financial flexibility. On top of this, we have also receivables of NOK 5.8 billion, where the main receivables is towards the investment-grade company, Nordic. And finally, a reduction of noncore assets in the future will enhance the liquidity position, in my opinion. The main takeaway is that our liquidity and debt burden has been significantly reduced and is now very manageable. And now to the financials of the quarter. Income and costs arise mainly from the consolidated [indiscernible] , who has a strong development in the like-for-like portfolio. As an example, the rental income increased close to 5% like-for-like. If you look on SBB consolidated figures since 2023, the rental growth like-for-like is 26%. That is very strong. SBB is a smaller company now and cost cutting is a central theme at the moment. Staffing SBB outside the core holdings is reduced from 145 to 29 since last year. The disciplined cost control is evident from group administration costs coming in at NOK 96 million, significantly down from NOK 157 million in the same period last year, acting as a strong proof of point of SBB's ongoing transformation into becoming a cost-efficient investment company. We aim to continue to cut costs going forward. The largest negative change for the quarter comes from currency exchange effects of minus NOK 300 million. This is mainly driven by negative exchange rate differences on our euro-denominated bonds, which are not fully hedged. For the period, we had an increase of -- in the net asset value of NOK 142 million. This slide is intended to show where the key components in the business have been during the quarter and what has driven the development in net asset value. Starting with liquidity. The cash position is down by approximately NOK 2.7 billion during the period. However, this should be seen together with the repayment of bonds of approximately NOK 1.9 billion plus acquisition of shares in Sveafastigheter, KlaraBo, Arlandastad and also some other investments. So while the reported cash is lower, the part of the movement reflects an active reduction of debt and the strengthening of the balance sheet. On the asset side, we have seen positive value development across the core holdings. This reflects the underlying quality of the portfolio, the stable income generation and continued progress in the business. The net asset growth in total is, as I said, NOK 140 million. In summary, SBB today is the market leader within social infrastructure in the Nordics. We benefit from long-term demographic trends, economies of scale in property management and a simplified corporate structure. As the real estate and capital markets continue to normalize, we see good developments and good opportunities for continued net asset value growth across the core holdings. SBB is now an institutional platform built for scale, focus and discipline. With strong assets, improved financing and a clear ownership perspective, we are well positioned to create value over time. Finally, I would like to thank you for listening in.

Thank you, Leiv, for walking us through the first quarter of 2026. We can now move on to the Q&A session. Thank you all.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Rebecca Clements from JPMorgan Asset Management.

I have on Slide 17 -- your interest-bearing receivable, that's the Nordic vendor loan, correct?

Mainly so, yes.

Yes. You suggest that's a source of liquidity. How easy would it be to monetize that? And what kind of time period would you be able to do that in if you chose to use that option?

It would be easy, and I can do it within 5 weeks.

And what would be the mechanism for that? Would you be negotiating with would you sell it? Or would you be negotiating with the issuer?

It's a good question. I would say we have always the opportunity to speak to Brookfield. As a large institution, they probably always give us a price. And also, we can talk with the company. And since Nordic is an investment-grade company, they, of course, have a possibility to raise the money externally and then use that proceeds to repay to us. That's also a solution. And the third one is to reach out to institutional bank and then ask a large investor for quotes on lending on with that asset as a security. So we have a couple of options to choose between...

And how do you think about -- how do you weigh the decision between continuing to have that outstanding versus monetizing it? Because it isn't paying cash interest, correct? So it's accruing, but it's not actually providing cash to you.

It's -- that's a good question actually. It's the cost of the new funding we receive versus the cost of holding on to the current bonds. So -- and if the difference is large enough, it's probably something that we will consider.

Okay. And then what's the expectation in terms of dividend flows given that the -- a lot of these larger holdings you have that are investment grade have now added leverage. So is that going to restrict their ability to pay dividends? Or what's the expectation there with respect to EPI, et cetera?

I think the investment-grade rating that we have increases the chances of possibility to create a cash stream up to the owners where SBB is a big owner of the entity. So a part of that cash flow comes to us. First of all, it was -- the first step was to establish the respective entity. And the first one was Nordic. And then after a while, we got a good rating on Nordic and we could reach out and issue USPP notes and then they started to pay dividend. And now the second one was when we listed Public Property Invest two years back, and then they have been working on increasing the portfolio size and also improving the ability to raise debt. And now they are starting to increasing the dividend stream. And then we have, who is maybe one year behind the other ones, and there's a good chance that they are on the same journey as the previous two I mentioned.

Okay. But in terms of trajectory, [indiscernible] Is probably a little bit behind in terms of ability to pay out significant dividends given the new debt they've added. Is that fair?

Yes. And also one other thing that they have a lot of building rights and they are constructing new properties. So a part of the cash generated from the operations goes into new projects. But recently, the market for newly constructed properties have picked up in the residential space, and they recently sold one property with 24% gain if you calculate the sales price divided with the construction cost. So it shows that they now have an ability to divest newly constructed properties and then that reduces the cash flow needed for new products. So that increases the likelihood that they will -- the Board in the future will decide on our distributions to the shareholder.

Okay. And then my last question is you've had a lot of changes in how you report and the various consolidation it's completely changed the way your financial statements look. Is this pretty set going forward? Or do you expect to have more changes similar to last year?

I think you will spend less and less time on underwriting SBB in the future. It will become very easy. it's true that we -- due to the financial stress that we had a couple of years back, needed to raise some kind of structured debt and also organize the debt in a way that we could maintain the covenants that we needed to maintain in the bonds. And we are past that period now and now we actively dissolve the joint ventures that we previously created, and we are on a good path to a very simple and transparent corporate structure.

Okay. So do you plan to hang on to these -- this size of your positions will probably be fairly stable going forward. You don't have significant plans for further divestitures or acquiring additional stakes?

First step, I think, is to continue to reduce the noncore assets and try to sell off some of them and making the corporate structure even more simpler to understand. And then by that happen, we will also improve the financial strength of the company. And then the next step after that is to find resources to continue to invest in existing holdings, but potentially also new ones. But the first step is to reduce the -- you can say the assets a bit and then use that cash flow to reduce the debt and improve the financial stability of the group.

Okay. And just a follow-up on the noncore holdings. do you have a time line for divesting that? I appreciate that you may want to wait and get the best valuation, et cetera, but is there an approximate time line for completing divestiture?

We have the cash we need for the 2026 maturities, but we need to divest something until next year when the next bond matures, I think it's after the summer '27. So we will probably have done some divestments in the upcoming year, I would say.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you. SBB is a Nordic investment company in social infrastructure. We hold key stakes in three market-leading companies. And with that statement, I would like to thank you for listening in.