Afry (Stockholm:AFRY) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Hello everyone and welcome. Thank you for joining us today as we present Afry's results for the first quarter of twenty twenty six. I am Linda Polson and I am the CEO of Afry. I will begin with some highlights from the quarter before handing over to our CFO, Bo Sandstrom. And after that, we will open the line for questions. In Q1, our strategy execution continued to progress according to plan. Our order backlog grew 6.4% year over year to SEK21.5 billion, which is a testament to the strength of our client offerings and our focus on sales execution.

0:50 Our strong order backlog position us well to drive profitable growth in line with our strategy going forward. In the quarter, we improved profitability with an EBITA margin that increased to 7.5% from the calendar adjusted margin of 7.1% in Q1 last year. This was mainly driven by a continued positive development of the utilization rate, which improved 1.1 percentage points. We saw strong performance in our global division Energy and Industry, while results in Transportation and Places were weaker. Net sales declined 4.3% organically in the quarter and that is mainly a result of a challenging market and the capacity adjustments we have made over the past year.

1:43 Global uncertainty remained high at the beginning of the year, which continues to impact the market conditions in some of our segments. As we conclude the first quarter, we are now approaching the end of a comprehensive restructuring phase, aimed at optimizing our capacity and portfolio. With steady development in Q1, we are moving in the right direction and we will continue to execute our strategy to reach the performance levels we are targeting. We then go into the divisions and let's begin with energy. Here we see a continued favorable market across the sector, which reflects in a strong order backlog development in the quarter.

2:36 Investments in grid capacity and resilience of energy supply chains are driving strong demand in several areas, most notably in transmission and distribution. Demand is also solid in hydro and pump storage as well as in nuclear. In the quarter, the division delivered positive organic sales growth and EBITDA margin improvement. That was driven by the solid performance and the higher utilization in several of the energy segments. Moving on to Industry and here we continue to see that persistent market uncertainty is impacting overall demand, as clients remain cautious around investment decisions for the larger project.

3:30 At the same time, demand remains strong for decentralization solutions that strengthen resilience and national security. This continues to be a key growth area for Afry going forward and we are therefore reinforcing our strategic focus on security and resilience. And to support this, we launched a new Defence segment within the Industry Division during the quarter. The segment brings together Afry's technology and engineering expertise to better support clients and partners in the Nordic defence sectors. So, with more than seventy years of experience, we will continue to deliver our leading solutions across engineering, cybersecurity, digitalization and resilience.

4:21 In Q1 profitability within the Industry division improved despite declining net sales. This was mainly driven by efficiency measures and higher utilization. Moving on to our final global division, Transportation and Places. Demand in the transport infrastructure remains stable, supported by large national investment programs. We also here see increased defense related investments across the infrastructure sector with focus on strengthening infrastructure resilience. Meanwhile, conditions in the real estate market continue to be challenging. Competition is high for the projects that are available, which leads to weak price development in our main markets.

5:14 To address the challenging market environment and strengthen our position going forward, we have implemented restructuring measures and other necessary changes in the real estate business over the past few quarters, including organisational adjustments and rebranding initiatives. These changes, combined with the challenging market, have pressured our performance in parts of the division this quarter. We expect that the impacts of these changes have phased out in the second half of the year, while we continue to navigate the market conditions in the real estate sector. As mentioned, we strengthened our order backlog during the first quarter with several new client projects and as usual, I would like to highlight a few examples.

6:10 First, I was pleased to see us further strengthen our partnership with Statenet. As Afry was entrusted to lead the overall project execution for a new transformer station. This is a key grid infrastructure project in Norway that will strengthen the power system to meet growing electricity demand, driven by industrial development and electrification. Within our Chemicals and Biorefinance segments, we secured another important partnership, as energy company Viagra selected Afry for the pre engineering phase of a new biorefinery facility. Once realized, the facility will become Finland's largest biogas plant, producing clean energy and supporting sustainable agriculture.

7:04 And finally, we were awarded a contract by Berlin's water and wastewater utility to design a new ozone treatment stage at one of the city's wastewater treatment plants. The facility serves around 300,000 residents and by improving the ability to remove micro pollutants, Afry will help deliver a resilient and sustainable wastewater treatment for the city. Moving on, a key focus area for us in our profitable growth journey is to focus on capturing opportunities in sectors with long term growth potential. And in the quarter, we announced an agreement to acquire AMC, a leading mining consulting firm based in Australia.

7:56 AAMC has a strong global reputation and deep sector expertise, particularly in the early phases of mining projects. And by joining forces, we will further strengthen Afry's mining and metals offering and expand our ability to deliver comprehensive solutions across the full lifecycle for leading clients in the mining industry. AAMC also brings a strong data foundation that enables data data and technology driven mind design capabilities that position us well to meet growing client demands. So, this acquisition is really a strong strategic fit for Afry. It's supporting our priorities in terms of segments, geographic presence, life cycle offering, culture and size.

8:48 So, I am very much looking forward to welcoming AMC's employees to Afry in the second quarter when we expect to finalize this transaction. Another area that is a key focus for us going forward is of course artificial intelligence. Strengthening our delivery through AI is a core part of Afry's strategy. We are applying AI across multiple parts of the business and are continuously exploring new digital opportunities to remain at the forefront of this development. As a part of these ambitions, we have entered into strategic collaboration with a Swedish tech company, ENDRA, which has developed an AI based platform to support engineering in building design.

9:39 We are now evaluating the technology from the inside and early results indicate strong potential to automate process and improve system and design accuracy. These types of solutions have the potential to amplify our expertise and enable our consultants to focus more on the deeper analysis, sharper insights and greater strategic impact. So very excited to follow this partnership going forward. And now I would like to hand over to our CFO, Bose Sandstrom, who will take us through the financials in greater detail. Thank you, Linda.

10:27 I will cover the financials for Q1 twenty twenty six. Quarter one showed net sales of $6,300,000,000 and EBITDA excluding IAC of $473,000,000 Adjusted organic growth remains in negative territory in line with last quarter. On rolling twelve months, we're currently at $25,300,000,000 on net sales. Rolling twelve month EBITDA margin increased slightly to 7.3 despite the negative calendar in the quarter. The order backlog continues to develop favorably and is reported at $21,500,000,000 an improvement of 6% to last year and 5% sequentially.

11:20 The order backlog is the highest ever reported. The majority of the sequential improvement stems from the Energy Division, which is now 16% higher than last year. The remainder of the increase comes from Transportation and Places, in particular from Rogan Ray. In Q1, with the net sales of $6,300,000,000 we report adjusted organic growth of negative 4.3, same as last quarter, where volume continued to be pressured by capacity adjustments related to our restructuring agenda. The market price pressure in some segments seen in the latter part of 2025 continue in the beginning of 2026.

12:08 This is particularly evident for segments within industry and transportation and places. Total growth is reported at minus 6.3%, affected materially in the fourth consecutive quarter by FX movements. Structural effects in Q1 relate to the net of the acquisition of Rieta during 2025 and three smaller non core divestments completed in the quarter. The negative adjusted organic growth in Q1 was the same as in Q4 twenty twenty five, but with some movement in respective division. Global division Energy is now again showing organic growth despite strong comparables from last year.

12:58 Industry remains at minus 6% adjusted organic growth, reflecting a continued challenging market and capacity adjustments during the last twenty four months. Transportation and Places declined further in the quarter as a consequence of capacity adjustments in the end of twenty twenty five combined with a continued weak real estate market. We report a utilization of 72.2 for Q1, more than a percentage point higher than Q1 last year. We see improved year over year utilization for all divisions, in particular for global division industry. This is the second consecutive quarter where we report an improvement to last year and it is a continued important step for our strategic efforts to improve operational efficiency in Afry.

13:52 The level of improvement this quarter was however partly supported by weak comparables. We will continue our focus on improving this metric to be one of the main drivers of profitability improvement over time. EBITDA excluding IAC is reported at $473,000,000 with negative calendar effects of $11,000,000 The EBITDA margin was at 7.5%, an improvement from 7.3% reported last year and 7.1% last year calendar adjusted. Currency movements have limited impact on the EBITDA margin, but in absolute terms, we estimate a negative currency impact of $17,000,000 on EBITDA compared to last year.

14:46 As in last quarter, global divisions Energy and Industry support the margin development of the group and particularly for Industry, we see positive trends that the division is coming out of the restructuring agenda with improvements in utilization supporting the EBITDA margin development despite negative growth. Energy supported by improved utilization and strong backlog development managed to improve from already high levels. The margin in the quarter in Transportation and Places was pressured by effects from restructuring and other measures during the last two quarters in combination with the continued challenging real estate market. We report $47,000,000 restructuring costs as item affecting comparability in Q1, bringing our total to $239,000,000 in the ongoing restructuring program.

15:48 The restructuring costs again primarily relate to redundancies across the group and for Q1 now more focused towards support functions. We've made significant progress in our efforts to reshape the portfolio and as we have now moved into 2026, we intensify our efforts on addressing the cost base. With only one quarter to go in the restructuring program, we reiterate our estimate that the total restructuring cost will be at the upper end of our guidance of $200 to $300,000,000 Following a record strong operational cash flow in the fourth quarter, we have a more moderate operational cash flow in Q1, somewhat lower than last year.

16:37 On a rolling twelve months perspective, the operational cash flow remains strong. Available liquidity increased to 5,200,000,000 as we are prepared to distribute dividend and close the AMC acquisitions during Q2. Our financial position remains strong. We see a marginal sequential increase on net debt and a corresponding increase on net debt over EBITDA. Dividend distribution and the completion of the AMC acquisition will increase leverage further over the next two quarters, but we expect to close the year at or below our financial target. And with that, I leave back to you, Linda. Thank you, Bhuve.

17:30 So, to summarize the first quarter of twenty twenty six: The execution of our Unlocking Afry strategy continues to progress according to plan. As part of this, we are now nearing the completion of our restructuring agenda. We saw steady progress in both the utilization rate and EBITDA margin in the quarter, as a result of the structural measures to improve efficiency. We also again strengthened our order backlog, which is another key enabler for profitable growth going forward. At the same time, the overall market uncertainty remains high and it is evident that market conditions in some segments do not yet support our ambitions for profitable growth.

18:22 With that said, looking ahead, we are focused on capturing growth opportunities in the market. We continue to prioritize sales to maintain a strong order backlog and build on this foundation to drive backlog conversion. We will also continue to advance key initiatives to harmonize our operation, improve efficiency and sustain our positive utilization trend. Finally, we will complete the restructuring agenda in the second quarter as planned, while working to ensure an effective transition out of the restructuring phase to enable continued strategy execution at full speed. So with that, we will open up for questions.

19:13 Great, thank you Linda and Bo. So now we will open up for questions, so please use the raise your hand function in terms if you have a question. And we will begin with Julia Sundwal from LBG Sundal Collier. Julia Sundal, if you would like to unmute and ask a question. Can you hear me now? Perfect. Okay. A few questions from my side. I would like to begin with transportation and places that is quite weak. You say it's because of the real estate market. Has it become worse during the quarter and which geographies do you see it has become worse?

20:06 Could you just give us some flavor on that? I can start with the market. Well, know the building market has been weak for some while and we see that in the price development for the opportunities that are in the market. So, we see actually price pressure in parts of the real estate business and we see that actually across The Nordics. And then just to add on that, I mean we're saying that of course the market is not supporting the development, particularly then for transportation and places looking at the real estate business, but that's not the only thing that we see in Q1 results. We also see a prolongation of many activities and restructuring efforts that we've done over the last couple of quarters And we see that they in combination with the continued weak market that affects the profitability in the quarter specifically.

21:07 Yes, so a combination of several factors. Yes, I see. And my second question, the number of FTEs is still down in the quarter, quarter over quarter. And if I don't mistake, you said in your Q4 report that you were going to focus on the support from now on regarding your restructuring program. But we see that it's down during the quarter. How come? Could you give us some more on that? No, I mean, you see the it's always tricky just like when you look at utilization, it's always tricky to look at on FTEs from a sequential perspective because the courts have different characteristics. But you're right. We continue to be down on overall FTEs.

21:56 Then when you look at support functions specifically, then we actually made quite significant adjustments at the very end of the quarter in relation to support functions. So, that is not reflected in the reported FTE numbers, which looks at the average for the full quarter. Okay. Yes, makes sense. And just a question regarding your debt. Your net debt to EBITDA is now at 2.7, that's above your margin target. How do you view this together with the recent M and A? We've always had a very strong seasonality of our leverage and when we look at our leverage target that is reflective of the end of the year. So, the slight uptick that we have in leverage between Q4 and Q1 is not abnormal in terms of normal seasonality.

22:53 So we should have ample room to cover the M and A and still be on track to be at or even below the leverage target by end of year. Okay, makes sense. And just a last question from my side regarding the geopolitical uncertainties. Have you seen any effect of this in the quarter? See the industry order back low is down somewhat. Is that a reason because of the geopolitical uncertainties or is there other reasons behind it? Yes. The geopolitical uncertainty continues and the impact it has is a little bit of a start and stop mechanism in some of our projects. We're not directly impacted, but we are indirectly impacted by this, since it's a disturbance in our clients' investment programs. So yes, we are to some extent impacted, but I would say the majority of it comes from delays in large CapEx projects. We are balancing this situation with a combination of smaller projects and managing the projects that we have in a smart way.

24:02 Okay, perfect. And if you look at industry, the industry backlog and link that to global uncertainty, I think what we're seeing from a short term kind of global uncertainty perspective that is not reflected in the development of the industry. I think we've been for a longer period of time. We've had global uncertainty from many different aspects and that is of course pressuring the amount of larger projects in the industry division and that's what we're seeing a bit more over time but not really reflecting the short term uncertainties. Okay, perfect. That was all from my side. Thank you. Thank you, Julia. Then the next question comes from Johan Sune Bin from Dundee Carnegie.

24:53 Vindan Bien. Hope you can hear me. Three questions from my side. Firstly, it's on the order backlog. And just curious to hear some reflections on pricing levels in the order backlog. Are you satisfied with them? Or are you taking some kind of strategic contract to build volume? We're very happy with the development of the order backlog. And we're also actually happy with the margins of the new projects in the order backlog. It's very much of the new backlog is related to well, it's actually good spread, but I would say the majority comes from energy and we are happy with the margin development of the backlog in that part.

25:43 That's clear. And then if we stay on energy, and I see the order backlog development, which is really encouraging. But at the same time, we're seeing number of these coming down both sequentially year over year in the energy segment. How should we think about the kind of bridging the roll down of FTEs in Energy Division versus the kind of growth potential from the order backlog and activating that? Well, I think Energy is example. As you know in our plan, we have first the profitability uplift, then we have the growth, the profitable growth path. And I see that energy is now where they should be in terms of profitability, so now we'll really kick off the growth in energy and we have the backlog to support that.

26:32 So we are now aiming to grow faster in energy than we have done in the last couple of quarters. And that work to kind of recruit in energy segment starts now basically, and you've been holding that back? That is, it has started, but it takes some time before you could see it in the numbers. Okay. So organic growth acceleration, it is a little bit too early to anticipate that to happen in the Energy segment already in Q2, right? Great. And the final question is also staying on the FTE numbers. Just of curiosity, when you look at the kind of FTE split between the various segments, I know that group common and eliminations has actually uptick in number of fees in Q1 twenty six versus both Q4 twenty five and Q1 twenty five.

27:33 How comes that? Yes, mean, it is well spotted. One angle of it is what I said on Ulyas' question, the changes that we've done, we did that at the very end of the quarter, so that's not reflected in the numbers. But then as you remember during last year, we took a big step on actually consolidating everybody that worked kind of with support functions into that one category and that work we made up kind of 80% through at that point of time, but we've had some kind of continued actually moving individuals from the divisions over to the group functions, which is not fully restated in that sense between the different categories. So, you see a bit of effect of that as well.

28:31 So, more like intra group shifting around people rather than that you're recruiting at the headquarter? Exactly. So that we can catch you. And the next question is from Jesper Stugamo from Handelsbanken. Yes, good day. Can you hear me? Yes. All right, great. So on the commentary in transportation and places, you highlighted that the weak result as a part of the restructuring, but I was thinking that this should yield the opposite result for you. So when do you see some improvement from the efficiencies that you have implemented?

29:27 And on the utilization rate there, could you say something how much it's up year on year, one percentage point more or less or flat? Okay. Well, I start with the first part of the question. Restructuring measures, I think, was written that it should have the opposite impact. Yes, we of course do this because we believe it's the right thing in the end and we are holding our direction going there, but it takes some time to see the impacts in some parts of the restructuring agenda. So and especially then in places, we are expecting this to turn upwards, but it's taking a little bit longer time than we expected.

30:17 But yes, you are right, we're doing the restructuring to get ourselves in a better position in terms of profitability. We can see it slightly improving in the utilization rate also in places part in Q1 and that's sort of the story that we want to build further on. All right. And then to guide you a bit on your kind of utilization development, utilization development for transportation in places is not quite as strong as for the group overall, but close to a percentage point. And then that's then driven from the road and rail part of the business rather than the real estate operations. Okay, thank you. That's perfect.

31:04 And a follow-up on prices here. You mentioned some price pressure and given the salary revisions this year, do you think that you can have a positive yield per consultants throughout this year? And do you see any new areas with price pressure in sub segments or is it still the same weak areas as before? Yes. In general, we can say it's the same weak areas that we have seen. As we have reported over the last couple of quarters, we have weak development in buildings or in phases and we have it in parts of the industry portfolio. And it's also there where we see the weakest price development this quarter.

31:53 Then, of course, if we see more of that going forward, I wouldn't say that. I would say that we see it still in the same weak segments, and we are, of course, working with measures to do that. We have talked about the restructuring capacity adjustments that we are through now. But of course, it's also about how we source to the projects. So we are scaling our ambitions also on global delivery centers. That's one example on how we are mitigating the sort of price pressure in these segments. Okay. Thank you. And just one last question from me on AI, it would be more interesting to hear your thoughts you mentioned around efficiency and output.

32:42 And yes, if you can give us some more color on this and if it's becoming more complex to run this through the organization as you also are implementing several restructuring initiatives, etcetera? Yes, there was a lot in that question. But if we start then, of course, AI is a vital part of our business, both sort of for our internal efficiency, but also for our external or the projects that we deliver. And you saw ENDRA here as one example of our engineering capabilities within buildings. So we actually believe that our new strategy and the segment based organization that we have chosen enable us to work even faster with AI than we could before. So, we see there is a potential for both sort of increasing the quality and increasing the productivity and, again, I think our deep sector knowledge together with the AI tools would put us in a good position.

33:56 Okay. From the customer side, have you seen any new dynamics in projects, for example, lower contract values or you're moving from variable price to more fixed price also here in The Nordics? We haven't seen a shift in the mix between fixed price and time and materials, not yet. But we are quite used to work in these large fixed price contracts as well. It's a natural part of how we deliver. But a fair answer is that we don't see clear movements in the customer dialogue as of now. Yes, all right. Thank you, Jumping back to the line here.

34:44 Thank you, Jesper. The next question comes from Johan Dahl from Banske Bank. Yes, good afternoon, everyone. Just a brief question on transportation and places again, just trying to get my arms around how sustainable margin pressure is. But is it sort of correct to make the interpretation that as the order book is developing quite nicely in Transportation and Places, there is still sort of fair prices to achieve in this business? And secondly, the pressure on margins, to what extent is that related to your ability to source competence in this quarter? Have you had to sort of source external supply competence and that has sort of bumped up cost in the quarter? Just trying to understand how we should look at this margin level going forward.

35:37 Yes, I'll try to answer those. I can start with the last one. No, not specifically kind of external sourcing in relation to this quarter. I think to go back to kind of your start of the question, I think it's very clear that transportation and places are covering two sectors that are behaving quite differently kind of at the moment. You have the stability in the transport infrastructure sector with reasonable price development, a good starting point and kind of stability in general. And then you have the quite weak market the real estate on the real estate side that has been weak for a while where we have over the last couple of quarters specifically, we've done a lot of actions into these businesses.

36:32 One of them kind of digging into kind of restructuring efforts, but also complementing that during this quarter with rebranding efforts and where we have also had kind of pockets of attrition that we talked about a lot kind of during Q4, but those things playing out in combination as pressured, particularly the real estate side of the business for the quarter as such, but it's very much kind of two different businesses under the hood of one division and that's very clear for us in this specific quarter. Yes. If you then focus on real estate, that part of the business, have you sort of accelerated cost savings separate or exiting certain businesses to sort of mitigate this or will you sort of try to sort of build this out in the coming quarters?

37:30 I think we went into this restructuring phase with a very high pace and we have continued to have that high pace throughout. And to some extent, that's also what we're seeing in this specific quarter. We're doing a fast pace, a lot of changes in the business and we see that in the results of the quarter. But I wouldn't say that we have accelerated it. In general, we're sticking to the plan that we had going in. Okay, so with that, I would like to thank you for joining us here today. We will now move on to our Annual General Meeting, which will take place later this afternoon here at our headquarters.

38:21 So have a great day and we look forward to speaking to you again in Q2.