Systemair AB (publ) (SYSR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

January 17, 2023

Nasdaq Stockholm SE Industrials Building Products investor_day 105 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Roland Kasper

executive
#1

So again, thank you very much for being here. We are very delighted to have you here and to be able to present and to describe a little bit about what is going on and what is ahead of us and to our Capital Markets Day in 2023. As a follow-up to which we also will conclude later on our Capital Markets Day that was in September 2019. So during the rest of this day, I will shortly start with a short presentation of Systemair with where we are today, just very short, brief introduction. Then Lee Morgan will have a short presentation about our sustainability work, followed up by Anders Ulff, our CFO with some words about the financial development in the Systemair group. Then you will have another short coffee break. We thought now in the afternoon after lunch and everything would be good if you can stretch your legs one more. After that, we'll go into operational excellence, some words about our manufacturing and our measures that we have there. Then some words about the outlook about the market, about the development and the mega trends that we see. The short peak after we are quite flexible. I think we will keep it rather short and then follow up with some words about profit improvement and an outlook on the strategic focus, follow-up by a general Q&A catching those things that we have not been able to address throughout the presentations. Any questions so for? Then we go from there. So Systemair, as you all know, established in 1974. Based on a product invention by Yara Lindstrom. Here in Skinnskatteberg, our last fiscal year, we had a turnover of roughly EUR 960 million. And we're listed on the NASDAQ Nordic Stock Exchange since 2007. Today, we operate our own companies in 52 countries all over the world, and we have 29 factories in 21 countries. All in all, today in the group, we are around about 6,800 employees, and we are selling to around about 135 countries. So I wanted to start to give you a slight overview about our organization. So in our management team, of course, Anders Ulff, who is responsible for not only for the finance, but also for ESG, human resources and IT. Then our Vice President of Sales, Uteland today, sorry, in Eli but he is responsible of the market area, both in Europe and Africa. Then our Vice President of Marketing Products; Bisconti, who presented the residential fitter solutions for you, in charge of the product and the marketing communication, and then Disgustason series. I did miss to present him early on, Anders Gossan, our Vice President of Global Supply Chain, logistics, sourcing and technology. And then Janiero,, which is, of course, a very interesting one. Today, also heading up on service and our price activity. And then I have some direct, which is the North American market area and the Asia and Middle East. We have our management team, the group management, and this is our operational management team that is reporting and working directly with our---, with our group management team. In Systemair, we strongly believe in our internal system and corporate culture. Our corporate culture is driven by our standards and values. This is something that I probably can say that is in company forever and has really developed on a very positive way to everyone's advantage over the years. The main words for us is to prioritize, to simplify and to create trust. And under the work that we really wanted the people, our employees, our management to take initiatives, be proactive, be engage and be dynamic. Everything that we do on factor decisions, fact-based. Don't overdo it, but you should have the effect in place. And we are loyal to choose strategy and we follow the strategy. When we simplify, of course, to simplify, it's based actually to where the company started with inland Daxan, the straight way. Don't make it more complicated than that, try to simplify it. It's a systematic approach or a standardized approach. And by that, of course, also standardized products, and I will come back to that. I think those of you that have met me earlier, we always believe and we always pray about standardized products and standardized processes that's really important is the backbone of what we do. When we talk about trust, it's internal, but foremost it's trust towards our customers, our partners. It's a clear communication. It's about our product reliability and it's a collective responsibility of everyone within Systemair. So in Systemair, we are carrying mainly those brands. Of course, the main overall arching brand is Systemair clear. Systemair is over all our ventilation products. Fantech is our brand in North America. As you can see already with the docs in beginning and with a system company, we -- over time, it will surely also transfer over to a Systemair. But North America market and customer behavior is a little bit more, how should I say, maybe old fashioned, they try to -- or they like to hang on to all things or to things that they know of since a very, very long time. So the Fantech brand as such still carries a lot of trust to a lot of smaller installers. And therefore, it also has still a value. But we have parallel to that also in North America Systemair for the more European, more efficient products. Frico is our brand for air borne heating products, such as air curtains, fan heaters, et cetera. Also to say that Frico, the customer base of Frico is the electrical wholesaler and installers which is different from the ventilation installs. And then Menerga, being our German producer of high energy-efficient units, but also dedicated to the pool or dehumidification business, which is the total different project area. Just to give you an overview of our market shares or our market areas, Eastern Europe and the CIS countries around about 12% of our total turnover, North America, 11%; Western Europe, 45% and Nordic region 18%. What we here see is other markets. It's a sum of -- today, it's Turkey, it's Middle East and Southeast Asia. Yes. As you partially have seen throughout the presentations that you had earlier today, we, of course, have several product areas or business areas we call them. The main being for us, air handling units, fans where it's outside of it. But today, fans, it's not only the small fans, it's everything in every size up to our standard actual fans that are up to 3.2 meters of diameters from our German and Malaysian factory. Air distribution products being what you see up in the ceiling, which are these diffusers could be simple grids that you have over there in the wall. Today, we have actually 3 factories for these kind of products. The residential systems that you had about in the presentations earlier. Fire safety solutions that are manufacturing in the same manufacturing points where we also have the air distribution products. And then the air conditioner or the AC business. And then at the end, under the pre-cool lower type, we have the airborne heating products. Because the question sometimes comes up, I made a little add on to this slides of the share in volume of these business areas of the total. So air handling units today is actually about 29% of the total volume of the Systemair group. The fans have 23% and then you have a fine share of 10% each of air distribution, residential, fire safety and air conditioners, and airborne heating as having 8% shares. Just to give you the overall picture of how the different product groups are divided. Here it comes. With all these different products, a product is a product, 2 products or 3 products together, and then combined with the control system is a solution or a system. We are supplying products that we can combine to systems, and these are the deliver to different applications. With our products have in the group, we are more or less able to deliver every application that in some way, is connected with air or air movement or air treatment. The main even here also started from sizes, commercial applications, absolutely, starting with everything like industrial or an office building. Industrial applications being everything from a chiller and a hand unit or it could also be FanXsystems. Residential applications, infrastructure, metros and tunnels, the big actual fans. Then health care, which is a growing application for us, we'll come back to that. Education schools a lot of talking and actions around schools throughout and after the pandemic, of course. And hospitality and entertainment. And as we also discussed out in the bigger hole earlier today, data centers. What has happened throughout the last year? And what do you have in the pipeline? I just wanted to make that reflection as a recap. Throughout 2022, we acquired a company such SagiCofim S.P.A. in Italy. That is mainly driven by the SagiCofim as a very interest for us as a bigger part of the business, which is air filtration filters. And in the wake of, of course, hospitals, operational ceilings and these kind of things, intensive care units now are very, very popular and very high demand, even before the pandemic, but even more after the pandemic that is, of course, growing application of for us. The other part of the business was such a core Systemair actually air distribution products, which is already in the market, and it's already sold by Systemair as a Group. And we also acquired in Italy, the company, Tecnair. Tecnair makes precision cooling units. And as a matter of fact, these precision cooling units are going to data centers and health care applications. So there was also a double effect. And then we also acquired a smaller company in Germany or the final shares because we already had some of them of Burda. Burda in Germany is a high specialized company in infrared heaters, but we are with Bluetooth or WiFi and have a lot of different applications for hospitality that we didn't have connection to before that made really good sense for us for especially the area of airborne heating. Then as you might have read and you're aware of on the 17th of November 2022, we had a press release about the sales of our Systemair AC division to Panasonic. And here, I need to mention also part of that sales of our air conditioning product is actually the Tecnair also moves with that package. We were very proud of that after the acquisition of Tecnair, we managed to integrate them and move them into our factory within 3 weeks, but now they're moving over to Panasonic in this acquisition. It makes sense because they are in the same factory as the existing Italian operation of our air conditioning, but it also has a lot of synergies because of it's the same kind of technology, the same components, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a perfect fit for that factory. And thereby, it also makes sense to be part of the Panasonic acquisition. I'll come back a little bit, and I know that Janni will also come back to the Panasonic acquisition. Then also in the year 2022, we divested our operations in Brazil. In Brazil, we had a factory for air heating units. And even before the new President in Brazil, it was expectation that there should be some both narrow effect and then came the pandemic, and then we're election again. So -- when we had the opportunity, we withdraw from Brazil. We thought it was better to make an exit because the overall outlook of a technical upgrade and then technically for us, interesting market was not there on the midterm perspective. As a follow-up of that, if you're not in Brazil, and we today only have the operations in Chile and Peru, we also had the -- at the end, we also made an agreement with Mardel Sur in June 2022. Mardel Sur is a national distributor in Chile, and they have now the exclusivity to distribute our products with my company left in Chile. So we have more or less withdrawn from South America. Then the things that we have bought are divested. We needs to be followed up what we do instead. We invested in a new -- or we built a new factory in Pardubice in Czech. It was a new factory or it is a new factory for a company that we acquired some years ago. I will come back to that data. It's a company Recutech. Recutech is a producer of counterflow heat exchangers. So they had to come to the limit of capacity and existing premises needed to get much bigger. We also invested in expansion in our factory in Maribor, Slovenia, where we bought the adjacent factory on the left side in the picture. And by that, we were able to add in the first step, 8,000 squares of production with the possibility to add even some couple of more thousand square meters if you renovate to take care of the rest of the property. Also to mention that we in November before also expanded in Tillsonburg, in Canada. Here, that was a lucky -- more or less by the same time that we expand these investment packages for schools in North America like exploded. This factor today is already going on its limit. So really good opportunity also. Then we have the investments that we have ahead of us because of we see the market growth quite impressed if we see the growth coming. Those of you that were part of the discussion that you had on the residential side, as Tobias has also mentioned, we are running a little bit on the ceiling when it comes to our production capacities in Lithuania. And that's why we already started our expansion project for our factory in Ukmerge in Lithuania to here add another 14,000 square meter of production area that is needed for residential and for air heating units. Then also, we have a need for expansion of our production capacity in Lenexa, U.S. because what is happening in the U.S. is that finally, the building codes have been changed in U.S. starting in California, Arizona and Texas. Now they also demand balanced ventilation. What does balance ventilation mean? That means in all residential applications where you either renovate or you upgrade and you need a new sign-off by building authority, you need to have ballast ventilation, which means that you need to have residential ventilation in the buildings. Today, we have a factory in Canada for residential ventilation that has been growing tremendously well over the last couple of years. but now the growth come in U.S., and we need to prepare for the local so that we don't have to ship all the goods from Canada to U.S. So we're investing in the next in the U.S. And then in Germany, Windischbuch, we have taken a decision, and we're starting up in the next couple of months, we expand the logistics center that is just running out the space. Germany and Windischbuch also by that is also one of our distribution centers in the group. Okay. A short introduction of what we are doing, what has been happening over the last year. And by that, I want to directly follow it up and hand over to Lee to talk about our sustainability products and what we do in India group in that aspect. Thank you very much. Lee, the floor is yours.

Unknown Executive

executive
#2

Great. Thanks. It's working as well. Okay. Thanks, Roland. So my name is Lee Morgan. I am obviously sustainability management for Systemair. And I'm going to give you a brief insight in our sustainability work and our efforts. But I would like to start with this. What we sell. And I think the message has got across the most of you actually makes a big difference in terms of sustainability as well. Why is that? So buildings all over the world stand for about 40% of all of the emissions that in total, and that's a lot. So when the buildings are in operation, of course, heating and cooling is a big part of this. So supplying really energy-efficient ventilation mitigates climate change because it reduces the energy usage, that's kilowatt hours and also then indirectly avoids emissions from carbon dioxide. The energy needed to -- additional energy needed to beat the building is less or cooler being in a hot country. Now IAQ is something we use a lot in the ventilation business. It stands for indoor air quality. So of course, the most simple solution if we want to reduce the buildings energy use to throw everything out which uses energy. So that's not feasible. We need good air to function for a well-being and about 90% of our time is spent indoors. So it's really important with a good indoor air quality. So this combination that we have is really strong. And most of our products are in the business of increasing indoor air quality and doing it in a really energy-efficient way. So I'm really happy with this, of course, being the sustainability manager, but it makes a difference, both for the planet and for people. So it's good for the health and well-being as we spend so much time indoors but also, of course, to mitigate the climate change. So I would like to dig a bit in revisimportant important about the energy efficiency. When you hear energy efficiency, sometimes you only think about the electricity that the motor uses, for example, but the big -- the electric motor, but the big difference is in Energy Recovery. So today, for example, it's about 21 degrees in here and about zero outside. When we bring in the outside air, we, of course, want to transfer as much as possible as the heat in here to the outdoor air. Otherwise, we have to use other sources for heating, and that's what's really energy-efficient. And the exact same logic works if it's the other way around. So if it's really hot outside and we want to keep the cool indoors. So in essence, it's circularity, which is a popular word in sustainability. It's almost as broad as sustainability, but it's about reusing, recovering. And in this case, we are recovering energy. So that's really good. And last year, last -- our last fiscal year, our products put on the market only that year, so not accumulated contributed to savings of 2 terawatts of -- 2 terawatt hours of energy which is a huge number. And if you convert that into where they were placed because, of course, depending on where in the world they are placed, they avoid different amount of carbon dioxide depending on how clean energy is and also if it's natural gas for heating or silver and it corresponds to about 0.5 million tons of CO2 emission avoidance. Also, if you calculate it the cost about 280,000, not electric cars, of course, wholesale-driven car. Now as we're in the business of energy efficiency and indoor quality, it also means that we're very well positioned for future financial incentives, such as the Green deal, which I think most of you heard of, also part of the Green deal with renovation wave, which is becoming really important now going forward and recently, the repower EU to reduce our dependence on natural gas. And really happy also that in the latest year and 2, the U.S. has come back on as we when we talk about energy efficiency and the build back better and inflation reduction. So really strong powers forcing for more energy-efficient buildings basically. Both new and existing. The EU Taxonomy, my favorite subject. It's quite new, as you know. And in the EU Taxonomy, there is an area called Manufacturer of energy efficiency equipment for buildings, and that fits us quite well. So what we reported last year was an eligible turnover of 42% meaning we have about 42% of our turnover included in the taxonomy. And right now, we're working on producing the align number. We, as you know, report 4 months later than most companies. So for this fiscal year, we're also going to report align number. And we're expecting a good one as we are in the business of selling highly efficient energy equipment -- energy-efficient product, ventilation. But of course, it's more than our products, sustainability. It's a broad topic. And I'm happy to say that we have a complete ESG agenda. ESG is, of course, environmental, social and governance, also often used instead of sustainability. As you can imagine, in the business we are, it's been a central and actual part. Sustainability as what we sell and what we put on the market makes a difference for the environment. But we also, of course, have a complete framework. So we have a responsible enterprise where we take responsibility in our value chain. We have sustainable operations where we work hard with improving our own environmental impact and also strive for a sustainable workplace for our employees. So our sustainability framework or strategy consists of these 4 areas: sustainable products, of course, and the 3 other areas to have a complete ESG agenda. So I'm happy to say that it's part of our strategy and it's integrated. These 4 focus areas consist of 12 core issues. And those core issues are the material questions for us, but also for stakeholder. So you recognize these. I'll show them briefly. And if you want to read more about them, we have a logic of why we contribute to them on our group web page. So we contribute to 10 of the sustainable development goals directly or indirectly because we exist. And we're happy about that, and we work really hard to develop as well to meet the -- to help and meet the Agenda 2030 target at the UN setup. So this is my final slide, and you and here probably know more than most that sustainability also more and more is about proving that you actually are making a difference and not just talking about it. I think I've quite clearly stated that our products actually are making a difference and they have been for a while. But we, of course, also in the other areas, we invest resources and money to develop. As an example, on responsible enterprise, we are now working with our human rights due diligence process to make sure that we check our suppliers and audit them in a good way. A sustainable workplace. We are developing a more ambitious plan for the quality and diversity and equal opportunity. And for sustainable operations, this has not been communicated yet, but we are committed to science-based product. We have got the official formal confirmation from science-based targets as they've been on quite a lot of holidays in Christmas, but this means that we have about 24 months to get our targets confirmed. So this is about our own mission. Great. I kept that quite brief. So if you have any questions, we can take them afterwards, and I'll be happy to answer them in the Q&A session. I'd like to just mention one more thing because the next person to talk is the CFO, and he knows a lot about quarterly and annual reporting. So one new thing that we just implemented is our quarterly reporting of a lot of our sustainability data. Before we only did it annually, so now we do it quarterly for some of our key data and this is really good for me, of course, but also for a company to look at how we progress and also to feedback to all our subsidiaries to have a more frequent update of date. Great. Thank you. So happy to give insight about Sustainability at Systemair and now our CFO, I wonder what he's going to talk about. Anders.

Anders Ulff

executive
#3

Thank you, Lee. What can it be? So I'm the only thing between you here now and the peak outbreak in 15 minutes from now. So I hope you can bear with me for a while more. Coming back a little bit to your home turf, maybe we're talking about finance and now also. We are quite proud in Systemair over our financial development over time. And it's selling that we have a graph that is showing the development over 25 years. It's a long time. But I think it proves really that we are able to generate growth over time. During this period, we had the financial crisis back in 2008 and 2009, we lost 3.4% in volume during that price recession. And also, during the pandemic, year 2021, we lost 4% of sales. So we think we can handle quite well and we have a good resilience against economic downturns. We are not really dependent on the specific customer or a product segment or market. We have one foot in renovation market and another foot in new build also which gives us a good resilience. We're also happy to conclude here at our first quarter report that we also reached a landmark of achieving sales of SEK 10 billion. Still also, as announced this morning, we have a good growth during November, December, as you saw those of you who read the press release, we had 31% growth in our invoicing. So really happy to conclude that. And also looking a little bit forward then, we see that there are really good growth opportunities moving forward. And I know Gannon and others will talk more about that. But I just want to mention one thing then about the Green deal the European Union recovery program. We -- the aim is really to double the rate of energy renovations of building. And we are talking about 35 million buildings. And of course, HVAC takes as an important role in this also. So we believe there are good possibilities to continue to grow for us. Our financial targets, maybe you expected us to revise them, but we would like to reinforce them at this point, really. Maybe if you remember on the last Capital Markets Day in 2019, we also communicated clearly that our main focus out of these 4 targets is really on the profitability target. And we will show you a little bit about the journey we have made and also what we have done in order to get closer to the 10% profitability target. The growth target we revised in 2019 from 12% down to 10%. We believe that it's still quite an aggressive growth target. And over the last 10 years, we have generated a growth of 9.4%. So we think we can achieve this target. Financial position and equity to asset ratio, we had a goal of 30%, we are on 45.5% last year, so no problem there. And dividend, we increased that from 30% to 40%. And during the 2 last years, you can see, 38% and 34%. So you are in quite close to that target as well. Digging down a little bit more than in our growth, really. The organic growth is also something we believe is, of course, something that will help us to see the 10% target. Over time, we believe that we can generate somewhere between 4% to 8% organic growth. We had before the pandemic, we had 10 years of consecutive quarterly organic growth with one exception. I think that proves really what we are able to do. If we can do 4% to 8% organic growth, then the rest up to 10% needs to come from M&A also. So -- and we believe that there are many interesting opportunities still on the M&A market. So you can continue to acquire companies as well. We have also identified organic growth initiatives, and this is part of our process where we do strategic meetings with our subsidiaries, but also in the budget process that we are about to start now. We have a very wide product portfolio, but we don't sell all products on all markets. So there are big possibilities to grow with existing portfolio. We have some focus areas that we have identified that will target even more where we believe that we can grow faster than the average growth we have. So that is the residential area that you heard more about out here. It's the health care sector, school and also within the service segment and circularity. Renovations and energy upgrades will continue to drive this demand also as mentioned before. And I would like to spend a little bit time on this one then because, as I said before, profitability is for us the most important target right now then. And we still believe that the 10% target here is possible. We are getting closer. And I would say that somewhere around 2014, '15, we started to put profit over and we communicated this specific internally. And I think we have proven that we are able to improve our profitability that we can reach 10% and hopefully beat that also. Are there any question? No? Okay. As Roland mentioned a bit, AC segment will be divested then. We'll come back to that. But that -- since that segment has a profitability under the group average, it will add another 0.4 percentage point to our profitability, taking it up to somewhere around 9%. Of course, you know about our Russian operations, and we would like to mention a bit about that. I have a slide about that also. So we'll come back to that, but that has also affected lately our margin also. So it has about the same effect as the AC segment had. We believe in economies of scale, and we believe in standard production and organic growth initiatives will contribute to economies of scale. So we believe that growing in these areas, we can also improve our margins. We have established a central price council that have had an [indiscernible] during the last 2 years, really, where we have constantly reviewed and increased product. We have implemented swift control systems for the subsidiaries, if they would like to make quotations, they need to need to assist the level. And during the pandemic, during the supply chain problems here, we have had several inofficial related to our production also, which has affected the margin. We have higher sick rates. And we have also seen that we have been able to produce only smaller batches in some cases, due to problems with components. So also that can help us to implement a higher margin. We believe one of the most important areas also moving forward is to review constantly our production setup and footprint, we to continue to work with that and improve profitabilities. We have higher resources in that area, and we are putting more efforts there. By all these actions and many more, we will be able to reach the 10% target, we believe. Just a recap of the AC segment than what has been agreed with Panasonic is that we will SEK 1 billion on a cash and debt-free basis for the company. The capital gain is around SEK 450 million preliminary and this will be reported within our operating profit. Until then, the AC segment will be reported as a separate asset held for sale. It closed its transaction that were around March, April. And so far, everything is going according to plan. These are some pro forma figures then with divesting the AC segment, we as a group that will lose around 7% in volume, and that takes place. But as said before, our operating profit margin will improve with 0.4 percentage points. And the proceeds that we received for the transaction will help us to lower our debt going from somewhere around 2.05, leverage down to 1.34. So it will help us to decrease our interest expenses and make us more possible to make other interesting investments also.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#4

[indiscernible].

Anders Ulff

executive
#5

Yes, absolutely.

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#6

I understand that [indiscernible]

Anders Ulff

executive
#7

No, you're right. We will not -- maybe I expressed it incorrect there. We will not lose 7%, but we will know some of it, but it's not all. We have a supply agreement with Panasonic. So we'll continue to source products from these production facilities. The biggest difference is that we will not own the production in Italy in 2011. And if you recall from Roland's presentation, in AC segment is totaling 10% of the total revenue. So there's a 3% difference also that is not included in this transaction. It's other AC program. And then to mention Russia, it's not that fun, but we need to be open about this also. Already 4th of March 2022, we stopped all the internal deliveries to our subsidiary in Moscow and with lots of sales offices around also. Already since the annexation of Crimea at 2014, we have lost volume in Russia. We had at most 15% of our sales on the Russian market, and it's a highly profitable market also. Since then, it has decreased from 15% down to 5% at the more outbreak. And today, it's a little bit over 1% left of the total sales. So it's already more or less diminished. We have communicated in our Q2 report that we will exit Russia also and that we are looking into different alternatives, how that can be done, but we will come back and present to you also. The Russian market was sourced from different factories within the groups, but it was from several factories. So there is no big impact for a single factor, except for the one that was built in Moscow, which was just inaugurated or about to be inaugurated when the war started. So that was a little bit bad timing. In March 2023, we estimate to have 130 employees set in 10 regional sales offices. So you could say that's about 50% of what it was a year ago. And we also said in Q2 that we will do an impairment of the Goodwill and building that was of SEK 168 million now. We talk a bit jumping to investments and depreciations then. You can see it's quite cyclical. And Roland talked a little bit about it already before. Also, we almost our factories, as you know, have a booked value of SEK 1.4 billion in factory buildings. And sometimes, we outgrow these factories, and then we need to extend them. And last year, we did so in Canada, Czech and also Slovenia. And we are about to do also extensions to that in Lithuania and in Germany and also U.S. So it will be another peak also after that. This year, we project investments of around SEK 310 million. That's the budget for this year, with depreciation of SEK 274 million. And this is my final slide then about working capital then. Yes. You're aware of the situation, and I don't think we are unique than any other company in the industry either. We have seen quite an increase in inventory levels over the last year. Yes of course, one part of it, which is a price impact that would correspond to half of the increase of our inventory increase and the other half then comes from increased safety stock of components due to the supply chain problems. Of course, this is not something that we want in the long run. It was necessary for a period to increase safety stock to be able to deliver. And also in some cases, we took market share from the competition. The problems have varied quite a lot. It has been everything from motors to controls to electric components or other things possible. It's not over yet, but it's getting better at least. We are working now with the bigger units, especially with focused accident targets. And we think we can take it down soon again. You can see already now that the inventory has stopped increased and leveled out and starting to decrease at least in the last month. So there's improvements already now coming here. And net operating working capital is also part of the bonus scheme for our Managing Director. So they really have a driver to improve this as well. But it was during the pandemic bring supply chain problem at the period here, it has been more or less impossible not to increase the inventory. That was all from me. Okay. Is there any more question? Short question? Otherwise, we take it at the Q&A. Yes?

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#8

On the CapEx -- Anders is from SEB. Just on the CapEx, where do you see the peak? You said EUR 310 million this year. Do you see it going higher before it moves lower again?

Anders Ulff

executive
#9

Sorry, is it?

Unknown Attendee

attendee
#10

Is it going to move higher than that before it moves down again?

Anders Ulff

executive
#11

As you saw, it is a bit cyclical depending on when everything falls out. I would say it could be a peak like the one we saw last year. But right now, there are also quite big delays, especially when it comes to production equipment, if you order something when you get it, I mean it could take a year or so. So it depends, but building all these 3 and maybe 4 factory extensions at the same time, that will, of course, make a peak in this curve also. But we will try to communicate the values and when they will occur really. But EUR 310 million is the outlook for this year, this one. I don't have a forecast yet for the company, but we hope to keep it under control. But I mean, these are happy -- I mean, we are happy to do these investments because it means that we have too much volumes in these factories, and it's really nice investments to do as well. Carl?

Carl Ragnerstam

analyst
#12

Okay. Just a quick question on your sort of margin bridge, I'm not sure if you're going to talk about this later on. But could you elaborate a bit more on -- you mentioned that manufacturing footprint optimization is one of the key measures in terms of lifting the margin. Is it possible -- is it predominantly the Menerga move from Germany to Maribor or do you have a?

Anders Ulff

executive
#13

That's a big part of it. All right. But I think Roland will come back more with the margin bridge in his presentation. So if it's okay, we can come back and see if it's explained by the end of the day then on the Q&A session. But -- all right. So yes, we take 15 minutes with coffee breaks served out there, and then we're back in here again to hear more. It's you 100% Janika, about growth initiatives. So it would be interesting to hear. Thank you. [Break]

Roland Kasper

executive
#14

Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we continue. Operational excellence and of course, its underlying main purpose, the focus on the profitability. We talk about operational excellence in our manufacturing entities. Of course, we need to talk about our tax risks. Today, we operate our own factories in quite a lot of places, as you know. And actually, we are quite proud of that we own our properties with a total service area of 320,000 square meters and a book value of around about SEK 1.4 billion. As you heard in the sustainability part, that is something that is really close to us. So one of the main purpose why we also have them and also in the terms of that under touching when it comes to investments, when it comes to expansion, but also to be able to increase capacity for new products, but of course, also for existing markets where we see that the growth makes us or puts us in a position where it's possible. It's good to have a factory that is well optimized. There's kief and we actually have under control and have well invested. And that is something, I think, that you can see in every factory that you visit from Systemair that we have a well invested factory, highly optimized and fit for purpose, where we, of course, also can influence the systems that we install in terms of ventilation, in working ambitions here and also influence the energy consumption. All our building plans are designed and optimized to have a low energy use. But for example, also in India, for example, we have rain water harvesting, with water and energy efficient installations, and we have on multiple facilities solar panels for energy installations. This you can only do and be prepared for if you own these properties. And of course, also, it is a -- I would not say low-hanging fruit, but more attempting, of course, having a strategic thought when looking at M&A candidates, is it worth investing in M&A or to expand on capacities and take it from there? So that is something that is dear to us and that we're always looking into and that's why we need these highly invested factories. So looking at our operations and our strategy. We have 5 main areas and that we are running and that we are looking for and we are setting our programs for. Starting with what has been discussed here several times already today is the continued to optimize our factory and logistical footprint in order to increase both competence and of course, economy of scale. Secondly, to keep regional factory setups, where, of course, the justified by market demands. For example, when you talk about air handling units, the sheer size of the product makes it necessary to be rather close to your main markets. Otherwise, logistic costs will have a huge impact on your total market price. Then implement lean manufacturing principles, and we have our own principles, SPM, system and production model. In that, I will come back to that a little bit. We have defined our internal processes and KPIs, how to run factories and how to constantly look into them and to make the better step by step. Then that we have a strategy where we're looking more into it to produce key components in-house. Why? Because of competitive needs, but also to, of course, hear be control of what is really important for the key areas of our offering. And then increase -- constantly increasing of the level of automization and digitalization in our production processes. So these are the 5 main areas that we are running. And in the presentation following here, I would like to give you some example of what that means actually in the different areas here. If you look at the first part, where we talk about continuously optimize the factories, for us, the operational efficiency, and there was also a question earlier today, we have an internal efficiency projects here with ongoing logistical review for Europe. What does it mean? Looking at the increase of cost and competitiveness when it comes to logistics setups, grades, et cetera. We, of course, need to look into that. We -- as you know, we have our setup we have in logistic centers in Sweden and Germany, for example, for Europe, but we need to review and reassess how much and what to be your stock, what should be directly shipped, what is the, I'll say, cutoff size for direct shipments, orders, et cetera. That is something that we are evaluating constantly. Looking at our manufacturing footprint, where to produce what and here, of course, review multiple locations for optimized outcome. I think you had an earlier question here today, if it's only Menerga. No. It's a constant thing that is ongoing depending on volumes, products but also closeness to main markets. very important. And of course, if we -- is it possible or should we allow that similar or the same products to be produced at several sites? A good question, but should normally not be the case. Then of course, when it comes here, Menerga is in focus for operational efficiency projects. And here is the main project ongoing, as communicated earlier in a quarterly report also the Menerga main products is for pool. It's for commercial with highest efficiency on energy efficiency and it's private pools. The private pool part has already been moved out to our existing factory in Maribor, Slovenia and there are other efficiency projects ongoing, where it will be follow-up by the rest of the volumes also be transferred out or kept in a reshaped model. That is the main ongoing activity for this part on operational efficiency. Covered here is, of course, also looking for common platforms, and I'll come back to that because it's a quite important one. It's footprint, where to be, what to do and the economy of scale. We are supporting geographical growth by presence, but also the setup and the way we support products, organizations and sales and of course, always have a look and invest in technology for future and, of course, on the life of sustainability. But looking at common platforms. I think it has been already touched upon several times before, but looking as an example, our Geniox platform for our AHU units. It's actually the same platform as you see the casing of that at the wall. It's called the Geniox. When we did the Geniox project, we started with some European factories and we made it to the first rollout to 3 factories. Meanwhile, this is a project 5 years old, the platform thinking has been expanded to what you have heard earlier today about all the controls, the Access platform. And also, all the selection tools are now on the same platform. Before that, I can say that we had 16 different technical platforms and 23 different selection tools. Today, one platform, one selection tool. It's quite a difference. This has now been rolled out to all the factories that you can see on this chart that makes quite a difference, of course, it's industrial platform thinking. Scalable, and of course, you have here and there are some local dialects, but it's the same chasis, the same production model, the same process, the same machinery, the same setup in the background. That's a synergy. I got the question earlier today in some of the discussions about systems. For us, it's very clear that when a customer talks about an installation of a ventilation system, what you can get from us is a product. You can get multiple products, but he needs to have a solution for his problem, which is in almost all cases, a system that is built upon several products that we need to connect. That's where he needs his help from us. We need to be able to connect different components of a ventilation installation to a system. We deliver the products, and we deliver the help on the digital side to connect them together in the best possible way for an efficient solution. But at the end, for system, what does it mean? When we talk about basic product range, standard products, that is, to us, I would say, clear products that you have an article number like a fan, a damper and heater or a residential AHU unit. To them, we manufacture and produce into stock. That's the simplest product that you can have and it's around about 40%, 45% of our volume. Then when it comes to the platforms, the configured products, these are the ones that we are building on these platforms, our technical platforms. And they are configured to order, but built on a scalable platform that you design in an selection tool. And then we'll talk about the customized products like a car park ventilation or a Menerga or a marine unit or like this one is a data center unit. But a car park ventilation sounds very complicated. CFD simulations, it's a lot of fans, a lot of controls but consists only of standard products that you connect together via our tools. So these are then engineered to order because we have to make the CFD. But at the end, what it means for us is that we are producing products, we are selling products but to connect them on the control side and on the, I'd say, competence behind the offering. So we are a product company. So to be able to produce that, of course, we need constantly to look into our factories, our setups. And when we talk about our Systemair production model, we also talk about digitalization, but what it covers in the Systemair production model, of course, how we measure, how we build and how we achieve quality in our products and operations, and our processes. It is continuous improvements, reduction of lead times, standardized work and environmental care. It's one step of that, which might be simple and easy, but which is very crucial, we work a lot with digitalization in our own factories. The automization of our factories also allows us, of course, to follow up. So we have -- on top of that, we have a system internally like [ Maxo ] system, but actually, we can measure a lot of things, we can visualize a lot of things. So we see -- we can monitor bottlenecks. We can look at and understand downtime on machinery, we can increase the capacity, and we can track and trace stop times and measure the operational efficiency. Just as an example, an existing factory in Spain where we apply the system just by really looking into that and to look into the figures and the data we identified another 3 working hours per day that we can remove on that machine. So we freed 3 working hours per day on machine. That's quite a lot. So just to show you a little bit of the possibility of having this digitalization in the manufacturing processes on automated machines. These are the things that we're working on constantly in the background. As an example also of other investments when it comes to also investing in existing factories and be prepared for expansion or new technologies. And here is an example I want to mention Recutech in Czech, in Pardubice. We acquired that factory in 2017. They made -- at that time, they made the aluminum counterflow of course. And they had a production volume of around about 10,000, 11,000 pieces in a year. A little bit with our help, they introduced later on a plastic heat exchanger based on the production line of one machine. And then at 2019 already, the markets increased that much by legislation and by the need of counterflow technology to achieve heat recovery in residential applications up to 90% so we saw an increase here that we got actually in 2019, we went up to around about 80,000 pieces a year. And by that, we went to be the largest producer of aluminum counterflow heat exchanges in the world. 2022, we inaugurated the need. We grew out of our factory, and we built a new one that is 4x bigger than the old one. And here already in 2022, when we had the inauguration, we also added new product lines, new sizes. And today, we're operating 7 lines for these plastic exchanges because the volumes are increasing constantly. So we are today actually the first production measuring 100% of all products that we produced for leakage, which is a quality assurance. And we will also -- this year, we will also start the production of the incorporated [indiscernible] heat recovery [ wins ] that we transferred from Germany to Czech also. So we're closing one factory in Germany and put it in here also now from already in the end of the last year. So by that, we have full control of the most important component in the energy recovery applications, the heat recovery cores. And today, here in that factory, we're running a volume to about 120,000 pieces a year. So this is either acquiring or investing in existing. I think here was absolutely the right decision to investing and building that volume on our own brands. This factory here is fully automized. So we think what you measure and what you track is the things that you actually get done and get improved. So we have a set of KPIs and things that we are, of course, measuring in all our entities in the manufacturing part. And it's because we will have a strong focus on the margin development to support our 10% target. And also the production footprint is always under review. But if you don't measure and track, you don't know. So it's a continued action on low-performing parts of our business, but of course, also to develop the ones that are really good to be even better. So we're looking for a reduction of lead times, productivity improvements. We're looking at our product cost focus. And here, it's not only looking at value-added or materials, everyone would think, but at also cost out, that you have a plan for cost out on an annual base on every single product that you have. Then the inventory review, finished goods, but especially in these days, components, absolutely. Sales and operation planning process, be in tight connection with the sales and the marketing parts. The logistics route that I already mentioned and working with our internal project models where we have the product platforms and our plan-to-market processes. These are the things that we are tracking in our own operations on a daily basis and it's really necessary and good to do. Okay. If no questions, I'm handing over to Janni for the part of continued growth. Oh, sorry.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#15

[indiscernible]

Roland Kasper

executive
#16

I'll just repeat the question because it's also filmed here. What is the difference between the different factories in efficiency. It is a little bit different also about what we produce in the different entities. I would say today, if you really want to compare like-for-like, then let's look at our [ hang ] unit factories. At the beginning, when I started this platform thinking, it was rather different in the efficiencies. Today, as we are on the same platform, you can actually compare it, but we can also load balance between the factories. That's rather what we're looking for, and we're looking for our main factories and assembly plants. The main factories being those really manufacture everything from a to z and the other ones just making parts for assembly. So we're not really tracking the difference in between us, the process are set the same. When it comes to other components like, for example, fans, on the extract fans, for example, is not really comparable as the one factory would be in Malaysia and one in Germany. So it's a little bit on that. So we are -- how to say we're more selective where to put them. And if they should be comparable, we need to put them on the same process, to same products. But today, on the Air Handling units, we have achieved that part. And that's, of course, a [indiscernible] I agree with that. Okay. Yes?

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#17

[indiscernible]

Roland Kasper

executive
#18

So the question was how we deal with the hyperinflation and inflation [ session ] and the different customers, and the different factories. The real hyperinflation issue we only have in Turkey. And the Turkish business as such -- the main part of the business for us is export, but the main part is that we're selling in euro. So by that, we are going out of the problem. And it's the way of the local market in Turkey to how to say? Safeguard themselves from the issue of the hyperinflation. You make the deals in euro.

Unknown Analyst

analyst
#19

[indiscernible]

Roland Kasper

executive
#20

Yes, it would be theoretically, but you're right. But what we of course -- we also are tracking, of course, the man hour cost in the different factories that we have. We have in the past, we have here and there, we have shipped products, taking them from other factors, for example, to Lithuania, we're taking in to Czech, to Maribor, as I mentioned also with Menerga. But it's just when you see that there is a -- how to say? It needs to be a difference. It actually overcomes the issue that I had, that you need to be rather close to main markets with some of the key products that we have because of the sheer size of the projects. So it's a lot of different ingoing how to say, arguments in that kind of decision. But just to say that the hyperinflation as such for Turkey is not the biggest problem for us. It is more difficulty I have to say, for the employees, but sellers are another thing. Okay, Janni. Thank you.

Janni Weber

executive
#21

Finally, my turn, and I will try to speed up a bit because we are a bit behind the agenda. But my focus will be on pretty much explaining why we believe that we will continue on the same nice growth curve as you saw 100% from the past 25 years. And I will start with a quite high level and I believe you have seen much of this in other Capital Markets Days and presentations, so I won't spend too much time. Especially not on the megatrends, but these are really important for us as they truly shape the future of our industry. So based on the megatrends we have identified 5 industry trends, we believe, will be especially important for us going forward and where we also feel that we are well positioned to capture those trends. We have a circular economy that we touched upon and also [ thought ] on a bit in the operations presentation, which for us is a lot about taking a wider responsibility for the products we sell throughout its life cycle. So short term, for example, looking at the service business that I will come back to. We have the supply chain transparency trend where we essentially believe and see that -- it's about doing the right things and also being able to be scrutinized for it. And that this will not only be needed from a legislation perspective but also demanded from customers going forward. And of course, this will also help us to deliver value in terms of adding transparency and traceability to the supply chain, which is something especially causing [ and lasts ] to a 1.5, 1 year with challenges in the supply chain is something really important to address. We have the HVAC industry consolidation, which, of course, is close to my heart to working with M&As. This is, however, not a pure financial driver or trend, which is about consolidating a fragmented market. We also see what Roland has touched upon numerous times to, let's say, reach the maximum energy efficiency, you need to work with the wider landscape and not only ventilation stand-alone. You need to understand how the ventilation system works, but also how the ventilation system works in connection to heating and cooling. And of course, that's also value for us to be successful in the future. Then automation, I think, is valid for any industry in terms of driving productivity. Humans are not super good at repetitive tasks. And of course, that can be automated. In our industry, we see a lot of this related to control systems and what Ralf presented earlier, that you can get a lot of efficiency gains from the software. And of course, then the software needs to operate with more softwares in a wider landscape, like the BMS system or the air control system and so on. So that's, again, a part of what Ralf presented in how we approach control systems from our perspective, having an open API and being able to operate in a wider system landscape. Then last one, regionalization. We have touched upon it in some of the questions. This is, of course, close to our heart with our setup where we are close to the customers, partly for logistic reasons and not shipping things across the world which are bulky and expensive but also to meet regionally or regional customer demands. More and more, I think, is valid for more industries than ours that a customer wants something specific for them and the needs will vary depending on which part of the world you are in. So for us, it's very important to be close to the customer and make most of the decisions close to where the customers are at, and that's also added for our supply footprint. So trends are important. But at the end, they are also creating very strong drivers for our business. And what we see now very favorable for us, and I will come to a bit more of this going further. But we have, for example, governments' climate actions which is a lot of government funding into programs to upgrade existing buildings, we -- and Anders touched upon like the Green Deal. 35 million buildings needs to be renovated. And of course, the HVAC system is part of that. Creates a strong demand for the products we offer. We have the indoor air quality focus, which thanks to COVID, you could say, has really increased in awareness and importance at customers and also governments to improve this and the impact it has on our health and productivity. Digitalization is increasing the demand for data storage, which in turn is driving the global expansions of data centers. And all of those data centers need reliable and energy-efficient HVAC systems to control the time that they allow them to operate in a safe way. Lately over the last year, this has been a real acceleration in converting fossil fuel-powered heating sources into alternative options. You saw examples from Tobias in how we address that in the residential segment with combining ventilation with heat pump solutions, also creating a really strong drive for the type of products we offer to the market. In terms of health care, as the economic prosperity rises, also the demand for modern health care increases. We have a very good position in the Healthcare segment. And here, of course, as the facilities needs to be modernized, they also demand modern and fit-for-purpose HVAC solutions, both in renovation projects and new build projects of [ business ]. And then finally, we have touched upon it a couple of times, the smart buildings. It's increasing even more, the complexity of buildings and not only building stand-alone but complete cities in terms of how to talk to each other. And this is a bit back to the control system short term, how do we are sure that we can deliver units out of the factory with the fit for purpose and optimized control system. So really good and strong drivers for our business going forward as we see it, a lot of them supported by funding from governments here. And I won't spend too much time on it, but this is something that you have heard us talk about indoor air quality. And this is -- has really been accelerated because of COVID and the importance of it. Partly what we see now is that the focus on improving the indoor air quality in schools is really taking off. And also here, we see dedicated programs from governments like in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany to start to renovate old schools and also in the new schools that are being built to put in efficient and reliable HVAC system. And here, we're also very well positioned to capture this growth too, among others, our recently launched Sense units, which is specifically good for renovation projects, so you have a unit in each classroom. So you don't have to rebuild the complete HVAC system and also a strong position in Canada. And of course, this is no different from work. Good ventilation allows us to be more productive at work in the same way as children will learn better and stay attentive longer in schools if the ventilation is good. So strong drivers for the market and what do we then see for the actual underlying market. So we believe it's, of course, ups and downs. And you saw the 25-year growth curve. It's also ups and downs in system as growth curve. Even though I must say the downs have been quite few and not so much. But we see that there will be a solid underlying market growth also the coming years for the ventilation industry and for us. And it starts off with the construction market, which is essentially the market driving the HVAC market albeit we have a delay from new builds to HVAC installation since that's not the first thing you do in a building. And we pick here the European construction market, partly because that's around 75%, 80% of our sales is in Europe, but also because it's the latest updated numbers we have gotten our hands on, and it has been revised downwards lately, of course. But what we see now is that the European construction market will grow around 4% per year CAGR in the coming years. Of course, that doesn't mean 4% every year. Adding then the positive -- for example, the positive drivers and the legislations on climate change, all these government-funded programs, as an example. We forecasted the global HVAC market will grow slightly above the construction market and the companies. And for us then what does that mean in our estimated addressable market have a 5% market share, and we believe that there is still a solid underlying market growth in the coming years. Again, there will be ups and downs. And I would be probably naive to say that there won't be any downs talking today with the pricing inflation and interest rates is putting construction and work on hold. But the good thing -- and why we also believe we are able -- have been able and will continue to be able to mitigate some of these ups and downs. It's partly what Anders mentioned with having a very diverse customer base and also a diverse market presence. We also see that we have a well-balanced position between new build and renovation in our business. We have a very strong position in the renovation market, which has allowed us to historically at least been able to mitigate some of the downturn in new build with increasing in renovation instead. We have our standard products in the range that -- or in stock that Roland mentioned, which allows for quick access, if you need to replace a fan or something, we can get it quickly. We also have dedicated products for renovation, our Geniox air handling units where you can note it down, get it in through the door and then assemble it instead of tearing down the whole wall in existing unit. Also footprint wise to take a different footprint as possible. And as mentioned, we have a diversified customer base since many years, which has helped us to deliver a quite stable growth even in downturns. Stable development even in downturns. And we make it easy for the customer to deal with us throughout this through our web shop and on site support, for example, innovation projects. So all in all, very favorable trends for our industry, very strong drivers for our business, not only the trends but also the same money behind the trends to really incentivize landlords, building owners, new construction to focus on improving the energy efficiency in the buildings. And based on that, a solid underlying market growth is what we see going forward with ups and downs, of course. Then we are, of course, not satisfied with growing in line with the markets. We haven't in the past, and we intend to grow faster and we have outgrown the market in the past, and we intend to do the same going forward. And to support that, we have identified 5 selected growth opportunities. And we have talked a lot about these throughout the day, some of them at least. So I won't spend too much time on going through each and every one of them, and I will be deeper into 3 of them, just in a bit. But we have the residential markets, where, again, we see very good growth potential for us. We are well positioned, have a strong product offering in place to capture that market and the increased focus on both the ventilation as such and having a balanced ventilation, but also the combination of ventilation and heat pumps so that you have the heating and cooling source and ventilation working together in house. We have the public buildings and especially schools. As mentioned, we have a very strong offer and also a strong position in this segment. And this is quite close to our core business of comfort ventilation. We have both the sort of single classroom units in Sense, but we also have more centralized ventilation for new projects in this space. In the Healthcare segment, also an area we believe we'll grow stronger or more in the future. And here, we also have the addition of SagiCofim recently, which has allowed us to complement our offer in a good way. So we have the airflow part, the air distribution part for air-handling units and so on, and SagiCofim adds the filtration part to get really clean air. And then data centers, I don't think anyone has missed out on that, and it's a rapidly growing segment. We have been in that segment for quite some years now and established a good presence and also a good model where we base our offer on our standardized platforms of air handling units so we can produce it with efficiency in our existing air handling unit factories. We also target, say, small to midsize projects to minimize the risk of these larger projects where you have both -- quite a long time from order to delivery, which puts a risk on how you manage prices versus cost and so on. So we have found our niche or found our positioning in that in a good way. We recently inaugurated the state-of-the-art test facility in Turkey to allow or to provide further support to our customers. So here we also foresee that we will grow significantly above group average in this segment in the underlying market. And then the final part, tying back a bit to circulate and renovation for that matter, but essentially the aftermarket sales or aftermarket service part of the business. This is also an area where we don't want to compete with our customers, installers. So it's a selective area how we approach it, it is, of course, an area where we see potential for further growth and also a necessity to have this in our offer going forward. So residential, we have talked a lot about that. But as you can understand, it is a very important segment for us, growth-wise if nothing else. Today, it's about SEK 1 billion of annual sales estimated in that segment, but we expect to be able to grow this significantly above group average in the coming years. And part of that is our focus that we are going from, say, more of a ventilation product sales, we sell just the product to more of a solution sales where you have the surrounding part as well, where the heat recovery system is, the core of -- the heart of our offer. And then we sell the complete package with everything around. And also, as Roland mentioned, how it -- how everything fits together and the knowledge behind that. We have vast experience and a really strong position. Norway is one example where we are very strong in residential. North Europe, North America, we are strong. And we think we can use this to increase our focus on the combined ventilation heat pump solutions that we also saw from Tobias, to leverage that and grow even further. And then this is also one of the areas where we have a dedicated acquisition strategy or approach. So this is one of the areas where we actually are looking for acquisitions to strengthen our offer and mainly then to add the capability to penetrate more subsegment or niches of this market could be, for example, a more dedicated approach to multi-dwellings, where today we are stronger in single-family houses rather than the multidwellings. It could be a product offer for entry level to balance ventilation without the heat recovery, as an example, but just to widen our penetration of the residential segment. So selective acquisitions in this area is something we are looking for. And now we have talked a lot about heat pumps. We have also talked a lot about Panasonic and the intended divestment of our AC business, and one might wonder, well, if you have the AC business, you probably have knowledge about refrigerants and very simplified regards to AC and you have a heat pump more or less but the positioning of our AC business is more towards commercial or heavy commercial applications with quite big units. And by divesting this, we will be able to increase our focus on the smaller units needed for the residential segment as an example. And as already explained, we have the long-term supply agreement in place, which means that we will have access to these products also going forward without necessarily producing them or developing them. And it could be good to add here in terms of revenues that -- I mean, the majority of what we intend to divest is sold through the units we are divesting. So that sales goes to Panasonic. Then a portion of the sales goes through other Systemair companies, and that's what we are keeping, so to say. So the 7% that Anders showed is taking that into account. It's not like we are selling all the revenues, but continue to be generated for Panasonic. It's a portion of that we will continue to generate going forward. So we see this as a really good move in terms of focusing a bit more on our core business ventilation and also strengthening our position in the residential to free up focus and efforts into that segment. Health care, is also one of the areas to highlight a bit more. And also one of areas we have touched upon. There is a growing demand for modern health care around the world. it gives reason for building new hospitals, but also renovating existing hospitals. And we have already before the SagiCofim acquisition, we had a very strong position in this part of the business. Partly here, it's important to have a strong brand to build trust because these type of customers don't want to take any risks, of course. So we have a vast experience in supplying to both new build hospital projects as well as renovation with dedicated offers. And then as mentioned as with the addition of SagiCofim, we are really complementing our offer into the Healthcare segment by adding the high-tech filtration part as an example, and also some specific air distribution products that I will show you in one slide. So this is today a relatively small segment for us, around SEK 350 million in sales year-over-year, but this is also one of the segments where we see that we can go significantly above the group average or our underlying market growth. And then just briefly touching upon SagiCofim and why that's a very good addition to the health care part of our business. So health care is not all of the business of SagiCofim but it's a part of it. They mainly have 2 parts that are really interesting to us here. It's the upper left part, which is a ceiling filtration solution, which allows the patient to not be contaminated by still allowing the surgeons to work in a comfortable way. It's pressing down there, filtrated air and pushing all the materials away around the floor. Second part -- and it's both filters and air distribution products for that. The second part is specialist wards, and that's for patients with a lower immune system where you have a horizontal airflow filtrated and then the doctor or the surgeon is standing downstream of the patient, ensuring that none of the bacteria or particles from the [ doctor ] hits the patient which allows them to work in a safe way, but also the comfort of standing in like a [ graph ] in its sense. So this is really complementing what we already have, and we strengthening our position in the Healthcare segment, and we expect to be able to leverage SagiCofim and grow the sales of SagiCofim products through the Systemair units around the world in a very good way. And then finally, service business is also one of the areas where we expect to generate significant growth in the coming year. And this is not really a new business to Systemair. It has been done in selected group companies in the past. So what we're doing now is essentially that we are scaling what has been done successfully to more Systemair companies. But again, in a selective way because we don't want to compete with the installation companies, which in the end are our customers. And our main business is to sell products. But more and more, there are demands from customers and wishes and also from installation companies that we offer aftermarket support and service for our products, which in the long run, means that we also capture for other products. So here, we have had an approach of, first, assuring we know what we are doing and that we can measure it. So we have created transparency in terms of creating a separate profit and loss statement for the service business, both consolidated but also for each legal entity, the service business we have within the entity. Then we stabilized the local service organizations, assigning clear accountability. So that someone owns the service business and also increasing the visibility of the service organization in that region. Luckily, we are a group with a lot of common infrastructure that we can leverage in these type of situations. So we have, for example, ERP and CRM in common that we are -- have adapted to fit the service business so that we use the same thing everywhere, not paying double for things. And it could be, I mean, simple CRM management in the service business or the recent launched spare parts portal making it easy to find the correct spare part for your unit. And so we're trying to leverage strength of being a group. The common framework for the offering and infrastructure. At the same time, as this is done selectively on the market where we see that there's potential for service. And this is also one of the areas where we have a selective acquisition agenda. And it doesn't mean that we want to consolidate and become a new Bravida or in [indiscernible] or something like that. Here, we are looking for companies that really add something to our existing business in that country. So it could be competence, customer presence or similar. So it's an active approach to acquisitions in the service segment is what we are looking at here. And today, it's representing or generating approximately SEK 400 million of annual sales. And our ambition is to grow that by double digits, quite clear double digits until '25, '26 year-over-year and go from a slightly dilutive EBIT margin to a slightly even more than that positively accretive contribution to the group EBIT. So one of the sector growth areas. So I think I managed to speed up now, and it means we are heading into a break. But before that, just to summarize why we believe we will be able to continue to generate this nice 25% growth curve also in the future year-over-year. First of all, we have very beneficial trends that are value for all, of course. But in our case, we also create very strong drivers funded by governments and organizations in a good way. So we do believe we have a solid underlying market growth, and we are confident we can outperform that market, among others, by focusing on these selective growth opportunities going forward. Good. Then it's a 5-minute break.

Roland Kasper

executive
#22

No. No. We are a little bit behind schedule now. So I thought we will speed up and ours is going to be rather late and it's snowing. So it might be that you then want to hit the road later. So I keep the attention, I keep you sitting Okay. So coming to the last chapter, which is a little bit trying to tie it together but also, of course, following up what has happened since our last Capital Markets Day. So this is actually what was presented during our last Capital Market Day. It was our bridge from where we were at that stage in September 2019 at an EBIT level of 6.3%, looking at how to come to 10%. So the steps in this wonderful diagram was on IT and AHU casing platform. There was some pricing and margin focus. It was the manufacturing efficiency and Menerga AC factories. Looking on where we are on that. So following our technical platforms, I think you have -- meanwhile you all understand and I'm happy for what a Geniox unit is. So that platform is something that we rolled out, which is under constant of course, development but also that we do the same on the control side and other products to follow where we see that the platform thinking actually gives us synergies that are wishful just because we set them up in different factories to have is on the same level. So that we see is done on the process. Manufacturing efficiency, cost control and footprint as also explained in the presentation I had before. That is something that is really, really important we're driving with more focus as we also have changed organization to really keep that driving and developing all the time. Here, of course, we have been holding back a little bit. Now we have been held back. It was a big part of that to be optimized in your manufacturing is also to have the components to manufacture. So we have been suffering a little bit inefficiency here over the last 1, 1.5 years. But this is, of course, something that is a little bit out of our reach, but we're working with it constantly. And as Anders also explained in his financial review, we also see a trend changing here now, which is really good, which will be beneficial for that. The other part, pricing and margin focus. And here also, as you also understand from the change in management. Janni is heading up our pricing part, where we have not only put up a thorough system and a process but we also have people working only with that following up market pricing, cost out efficiency in the operations. So it's really something different than was said before, especially in very smaller entities really market pricing is something different than the cost-plus pricing. So that is something that we also see a clear good development, which has helped us a lot throughout the pandemic with the all ever ongoing increase of material costs and everything coming into our operations. Then we also had one part where we're moving from big projects to profited projects. That is something that we have been working on, which is -- it was a very simple and fast to change. It is more working with the sales units and sales entities and to reward rather midsized and smaller projects where you achieve good margin instead of having all the nice site, having a multiple million units order where you are happy that you won it against your competition just on price. That is not so good. We don't want that, but it's more about having a good profitability and a nice project. There is working here also the takeaway that why it's yellow is that due to the component shortage the development in the market for the last year, as also mentioned earlier today, delivery beats pricing. So as long as we had safety stock and we took some of the costs, we took some components, we could also charge more but of course, it has some impact. It's not the real development. We normally have a process in place where we review the normal market pricing up 3x a year. And in the last 1.5 years, it has been up to 5, I think, in 2 countries, even 6 times a year where we have adjusted market pricing. So it's a process that is just now due to how the market is reacting. But if it wouldn't have been in place, it would have been not so good for us. Then we had the 2 issues of Menerga and the AC companies. Menerga has explained a lot of things ongoing here, and we will see the movement and everything having its effect. And the AC factories, of course, with the divestment of the AC factories, there's a green one. But I also have to mention that in the first 2 quarters this year, we saw all the benefits of the restructuring that has been done so we have had quarters in the AC units that had an EBIT level of 10%. Just to say that, that was really turning out really nice. So this is what we wanted to achieve. And of course, on top of that, as Anders also pointed out, of course, here is than comparing to where we were one year ago. Russia is not included in that anymore. The Ukrainian war has put a lid on it. So a little bit of things that have, of course, also had its impact. But we believe in the 10% and even better than we believe to exceed the 10%. So to exceed that, what are we doing? What we're focusing from here on? So we maintain the technical platform thinking because we even think it's been proven internally and how it's developing over the last couple of years. That's the way that we need to go. We continue with that. manufacturing efficiency, of course, is an ongoing, never-ending project that you need to just be better and better every day. But on the right side, as also mentioned by Janni, for us, very, very important to, on top of the normal market development, to start up organic growth initiatives. And here, our focus for the going forward is these selected areas. And here, looking at residential, looking at the public buildings, health care, especially after the acquisition of SagiCofim where we have the operating theaters possibilities and all the health care and in intensive care units and of course, then also the data centers and service. That is one area. Then as you see throughout the change of our management and also the group management, there is more focus on global supply chain and M&A. So we have refocused our setup and our process and how we are organizing ourselves to move on from here and to really achieve this step by step, better and better every day in everything we do. And then, of course, also on the focused M&A activities. Also making it clear with bringing M&A as an own chapter, there's no one organization within our organization, supporting a profitable growth, looking for the right candidates, that are actually adding value directly from start to our company. So this is how we're moving from here. So looking at then the strategic focus and what are the areas in supporting these initiatives. So we call it our enablers, what is actually allowing us moving in the right direction. And for us, the strategic enablers is to develop people and strong relations, attractive offer built on standardization, it is efficient business setup with continuous improvement, sustainable and future-proof business and strong position benefiting from structural growth. I will move into that and explain a little bit what is behind it. But with those enablers -- that's how we fulfill our financial targets to achieve the profitability that will be above 10%. That's what we need to achieve. That's our target. And of course, never forget our core values of corporate culture because without having them on board and developing them further together with all our employees and all the organizations, it would not be possible. But looking at the enablers as they are the key to success for us to develop people and strong relations, we need and we want to be an attractive employer with an inclusive corporate culture. We have, for example, today here in Skinnskatteberg in excess of 30 different nationalities working in our company and not only taking into account, of course, for customer support and everything, but also in manufacturing. And this actually is enriching the competence, but also the behavior and the culture in the company every day. Believing in an entrepreneurial drive and developing strong capabilities. I mean this company is, of course, founded by an entrepreneur and we are having a lucky position as many of our acquired companies were actually acquired from entrepreneurs and further on driven on entrepreneurial style. So I think this is something that we have throughout the whole Systemair group which makes that you have underlying always a thrive for it to be better move on and move forward. It's a good spirit to have and to keep and building strong relations and partnerships based on expertise and trust, which is also, as I said before, a part of our corporate culture. Then, of course, that all the attractive offers should be built on standardization, and I explained the platforms and how we think, standardized product and product offering. So maintaining attractive offer with a broad range of quality products on standardized platforms, providing most energy-efficient product solutions, improving indoor air quality. We still talk about one of the most precious things that we have in life, the air that we breathe. That's what we're treating, that's what we're tempering, filtering. So we think we're in the right business to really make a difference and to move forward. And of course, enabling connected solutions and enhancing the user experience to smart solutions. And you heard the presentation from Ralf and also other points you throughout the presentations. We also believe in an efficient business setup with continuous improvement and, of course, profiting from economy of scale through efficient operations and supply chain and here, of course, our setup regional and over the world internationally, helps us a lot. Evolving through efficient product development with standardization as guiding principle, also mentioned before from me, especially when it comes to standardized products -- end products is really important for us. That's a possibility we have with our technical centers like this with a standardized and fully optimized production, that's where you can really develop that to fullest extent. Prioritizing strong local sales presence, common processes, agility and decentralized decision-making. Having these processes a standard together with the CRM, ERP tools, then you can actually also live with a decentralized decision-making and create a successful business. Sustainable and future-proof business. We think that the forward-looking improving the circularity in the carbon footprint of our products is something actually contributing, of course, to 2030, 2050 goals and is totally in line with the current development in the world. Growing the service business, we will also here ensure sustainability throughout the product's life cycle, also enabling not only that we can actually make upgrades. We can also make service. We can also replace or help our customers recycle and then we really have the circularity. And safeguarding responsible business through sustainable and first of all, long-term decisions. I think that is something that really where Systemair stands out, not thinking short term. We really believe in thinking mid and long term is what secures and builds the business on a stable base of future. And the last one, the lucky part is we really believe in that we have a strong position, benefiting from the structural growth that we see in the background. You have seen the slides on the right side, but leveraging our different brands that we have with Systemair as the main brand gives us a strength to not only be in the ventilation distribution and installation market, also attrition with the Frico brand and so on. We're really touching about different applications in different areas. Maintaining resilience and growth through the global and diversified customer base, as you heard also from Janni and others before. Today, selling into 135 countries all around the world, I see that as a strength. And profitable growth through organic investments and an active acquisition agenda. So looking into investing in our existing highly autonomous factories or an add-on acquisition that makes sense for strategic growth and development of the company. It's a good thing to be part of that. And we believe in these growth opportunities that we are looking into. So that all leads us to this picture. And on top of that, for us, then we take the takeaways and to create better air every day and worldwide. That was what Systemair can do and develop it from here. By that, I would say thank you. I've tried to speed it up a little bit at the end because I know you have been sitting for quite a long time.

Read the full transcript via the API

You're viewing the first half of this call. Get the complete Systemair AB (publ) transcript — plus 248,000+ transcripts from 12,000+ companies, speaker segments, AI summaries and full-text search — through the EarningsCalls.dev API.

Get the API View API docs →

This call discussed

For developers and AI pipelines

Programmatic access to Systemair AB (publ) earnings transcripts and 248,000+ others is available through the EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments, full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.