SmartCraft Group AB (publ) ($SMCRT)
Earnings Call Transcript · May 8, 2026
Highlights from the call
In Q1 2026, SmartCraft Group AB reported total revenue of SEK 136 million, reflecting a 3.1% increase year-over-year, with organic growth of 5.2%. The company achieved an adjusted EBITDA margin of 36.6%, up from 34.7% in the prior year. Management highlighted a significant reduction in churn to 8.3%, down 1 percentage point year-over-year, indicating improved customer retention. Despite a soft market, the company remains optimistic about future growth, maintaining its midterm growth target of over 15%.
Main topics
- Churn Reduction: SmartCraft reported a churn rate of 8.3%, a reduction of 1 percentage point year-over-year, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of decline. CEO Jeremias Jansson stated, "we have done a lot of measurements to... help this churn," indicating effective retention strategies.
- Revenue Growth: The company reported total revenue of SEK 136 million for Q1 2026, up from SEK 132 million in the prior year, representing a 3.1% increase. CFO Kine Olsen noted that the underlying organic growth was 5.2%, highlighting positive momentum despite currency effects.
- Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) Growth: SmartCraft's ARR grew to SEK 504 million, up from SEK 469 million last year, reflecting a 7.6% year-over-year increase. The organic growth of 7.3% was noted as a positive trend, with the highest quarter-over-quarter growth since Q1 2024.
- AI Integration: Management emphasized the company's commitment to an AI-first approach, stating that they have implemented AI in R&D and customer-facing products. Jansson remarked, "we want the main idea being that we write code with the help of AI," showcasing their strategic focus on technology.
- Market Conditions: Despite the positive performance, management acknowledged a soft market environment affecting growth. Jansson mentioned, "we know about this... our job is to make sure to perform regardless of that," indicating a proactive approach to challenges.
Key metrics mentioned
- Total Revenue: SEK 136 million (up from SEK 132 million last year, +3.1% YoY)
- Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): SEK 504 million (up from SEK 469 million last year, +7.6% YoY)
- Churn Rate: 8.3% (down 1 percentage point YoY)
- Adjusted EBITDA Margin: 36.6% (up from 34.7% last year)
- Organic ARR Growth: 7.3% (highest quarter-over-quarter growth since Q1 2024)
- Cash Flow: SEK 73 million (up 35% YoY)
SmartCraft's Q1 2026 results demonstrate resilience in a challenging market, with significant improvements in churn and profitability metrics. The ongoing focus on AI integration and strategic capital allocation positions the company well for future growth. Investors should monitor market conditions and the effectiveness of management's initiatives to sustain momentum.
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Operator
OperatorWe wish viewers a good morning as we continue with another broadcast report presentation. And today, we're shifting our focus towards SmartCraft, who just this morning, not too long ago, published their report for the first quarter of 2026. And standing beside me is the company's CEO, Jeremias Jansson. Welcome.
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesThank you so much. Great to be here.
Operator
OperatorIt's good to have you here, and you will give us a presentation of the quarter, joined, of course, by your CFO as well, and I'll return later to ask some questions.
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesThank you so much, Michael. So, to all of you out there, a very good morning. We're going to talk about the report for Q1 for SmartCraft. Small disclaimer first, of course, as always. And then what is the agenda that we're going to present today? So, first, we will go through a little bit shortly, what is SmartCraft? We're going to talk about all the great Q1 highlights, then we're going to talk about the Q1 financials. Then we're going to do a summary, and then we have the pleasure of having, of course, a Q&A where we welcome also people to ask questions in the chat. Now the presenters today is me, Jeremias Jansson, CEO of SmartCraft. I've been the CEO at SmartCraft since the 5 of January. So, I did do the Q4 report, but this is sort of my first quarter in SmartCraft. And then I'm going to be joined by Kine Kragholm Olsen, our Interim CFO, who's going to go through the financial numbers. I hope you're going to enjoy it. So, let's dig in. This is SmartCraft. So, first and foremost, what do we do actually at SmartCraft? Well, I normally say that we go up every morning to try to help handyman and smaller construction companies to handle their day in the best possible way. We are in love with this type of customers that every day, many times outside struggles to fix smaller construction sites, fix plumbing, fix electricity for their end customer. So that's basically what we do. We are a company with about 270 employees, and we have more or less 13,300 customers and a lot of users in our systems. Now, going a little bit deeper into this, we have a couple of different products to do this. We really believe that the different end customers that we have different needs. That's why we also are set up in different business areas. So for example, in the business area Electro, everything we do in that one is for electricians. And we strongly believe that it is an important, very important topic for our end customers to have specialized tools. When they work day-to-day, you could think that, for example, a plumber and an electrician are doing the same things. But in essence, how they do their daily works are very different. So, knowing this, we actually did a reorg last year in Q4 into these business areas to make sure that basically, we are driving the right behaviors and knowledge towards our customers because let's face it, a company only have two great assets. It's their customers and their coworkers. Now how do we then help them? Well, basically, if you think about our customers going up early in the morning and then going through the whole day, our idea is to help them on their everyday process with the routines and the tools that they need so that basically we cover more or less all their needs when it comes to help in the form of computer science, so to speak. And that basically means we help them from the start when they want to offer something to the end customers. They want to send over that offer. They want to get the customer to accept that offer. And then they want to drive their projects, and they want to communicate with their coworkers through that project. They want to make sure that those people working on the project has the right material to do the work they should. And once the project is ongoing or finished, they want to make sure that they can get the financial benefits for that and follow that up, at the same time, communicating continuously with the customers. So basically, we support a whole workflow with all the data needed for our customers to have a great day. Now of course, a lot of things has been discussed around AI. And this was actually a slide that we used also in the last quarterly reporting session that we had. And it hasn't changed. We, of course, have looked at ourselves and said, okay, how can we support a growing company in the future with the help of AI? And why are we uniquely positioned to do so? And in essence, to make it simple, it is about a couple of components. It is about having the knowledge and the relationship with the customer. It is about controlling, understanding and processing the workflows, and it is to be able to understand and co-own the data with the customer. And basically, all those 3 things are in the core of our system setup because of the fact that we're supporting the customers through their daily life. Now what has this led to historically? AI or not AI. It led to 15 years of consecutive growth, 15 years of always growing, always improving as a company. And this is what we will continue to do going forward as well. Quarter-by-quarter, year-by-year. That is what we're saying. Now that was a little bit about who we are and what we do. Let's step into the Q1 highlights and information about that. Now basically, first, if we look at Q1 in brief, it was a good quarter for us. On the key metrics that we have, we did improve on more or less everything. I will start with something that is, of course, sort of a negative factor, but it is the churn. Now what we see is that, this is now the more or less fourth consecutive quarter where our churn goes down quarter-over-quarter. We had a peak in Q2 last year, driven by the soft market and of course, the bankruptcies as our customers. Now we get that number to go down to 8.3%, which is 1% down, 1% point, I should say, down year-over-year. How did this happen? Well, of course, it's gone in a lot of hard work into that. And I normally state that part of the churn, of course, is controlled by us. Part of it is structural. But on the part that we can control, we have done a lot of measurements to -- sorry, that is helping this churn. Now the other metrics then is the cash flow. So the cash flow went up a lot in Q1. We always have a strong cash flow historically in Q1, but this is one for sure of the best. The cash flow is, of course, also affected by some one-off parts, about SEK 10 million that Kine will talk a little bit more of. But even taking those out, we have a very strong growth in cash flow. Our adjusted EBITDA CapEx, which is, of course, for us, the most important metrics when it comes to efficiency, if we talk about it like that, profitability, increased a lot year-over-year, which is also in line with what we have said that we want to continuously increase this CapEx margin. And our annual recurring revenue grew by 7.3% organic, which is, of course, again, an improvement both year-over-year but also quarter-over-quarter. However, our midterm idea is that we will grow over 15% in good times. So that still shows that the market is soft for us, but we also see a little bit of a positive trend from this number. Another number a part is, of course, our marketing effort. And -- we had a very good marketing situation last year as well even if the conversion rates was not 100% what we wanted last year. And that trend in general continues. There are a little bit up, a little bit down here year-over-year, but you can still see that we are historically on a high level of more or less all these KPIs, again, indicating that there is a need in the market for solutions like ours. And we do believe that when the market, hopefully step-by-step will become less soft, we will see the full benefits of these good marketing efforts. Now I talked a little bit in general why we, as a company, are fit in an AI reality, so to speak. We're trying to be a little bit more direct towards all of you and tell you, okay, but what do we do then actually shift and what do we actually do with it? And basically, if I simplify the whole thing with AI, you can have sort of millions perspective. But if I take two, which is one perspective, which is internally, we call that AI first. And then I have two examples of external activities that we have done. If I start with the internal activities, basically, we were very fast and started already way before the general trend on AI to think about this and how we could use it. And as of today, we have put in an AI-first mentality in our R&D department, which means basically that we want the main idea being that we write code with the help of AI. The other thing that we have launched internally is AI first when it comes to other types of work. So in all the internal activities outside also the R&D department, we have projects running on how to improve our sales and marketing, all the back-office functions internally as well, support customer success as well. And we run them in the project part that's called the PMO project handling part. External to customers, we look at every of our product and try to figure out how can we give the customer true value with AI. You have to be a little bit careful with how you use the AI when it comes to how the customer uses it because some things are really good for the customers to use it for. And in some other cases, you should probably not use it in those processes because it doesn't have any add-on for the customer today. Two examples that I'm talking about here is Clixifix and Locka, where we have done significantly interesting things with AI, which will help our customers to use those tools even more. Now of course, what we also have tried to do in Q1 is to improve our execution across all the different parts. So basically, we have set up goals on all the different parts internally and are driving that. And those things is, of course, commercial things, it's operational excellence. It is about putting in new people into the SmartCraft environment, which we have hired a new CFO that will come in and also a new leader for our HVAC and plumbing. And then, of course, for every product, we are following up what do we ship to customer every month, every quarter. And these are just a couple of examples of what we have done in Q1. Now another interesting and eventful event that happened in Q1 was the fact that we moved to NASDAQ in Stockholm. Our first day of trading was on the 24 of March, and I got the chance to ring the bell, which was a fantastic fun event. But sort of behind the fun thing, what was the idea behind this? Well, basically, what we wanted to do was to make sure that our liquidity in the share goes up and also the fact that we think that Stockholm is sort of a SaaS AI capital of the world. Well, maybe that's enhancing it a little bit, but it's a lot of companies in Stockholm that works with AI and that works with software solutions. And I think what we have seen is that the number of shareholders in SmartCraft has increased. So that is a good thing. We see so far, even if it's early days, that our liquidity in the share has gone up in April compared to prior times. And I would also say that we see that the interest and discussion about AI software seems so far, again, even if it's early days, to be a little bit higher than what it has been in the past. So summary-wise, fun to ring the bell, but actually, we already see some benefits even if as most things in life, time will tell. So that was a little bit about Q1 and both what has happened with our company. Now we'll talk a little bit more with the help of Kine about how the numbers looks more in detail. So Kine, over to you.
Kine Olsen
ExecutivesThank you, Jeremias, and good morning, everyone. So diving into the financials for Q1. The first thing we want to highlight is our annual recurring revenue as we see this as a basis for the success of SmartCraft. By the end of Q1, we have an ARR of SEK 504 million. That's up from SEK 469 million last year, and it gives a 7.6% growth year-over-year. Underlying is a 7.3% organic growth in the ARR. And even though our growth is somewhat hampered by low growth with HVAC and plumbing, we also see that Q1 now continues in the same track as the previous quarter with the highest organic growth quarter-over-quarter since Q1 2024. We also see the improved retention. So the rolling 12 months churn by the end of Q1 is 8.3%. And as Jeremias said, that's an improvement of 1 percentage point compared to last quarter. With this picture, we want to also visualize the drivers of the growth for our ARR. It also gives you the opportunity to separate what's structural where we can have price increases, but also upsell to our and improved delivery to our customers and also the improvement on our retention and how that affects our ARR, both for the Q1 '26 ARR, but also historically. So secondly, the bigger picture for Q1. Q1 total revenue in 2026 was SEK 136 million, up from SEK 132 million last year, and it's a growth of 3.1%, but underlying is an organic growth of 5.2% and the difference between the 3.1% and the 5.2% is currency effects. Of the SEK 136 million in revenue, 96.3% is defined as recurring revenue, and we expect this to continue to be in the mid-high 90s going forward as well as we continue to focus on delivering software as a service to our customers. We also consistently deliver high profitability. In Q1 '26, the adjusted EBITDA margin is 36.6%, and that's increase from year-over-year of 1.9 percentage points. And the adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx is 29.6%. The adjustment postings that are made to the EBITDA is solely related to the relisting that we finalized in Q1 as well. And investing for the future, our capitalization for Q1 '26 was at SEK 9.5 million compared to SEK 9.7 million the last year. The share of CapEx in Q1 was 7% -- and we continue to invest in strategic development projects. And even though level of capitalization varies depending on project life cycles, Q1 '26 is also affected by the introduction of the AI-first project that Jeremias has talked about and the following education within the development department that we have had throughout Q1. So we expect the share of CapEx to increase going forward. So more details about the different segments that we operate within. SME construction is our biggest segment and also the highest contributor for the profitability. SME Construction has a revenue in Q1 '26 of SEK 53 million and underlying organic growth for the total revenue is 9.9% year-over-year. Within that, the part of the revenue that's recurring has an organic growth of 10.2%. And with a margin of 60.6% for Q1, it's a proof of the engine that SME Construction is for our growth and our profitability. HVAC & Plumbing has a revenue of SEK 32 million at the end of Q1 '26. That's at the same level for last year, but this is also affected by the transition to SEK as a reporting currency. And we see that the organic growth is 2.7% and of the recurring revenue portion is 2.4% organic growth year-over-year. And -- but even though the growth within HVAC and Plumbing has been challenging, we see a continued high margin of 49.3%. And the segment is still focusing on recovery by keeping the margins going forward as well. Electro is the third segment that we operate within, and they have reported revenue for Q1 '26 of SEK 16.8 million. The underlying organic growth of 4.5% is the total revenue, but for the recurring revenue within Electro, we have an organic growth of 7.4%. Electro has a margin of NOK 5 million for the Q1, which is an improvement compared to last year, and they continue to focus on building a scalable platform for the future as well. Enterprise is last but not least, a segment that operates in both Sweden, Finland and the U.K. and is the segment that is mostly affected by the currency changes that we see today. They have a reported revenue of SEK 34 million with an organic growth of 1.4% of the total revenue, but the recurring revenue share has an organic growth of 7.5%. Despite the reduction in overall revenue compared to last year, we still see an increase in margin, which is a testament to the efforts that are made within the Enterprise segment. The financial position for SmartCraft is solid, and we delivered also an operational cash flow for Q1 '26 of almost SEK 73 million. That's an increase of 35% year-over-year, and it's driven by reduced prepayments of tax, but also increased payments from our customers and an increase in current liabilities. As I said, we have adjusted our EBITDA with SEK 10 million approximately regarding relisting costs -- these are all expected to be paid during Q2, but still adjusted for this in the cash flow as well, we have a strong improvement in our operational cash flow. The balance sheet shows a solid equity position of 73% for the group. The group is net cash positive, which we've been in every quarter since we listed in -- originally in Oslo in 2021 and the negative net working capital is also still in our favor. We -- the balance sheet shows that we also hold approximately 6% in treasury shares in the group. And that leads me to sending to you, Jeremias, to talk a little bit about the capital allocation as well.
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesThank you, Kine. So as you see, of course, we are generating cash constantly. And as you also saw, we had a very good cash generation in Q1, which is, of course, as I said, historically also been a very strong quarter, but this one was extra strong on that. So what do we do then with our capital? Well, the easiest way to talk about that is, of course, to look, so to speak, what have we done in the last 12 months. And what we have focused on is actually in that period of investing continuously, of course, in our normal operation with the cash that we're generating, but then also we have done different buybacks of shares, leading to, as Kine said, that we today have about 10.4 million, not 3 million of treasury shares. Now of course, the question I get a lot is what about M&A then, Jeremias? Are you not doing M&As? And the answer to that is, yes, we are continuously looking at M&A. And when we look at that, it's very important for us, a couple of factors. So basically, one factor is for us that it is in the right geos that we want to be in. It is a type of company that is giving the same type of value or a similar type of value to the same vertical as we are already working in. And the reason for that is that we really believe in verticalization and being very strong, one, in the regions that we act; and two, in the verticals we act. And then, of course, we need to find something that is worth it also when it comes to the money side of things, the valuation of the company. And as most of you are aware, I think that it is a little bit differences in the expectations between the public market and the private market. Still, we see that there are possibilities in this area, and we will continue to work with that going forward. Now trying to step by step summarize this up then in this presentation, and thank you for paying attention to this. I think that looking back into Q1, we had a solid performance here in Q1. And for those of you who listened to the presentation after Q4, we said that we will try to make sure that our EBITDA CapEx step-by-step moves upwards. It was a pretty big move this quarter, and we are not saying that, that will continue exactly like that, but we will always try to increase our margins quarter-by-quarter, year-over-year. At the same time, we really want to grow, of course. And as you saw, we now had a little bit of a positive trend year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter when it comes to the growth. We will continue to do that by making sure that we invest in the products that has been on the market for a while, but also into our little bit newer products. At the same time, we work very hard with making sure that our customers are happy so that we can keep downgrades and churn, again, step-by-step going down. Again, on the churn, we did a pretty big jump downwards this quarter. I'm not saying that, that will happen every quarter, but we are working very hard to make sure that over time, we can press down churn and downgrade. Doing this, we are making sure that we also strengthen an organization. It is about, of course, using AI in different ways, but it's also about doing other things. We call it One SmartCraft. And that is something that, of course, has been started before I started in SmartCraft with, for example, the reorganization into business area, but that's also something that is very close to my heart to drive us into operations where we handle different things internally in the same way across the group, even if we are in four countries and we have a couple of products. Doing that will increase our efficiency, will increase our stability and will make sure that our customers are more positive. With all that said, we feel that we are well positioned going forward. It is some challenges in the surrounding environment. We have some situations out in the world where things happen that we can't control. As we also state in our report, we know about that. We are, of course, reflecting about that and thinking about how to handle that. But our job is to make sure to perform regardless of that. That together leads us to believe that we have a good path forward, and we're very positive to take that path with you going forward. With that, let us move over to some Q&A and probably with the help of Michael.
Operator
OperatorYes. Thank you very much, Jeremias.
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesAnd maybe you want to join as well, Kine.
Operator
OperatorSo I think I'll begin with the fact that this is the first quarter report that you are part of Jeremias as CEO of the company, but it's also the first report for SmartCraft listed on the Swedish Stock Exchange because in March, you changed from the Norwegian Stock Exchange to the Swedish one. How is the first month so far in the Swedish Stock Exchange?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesI think it's been good. As I said, we have a couple of different targets for this. It was, first and foremost, a fantastic event to do that with the help of NASDAQ. Thank you so much to them. And then I would say that what we have seen so far, and you never know about the future, of course, is increased liquidity, which was important for us. I would also say that -- we have also seen more interaction with analysts and also other players in the industry. So that has been positive.
Operator
OperatorThere's a lot of questions from the chat. I'll try to keep my questions short so we can allow more time for that. But you do mention the listing in the report, and you did mention also some of the benefits that you've seen so far, more liquidity in the stock, more shareholders, but also more prevalent discussions. Can you elaborate on the last part?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesNo. But I think that, of course, Stockholm is a little bit, I call it the capital. That was maybe a little bit harsh to say that to all other towns in the world. But we are, of course, a country in Sweden, but also in the town of Stockholm, where we have lots of companies that are in the AI space and that is also in the software space. And that, of course, gives you a very good dialogue with others about how they're tackling the future and also looking at the possibility to invent things and use that.
Operator
OperatorQuarter-on-quarter ARR growth this quarter has been the highest since early 2024. What has primarily driven the growth this year that's different from others?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesI wouldn't say it's different. I would say it's more. So basically, what we have managed to do is, of course, on the defensive part, playing defense has been to work a lot with the churn prevention, as you can see from the numbers. And then I would say that even if the net new sales, we wish would be even higher, but we managed in this market to still produce new customers. And then, of course, our target on existing customers for upsell has been good. And when you look at the upsell price increase part, we do, do some price increases, which we announced in Q4, but I would say to the market that most of this is still an upsell increase, not a price increase.
Operator
OperatorSo price increases, upsell, you also mentioned managing churn and also acquiring new customers. What is the biggest growth pillar?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesI would say that if you look at the historical numbers that we have been giving year-over-year more or less, it is more or less that breakdown that you can see. And that's what I'm expecting going forward as well. We just want to push it a little bit higher all the time.
Operator
OperatorThere's a lot of questions about the price increases from viewers and Torbjorn asked, if you could quantify the effect of organic ARR growth from the 10% price increase in Bygglet?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesYes. So we have not gone out with exact numbers about that. What we have said to the market is basically like this. We announced this in Q4 -- the 10% is not from 1 of January. It's spread out through the year. And it is a little bit different for different customer segments depending on how big they are. And I think that's more or less the details we have given around that. And then it's up to everyone to have some calculations themselves.
Operator
OperatorAnother viewer is very curious how the price increase has been received by customers in Bygglet?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesYes. As I said, in the total numbers that we have got, price increase is a smaller part, so to speak. But what we do with the price increases, which is maybe different from what some other ones has done on the market is that when we decided this in Q4, even before my time, we basically did simulations in a good way because when you do price increases, you have to look at the value you give to the customer in total as well. So we try to combine the price increases with some benefits for the customers also. Of course, there are also some interaction from the customer that someone can feel that this is not good, but we try to do price increases in such a way that it minimize the negative effects of it. So, so far, we haven't seen huge negative effects on it.
Operator
OperatorYou did mention upsells and Torbjorn is also curious about the downgrades in rolling 12 months in Q1.
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesYes. And again, you can probably see from the numbers that we have in the report for the last year, of course, that's why we put in this ARR bridge, which has been asked from a lot of people actually, which we haven't had in the past. I would say that, again, what you can see from those numbers is that we're in total pressing down those effects step by step, but still, we think they are on a too high level. And of course, they are driven a lot by the fact that everyone knows that with the soft market, still some customers are using a situation where they reduce number of users. But we're seeing a little bit of a positive trend on that as well.
Operator
OperatorMore questions about the churn and ARR from Torbjorn. Churn continues to fall, but ARR growth does not seem to be accelerating when you adjust it for the price increases. Is there a -- is the reason solely market softness? Or is there also competition intensifying?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesI would say that the competition is always there, of course. I wouldn't say that it's more competition now than it's been in the past. I do think, of course, that it is a soft market. I do see that the numbers are picking up even if you sort of take away the price increases. And then you also have to keep in mind when you look at the numbers that ARR growth is sometimes a little bit different against bookings, against other parts of metrics as well. So you see a quarter and then you get that number, but you never know how it looks over time exactly.
Operator
OperatorBefore we head into the margin, we have one final question regarding your ARR from Jakob. Is the -- in the ARR bridge, there appears to be a correlation between increase existing and decrease existing. In a market upturn, do you expect both to go down or increase existing to stay elevated?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesThere are some correlations between actually all the metrics in all honesty, and I've been open about this before. For example, the most recent part that I have talked about is the fact that, of course, if you have a bankruptcy, which is, of course, a churn, what happens sometimes in these smaller companies is that they filed for bankruptcy on Friday, and they start up a new company on Monday morning in a new name, new org number and with a new responsible person, but essentially, it's the same company, which means, of course, that we get the new booking sales, but we also get sort of a churn. So there are some effects of that. The tricky thing is it's a little bit hard to say exactly statistically. So I would say I can't give you statistically 100% answer, but I know there are some correlations between them. Of course, our idea would be that in a softer market -- or sorry, in a better market, we could still increase the net new sales and the upsells while pressing down the downsells and churn though.
Operator
OperatorIn your financial targets, you're in line with them, you're improving your EBITDA margin from 34.7% last year to 36.6% this year. Quarter-on-quarter, the increase is slightly higher. What level would be satisfactory towards the end of the year?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesAs I said, we are not giving you exact numbers in the future, of course, but we are trying to make sure that we grow every quarter and that we basically get a little bit better margin, as I also said in the prior report from Q4.
Operator
OperatorAnd your different business areas, they have different levels of profitability. Is there anyone that you would favor?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesNo, of course, not. They're all dear loved children to me, all four of them. What I would say, though, is that they are, of course, in different stages, which you can see from the material, and that also shows a little bit the unique characteristic. If I would point out some quick things about it, I would say that I'm very proud about the SME area when it comes to the fact that Bygglet is going from clarity to clarity as a big product and also quality is controlled. And then if you look at Electro, it's very exciting with the new parts that we are giving out to the market. On HVAC, yes, we would like it to grow more. But if you look historically, you can see that we had many months in last year's beginning where it was actually a negative growth on that product. And we have managed to turn that around even given the fact of the soft market in Norway. And then on enterprise, I think many of these products has sort of rejuvenated in the fact of AI, as you saw from Clixifix and Locka, where we are very excited about what we can do next with them.
Operator
OperatorIndeed, and AI seems to be on everyone's list at the moment. How is your implementation being received by your customers?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesI think it's positive. Still, it's early days, to be honest. And I think for the end customer, what is important when you work with AI is to really think about what are you using it for, as I said. For a customer, I think where it can benefit a lot is, of course, in their processes where they can use the data that you have to make better decisions faster or create, for example, an offer or similar like that. And then there are many situations where it doesn't give that much extra for the end customer. It might look flashy to have it in it. But actually, in the end, it doesn't help them that much. I think for the whole construction and the handyman industry, if I put it like that, there are lots of interesting user areas that really helps them in the day-to-day life. And I expect the market to really produce those in the future.
Operator
OperatorYou might have already answered this question just now, but perhaps a little bit more specific because you were asked the following. You have previously stated that you believe new AI features will drive penetration rate for this kind of software as it becomes easier to work in the system. Have you seen any signs of that?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesThat -- I have to admit, I don't have a statistical effect on that. But I still do believe that. I still believe that -- I think that it's a natural wave going on where more and more of our end customers understand they need to have a solution for this. And many do have that already. And I do think in those processes, of course, if you can make sure that, for example, offering goes faster for electricians to do that, they are going to use this more and more.
Operator
OperatorHow should investors look at the relationship between you implementing more AI solutions and profitability?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesSo again, of course, if you can make sure that you become more efficient in the organization by helping yourself with AI tools internally, then you can basically do two things with that, either you can become more profitable or you can use it to create even more products and benefits to the customer. And yes, we will look into that, but that's what we're working with.
Operator
OperatorIf we talk about the market then, you alluded to the geopolitical situation sort of in the report, you said you didn't have any control over it, et cetera. But how is SmartCraft affected by it?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesI would say so far, as you can see from the numbers, of course, it is a soft market, and you can see that from the numbers last year. Although I think that we have found sort of our place a little bit more into it, and we are understanding that we can't change some of these things. And instead, we have to do better. But of course, last year, we had a lower growth than the years before. Now we have a little bit higher growth. So of course, it has an effect on us. What I'm trying to state is that we know about this. And -- no -- well, there are people who can fix this, but not me, unfortunately. So I have to focus on the different activities that we can fix, make sure that our products are giving value to our customers, make sure that our coworkers has a good life in a positive way and that they learn the new stuff that is needed so we can produce more and then keep track of all those two components.
Operator
OperatorWhat is the current market outlook one viewer asks, is churn still to be low and customer activity high in the construction sector moving forward?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesSo it's a little bit different in different countries, to be honest, how it is. We saw, of course, a little bit positive figures for Sweden about bankruptcies and other things. Now the situation since the war in Iran, unfortunately has turned into a situation where we are not sure actually where the interest rate will go, which is very important for our end customers. In Norway, we haven't seen any sort of macro political positive things actually still. So the improvements there is more from hard work than the environment changing. Looking forward, well, you will probably have better people to answer that question than me. I think that, of course, if things would change in the global economy because of some global big macro events, that would be a beneficial thing for us. But I think that it's hard to tell.
Operator
OperatorOil prices are very high, and that has its effect on the fuel prices. And I can imagine that construction, which is already dependent on economic cycles is also very dependent on high fuel price. Has that sort of changed anything when it comes to the customer signal to how do you say, pay readiness?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesI wouldn't say that yet, but I would say that, of course, during the long period of time, that can have effect. What is important for us then is to show them that by using our system to coordinate what they're doing, to communicate better, then maybe they can also use those systems to become more efficient, therefore, sort of using our system more will help them reduce the extra cost that they would get. And I mean when you do a calculation and you think about how much material you're using, the more accurate that is, the less material you have to buy in, therefore, reducing cost in that side. So there are probably both plus and minus situation always when you have a tough situation in the world.
Operator
OperatorAnd to finish off the market discussion, then I have one final question in this broadcast. So if any more viewers are more curious, then they're welcome to post them in the chat. Torbjorn asked, property transaction seem to have picked up nicely in April in Sweden. Probably still early days, but has this had any impact of activity amongst your customers?
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesWe have seen some small slight activity on it. And of course, we hope when it comes to the construction sector that the housebuilding will start even more, both in U.K., Sweden, Finland, that would be a plus for us and for our products for sure.
Operator
OperatorThank you very much, CEO, Jeremias Jansson; and CFO, Kine Kragholm Olsen.
Jeremias Jansson
ExecutivesThank you so much.
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