Ambea (Stockholm:AMBEA) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Welcome to Ambea's presentation of the first quarter twenty twenty six. I am Mark Jensen, CEO. And with me today is Benno Eliasson, CFO. We will start with a brief group overview and our growth drivers, and then Benno will take you through the financials and business areas before we wrap up with concluding remarks and the Q and A. AMBEA is the leading care provider in The Nordics with operations across Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland.

1:30 We operate through strong local brands and business areas covering elderly care, social care and staffing and competence solutions. This breadth and scale create resilience and long term growth potential. In the last twelve months, we reached over SEK16.6 billion in sales and delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 9.7% on group level and we continue to grow through both organic expansion and acquisitions. Let's go straight to the highlights of the first quarter. Quarter one was characterized by strong growth with several new care homes opened and one acquisition closed. Net sales increased by 16%, mainly driven by acquisitions, but also solid organic growth. To support growing needs in society, we continue to build our pipeline of new care places and expand capacity across business areas.

2:19 At group level, adjusted EBITA amounted to million with an adjusted EBITA margin of 9%. The improved result is driven by higher occupancy, operational improvements and acquisitions. At the next slide, we will look at how we build our organic pipeline. On this slide, we show the high pace we have entered the year with. Already in the first quarter, we have signed more new care places than we did in any of the years from 2021 to 2023. 2026 will for sure become a record breaking year in terms of pipeline additions. When needs in society increase, it is important that all operators, public and private step up and do their utmost to find relevant new projects when demand forecasts are showing a clear need for additional supply of modern and qualitative care places.

3:07 At AMBEA, we take this responsibility extremely serious and won't rest before we know everyone in need of care will have a fair chance of receiving qualitative care at the right place and at the right time. We are active and collaborate closely with all Nordic municipalities where we are welcome. With more municipalities open for private operators to help them overcome the care challenge, we could do even more. To us, it has no intrinsic value who adds the needed supply if it gets done. But we worry that many municipalities have no plans for needed future supply and also no plans to use private sector in the supply model. And this is a threat to the fabric of society, which we urge politicians, regardless of party, to address with more urgency and determination. Turning the page, let's review the total organic pipeline.

3:56 Organic growth is a cornerstone of our strategy. Now we have almost 2,000 care places in our growing pipeline and this is an industry leading number in the Nordic Care sector. During the quarter, VorDagge was the most expansive business area, but it's also promising to see Alsid in Denmark being back building organic pipeline with all managed residential elderly care with two newly signed contracts for nursing homes to open 2028 and 2029. We have had an expansive first quarter with several openings and looking twelve months ahead, we will add another three zero four care places to the Nordic market, which supports continued growth and improved economies of scale. Quantifying the revenue growth from the old management pipeline can be somewhat difficult, but we have this quarter added expected revenue assuming all new homes fully ramped up.

4:45 A ramp up would normally take twelve to twenty four months from opening date depending on size and type of care home as well as local demand. In 2026 prices, the expected total pipeline revenue will accumulate to approximately SEK 2,500,000,000. The pipeline covers openings in 2026 to 2029, where more projects will be added to the later years during the remaining part of this year. With this level of mid single digit organic growth from pipeline expansion, it is important to maintain and develop our position as an employer of choice, we will continue why we will continue to invest in our workplaces, work environment, career opportunities and competence and leadership development. And we will now have a look at acquired growth.

5:31 Acquisitions are an important complement to organic growth building to the overall 8% to 10% growth target. And we have maintained a high level of M and A activity with a focus on bolt on acquisitions. During the quarter, Validia and Finland expanded and closed the second strategic acquisition within child welfare services, adding SEK118 million in annual net sales. We continue to see an active pipeline across markets and we remain selective focusing on quality assets, strong operational fit and value creation through integration. Let's have a closer look at total revenue growth on the next slide. Revenue growth remains above our long term target driven primarily by strong acquired growth combined with solid organic development. This reflects the strength of our business model. We grow by improved occupancy, expanding capacity in our existing operations, signing contracts for new care units and by successfully integrating acquisitions.

6:25 Overall, this creates a balanced and sustainable growth profile. At the core of our model is quality and care, strong local leadership and high employee engagement, which I will talk about on the following slide. During the quarter, we presented AMBEAS Quality Award, an annual recognition given to one unit in each business area. The award highlights units that combine high quality, strong alignment with our values, concepts and working methods, and also solid financial performance, illustrating the strong correlation between high care quality and healthy financial results. Local leadership remains critical to ensuring consistent quality across our operations. In the quarter, we conducted the first leadership index survey of the year, resulting in a score of 77 out of 100, a stable and encouraging result that reflects our long term focus on present and supportive leadership.

7:14 We continue to invest in leadership development and during the quarter managers across the organisation started new leadership programmes at different levels. Finally, Validia brought together two fifty managers and employees in an initiative aimed at strengthening leadership and quality, while ensuring that everyone can influence their daily life and the support they receive. You can read more about our quality and sustainability work in the quarterly report and also in the newly published annual report for 2025, which include plenty of new information and additional transparency through the new CSRD requirements. And now I would like to hand over the presentation to Benno for a financial summary. Thank you, Mark. Net sales grew with 16% and were primarily driven by the acquisition of Validia, but we also saw solid contributions from Nithira and Vardaga.

8:04 And the good growth we have seen in the recent quarters continued, driven by both acquisition in Nithira and Vardaga. Validia this quarter added SEK420 million to net sales. Stendi and Altiden still face some currency headwind in SEK of 3% to 5% because of the strong Swedish currency, that both showed steady growth in local currency. And Clara still faces tough market conditions with a 13% decline in sales. And now the EBITDA. This slide shows how the different business areas have contributed to the adjusted EBITDA of the group. The acquisition of Validia, of course, affected the EBITDA most. The strong performance added SEK42 million to the group. Stendi faced tough comparison from a strong Q1 last year and EBITDA margin was down 1.3 percentage point.

8:55 Paragga grew both EBITDA and EBITDA margin despite all new openings the last quarter, which is really strong. Nitida continued EBITDA growth with more steady occupancy that led to higher margins. This quarter, Nitida added SEK17 million more to the group EBITDA. And lastly, Altiran, which delivered a really strong Q1 with more than double EBITDA margin versus last year. Adjusted EBITDA in total increased by 24% to SEK380 million and the adjusted EBITDA margin in the group was 9.0%, up from 8.4% last year. Operating cash flow was in line with Q1 last year, but much lower than last quarter. Q1 is the weakest cash flow quarter of the year and seasonality effects get even larger over the years. And since this quarter also followed by an extremely strong Q4, this was showed more obvious this year.

9:51 Cash conversion is still over 91%, rolling 12. This slide shows the way from the EBITDA excluding IFRS 16 down to the free cash flow post tax. The rolling 12 numbers are now at SEK713 million. The numbers are still affected by the one off effects of the Validia acquisition and the settlement of the Norwegian dispute last year, we expect the full year figure to increase when these effects are out of the rolling 12 numbers. The underlying solid cash generation gives us both flexibility and strength to continue investing in quality and in growth. And now to the utilization. This is how we have used the generated SEK713 million. SEK185 million was distributed to our shareholders at dividend.

10:40 SEK 1,312,000,000 was spent on the five acquisitions and SEK $521,000,000 was spent on the share buyback programs. Net debt has increased by SEK 1,375,000,000, mostly driven of course by the strategic acquisition of Alidia, which mainly was financed by external loans. The increased debt has led to an increased leverage from 1.8 times EBITDA to 2.5 times, still with much headroom to our financial target at below 3.25 times. Now to the earnings per share. The strong development in sales and profitability together with the share buyback programs conducted have produced a strong growth in earnings per share over the last years.

11:26 This quarter reported EPS grew by 45% compared to last year and the growth pace over the last years is very high. The compound annual growth rate the last two years are 24% in reported EPS. And if we adjust EPS for the IFRS 16 and items related to acquisitions, the growth rate is at 20% per year. And now to the different business areas. We start as always with NetEDA. Net sales increased by 5%, driven both by acquisition and startup units. EBITDA rose by 14% to SEK135 million compared to SEK118 million last year, thanks to the continued good performance in previously completed acquisitions, together with improved occupancy for start up units and some adjustments made in the service offering.

12:18 We have continued to adapt our service offerings in favor of those services with expected high demand going forward, as well as successfully adjusting the capacity. This is the third consecutive quarter with a higher margin than previous year, and the Rolling 12 margin now increased up to 12.9. And then turning to Vardaga. And Vardaga continues to deliver a solid growth. Net sales increased by 8%, driven by higher occupancy and by the Avasta acquisition. Sales in Owned Management grew by 11%, reaching SEK $997,000,000 due to higher occupancy in New as well as established nursing homes. During the quarter, we have opened three new nursing homes with a total of 176 care places, adding to the two new nursing homes we opened Q4 last year.

13:07 The occupancy in these recently opened facilities showed a better than planned development in the first quarter. Net sales in contract management increased by 3%. EBITDA increased by 13% to SEK 125,000,000 and the profitability development in mature units continues to be strong and the negative effect that normally comes from newly established units was lower than expected. In total, the EBITDA margin increased by 0.3 percentage points to 8.8% in the quarter and to 9.6% rolling 12%. We expect the strong growth in our own management portfolio to continue the coming quarters, but the sales in contract management will turn to negative growth, since contracts with a total revenue SEK204 million is set to end the coming twelve months.

13:54 And then we turn to Norway to overview of Stendi. Stendi had a quarter where occupancy for care services for adults was slightly lower than last year, while our services for children and youth had more stable occupancy in the quarter. In local currency, net sales increased by 2%, but in SEK net sales decreased by 1%. EBITDA amounted to SEK57 million and EBITDA margin was 7.0, which was 1.3 percentage points lower than the strong Q1 last year. This is an underlying trend that is a bit stronger than the previous two quarters. The weaker earnings performance versus last year was mainly due to the lower occupancy in our social care service for adults, which led to lower staffing efficiency in the quarter.

14:41 We are constantly working towards units with high capacity and better operational efficiency and are phasing out smaller units. We expect to gradually see the clearer effect of this in the second quarter in the second half of the year. And now we are turning to our Finnish business area of Validia. Validia is now reporting its fourth quarter as a new business area and has been consolidated into Abea's account from 04/01/2025. Validia showed continued solid performance together with the completion of the second acquisition in a new segment of child and youth welfare. That latest acquisition was closed twenty first of January this year. Net sales in the quarter amounted to SEK $420,000,000 and EBITDA reached SEK 42,000,000, corresponding to a margin of 10%.

15:29 In total, for the first twelve months in AMBEA, Validia has reported SEK 1,593,000,000 in sales and an EBITDA margin of 10.8%. Validea was acquired as a growth platform in Finland and we will continue to create growth through new establishments, bolt on acquisitions and continued develop of the existing operations. And now turning down to Denmark and Altirren. Altirren delivered an overall very strong quarter with continued strong revenue growth in local currency, driven by higher occupancy across both elderly and social care. Net sales increased by 6% in local currency. In SEAC, however, net sales were only 1% up.

16:16 Net sales in own management increased by 10% in local currency. The decline in contract management was due to the termination of one Social Care contract last year. The profitability improvement continues at a high pace. This quarter EBITDA increased to SEK19 million corresponding to a margin of 5.7, up from 2.4% last year. And positive earnings development was driven by the higher occupancy and by operational improvements. We have now eight consecutive quarters with margin improvement and the rolling 12 margin has gone from negative 3.3% to positive 5.2. Our extensive work on new projects in Denmark resulted in signing of two new nursing homes with a total of 184 places scheduled to open for care receipts in 2028 and 2029.

17:07 The contracts demonstrates the improved market condition in Denmark following the 2025 Elderly Care Reform and additional contracts for new care homes are expected during the year. And now to Clara. Finally, Clara saw lower net sales due to the weaker demand of several of their services. Net sales decreased by 13% to SEK87 million. Historically, strong supply of nurses in the labor market has led to some customers to employ their own staff instead of purchasing external services from companies like Xala. EBITDA amounted to SEK9 million, which with a margin of 10.3% compared to 8% last year. The good margin development reflects well managed cost adjustment and continued focus of profitability even in a softer market environment.

17:58 And with that, back to you, Marc. Thank you, Benno. Our financial targets remain as we drive profitable growth, strong margins and disciplined leverage. And we remain committed to consistently deliver on all three financial targets, which we have also done in the first quarter of the year. The rolling twelve months growth rate is now at 16%, which is well above our growth target, thanks to the high pace in acquisitions and good organic growth. Rolling 12 profitability landed at 9.7%, which is above the target of 9.5%. We will continue to invest in people, quality and growth. Our leverage is slightly up to a ratio of 2.5 times net debt to EBITDA below our target of 3.25 times. We maintain our financial capacity to engage in the right bolt on acquisitions.

18:46 And before we open for questions, I would like to provide an outlook post quarter one. Ambea is the only Nordic Care provider with a brand new tailor made and group wide quality management system, which was ready for launch at the end of the first quarter. The system named mirroQ has been launched in the first business area after the quarter ended. We will continue the rollout of the new system to all business areas during the remaining part of the year. With mirroQ, we have further optimized and standardized operational quality work, improved system performance and features, as well as data quality and access to predictive analysis and cross country quality improvements. Care needs are increasing and we remain committed to sign contracts for more care homes across markets, adding to further organic growth, supporting society and further growing our market share.

19:33 Validia will continue to build our new Finnish segment within child welfare services and we are actively working with all aspects ramping up the business segment. And we will also see more bolt on acquisitions and in more markets throughout the year. The adjustments in STENDY are progressing well and will deliver margin improvements in the second half of the year leading to full year margins above last year. We are more people giving care to more care receivers in need. I am proud of what we do and we will employ and train thousands of new care professionals in the coming years as we grow and support society. In a world of conflicts and division, our wish is that politicians and civil servants can unite with us behind the core challenge of a functioning and respected welfare system. We strive to make the world a better place one person at a time.

20:21 With this razor focus on each individual care receiver, our teams strongly contribute to the attractive of a society with equal rights for all. And this concludes our presentation and we will now open for questions. Thank you. We will now take the first question from the line of Julia Angeli Strand from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions.

21:08 My first one relates to Vaadhaga. And I know ahead of this quarter, there was some caution around pace of openings and that was expected to weigh on margins. This has not been the case, rather the opposite. So I was wondering, can you say a few words on what drove the margin or sort of what changed compared to before this? Yes, thank you for the question. I mean, what drove the margins and what changed according to our own expectations also was the pace of ramp up in the newly opened Wodhogger units. As a total, the average was faster than expected. We have opened three new care homes or nursing homes in this quarter and two in the last quarter.

21:59 And at the end of the third quarter, we opened also one. So it's a lot of new openings in the last six, seven months. And they have ramped up faster than we anticipated. And that has, together with good development and continued strong performance in our mature care homes, delivered the strong performance of Raw Dogger this quarter. Okay. Understood. And just as a follow-up there, yesterday, one of your peers reported, and it seems like they noted that the demand for Swedish elderly care picked up a little bit. Would you also agree on that? There is an increasing demand in the years to come for more elderly care, and that is driven by demographics.

22:45 And we will continue to see that for many years to come. The issue is here that society needs more capacity and therefore we are also very focused on building additional capacity in our already strong pipeline. And one could think, and that will of course depend on local demand, and it's a little different from case to case, that ramp up could be somewhat faster in the future than they have been in the past, as needs are increasing. Okay. Understood. And then secondly, on Validia, could you say something about the underlying margin? Because there was some start up costs in this quarter? And also maybe say how this quarter seasonally can be compared to Q2?

23:37 I can take that. In total in the total year of Validia, we have now rolling 12 margin on 10.8%, and we have had a transaction and integration cost of the two acquisitions, both in Q4 more in Q4 than I would say than in Q1. This quarter, it was not so much. We have a more a little bit more effect on Q4 numbers than Q1 numbers. But for sure, the margin would have been below above 11% if we haven't these transactional costs in the Rolling 12 numbers. Going to the Q2. The Q2 is the weakest quarter, I would say, in all business areas because of the seasonality of the number of invoicing days and the the Easter holiday and other banking holidays. This is also in Finland. Maybe the the the seasonality effect is a bit a bit little bit lower in Finland than the rest of the rest of the countries.

24:40 Okay. Understand. And if I may squeeze in a follow-up question before I get back in the queue. He said something about the organic growth for Validia. I know we don't have historical quarters, but can you give us some guidance on how that developed? When we bought Validia one year ago, the occupancy levels was really high in the existing unit, So it's not so much to gain to increase occupancy in the existing unit. But of course, we are planning to open new units, and we have planned four new openings to open in the second half of this year. And we, of course, want them to be part of the organic growth situation in Finland going forward.

25:32 Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Bjorn Olson from SEB. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. First, on Stendi. How much do you think we could extrapolate additional margin improvements from potentially increasing occupancy and staff improvements in addition to the ones you delivered this far? Sorry, once again, how much we can expect to sorry, please repeat. No, it's a it was a poor question. You said you had a lower occupancy, and it was not fully offset by the lower personnel costs. So, for the trend ahead, how should we think about the curve for the year in terms of rightsizing the staff?

26:38 Okay, I get that. So in Stendi, I mean, we operate two main segments. One is childcare. That is progressing well with stable occupancy and with good results. The segment where we have low occupancy is in social care for adults. And here we are doing some adjustments, both to capacity and to staffing, as you alluded to. They will have an increasing positive effect throughout the year. There will be some improvements in quarter two. They will not be material as it takes time to right size also Norway. There will be more improvements in quarter three and even more in quarter four. And as we said, we expect the full year margins of Stendi to be above last year's margins for the full year, but the impact will come as we move into the remaining quarters of the year.

27:35 All right, thanks. And just to follow-up on Julia's question on Vardaga as well with the for the coming openings then, because it sounds like we were all a bit positively surprised that there wasn't really a margin pressure from the new openings. And I guess you sort of guide that they were they had a higher than expected occupancy, faster than you would expect. And the established orders of the old homes had also increasing occupancy. Do you think we could extrapolate this trend to the coming openings as well? Or could those sort of pressure a bit more on margin? It's difficult to say because all markets are local. I mean, you look at elderly care, care receivers, they come from the local municipality and even from the city or the area of the city where the nursing home is located.

28:28 So, it can differ from place to place. Now we have the care homes, have nursing homes, we have opened now in the last quarters have been well located compared to local demand. But of course, going forward, as also the size of the nursing homes differ a bit and we build somewhat larger nursing homes now than what we did like two, three years ago. I don't think we can extrapolate, you know, any trends into the future that it would be faster or as fast as we have seen in the last two quarters, because it is very local. So between twelve and twenty four months, we still think it's a reasonable time for a ramp up of a new nursing home. But of course, it depends on local demand and what the municipalities are doing with their own portfolio of homes.

29:16 That makes sense. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Adrian Almblund from Nordea. I just have one question really here regarding the sales decline in Klara. Like do you view the shift here in customers basically hiring their own nurses as cyclical? Or is this more of a permanent shift in demand? And is there anything that could be similar in the other countries as well? I would say that this has we thought it was more temporarily a year ago or so, because it's all the reason behind is that the Swedish healthcare region are no longer taking in nurses, rent nurses. That made the labour market shift totally. So there are much more nurses out in the labour market now, and that has also reduced the nursing staffing services from other companies and the municipalities.

30:26 And I think that will probably be it's not a trend that we see will shift back towards where where we were, say, two, three, five years ago. Right. So this sounds more of a permanent shift. And kind of like, are you expecting to change your operations there? And is there a similar shift countries like Norway or Denmark? We don't have these services in other countries. Clara is only active in Sweden for these services. And we have the share of, you can say, all traditional staffing services are really low now in Clara. It was the largest sub segment a couple of years ago. Now it's really low. And now it's the student health care services and the nursing patrol services, the two most important in Clara, and will be so for the future.

31:25 Okay. Fair enough. Thank you very much. Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Filipe Fetevskiest from SB1 Markets. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. I have a couple of questions. I'll start with Vardaga, and you currently have approximately SEK 200,000,000 of ending contracts that are expected to end in the coming twelve months. Are they expected to end evenly throughout the period? Or are they front or back loaded? Or how should we think about that? Rather evenly. We have some now in the second quarter. I think we have some in each quarter. I'm not fully have the exact dates of all the ones, but you can expect them to live evenly.

32:17 I think it's eight different smaller nursing homes. All right. Thank you. And I assume these are margin dilutive, right? So it will help the margin when you have exited those contracts? Normally, contract management homes are a little bit lower margin over time than own management. I won't I don't say something about the margin of these specific ones, but normally over time the margins are lower in contract management. Yes. And then a question on Denmark. Denmark keeps showing great volatility quarter to quarter. Do you think this 6% margin you reported today is something we can extrapolate going forward? Or do you expect continued volatility?

33:07 Or how should we think about the margins in Denmark? The margins in Denmark and Norway are very seasonal differences, where the Q3 is by far the strongest and Q2 is by far the weakest. And that is because of the high extra payment for the banking holidays that are in Q2 and that won't shift going forward. So we can expect lower margins in Q2 than in Q1, especially in these two countries that are really the strongest seasonal effects. But year on year you expect improvement? Yeah, year on year, when 2025 and 2026 is the same calendar, you can say the Easter is in the same quarter. 2024 was a different story, but 2025 and 2026 we have the same calendar throughout the years. So you can compare the quarter year on year, of course.

34:06 Yeah. And then one last question still on Denmark. What had changed there? Do you now make it that you now feel comfortable to add a lot more capacity there? So what has changed is, first of all, that we have a much more stable business now, performing better with good management and good control, also taking leverage of the systems and methods that the Ambea Group can provide. So that's of course the foundation for future growth. The second thing is that last year was the new elderly care reform in Denmark put in place and voted through parliament. And that new reform basically gives the private operators freedom to establish across the country and the full freedom of choice for the care receivers also across the country with a good revenue model, which we think is attractive also to private operators.

35:04 So since then, we have of course been looking actively in the market for new projects for nursing homes. We have signed two so far this year for opening in 2028 and 2029. And we will sign more contracts as we move into the year for nursing homes to open in '29 and onwards sorry, '28 and onwards. We also see opportunities for organic growth in the social care segment, both for children and for adults. And we're also looking for opportunities there. So there will be more pipeline expansion from the organic side in Denmark as we move into the remaining part of the year. Thank you. That was all for me. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Jacob Anderson from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

35:57 Good morning, Mark and Benno. I hope you can hear me. So I just have a few follow-up questions. If you start with Stendi, on the ongoing capacity adjustment there, where are you in that process? And how large has the margin headwind been from these restructuring efforts? So we have said that we believe a good margin level in Norway is between 8% to 9%. We have also said we will get closer to that range this year, but most likely not all the way. But I will reiterate that we expect higher margins for the full year than we had for the full year 2025. The capacity adjustments are ongoing and they're progressing well, but capacity adjustments takes a bit of time. We are not talking about hundreds of placements, it's some handfuls of placements that we are shifting around.

36:46 We are moving some between the segments, so some of the care homes we can rebuild to childcare, which we are doing, and some of them we are leaving. And the ones that we are leaving are the smaller units with lower efficiency and the ones we are signing and entering are larger units with higher efficiency and where we can also offer more competitive prices to the Norwegian municipalities without impacting care quality or work environment. And the effects will come gradually throughout the year with more as we move into the year. So you will see some improvement next quarter, but the majority will come in the second half of the year. Yes, perfect. Thanks for that. And just a follow-up question. So you mentioned in the Q4 report that demand was kind of stabilizing towards the end of that quarter, but how do you view the market conditions now in Norway over the next, say, six to twelve months?

37:41 We believe they look good in child welfare. I mean, it's we are a strong supplier to the Norwegian society in child welfare, and we continue to be so. We are also developing our services in line with the needs and demands from the state and from the municipalities. So, we expect that to be stable to slightly growing. Whereas in adult care, we expect demand situations which will be stable, flattish throughout the year and where it's more about adjusting capacity to make sure that we have the capacity in the right parts of Norway and where we can also offer capacity at the competitive prices with good quality and good work environment. Okay, perfect. And just a last one there.

38:28 And you also in Q4 you flagged those investments in your broader operational structure. But can you give us some sort of update on the magnitude of these investments in Q1? At what point should we expect these to start declining? We continue to invest and we will continue to do so for many quarters to come. I mean, it's very important for us as we grow that we maintain high investments in systems, processes, people and leadership, because this is a people business and we are very depending on high quality care in our operations. And we will employ, as I said, thousands of new employees for just looking at the organic pipeline we have, it's thousands of new employees coming in just with the pipeline we have now. And as we will add more to the pipeline, we will of course also add the need for more care professionals coming into us. They need training, they need development, we need to invest in new care homes, we need to invest in our systems and processes.

39:22 So this is not a kind of a one quarter or two quarter effort. This is an effort which is ongoing and which will continue. We think that also correlates to our financial targets where we have a high growth ambition, but we have maintained also our profitability target of 9.5%. Now we're a bit above, but we think with an increased pace in our growth and continued investment in our people and operations, it's a good level to be at and reflects also the quality of operations. So, it's not like that, you know, investments have come down or will come down next quarter. We will continue to invest in those things. Okay. Thank you. That was all for me. Thank you. Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Christopher Lehleberg from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

40:20 Thank you. Three questions. First, on Denmark, surprisingly strong margin for being a first quarter. Was any type of one offs or positive events that impacted this? No, nothing at all at that kind. So it's the underlying margin is as they reported. And if I just compare with last year, of course, you had that pretty weak it gradually become better. But Q1 last year, you did 2.4% EBITDA margin in Q1, and then you ended up for the full year in a two percentage points higher than that. Is that the type of extrapolation you could do also for this quarter?

41:07 Or is that maybe too aggressive? I think that most of the profitability improvement, the large one, is do have behind us as of now. We still expect the margins to increase going forward. As we see, there are still occupancy improvements to gain, and we think there are also more operational efficiency to gain, but it won't be percentage points per quarter as we have seen this quarter and some quarters last year. Okay, that's fair. Then on the new openings in Finland, is it possible to quantify the size of them and how much growth they could add? Yes, we have around I think it's 88 new places.

41:53 I don't have number in front of me, but it's I think we have one large unit, a large home, and then we have three smaller units where two are part of the acquisitions that we've made now in child welfare. So so this is this is how it looks like to to open up in the in the second half of the year. It is 88. You're right. Yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. And then finally, the group margin, and I think if I remember correctly, you indicated even that EBITDA margin could be slightly down this year with a lot of openings, etcetera. I think that seems pretty cautious now given the strong start of the year and you talk about further improvements in Norway, for example.

42:48 So how do you view now the full year margin for 2026? We are not changing the margin target, but you're, of course, right that we have seen a stronger start to the year than one could have expected at the back end of 2025 with good operational efficiency, good increase in occupancy and well performing business units and teams. And, you know, going forward, we have of course more openings and more acquisitions to conduct this year. But it has been a good start indeed. So one could think that we would perform slightly better than the profitability target, but I will leave that to you and your analysis to determine what you think.

43:37 But it's looking definitely positive from the start of the year. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Marc Jensen for closing remarks. So thank you all for joining us today and for your continued interest in Ambea. Thanks for all the good questions from all of you. The report from the second quarter will be published on August 19 this year. So I wish you all a very nice day. Stay safe and healthy. Thank you.