Teqnion AB (publ) (TEQ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Teqnion 2025 Q1 Q&A. Today, we have kept the tradition of issuing our quarterly report on the same day as our AGM, which is the reason why we do this Q&A a little bit later in the day. We will, as always, alternate between the questions that we have received through our Q&A e-mail and ones that you can ask us live. [Operator Instructions] Before we jump into the Q&A session, I would like to hand it over to you, Johan, to say a few words about the quarter.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Q&A. Today, we are broadcasting from TM & Partners in Stockholm, our legal advisers here where we're later today going to hold our AGM. The quarter has been rather hectic with a lot of acquisitions for us. We have had a pace where we acquired 6 new companies, and we are very happy to welcome our new colleagues into the group. This is a pace that you shouldn't be accustomed to. Please don't extrapolate this speed going forward. We have had a rather big backlog of acquisitions lined up for this first quarter from the previous years, talking to a lot of entrepreneurs and building relationships as we always do. We think that the pace that we communicated before with a handful of acquisitions per year is something that we like and are comfortable with. And over a period of time, we believe that's the right pace for Teqnion. The result in Q1 has been boosted quite a bit from FX effect. The Swedish krona has been strengthened due to the very turbulent global situation that we have at the moment. And since we are operating more on an international level these days, these things tend to be bigger than they used to be. And it's also something that's probably going to stay bigger in the future as we grow and move more international. We have operated quite hard when it comes to improvement projects out in our subsidiaries with the struggling companies within the group. And happily, we start to see some effects in those improvement projects. So the results, some margins and -- and the cash flow on specific companies have been improved and especially when it comes to the sequential comparison with a very poor Q4, we were actually doing a little bit better, which is, I don't know, if I can say it feels good. It's still a lot of frustration with these things. This will take a lot of time. It's a very slow pace to fix things that needs to be fixed, but we're on it, and we're working really hard to do this. And we are confident that we have the ability and skill set to do it. But once again, it's a slow process. I think that -- with that, we can maybe move into the Q&A, which is the main reason why we're here.

Yes. We'll be trying to be quick on some of the questions just in order to get through as many as possible, and then we might deep dive a little bit more in some of them. So the first live question we have comes from Niklas Preiholt, who is wondering, would Teqnion ever consider investing in the public markets if extraordinary opportunities arose, like a 2008 type crash for example?

You're the investor. I think that we never say never to anything, but we're not thinking in those terms, and we have never been interested in doing that because we have had so much opportunity on the unlisted market, and we still have the valuation there that is far superior to the listed market.

Yes. We can, in extraordinary situations, maybe do something that is more extraordinary, but the bar will be very high compared to what we think that we -- compared to what we're doing right now. We've got an e-mail from [ Georgi ] through e-mail, saying congratulations with the stream of acquisitions. With the 5 companies from 2025, this was before the sixth acquisition, you're adding 10.7% of sales. Taking into account the work Johan is doing in the weak subsidiaries, what ambition do you have for the year regarding organic and inorganic growth? And what margin recovery could be expected?

Maybe just to underline that it's not only me working with improvement projects. We're a good team of people doing that and also the people within or the [indiscernible] within the subsidiaries itself are doing a tremendous job to improving our figures. When it comes to how we see -- on a theoretical level, how we should grow going forward, we have said before, I think, and at least we thought about it, that maybe 10% of the growth will be from acquisitions and like single-digit percentages in organic growth over time in whatever that is a normal market. So that would give us the 15% of annual growth that we are aiming for.

Yes. And maybe just to clarify another thing is that when we report the sales numbers for the companies that we acquire, we always do it as an average of the last 3 years. So when you look at those numbers, that doesn't mean that it's the pro forma number or it's the last year revenue number, it's the average of the last 3 years. And most likely, the companies we're acquiring are also growing, which means that the historical numbers are a little bit lower than current ones, just as an FYI. We got a question here in the live chat. Prakhal Goyal is wondering the acquisitions made in 2025 appear to have an EBITA margin of over 20%. Are there any one-offs driving that figure? Or is the 20% margin sustainable? I think the quick answer is that, yes, we do believe that they are sustainable without promising anything, of course. If you look at, I believe, our Q3 report, we do show what the margin is for our international companies compared to the Swedish companies. And the positive thing on that slide is that the international companies are actually having EBIT margins north of 20% and all of those are, of course, acquired during the last 3, 4 years. The bad news is that the Swedish ones have much lower margins. But we are constantly looking at companies that are better than our average, which means higher margins on a sustainable level. It's a second-part -- 2-part question from Prakhal. The second part is basically excluding the acquisitions, the same-store EBITA margin is approximately 7%, which is lower than our stated targets. Why is that? Was it entirely due to the minus 3% organic growth? I think -- I mean, declining growth or declining revenue is, of course, not helping this. The main problem or the main challenge that we have in the companies that are not at the level we want is that they are really not performing where we want them to. We have, as we pointed out, a few companies, especially in Sweden, where they are struggling and where they are -- have been losing money for some time. We do see underlying progress in that group of companies. We see -- Johan pointed out in his letter, for example, that one of our housebuilding companies, the bigger of the 2, actually is running at a profit right now after putting in Håkan, who was actually the original entrepreneur of that company, showing that the right person can actually do wonders. But obviously, we don't want to have companies that -- where you actually need the best person in order to just barely make money. I don't know if that's any kind of answer. I mean, the same-store EBITA margin is just too low, mainly due to that we have companies losing money.

And I think that's worth pointing out that we have plenty of companies in Sweden that have really healthy margins. We have a few, unfortunately, where we're losing money, which drags the overall margins down, of course, and that's where we're putting most of our efforts now to stop that bleeding, of course.

Yes. Through e-mail, we've got a question that reads, dear Daniel and Johan, why other heads might suggest that you should buy a business that an idiot could run. I'm simplifying the letter a little bit. What is your thought on that? And do you have any businesses in the group that even idiots can run? Could you give any examples?

I think that we tried to explain a little bit around this before. When we look for potential acquisitions, we look for companies that we, me and Daniel, understand how they earn money. And that is a little bit saying that an idiot could run it. We -- since we are working in many different industrial segments with a variety of products and customer offers, we tend to look at the business model. If we understand that one, if it's simple enough to realize how a normal manager could run that company, we believe that it's also something that we can acquire. If we have a solid history, healthy margins, stable earnings and low business risk within that niche, then I think it's something we look at. And over time, of course, I think that we have acquired companies that fulfill more of these criteria. It also means that we have been able to look at companies that fulfill more of these criteria or have higher points in this criteria due to the fact that we have more money to buy companies for. When we started out back in 2006, we were only capitalized with our own operational cash flow. We had no money other than the money that we earned within the operating businesses. And that's how we learned and how we grew and how we maintained the focus on always having a positive cash flow because that's our bloodstream. That's what we need. We need the positive free cash flow from our subsidiaries in order to maintain the acquisition pace and the growing pace that we want to achieve. That means that we need to understand and have the business model that we acquired and also that we believe that these business models will be sustainable over time and that we, together with our coworkers, will be able to handle them even if they are on a downturn period due to other factors or macro things, turbulences.

Yes. Maybe just to add to that, for us, when we look at companies, the litmus test could an idiot run this or alternative to that question is a big portion of is this a quality company or not. And I mean, it's on a scale, and we always try to find better and better companies. Every now and then, we run into a company that makes a lot of money, but where basically, even though it looks like a company, it's one person, usually entrepreneur that runs the show and where we know that profits will be halved or just evaporated. We start this one person. Those are companies that on paper look good, but we absolutely do not acquire. Whereas if we think that an entrepreneur can step out and there are people in place, systems in place, processes in place that things will just continue to run theoretically at least without that main person, that is something that is much more attractive to us. Another live question here comes from Kolappan Pillai, sorry for pronunciation. I know Dan talked about this before, but it would be good to know at what point would you consider divesting low-performing companies? For example, if you see no trend line improvement 2 quarters, 1 year or later, or will we strive to make them better no matter what? I can start because I ended that last time. So we -- the most important thing, maybe as a takeaway from this call is just to iterate -- reiterate that Teqnion, we do the best for the shareholders over the long term. And that means that we need to grow our earnings per share, means that we need to increase our cash flow, our returns on capital over time. It won't happen sequentially quarter-over-quarter all the time, but over time. We have a preference of not selling companies. We have a preference of owning the companies that we have acquired forever, but it's not the religion, and it's not a high standing thing. And I just want to say that as a statement. It is a little bit difficult to say exactly the time frame because it, of course, depends on the data and what it's telling us. Some of the companies that we have in our group, we do believe that we have done changes and have continued to do changes that will be reflected financially in the quarters and years to come. We might be hopefully right above that or we might be wrong, hopefully not. But in the cases where we see absolutely no progression, even though we've used the full arsenal of our toolbox, then we are obviously not the right owners of that business. And being good stewards of your money and being managers of basically your company, we feel that it's our fiduciary duty to look at the other alternatives, which might include selling that to someone that actually can take care of it in a better way and for us to offload losses. But I mean, it's not -- we're not going to bleed forever. I said in the last call, and I can reiterate that. I mean, for us sitting in this room, if we don't see a good trajectory on these companies, we're going to suggest doing other things before this year has ended. But given that we're in industries where there is a lot of momentum in different directions and also that there are changes, even though the changes have -- would push the button, the financials of that won't show sometimes until 3, 6, 9 months later. We just need to have a little bit patience to see what the actual effects are. Do you want to add something?

There was a lot of words, and I like I refrain from saying something.

All right. We got an e-mail from [indiscernible]. Daniel, thanks for transparency showed in the PR, also great news in the housing factory, and it's great to see U.K. contributing more and more to our revenues. Some questions for today. What's behind the decrease in return of equity? Quick answer. Our profits have gone down, whilst the equity base have not. We'll fix the profit and thereby return on equity will return to levels that we feel is acceptable and it is not right now. Another question is regarding the scrapping of inventory and write-down on equipment. Can you elaborate, please?

We have done some restructuring in some of the subsidiaries. And with those projects, we also had some of those write-downs. Yes.

Yes. Any plans on hedging our currency? Same question -- that was the question from the same person. My -- our overall opinion regarding hedging is that over long periods of time, hedging is a cost. It absolutely smoothens the quarters. However, because we're not in it in the quarters, basic economic theory says that hedging is a cost, not a profit over longer periods. So that is our overall view of it. Our subsidiaries, they are free to choose what they want. Most of them choose to have a floating exchange rate. Sometimes they're a little bit, let's call it, lucky. Sometimes they are more unlucky in that regard. We do have a little bit of hedging in some companies because some of the CEOs like to have smooth months or quarters, but of course, bearing that insurance cost basically. But we don't plan to do it on a group level. All right. Let's go back to the live questions. We have a question from -- actually, I can't say this name. What key traits do you look for in companies before acquiring them?

I think we covered that a little bit. First of all, they should have financial stability and good earnings. And when we see that, we look at the company -- we look at companies that sell to other companies. We look at companies that promote or sell physical products. And hopefully, they are in a rather narrow industrial niche where they can dictate the terms for that specific market. And they're not in it there to just to sell because they can lower the prices. They are there to sell because they can add something to that physical product if it comes to knowledge or knowledge about the application, knowledge about the regulation around that product or the application of that product. So the customer will keep coming back and build a long-term relationship with this supplier, which is our company, and hopefully grow together towards the future. So it's something that is stable, maybe at first glance, a little bit boring or a little bit odd, but is necessary to run this society forward. And hopefully, it will be relevant in 10 years and 20 years to come as well.

Yes. I think just to add to that, we are in the game of capitalism. So what we try to do is that we acquire companies that are somehow "safe bets." So what we look for before basically everything that you want because it's a given is that we look at the financials. And we look at the financials to see if they -- is this a company that is going to be accretive to our EPS. Is this a company that has return on equity that is sustainable and higher than our average? Is it a company that profit margins that have been sustainable and higher than our average? We look at the growth over time, is that sustainable, and hopefully higher than our average. And we look at the key financial metrics and only when all of those key things are in place, do we look at any other thing. Before that, quite often, I don't even know what this company is doing. And then we look at the soft things. Galileo through e-mail have 6 questions. Hello, guys. I can imagine backlog has been affected by several factors, including currency effects and less companies working with long backlogs. Can you elaborate on why it is down year-on-year? Yes, we can. Yes, currency effect do have -- it has some effect. The Swedish krona have appreciated. So obviously, other currency backlogs is worth, give or take, 10% less. However, that is maybe not what I really want to state here. So the backlog, I think, we look at backlogs per company when we look at our subsidiaries. We don't look at it too much on an aggregated level. And the reason being that there's a handful of companies that actually account for roughly half of the actual backlog. And unfortunately, that half of the backlog is also very low margin ones. So just to mention a few names. We have the contract manufacturers where that typically have very long backlogs. We also have one of the housing companies that have had really long backlogs. And so when you look at the aggregated backlog, if that goes up or not, that might give an indication of, let's call it, the overall macro climate given that we are in different niches and these one are the ones that are most cyclical. However, some of our best-performing companies actually have no or low backlog all the time. So when you follow it as we do on a subsidiary level from one month to another or quarter-to-quarter, that gives a good picture. whilst on an aggregated level, it gets clouded by, unfortunately, a few companies that account for a lot, but with revenue that doesn't bring profit at the moment.

Good answer.

How many sales do we have in the U.S.A. affected directly by tariffs? Low single digit, close to rounding error.

Correct. I think we just discussed this a few weeks ago, and we are around -- I think we're below 5% of the total revenue trading with the U.S. That's unfortunate because we have a lot of plans doing more over there. That is, of course, being a little bit postponed just to see what's going on. But it's a very little effect. The big effect for us in this situation is the same as for everyone else, of course, that the world is waiting and just postponing any decision when it comes to investments or purchases because you don't know what's going on next week. So that is, of course, frustrating. But direct trading with the U.S. is very limited. up until today.

Yes. The little sales that we do have, those companies are, in my opinion, maybe the ones that are strongest when it comes to pricing power and the customer is going to eat that extra, whatever percentage is going to be added on it. Which companies are planning to sale close? Are you already in conversations regarding a possible sale? We can't disclose that at the moment, really boring answer. Four, margins in contract manufacturers have been very thin over time. How do you expect the relocation to affect margins going forward?

I think the margins are very tough to improve in those type of companies, at least up into the levels where we are getting used to when it comes to new acquisitions and new companies into the group. Of course, you can do really, really well with the contract manufacturer and still be on what we consider normal on a very low level, which means that over time, I don't think that we -- with contract manufacturers will reach the levels that we will reach in other segments of industry.

Five, I've seen many bankruptcies in some cyclical companies in Sweden. Are you noticing less competition in some of the cyclical markets? I think it's difficult to quantify because different companies are in different niches. I think as a very high-level comment, I do feel that the number of competitors are a little bit lower. We are usually in very small niches. It's not actually affecting us 1:1. But yes, there are fewer competitors. However, there's another effect to it. The ones that are still there are struggling and some of them have reduced prices lower than what we want to go. So net-on-net, I'm not sure if the bankruptcies are helping us. I don't think it's hurting us either, but no big effect. Last question from Galileo. How much effect did you have in transaction in USD that you mentioned in the report? Do you want to take that?

Well, it's -- we have had for us a rather big trade or we bought some equipment or products in the U.S. and sold in Swedish, it was an effect that when we bought the dollars, they were more expensive. And when we sold in dollars, they were cheap.

Or less expensive.

Less expensive, which meant that we lost quite a chunk of money because the business from the beginning was a rather low-margin business. So that was a little bit painful, of course.

So next live question from -- one from Maarten IJkelenstam. You've completed 6 acquisitions already this year. Are there additional deals currently in the pipeline? Yes, there are. But we always have additional deals in the pipeline, some further away and some closer. As Johan said before, we -- throughout the years or at least since 2020 or something like that, we've said that we want to acquire roughly 5 companies a year. Sometimes we've been lower. I think 1 year, we did 5. This year will be more. But over time, I think you should keep roughly 5 in your head.

Do you agree with this? At the moment, are tuned in roughly 5 acquisitions per year. As you know, we're going to do more this year, but spread over a few years. I think going forward, let's say, 5 years from now or so, we might acquire more, I think we'll be in that position. And we're probably going to buy a little bit bigger companies because we will be in a situation where that will be possible for us. So it's -- as we always thought to ourselves that we are constantly trying to evolve and scale the things that we are doing and try to do them better and bigger. So it will be saying we are still aiming for a handful of acquisitions per year. But maybe in 5 years from now, we will say something different. And hopefully, that will be a bigger number and most so bigger acquisitions.

Yes. I think it goes back a little bit to our financial targets where we say that we're going to at least double our EPS over a 5-year period. And then, of course, you can break that down. And as we answered before, in a normal year, whatever that means, we're going to do at least 10% on the acquisition part of things and then roughly 5% or so on the organic growth. And that can count buying more or buying bigger or a combination of those. And I think that has changed a lot. I mean, only during the 4, 5 years I've been here, before I came buying something that made roughly SEK 5 million that was seen as rather big because that would be 10% of the earnings at the time. Now we don't look at things that make SEK 5 million, we look at things that make at least SEK 10 million, give or take, and that will probably change over time slowly and year-by-year. An e-mail question from Shane Smith. Three parts: One, can you explain the release note in Note 4 in the annual report. It was a [ SEK 7.8 million ] reclassification. Does this indicate acquisitions post 2021 have underperformed expectations.

Do you want to start, please?

Yes, absolutely. So what we usually do is that according to the accounting rules where you should be conservative where we, of course, have very happy and optimistic vendors of businesses, entrepreneurs that believe that they're going to take over the world. Not really. But -- so we have forecast from the entrepreneurs. And given that we're new to the business, it's difficult to just come in and say, you're wrong because, one, we don't know; two, that's a great way of destroying the relationship. So we have a earnout mechanism for all acquisitions, where if they make so much money that they have in their forecast, they get a lot of earnout and we get a lot of profit. And then the turnout is built in a way that the lower the profit, the lower earn-out and both get a little bit of course. But this thing is, of course, it's more art than science to guess on a single point on these curves to say what is the actual belief that the profit is going to be and thereby the earnout is going to be going forward. And given that we need to be conservative according to the accounting rules, we rather reserve a little bit too much than the opposite. So I would say that the group for the last 5 years or so have performed roughly in line with our acquisition -- with our own forecast, maybe not always according to the entrepreneurs' forecast.

And also maybe it's worth mentioning that they are not mechanism and constructed in a way, so if we don't reach the very high entrepreneurial goal or the forecast, we still have the same valuation. So there will be -- we will still have our money back within the 5-year period even though that they don't get the maximum earnout.

Yes. Shane is then wondering, I'm surprised that how small some of the recent acquisitions have been, because acquirers have commented that small acquisitions are riskier, succession planning, customer concentration, fragility of operations, et cetera. What gives you confidence that Teqnion is able to properly manage so many disparate small businesses? I think this goes back a little bit to what we said before. I'm the well-regarded serial acquirers, no matter if you call them [indiscernible] trade outtake or whatever. And when they were smaller, they bought smaller stakes. And even today, some of them are actually buying companies of the size that we are acquiring. But of course, the average that they're buying is bigger. We will most likely also go down that route, and we're having going down that group. The companies that we're acquiring today are on average much bigger compared to 3 years ago, and those were bigger compared to ones 3 years ago. And we actually do not believe -- actually, we don't know other companies, but Johan and I, don't have a belief that we are way better at handling very small companies compared to other serial acquirers. We -- I mean, we wouldn't be here unless we thought we were a little bit better at least, but it's not a business strategy that we're going to buy only small ones forever. It's that we want to buy -- the ones that are small enough so that we don't risk to hold, but big enough to make an impact on finding that fine line that will change and go up for every year that goes, that's what we're doing. Last question from Shane. Do you charge any fees to your subsidiaries? and the subsidiary P&L understates to profitability?

We charge our subsidiaries a management fee for the services that we perform for them. And yes.

Yes. We have another question from Martin. What should investors focus on when it comes to earnings per share. In 2023, EPS was around SEK 7.5, should we be thinking in terms of long-term goal of SEK 15 EPS by the end of '28? Yes. But this is also the reason why we have -- it's -- I know it's a rather unusual method, but we don't not have one long-term goal until, for example, 2030, and then make up a new one. We want to keep the financial target that we have for as long as humanly possible, which means that there's basically a new 5-year targets every year or actually every quarter. And that is what we are aiming for. E-mail question from [indiscernible]. On cultural leadership from HQ, given Teqnion's decentralized model where subsidiaries have a high degree of quality, I'm curious what role does the team at HQ playing shaping the overall culture of the group? How do you lead, by example set the tone so that values like long-term thinking, accountability and are consistently reinforced across all the companies?

I think we just lead as we learn, aren't we? Or at least we try to. And then it gives a tone to the entire group. We gather all the CEOs a couple of times per year to share information, to share the culture and to get to know each other, and maybe share a few beers as well. We also try to emphasize these things as often as possible in all the forms that we communicate with our colleagues. When it comes to loving to make money, of course, to handle I mean, we have the company's money to grow. That's our task. And that's the game we set out to play, and we want to be the best at it, which means that we need to be very, very thoughtful of what we spend those money on. It's much more fun to see the money grow than to spend it on a fancy car or a business class ticket when you fly somewhere. We try to complete in living cheap and making as much profit as possible and then use that capital to acquire more companies and grow the capital base as we move along. That's the aim we're in. And that's the aim that me and Daniel and the rest of the management team is living and that's the drive we have. And of course, we hope that reflects us many of our coworkers as possible. But just meeting, talking and showing by example, of course, affects the overall culture within the group.

Yes. The next question there, same person. On entering unfamiliar industrial niches, Teqnion has deep roots in the industrial sector, but it also a space full of highly specialized niches. If you come across a company in a niche where you have little existing knowledge or operational experience, how would you evaluate opportunity? What are the nonnegotiables you look for to gain conviction despite knowledge gap?

I think you said some really good things about that previously. You can say it again. Yes, just repeating.

Absolutely. And I think one thing just to tweak the question a little bit. It's just how do you evaluate something where you have little existing knowledge or operational experience? When we get into situations where we feel like that, we actually just walk away and we don't try to squeeze in steps that we don't understand because we look at very many companies a year and we meet with a lot, and we're happy with acquiring roughly 5 companies a year that are relatively good. So when those uncertainties are there, of course, there are always uncertainties, but when they are high, we just go away. But when it comes to the nonnegotiables, I mean, the financials historically -- historical robustness when it comes to growth, when it comes to profit margin, when it comes to return on capital and handling on organizations where knowledge is spread out and in quarterly spread out also when it comes to customers and suppliers, those are things that are super important for us. And...

Because I put somethings down before, but maybe I can squeeze in here. So when it comes to the framework or what we're looking for or that we walk away from is that we walk away from turnaround cases. We walk away from start-ups. We walk away from typical contract manufacturers because we see that this is not what we choose to spend time and money on. Yes, that was just thank the team there.

Absolutely. And maybe adding to that, we have a lot of respect for that in different countries. For example, there are different cultures and different legislations and we learn new things all the time. That is also why we're focusing on the current markets that we have. So we try to find as many, let's call it, common ground interactions as possible in order to remove some of those uncertainties at least. And on selling a subsidiary, there's third question here. Let's say someone approached you with a very attractive offer to acquire one of Teqnion subsidiaries, what will go through your mind in evaluating where to sell? What are the guiding principles Teqnion is going to keep the healthy way financial gain against the long-term vision of building a permanent group of companies? So this does happen not very often, but we get approached every now and then for when different people want to buy certain companies. Very unsurprisingly, they always want to not pay a lot for our best companies. I mean a lot is relative, but there are absolutely offers every now and then in, let's call it, a mid-teens multiple on EBIT on some of our better companies. And that is absolutely not interesting for us because we do believe that we can use that cash flow and help those companies grow and acquire other companies that will be worth much more than those multiples. And so the question that more is closer to our heart and especially now is, of course, what would happen if we cannot fix the companies that we have in our group. And the answer is, of course, we're not in the game of having permanent consistent losses with some of the companies forever. If we do believe that we cannot fix it, then we'll need to find a better home for someone that actually can, we think that they can fix it. Do you want to add something on that?

Yes, maybe. But no, I don't know. I mean, it's also I think we touched on the subject as well that some of the fundamentals for some of the subsidiaries will never reach the average of taking on today and we'll be even further away in a few years because we are moving threshold over time. So maybe we will, in the future, find a better home for a subsidiary that someone else see bigger potential with than we do. So that also might be a reason why we should let go something because we can use that energy and cash better somewhere else. But like we said it, and I think it's worth mentioning again that one of our rules is that we never sell a company. We buy them to hold them forever, but that doesn't stand above the rule of doing what's best for the company and for the shareholders when it comes to generate earnings and return on equity. So this is -- the most important rule is to win in the game, capital is not to keep a company forever if we see that it can do better somewhere else.

Yes. We got an email from [ Valentine. ] Hello, Daniel. It's a four-part question. The first question is regarding Jonathan, our CCO. You mentioned that Jonathan has a laterite on acquisition. He joined fairly recently. Can we know something more about his background?

He is a very nice guy in Western Sweden. He's been an auditor for PVC for 7 years, economist by trade, and yes, he makes us smile and he's very smart.

Very interested in investing. So he does all of the financial stuff -- not all, but he is in charge of the financial stuff at Teqnion. He is also very interested in investing and wants to be part of the acquisition process. So we have an investment committee, which is Johan, Jonathan and I, and in order for us to win something, we need to have 100% votes for, which is 3 votes. And Jonathan is usually -- when we look at companies, Jonathan is more involved in the side that has to do with accounting and trying to help us understand those pieces better. But obviously, we're a very small team, so everyone is interested in looking at different aspects, yes. Second part of that question from the same person. Sweden versus international exposure. With the geographical footprint expanding, could you share a rough breakdown of sales, earnings between Swedish and non-Swedish businesses? Based on recent acquisitions, it seems like international operations might now represent a substantial share. Yes. That's, correct.

I think you mentioned to me that we are approximately at the same level of earnings, but the margins in the international businesses are much higher, so the sales are less lower, but maybe we stay with that.

Yes. Philosophy of not selling companies. I think we touched up on that. Name origin, just out of curiosity, what's the story behind the name, Teqnion?

Sorry to tell you that it's not a very fun story. We were just trying to find -- we were playing with words and putting them together to find something with a web page that was free and we came up with something with technology and unification and with playing words, it ended up with the taking out spelling with a Q.

Yes, which is great when you try to help people in a hotel how to spell it.

I never regretted it.

We have a live question here from [indiscernible]. Great job, guys, as always, I have a few, but all related questions. Do you put a Teqnion-cultured person in each and every company kind of like a Chairman to follow the monthly report and offer them guidance of best practices? Yes. that is -- we do that for all companies, and that is the minimum level of guidance that we're doing. But then, of course, for all companies, there are also other interactions for both through formal more channels through the Chairman, but also more informal ones depending on if they like to speak more with Johan or me or someone else.

And also a lot of interactions with the financial and accounting team on the headquarters. So [indiscernible] and Jonathan is also interacting with all the subsidiaries continuously to make sure that we have the right quality in reporting and the accounts out in the subsidiaries.

Yes. What kind of guidance do we give is the second part of that question. It depends on which company it is. Depending on how well the CEO and the management team have been running the company and for how long they've been doing that, then they get longer and longer leases. And if someone knew and that doesn't have a backdrop around this company then we are there to guide much closer. I think that one of the lessons learned is that maybe we have been giving a little bit too much lease to some of the newer CEOs, which is something that we've been amended lately and monitoring more closely. But when it comes to what kind of guidance, I mean, for the longest lease people, it's really about the long-term targets and going through the budget and talking to the really high strategic things, should we start selling more in the U.S. or not. Whilst for new CEOs and in companies that we feel is a turnaround, then basically, it could be a situation where we have someone there as almost like a Co-CEO, not really, but really part of the operational decisions.

So it tends to be a human thing that when you step into a new place, you want to put your color on it, and we don't allow that not to start. First, you have to prove yourself that you're worthy of this very, very good opportunity that you have to take over someone life's work and drive that towards the future. When you've proven that you're able to do that, maybe then you can add a little bit of color, but not from day 1.

Yes. Do you think in time, Teqnion will have synergies between businesses operationally? And yes is the quick answer. And we'll not really look for synergies. But I mean, in the beginning, when we had 2 companies, they were very far from each other. But for every dot we put on the canvas, it's only natural that some of them will be closer to others. So we have a few, let's call them, couples, where there are more operational synergies because they sell to similar markets or they source for similar suppliers, where we do believe that they -- because they both want it, can help it other out and get operational synergies. And we are running out of time, but I want to bring up one more question because I think it's fine. So we have Bob from LMK Capital, who is saying of the cohorts 2 and 3 that are struggling, one portion of them are home builders, two, apparently contract manufacturers, what do the others do? I think Bob is referring to that in the last call, I said, for simplicity that we could divide all of our companies into 4 cohorts of 5 years, depending on when we acquired them. The first 5 years, second 5 years, the third, et cetera. And cohorts 2 or 3 that are struggling the most, the biggest losses do come from the homebuilders and contract manufacturers. But in that group, there's also a few companies that are -- they provide products to, let's call it, the general heavy industry mostly in Sweden, and that has also been a tough times for them.

And it continues to be. So even though that we're making a lot of improvements, it's also -- we experienced a lot of headwind just from the economic situation in this country.

Yes. And last question from the same person. While clearly incorrect, what was the thinking of buying the homebuilders at the time given the company has been through the financial crisis?

It's a shorter answer due to lack of time, okay. Now it falls on me. I was confident that the people that had built the company and was running the company was able to run it in good times and in bad. They had a very strong case supporting that. And they were not operational when we went into a tough market for the house builders, a couple of years ago there in Sweden. And now we put one of them back and he made it profitable rather quickly. But so it's maybe -- it's not a good answer to that question. But maybe it's just emphasize that we shouldn't buy companies where you need a specific, very skilled, more like a magician to run it. It's more like a normal management should be able to run the companies that we have within the group. And in this case, you need to be really good at this in order to run it in a poor economic situation, which we are doing now. It's hard to do in -- to make really good profits, it's not that hard in a company like that when everyone is buying a new house. But still you need to have very hard control of every aspect of a big factory like that. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of material and it's rather complex projects. And if you don't have it in, you won't be able to manage it in tough times. And that maybe was a little bit proven now that we put into the factory and made it effective and profitable again, even in this very rough environment. So I don't know. I underestimated the skill set and I don't know drive needed within a normal manager in order to operate a company like that.

Yes. We are unfortunately out of time. So with that, we conclude this Q&A and unless you want to say something to end.

I want to say that thank you so much for showing interest and listening to our answers. We are very grateful for you sending questions to us. It makes us think about what we're doing and how we can improve. Please rest assured that we're working really, really hard to get back to numbers that we can be proud of again. That's -- we're going to be there. We're going to be there as possible.

Great. Thank you, everybody, and have a great Wednesday.

Goodbye.

Bye-bye.