Earnings call transcript: Bravida Q2 2025 sees improved margins amid sales drop

Bravida Holding AB reported its second-quarter 2025 earnings, revealing a mixed financial performance. While net sales fell by 9% to 30 billion SEK, the company’s EBITDA margin improved from 4.5% to 5.4%. The order intake rose by 9% to 8.1 billion SEK, and the order backlog increased by 1.3 billion SEK. The stock, which recently closed at 92.5 SEK, saw a minor decline of 0.16% or 0.15 SEK in its latest trading session. According to InvestingPro, Bravida has maintained a consistent dividend growth track record, raising its dividend for 10 consecutive years, and typically trades with low price volatility.

Key Takeaways

• EBITDA margin increased to 5.4% despite a 9% drop in net sales.
• Order intake and backlog showed positive growth, rising by 9% and 1.3 billion SEK, respectively.
• The company is focusing on ESG improvements with 40% of its fleet now electric.
• Market conditions in the Nordics show stabilization with a forecasted improvement in 2026-2027.

Company Performance

Bravida’s performance in Q2 2025 highlighted both challenges and strengths. The company managed to enhance its profitability through better cost control and restructuring efforts, even as sales declined. This strategic focus on margins over volume is evident in the improved EBITDA margin. InvestingPro analysis shows the company operates with a moderate level of debt and has remained profitable over the last twelve months, though it currently suffers from weak gross profit margins. The Nordic markets, where Bravida operates extensively, are stabilizing, offering a hopeful outlook for future growth.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 30 billion SEK, a 9% decline from the previous period.
• EBITDA Margin: Improved to 5.4% from 4.5%.
• Order Intake: Increased by 9% to 8.1 billion SEK.
• Order Backlog: Increased by 1.3 billion SEK.
• Cash Conversion: Maintained at 80%.
• EPS: Improved by 13%.

Outlook & Guidance

Bravida anticipates the market conditions to remain similar over the next two quarters of 2025, with expectations for a market pickup in 2026-2027. As a prominent player in the Commercial Services & Supplies industry, according to InvestingPro data, the company continues to prioritize margin over volume, which could lead to improved cash flow in the latter half of 2025. Unlock comprehensive insights and access 8 additional ProTips about Bravida’s market position and growth potential with an InvestingPro subscription.

Executive Commentary

CEO Mattias Johansson emphasized the company’s strategic focus, stating, "We will continue that focus on margin over volume." He also highlighted the robust order backlog, saying, "We are managing this company not out of the SEK 8 billion in order backlog on Swedish level." CFO Petra Vranjes expressed pride in the company’s achievements, adding, "I’m super proud to be a part of the Bravida team."

Risks and Challenges

• The installation segment continues to face challenges, which could impact growth.
• Geographical variations present operational difficulties, with Finland posing the most challenges.
• Macroeconomic uncertainties in the Nordic region could affect future market stability.

Bravida’s Q2 2025 earnings reflect a strategic shift towards improving profitability amid challenging market conditions. The company’s efforts in cost control and ESG initiatives, alongside a stable service activity, position it well for future growth as the Nordic markets stabilize.

Full transcript - Bravida Holding AB (BRAV) Q2 2025:

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: Good morning everyone and welcome to this presentation of our Q2 report 2025. I will start with some highlights or overall general numbers for Bravida. We are in close to 200 different places in the Nordics, 14,000 employees, and we had in 2024 close to SEK 30 billion in sales, 14,000 employees, 84,000 customers that are served by 350 branches. Creates a very stable business model that we think is very positive. My name is Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO of Bravida. Today for the first time I have Petra Vranjes. Welcome to Bravida. Maybe you want to say something.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: Thank you, Mattias. Yes, absolutely. I’ve been here for a little bit more than a month now and I have to say that I’m super proud to be a part of the Bravida team. The first thing that appealed to me with Bravida was the long-term view that the business is taking, and that combined with the sustainability. Engagement is super important to me, especially in the marketplace that we are in today, which is everything else than certain. I have a long experience in finance, finance leadership, and management, mostly in telecom. I’ve come from a long line of telecom jobs in Ericsson and Intellia, but we also worked with large projects, large complex projects and services in those markets as well. I’ve been working both in Sweden and abroad, so I’ve been dragging my family around into the world.

We have been located in Russia, in Moscow, working with the CIS countries. It’s really difficult to understand now when we look at what’s happening in that part of the market and of the world. We’ve been located in the U.S., working with a big telecom operator in the U.S. and Mexico, and lots of things happening in the U.S. market as well. This experience that I’ve gotten really has given me a sense that business is not that different in different locations and markets. On the other hand, it’s also very different because we also have ways of working, ways of living, we have cultures, we have all of this which brings us strengths and opportunities. With Bravida being present in the Nordic markets and having so many locations, the 350 branches in so many locations, that appeals to me.

It appeals to me to work in the footprint and to get to understand what are our strengths and what are our opportunities. What can we do better in those markets? In this month we’ve been traveling, you and I. We have been to Norway, we have been to Denmark, we have been to the southern part of Sweden, we haven’t been to Finland yet. We haven’t been to the northern part of Sweden. I’m really looking forward to getting there. Of course, I met the teams, I have met the business segment heads, I have met their teams. They have helped me to feel welcome into Bravida. They have helped me to start understanding the business. I think what I’m seeing is a lot of professionalism, a lot of skill. We really, really have a good crew, good customer engagements, good focus on the customers.

The dialogues that are happening out there, I really want to support that. Right. All the skill that we are seeing is excellent. I think we have another gear to put in when it comes to the scale, right? If we could combine the scale and skill, being the entrepreneur in the local market and leveraging on the large company that we are, that’s really where I want to make a difference. As the Bravida CFO and my team are thinking, we want to be part of creating a foundation where we can continue having this open dialogue. Supporting with information flow, with structure, so that we can help the business continue with the internal and external dialogues. Of course, we want to work with governance so that we can put the gear in and get to the scale as well.

So that.

That’s really what I’m looking forward to. I feel super, super humble. Welcome. And Peppa, as we say in Swedish, so up and running. I want to thank everybody for bringing me on board.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: Yeah, great. Welcome to Petra and we are super excited as well. You will hear more from Petra in a few minutes. Thank you, Petra. I can tell you that Petra will add another dimension to me, to the management team, to the whole Bravida, to help us develop Bravida to the next level. Really looking forward to that. With that, going into the Q2 highlights, as you probably have seen already, we are still facing a quite tough market and that means that we are presenting a lower sales. The net sales is down 9% and we have communicated and said in the report that this is a balance we need to have, because we want to have a balance between the margin and the risk exposure.

Coming back to that later, the order intake increased though with 9% and the order backlog increased with close to SEK 1.3 billion in the quarter. Fantastic to see that the margin improved to 5.4%. Being able to improve the margin when you are declining the top line is very good as I see it, and is a result of our restrictive project selectiveness, cost control, better production, and mix between different types of projects. Customers’ cash flow is negatively. 80% cash conversion and we see a net debt at 1.4 times EBITDA in the second quarter the last 12 months. Happy to announce that the LTIFR is decreasing with 12% and the decrease in that number is good. We are improving the numbers to 5.2 and it’s mainly driven by Sweden and Norway. Already well below the NAM group target.

In total we are below the group target as well. We also have reduced the CO2 emissions in the last 12 months with close to 15%. You can see a big drop in the installation sales compared to the service sales, which is as expected. If we look at the bridge regarding the sales, you see that we have some currency effects now. A pity when Denmark is improving, that currency is impacted negatively. That is just how it is. We see that M&A adds SEK 92 million in sales and then you see SEK 612 million in negative organic growth. That is divided from, you can say, SEK 100 million is coming from closing down different cost units and branches in the south part of Sweden. We also had some tough comps in Norway. We had very high production last year in this quarter.

Of course, the market is impacting this as or in combination with our own selectiveness regarding what type of projects customers we are choosing to work with. On the other hand, that is giving a better margin. Talking about the margin and EBITDA, you see that we have increased the margin from 4.5% to 5.4%. I think this is impressive to be able to do that improvement in this type of market when we’re losing volumes. Main part is coming from the improvement in Denmark that we have been communicating a lot around. It’s also, of course, very good to see that we are meeting the things we have said and planned internally in Denmark. The Danish team are working hard and we can also see the result of this.

The other part of this is that we have been selecting what type of customers we are working together with, but also what type of projects and the pricing we have set in the orders we have been winning there for the last 12 months. We see that the margins in the orders we have won the previous quarters is on okay level or quite good level. We’ve been able to improve the margins in the order backlog the last quarter despite the fact that we have a decline in the market. That is again back to the focus on margin over volume. Other things that is impacting the margin is, of course, that we have had a really good cost control.

We have been able to lower the cost both in absolute numbers as well as in relative terms compared to the top line, which is really, really good from everyone in the organization. We can see some better productivity in the execution we are in the projects we’re delivering to the customers as well. All in all, you see the biggest basis points improvements in Denmark. We have some small improvement in Sweden and slightly more in Norway, then we are struggling in Finland. The Finnish market is still probably the toughest market we have in the Nordics. It will be the same the coming quarters, I think, but we are very selective. We are saying no thank you to projects because there are too low prices.

There is some increased activity in the market where we see some more discussions with customers and external forecasts regarding the markets in all countries say that it will be a bit unstable in the last part of 2025, but will most likely be improved in 2026 and 2027. If we look a bit at the order intake as well, you can see that the order intake increased 9% year over year. The order intake increased in Denmark, but decreased in all other countries. To the left you can see that we had an order intake at SEK 8.1 billion and actually that is the second highest order intake in any single quarter we have had in Bravida. If we look, you know, we have a seasonality in this industry and this business as well.

If we just look at the second quarter, this is actually the highest order intake we have had in the second quarter, which seems to be part of some kind of turnaround in the market because we can see that the margins in the new orders we have taken is at the same level as previous quarters or actually slightly, a bit, bit better. When we look at the order backlog, it increased with close to SEK 1.3 billion in the quarter, mainly driven by Denmark, but also Norway is adding to that. We are still struggling in Sweden and Finland. Activity is high or not high, it’s better, it is improved. I take away it’s not high, it’s better than before. Maybe that is the first sign of a change in the market. Let’s see what’s happening in the coming quarters.

The order backlog, as we have said many quarters before, the margin in the order backlog is okay or slightly better than before. Of course we wanted to have somewhat higher order backlog, but the market is what it is and again, we want to have a balance between the risk exposure and the new orders. We are winning ESG. Today 40% of all 8,500 vehicles are electrically driven. That is something we have worked with for many, many years. That also shows in the numbers. The LTM numbers for the CO2 emissions is down 15%. If we compare to 2020 and adjust for the growth we’ve had, we’re actually. Which I think is fantastic and also a thing that customers more and more are looking at going forward. As I said before, decreasing number of injuries, which is really good for all our employees. We are now at 5.2.

We see an improvement in Finland as well as in Sweden. Sweden, Norway has quite low numbers from before, but now we see some improvement in Finland as well. Finland and Denmark is the countries that we need to improve to get even lower on this KPI. Science Based Target has approved Bravida emission reduction targets. The climate targets are absolute emission targets for scope one and two and an engagement targets for Bravida’s scope three emissions. That is something we press released a couple of weeks ago as well. Regarding acquisitions, we have done one acquisition in the second quarter adding SEK 350 million, close to SEK 350 million in annual sales. In the beginning of Q3 we have done another acquisition in Finland adding SEK 45 million annually. There are interesting M&A discussions ongoing.

I think it’s fair to say that when we are discussing with targets, we can see that it’s demanding to find good enough targets because the market we are impacted by has also impacted the companies we want to buy and quite often a lot, lot more. We see in some cases that earnings is going down or that the order backlog is not healthy enough for us to buy. Again, we have discussions ongoing. It’s a bit more tricky to find targets we want to buy. We have the balance sheet to support future acquisition and we will do it when we think it’s a smart idea to do it. By that, I hand over to Petra who will take you through the different countries.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: Thank you, Mattias. We will start looking at Sweden and 2Q25, and net sales in Sweden came in at SEK 3.4 billion. That is a decrease of 9%, 10% organically. Then we add back 1%, 1% for the recent acquisitions that Mattias was talking about. That acquisition will bring us approximately SEK 350 million on an annual basis. Sales are down. A lot of the impact is due to a soft market in the southern part of Sweden. We are strict on our strategy to go for margin before volume, and that brings us a bit down on the project selections when we enter into new contracts. We have also done restructuring measures for non-profitable branches in Sweden. This was done in the latter half of last year, so the second half of last year, but gives an impact on the year-over-year comparison.

The closure of the branches that were non-profitable has impacted top line, however, stabilized the margin and is helping Sweden to come in on an EBITDA margin of 6.1%, which is up 10 basis points. When we look at the service sales, it is decreasing by 7% and installation sales by 11% in the Swedish market. Order intake: a lot of discussion on order intake this quarter, and we’re really looking forward to all the order intake that we are reporting in the quarter. In Sweden, we have a negative development of 13% year over year. However, sequentially, Sweden is also showing a stable order intake with the -SEK 24 million, which is negligible, not mentioning that. That’s the Swedish market. I also want to say that in Sweden, we are now seeing the service sales ratio bumping up 1 percentage point, going to 49%.

If we go for the Danish market, the Danish market was performing strongly in the quarter and came in at SEK 1.8 billion in sales. We have seen an organic growth of 6% in the Danish market, and then we have an FX effect which brings us down 5%. Denmark is showing an improved EBITDA margin, and here we have had quite significant improvements ongoing. The new business that is coming in in Denmark is coming in with good margins, and the non-profitable business or low profitability business that we have had in the books is gradually decreasing in volume. EBITDA margin is at 4.3% compared to 0.1% year over year. The order intake in Denmark is up 78%, and it’s largely explained by one big order. Of course, Denmark has a lot of order intake that is coming in in the quarter as well.

One big order in an industry company is coming in and really increasing the order intake for the quarter. The backlog is increasing with SEK 1.1 billion. The Danish market is really performing on its best side. We are, to Mattias’s point, expecting that the Danish market will continue improvements in the second half of the year. As for Norway, the Norwegian market came in on a revenue of SEK 1.3 billion. Norway was impacted by an FX of 5%. Altogether, the organic growth is showing a negative number of 13%. That makes -18% in Norway. In Norway, we are comparatively seeing a big decline partially because of the very good production and high production in Q2 2024 where a number of projects had high production growth.

On installation business, minus 27%, and it’s then explained with the installation going down year over year due to high production in Q2 2024. Services business is down 10%, and that brings the Norwegian ratio of services to 59% of the sales, which is quite high. Norway is also showing a good improvement in the EBITDA margin despite the decline in top line and has been working on both getting the unadjusted margin for projects on a good level as well as decreasing the administrative costs. 5.9% for the EBITDA margin. Order intake unchanged in the quarter, and the order backlog is improving for Norway with SEK 143 million sequentially. We go to Finland, which came in on the top line at SEK 0.6 billion, and Finland is showing a growth of negative 15%.

We have a soft market in Finland and are selective in what contracts we are taking, so there are ongoing tenders and discussions. However, we are selective not to get non-profitable business in, and we can also see that Finland is doing a good job on securing that they are having the right organization to the market and the market developments. The EBITDA margin comes in at 2.7%, which is a decrease from last year. However, a very good stabilizing of the EBITDA margin considering the market situation they are in. Order intake is decreasing 7% year over year, but also here we are seeing a sequentially unchanged order, and it’s a stable market in that sense. Just touching on the cash flow and operating cash flow then, as Mattias was saying, we are down on the cash flow, cash conversion to 80%.

We do have some puts and takes with the accounts receivables going down, going up, and accounts payables going down and some other movements. However, the main explanation to the cash situation is one large contract that we are having which has built up contractual assets. It’s nothing strange or odd. There are milestones that need to be ticked off before billing can be done and collection. We are expecting that to happen in the second half of the year. Touching briefly on our financial positions, with the cash balance, term loans and revolving credits, commercial papers, leasing, we have a net debt of SEK 3.1 billion in the quarter and that then brings the net debt to EBITDA margin to 1.4. That is what I had on the cash situation and I’m handing over to Mattias for bringing us back onto the market outlook.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: Thank you, Petra, for that gift. I think the market outlook is something everyone is interested in, of course. I think you can say overall the market has stabilized. Even if it’s still a tough market, it has stopped going down. It is more stable today than it was the previous time I was standing here and discussed. We think that the service activity continues to be stable. The service part, where we have some smaller projects, for example, renovation of offices, etc., when someone is leaving a building for signing a new contract and the tenants have to move in or the owner has to move in a new tenant, then there are changes to be made. I think that activity will most likely go up a bit. That has been down for a while.

Of course, we see continued challenges in the installation, and there are definitely variations between the different geographies. As we have seen in Denmark, the market in Denmark seems to be fantastic. It is in some places, but also in Denmark we are struggling in some areas as well as we are in Sweden and Norway, where we have some great places and some other places where the market is very, very low. There are, though, favorable areas that we still continue to see good demand within. That is, of course, infrastructure, defence facilities, some parts of industry investments, and civil engineering. That gives us, and I think maybe a company like Bravida, better opportunities than the average company in the sector because we have the knowledge, we have the resources, we are in the places where those projects are going to be built.

We also have the competencies from the first part of the change, the design. We have the management capacity, and we have a lot of resources who can help our customers and help them deliver quality and the services in the time they are expecting. In this market, we will absolutely retain our focus on margin over volume, because that is so important. You have heard me say that so many times. The reason is it’s still chances to grow in this business, of course, but that means that you need to participate in a price competition that we think is silly or not good enough.

I think we have shown in the last five, six, I don’t know how many quarters we have had a tough market, that we have been able to be selective but also continue to deliver margin that is stable even if the top line is declining. We will continue that focus on margin over volume. Absolutely. The market will, due to external companies who are experts in this area, probably be pretty much the same in the last two quarters of this year. We expect the market to pick up in 2026 and 2027, and in some areas, actually their forecast is that they will pick up quite a lot. Let’s see what happens. That’s too early to say. A summary of the second quarter: 2025 sales is down 9%. Installation is down 12%. Quite stable, even if we have lost some small projects on the service side as well.

We have a negative organic growth at 8%. We are growing from acquisitions. Increased order intake in Denmark year over year, order backlog is increasing in Denmark and Norway. Remember what I said about the order intake in the second quarter. It is the second highest we ever had. I think that is showing something at least in a tough market. Improved EBITDA, improved margin. Fantastic, when we are facing this tough market condition, and it is a combination of being selective of contracts we are entering into, great cost control, good productivity, but also better pricing and better contracts, especially in Denmark. That is the result we are seeing now. We see an improved EBITDA margin in all countries except for Finland. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are improving the margin. We have cash conversion at 80%.

Petra just told you that we have some milestones we need to reach before we can invoice the sum of money that actually takes the cash conversion back to the same level as last quarter. That is expected to happen during the coming two quarters. On the ESG side, we are improving the LTIFR number and we are improving the CO2 emissions. Finally, we are improving the EPS with 13%. With that, Petra and I, for the first time, open up for Q and A session and let’s see how we can handle this together. I think we will manage quite okay. Let’s see.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: I think we will.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: You will, we will. Together.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: If you wish to ask a question.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: Please dial Key 5 on your telephone keypad.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: To enter the queue, if you wish to withdraw your question.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: Please dial 6 on your telephone keypad.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: The next question comes from Carl Ragnastam from Nordea.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: Please go ahead.

Good morning, it’s Karl from Nordea. A couple of questions. Firstly, Mattias, you’re guiding for quite some substantial uptick in activity in the market. It is of course on a quotation basis, but we’ve heard rumors before that it’s a fairly okay quotation level, right? Customers have not really been ready to push the button to really get those firm orders. Do you see that the customers are more willing to sort of push the button today for you to get firm orders? Is there any difference here in the quotation uptick you’re talking about compared to before?

Yeah, I think just to make everyone understand your question, Carl, what we have said before, I think we start, in the last phase of last year, we said that there was better activity in the market regarding tenders, etc., in November, December, beginning of January. When President Trump was elected and started to discuss about all the tariffs, etc., that activity was paused for a couple, two to three months. Now we can see that the activity is coming back again and I would say that it’s slightly better or quite more often. They are pushing at the bottom, as you said, because it has improved a bit, not a lot, but the activity is back again and now it seems like more projects are going to start.

A small difference, not a big difference, but I think you understand me correctly, that it has changed a bit to the positive side.

That’s very good here. Also, looking at, of course, I know that you have a high degree of variable cost that’s obviously shown in your resilience. With the order backlog down now to SEK 8.3 billion versus SEK 10 billion last year, to what extent do you need to do more SG&A measures or cuts in order to sustain a decent margin with lower volumes, I guess in Sweden, that I’m talking about?

Yeah, interesting question. I think the honest answer is we don’t know how much, but we know that we’re working on it. I think we have shown this quarter what we have done enough. I think I mentioned we have actually both in absolute numbers and then relative numbers actually taken out cost. That is one reason why we can present a solid margin. Of course, both me and Petra, we will continue to work on the cost side. As you know, Carl, it’s two different types of cost. You have the SG&A cost centrally, as you can say, and then you have some administrative cost locally that you need, or direct cost as well that you need to adjust if the local demand is increasing or decreasing. That is part of our business model and that is you are asking and discussing that more in a market like this.

That is something we are discussing even when we have a really good market, because in a good market we still have some places where we are underperforming, etc. This is part of our daily management work, management job to do to make sure that we are adjusting cost. To question how much, I don’t know. Will we work on it? Absolutely.

Okay, so you feel comfortable in maintaining the Swedish margin despite the backlog being quite a bit lower than entering mid 2025 and onwards?

I also think that we have done a lot already. That is the reason why we can present a solid margin in Q2. Maybe we need to do more, but absolutely, in some places we have to do more because we know we are managing this company not out of the SEK 8 billion in order backlog on Swedish level. We are managing this company because we have all integrated in the same platform, depending on the order backlog they have in Istad or Falkenberg or in Kiruna in the north part of Sweden. That is something we are working on daily.

That’s very clear. On Denmark, another step in the right direction of margin improvements, clearly. Would you say that the biggest steps are done, meaning that reaching the 5% or even above, will it take a bit longer time from here and maybe be into 2026 or mid 2026? What is your sense of what is the route to the 5% from here, would you say? Of course, you’re still facing deliveries of some tough margin projects, right? Could you give some flavor into how sure you are that you’ll reach the 5% in the foreseeable future?

I guess you’re talking about Denmark now, Carl. That’s how.

Yeah, Denmark for sure. Sorry.

No, but I think we have done a lot in Denmark, starting with December, January 24th, I think it was when I was an interim. Then Christian came in on May 1st, 2024. We have done a lot since then and Christian and his team have done a fantastic job. First, we have started. We have changed a lot of the management. We have changed, as you know, the why, the how we are pricing our bids and that means both in terms of risk, but also what type of ambition we have in the margin in both service and projects. We have much better self-confidence in the Danish organization today because we have seen that even if we have increased the prices both on margin as well as on risk, we still are winning a lot of projects.

In combination with a changed pricing strategy and a new management team, Christian and his team have driven a tough work regarding the loyalty to our Bravida way, the way of working, but also how we follow up the business, steer it. This is what we can see today in an improved margin. We also have a much, much more customer focus. We are working together with customers and we can see that the customers are more happy with our way of acting with the delivery. They are more keen on working together with us today than they were 15 to 30 months ago. Now we are winning the right contracts to the right customers. The next phase is up to us to deliver, to show that we also can have a solid execution.

The path to 5% is better contracts, better way of working, better management and fewer problem projects that we have to deliver upon. I am stating in the report that we will be close to 5% and earlier we have said around 4.5% I think. That means that we are a bit more positive about the Danish organization and their performance today than we have been before.

Yeah, for sure. Thank you.

Thank you, Carl.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: The next question comes from Johan Longqvist Sunden from DNB Carnegie.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: Please go ahead.

Morning Mattias and Petra. Thank you for taking my questions.

Good morning.

First one is on installation volumes. I’m just curious to hear how you think your order backlog, when it will be activated, because now we see that installation order backlog as relation to LTM installation sales is up quite a bit and a bit above one. At what point do you believe you should be able to start grow installation?

Yeah, that is a guidance that we normally don’t give. The big part of the order backlog increase coming from Denmark is starting not immediately, but I think you can say that that is quite normal. It’s not a very long project that will start in this year. You can say that the new orders are not projects that will start very far ahead. It will start as normal projects normally do, coming into our portfolio. It’s not long projects that will start very, very late. It is quite many that start right away. You can say one example. For example, we have in Norway where we have some good order intakes as well, that has already started. It is a mix.

You don’t dare to call one group.

No, but the last report we had, we said that we are not expecting positive growth this year. We still think that we will struggle a bit on the growth side for the rest of 2025. It will be more normal, more stabilized than before. Again, the margin is more important. I’m more relaxed to be able to present a margin improvement for you today than I had been to have had a growth expansion at the same time as we have lost on the margin side, because that means future problems instead.

Excellent. Just maybe follow up to Carl’s previous question on Denmark. You’re quite clear on your guidance on full year margins. How much of a plateau phase do you think 2026 will be for Denmark?

Yeah, that is an internal discussion as well. No, but I think we can see fantastic improvement from the Danish team, of course, but I think we should be a bit cautious regarding 2026 as well because we are not a tech company. We are in a very mature market where prices are quite stable. We can improve our execution even more in Denmark, of course, and the mix between good and bad projects can improve and will improve. I think I stay with what I’ve said before. 2025 is a year of transition. You can say 2026 will be better than 2025, but I don’t think it will take us to—you can’t draw the line, continue the line up in 2026, but I expect an improvement in 2026, of course. Let’s come back to that. Let’s deliver on 2025 before.

Excellent. My final question is a little bit on the dispute you have in Denmark and Norway. Just to have an update on timing, what to expect for those two disputes that will be finalized during 2025, if there is any potential cash inflow, when that can happen.

No changes. Actually, the Norwegian one will come up in September. I think it’s the second half of September and will be discussed in September and October. We won’t, I don’t think we will have any result in Q3 for that one, but we will most likely know in the beginning of Q4 the result of that. Cash flow wise, I think that will come in this year as well. Denmark, the small one in Denmark, is also up for arbitration in Q4. I think it was quite late in Q4, and that means that we’ll most likely have a result in Q4 but no cash impact until the beginning of 2026. I guess that’s the best estimates we can give today, but otherwise nothing new.

There has been some discussion with the Norwegian customers that actually gives us a bit more confidence than we had before, but nothing really new.

If we just stay on the cash flow and you talk about milestone payments on a big infrastructure project, when do you expect you’re passing the milestone needed for you to send the invoice?

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: It is one of the big infrastructure projects that is working out according to plan. It is actually going as contracted. We have been working for a long period on advance payments. We have had a good cash inflow for a long time period in this specific project and contract. Now we have come into the part where we are executing on securing milestones for getting the billing and invoicing out, and we’re expecting that will come in the second half of the year. We’re actually expecting that part will come into Q3 and then in Q4. That is according to the plan. Quite a lot is built up in the asset, but that’s how it goes in the large projects.

A pretty strong cash flow in the second half this year should be expected. It is like.

To tell you honestly, I would have to know how the cash flow looked like because you’re probably going to compare. We’re all going to compare with last year, so I can’t really say that.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: No, I think it’s.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: We are expecting cash in from that project. Absolutely.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: We have quite many big projects, large projects now where we have had a lot of pre-invoicing or will have pre-invoicing, and those projects also impact the history a bit. It’s not as normal as before, but we have been quite successful in negotiating good contracts, etc. We expect we have a target at around 100% cash conversion, and that is what we try to deliver upon.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: We are expecting an improvement from today’s. Absolutely, yeah.

Excellent. Thanks for asking. Get back in line.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: Thank you so much.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: As a reminder, if you wish to.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: ask a question, please dial on your telephone keypad.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: Thank you. We know there are a lot of companies reporting today and maybe there are some vacations as well or maybe it’s because you can find all the answers in the report. I don’t know. Tough market, but I’m so happy to be able to present an improved margin, improved increased earnings, EPS up 13%, and that is a result of hard work in many places from many people within Bravida. I want to say thank you to all employees, thank you to all customers, thank you to Petra for the first report together with me. It feels fantastic to have Petra from my side, and with that we say thank you and wish you all a great summer.

Petra Vranjes, CFO, Bravida: Yes, thank you, and have a great summer. You too.

Mattias Johansson, Group President and CEO, Bravida: Oh, thank you.

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