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Volati AB reported its third-quarter 2025 earnings, showing a solid performance with sales reaching SEK 2 billion and EBITDA at SEK 200 million. The company demonstrated a 9% growth in overall sales and an 11% increase in EBITDA compared to the previous year. Following the earnings report, Volati’s stock price rose by 3.91%, reflecting investor confidence in its strategic direction and growth potential. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains strong liquidity with a current ratio of 1.86, while its revenue growth stands at 8.48% over the last twelve months.
Key Takeaways
- Volati’s Q3 sales hit SEK 2 billion, marking a 9% increase.
- EBITDA grew by 11% to SEK 200 million.
- The stock price increased by 3.91% following the earnings announcement.
- Volati plans a potential spin-off of its Salix Group in 2026.
- The company aims for a 15% annual growth rate to close its growth gap by 2027.
Company Performance
Volati’s performance in Q3 2025 reflects its resilient strategy amid challenging market conditions. The company’s focus on acquisitions and organic growth has contributed to its robust financial results. With a return on equity of 19%, Volati continues to outperform many of its peers in the Nordic market, despite facing headwinds in the construction and agricultural sectors. InvestingPro analysis reveals that the company has raised its dividend for three consecutive years, with a current dividend yield of 1.92%. InvestingPro subscribers have access to 8 additional key insights about Volati’s financial health and growth prospects.
Financial Highlights
- Revenue: SEK 2 billion, up 9% year-over-year
- EBITDA: SEK 200 million, up 11% year-over-year
- Net debt to EBITDA ratio: 2.8
- Return on Equity: 19%
Market Reaction
Following the announcement, Volati’s stock price increased by 3.91%, reaching a new level of investor optimism. The stock’s performance is notable, considering the broader market challenges in the Nordic building trade sector. The company’s strategic acquisitions and focus on operational efficiencies have likely contributed to this positive market sentiment. With a beta of 1.52 and a market capitalization of $960 million, InvestingPro data indicates the stock trades at a relatively high P/E multiple of 41x. Detailed valuation metrics and comprehensive analysis are available through InvestingPro’s exclusive research reports.
Outlook & Guidance
Looking ahead, Volati aims to close its growth gap by the end of 2027, targeting an EBITDA range of SEK 1.1-1.5 billion. The company has set an ambitious goal of achieving over 15% annual growth, leveraging both organic development and acquisitions. According to InvestingPro forecasts, net income is expected to grow this year, supported by the company’s strong financial health score and consistent profitability over the last twelve months. A potential spin-off of the Salix Group is planned for 2026, which could unlock further value for shareholders.
Executive Commentary
CEO Andreas Stenbäck emphasized the importance of organic development in closing the growth gap, stating, "We will see accelerated organic development. That is what will help us to close this growth gap." Martin Aronsson, CEO of Salix Group, added, "Once demand recovers, we believe... we have a good position to grow both organically as well as through acquisitions."
Risks and Challenges
- Supply chain disruptions could impact future performance.
- The Nordic market’s ongoing challenges, particularly in construction and agriculture, may hinder growth.
- Currency fluctuations could affect profitability and financial results.
- The success of strategic acquisitions remains uncertain and could pose integration risks.
Q&A
During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the company’s acquisition pipeline and strategies to close the growth gap. Volati reported having strong qualified leads and a better positioning than in recent years. The management highlighted organic development and reclaiming profitability as key strategies for future growth, as markets recover.
Volati’s Q3 2025 performance underscores its strategic resilience and growth potential, despite facing market challenges. The company’s focus on acquisitions, operational efficiencies, and future growth initiatives positions it well for continued success.
Full transcript - Volati (VOLO) Q3 2025:
Moderator: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today’s product cost presentation with Volati. With us presenting today, we have the CEO of Volati, Andreas Stenbäck, and CFO of Salix Group, Martin Aronsson. We’ll open up for a Q&A after the presentation. You can either type in your question, or if you’re calling in, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to mute yourself when you get the word. With that said, please go ahead with your presentation.
Andreas Stenbäck, CEO, Volati: Thank you. Thank you for listening in to our quarterly presentation. We’re happy to have Martin Aronsson with us today as well. He’s the CEO of Salix Group, and he will tell you a bit more about that platform or business area once we get there. Let’s start with our presentation, and I’ll go directly into page three and talk a bit about the most recent quarter. I’m very happy to see that we’re back to organic growth, even though it’s a small number. It’s thanks to a very strong organic growth in Salix Group, which shows a positive and strong number. It leaves us with an overall sales growth of 9%. The EBITDA growth of 11% is good. It’s much thanks to Salix Group, which shows a very strong year-over-year growth of 50%, which Martin will tell you a bit about more later on.
At Etiketto, we had a decline, a small decline in the quarter, and that’s mainly because of a disappointing slow start in the quarter. We have, however, seen that the development has gradually improved in the course of the third quarter. In Industry, three out of four platforms showed EBITDA in line with or better than last year, while we have Corroventa that showed a decline because of the lack of floodings. We’ll get into that a bit more later on in the presentation. Looking at the numbers, sales and EBITDA already commented on that, but we’re at SEK 2 billion in sales and SEK 200 million in EBITDA. The operating cash flow increased by 11%, roughly SEK 200 million, which was very much in line with what we expected. That has also left us with a lower net debt to EBITDA compared to last quarter.
We’re now at 2.8, which then leaves us with room for acquisition. Specifically, if you take into account that we have a strong Q4 ahead of us, that’s typically a strong cash flow quarter. Taking a step back, looking at the last 12 months’ numbers and the yearly numbers, we’re now at SEK 8.4 billion of turnover and SEK 720 million of EBITDA. As I usually comment, Volati is best evaluated over time, and the average yearly EBITDA growth since 2019 has been 16%. What one could also see on this slide is that since 2021, we haven’t lived up to our financial growth goal of a growth of at least 15% per year. That basically means that we should double every fifth year. Since 2021, we’ve seen a slowdown, and that is, I would say, solely because we’ve had challenging market conditions in the majority of our platforms.
That also means that we have created a growth gap that we need to close in order to live up to our financial goal. On this next slide, I have a way of illustrating that growth gap. This basically means that if we are to close that by the end of 2027, we need to show an EBITDA of between SEK 1.1 billion and SEK 1.5 billion of EBITDA. In recent years, when we’ve been meeting lower demand, we have taken long-term structural measures within the platforms. I’ve spoken a lot about that in recent quarterly calls. These will then benefit us when the market returns. What does that then mean? That means that we will show accelerated organic development. That is what will help us to close this growth gap.
At the same time, we will need to maintain the same acquisition pace that we’ve done in the last years. We need to both work with the organic development and maintain the acquisition-driven growth. This was to touch a bit upon our financial growth target. Again, we should grow at least 15% per average annual growth. What we’ve seen now in this quarter is that we’re at 10%. We’ve actually now had five consecutive quarters where we have improved that number. In order to close the growth gap, we need to surpass that financial goal for some time. We need to be beyond 15% for quite some time in order to close the growth gap. Also, what can be seen is once we start showing growth, which we have now done, the return on equity is starting to improve.
We’ve had quite a few quarters now of improvement also on return on equity. We’re now at 19%. We should be at at least 20%. We’re clearly getting there. When it comes to the net debt to EBITDA, we are in line with last year. That means room for acquisition. The next part of this presentation is to dig in a bit more into the three business areas. I am very happy to introduce Martin Aronsson, who will start by telling you a bit more about Salix Group. Thank you, Andreas. My name is Martin Aronsson, and I’ve been the CEO of Salix Group for just over four years. It’s a very exciting opportunity for me to be here and say a few words about Salix Group today.
I would like to start with the last point here and tell you that our headquarters is in Malmö, and we’re altogether some 700 employees in Salix Group. A proud, engaged, and a competent team, which is the core of our business. I’m very, very happy to be here and tell a little bit more about what we do. What we do is that we are a proud trading company that primarily provides products for the building trade and the building industry. That is roughly 80% of our business. There is also a strong offering of products for agriculture and forestry and home and garden. As you can see on this chart, we have a long history. We were established back in 2006 as a group, but we have roots back to the 19th century.
We have a number of companies with long experience in the market and in the trade. We have done some 14 acquisitions since 2019. The combination of operational excellence and acquisitions is how we would like to grow and develop our business. Our main market is the Nordic region with a focus on Sweden. We have some two-thirds of our business in Sweden today. We are, of course, curious to further explore opportunities in the Nordics and even outside the Nordic region. I would like to tell you a little bit on the right-hand side of the chart as well. We have three business areas in Salix Group. As you can see, we have great and strong businesses and some very strong brands. We combine that with an excellent reach in the trade in the Nordic region.
This is how we believe that we best can create value, the combination of strong business, strong brands, and an exceptional reach into the Nordic region in terms of the building trade and the building industry in particular. If we move on to the result for the quarter, we deliver 19% growth in the quarter. You heard Andreas saying that we would like to close the gap. We leave, I hope, three to four years behind us where the market has not been so easy. The building market in the Nordics has been challenging. We see that we have maybe lost volume in the region of 25%, even 30% in this period. This is a quarter behind us where we see organic growth of around 8%. We see this growth coming from, in particular, the DIY segment.
The home improvement and DIY segment is where we see the indications of growth, and that impacts us in a positive way. The DIY segment, in the way we measure it, is around 20% of our total exposure. An 8% organic growth and overall 19% growth for the quarter. If we move on and look at the EBITDA, the EBITDA ends up a little bit above 50% growth. As you can see, 12% EBITDA margin. This comes from that we over a period of time, as Andreas also said, have done structural measures. We have worked with supply chain efficiencies, purchase improvements, and also, if you look back here over the last couple of years with the volume loss, we have corrected our prices, price increases, price corrections, as well as a more normalized Swedish krona.
The FRAB cost for us is more normalized, meaning that we have now a platform for both internal measures that we have done over the period and a more normalized outside environment that we believe that we are in a strong position for further growth in Salix Group. When demand recovers, we believe, together with great people, engaged employees and managers, that we have a good position to grow both organically as well as through acquisitions. Thank you, Martin. Now we’re going to talk a bit about Etiketto. As can be seen, Etiketto showed a strong sales growth in the quarter, which is attributable to the acquisition of Cleever Group in Germany earlier this year. Organically, which I touched upon earlier, we had a slower start of the quarter than expected in Sweden, which, however, has gradually improved.
As expected, we’ve seen a decline in the margins, as Cleever, which was roughly one-fourth of the total sales in the quarter, are operating under significantly lower margins than the group as a whole. This is where our value creation through acquisitions comes in. As can be seen on the graph on this side, we did a number of acquisitions in 2020 to 2022, which basically left us with a margin of 15.6% in 2022. What then happened is that we gradually improved the margins over the course of two years, which was basically done by improving the profits in the acquired companies. These are the kind of measures which we do when we do the acquisitions. This is a core way of how we create value in Etiketto.
Looking at Industry then, basically, three out of four platforms showed an organic development of EBITDA in line with or better than last year. We had Corroventa, which came in significantly lower because of the lack of summer storms and floodings. I want to point out that the core business of Corroventa is developing as expected. The ones of you that have followed us over the years know that when we have strong years or summers, in particular in Corroventa, meaning that we have floodings where we need to help and support our customers both through sales and our rental fleet, we have a very strong profit contribution from Corroventa. We didn’t see this. It’s been a very dry summer this year. If we exclude Corroventa, we see improved margins and a significantly improved EBITDA, actually, in the business area Industry.
That is despite the markets for Etiketto, particularly Tornum Group and S:t Eriks, still being challenging. Why do we still see this improvement? Similar to what we’ve done in Salix Group, we’ve been focusing on these long-term structural measures to meet the lower demands in the platforms that we have. Tornum Group is still facing a historically weak market. It’s the agri market that we mainly operate within. We’re also meeting some softer comparables in the second half of 2025. S:t Eriks is still facing a similar market as in previous quarters, meaning that we have a weak demand in the construction segment. What one needs to keep in mind is that S:t Eriks is a bit later in the cycle than, for example, Salix Group. We haven’t seen the real uptick in the construction segment for S:t Eriks, while we have a stable demand in the infrastructure segment.
Let’s go into the acquisition segment of the presentation. The pace for the last two years, I would say, has been okay. We have been and are working very actively on building an M&A pipeline in our platforms. Right now, I would say that the outlook is positive. We have several qualified leads that we are working on. As I’ve said before in these types of calls, M&A takes time, and a deal is not done until it’s closed. There is still uncertainty out there. I would say that our deal pipeline is good, and I would consider it’s very qualified. Looking back at what we’ve done since 2020, basically, what this slide shows you is that our add-on acquisition strategy to the platform works. We’ve done 27 acquisitions, adding some SEK 4.2 billion of annual sales.
In the last 12 months, we have concluded and closed three acquisitions, adding some SEK 750 million of annual turnover. In order to make the acquisitions, we have to have also the capacity. I already touched upon that the net debt to EBITDA is where we expect it to be within our range or our financial goal range. We have had also a strong cash flow in the third quarter, and we expect yet another strong cash flow quarter in Q4 because that’s how it typically is. We will continue to expand the M&A room further. Once the market comes back, once we start closing that growth gap that I’ve been talking about, both me and Martin, the net debt to EBITDA ratio will improve as also we will get an organic EBITDA expansion.
Before concluding this presentation, I have some exciting news that we shared in our quarterly report, and that is that the Volati Board of Directors has decided to evaluate a possible spin-off and separate listing of Salix Group. Salix Group came into Volati through the acquisition of Le Monde Industriel about 10 years ago now. Since then, Salix Group has developed into a very strong and independent platform within our group. We will now evaluate the possibility for Salix Group and also the remaining Volati to pursue the continued value creation independently. This is an evaluation which will now take place, and the ambition is to conclude it and have a possible planned listing during the year 2026. To summarize, we had a strong development, I would say, EBITDA development in the quarter.
The growth is picking up, and it’s very much thanks to Salix Group, which had a 50% EBITDA growth. We do see the effects of the long-term structural measures. Salix Group is a good example of that, but we do also see that in some of the platforms within the business area industry. Once the market returns, we expect accelerated organic growth. We do also have, I would say, a strong pipeline of qualified M&A leads, meaning that we have a good foundation for continued growth through acquisitions. Finally, and importantly, we will now initiate the evaluation of a separate listing of Salix Group. With that, I leave the word for any potential questions to Martin or myself.
Moderator: Thank you very much for that presentation, Andreas and Martin. Yes, let’s open up for the Q&A section here. If you’re calling in and would like to ask a question, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to mute yourself when you get the word. You can also type in your questions in the form located to the right. We’ll start with the first question here. You have previously done a spin-off of Bokusgruppen. What is your experience from that?
Andreas Stenbäck, CEO, Volati: It’s a good question. We had, I would say, a successful spin-off of Bokusgruppen in 2021. They actually had a quarterly report yesterday. I think since that listing, they have had a revenue increase of some 15+%. They have significantly improved their margins, and I think the share price has almost doubled. From my point of view, Bokusgruppen is a good example of how separate listing can reduce complexity, increase focus, release energy to create a lot of shareholder value.
Moderator: Thank you for that answer. You said in the CEO statement that the acquisition pipeline is strong. Can you elaborate on that?
Andreas Stenbäck, CEO, Volati: Yes. As I said also during the presentation, M&A is long-time work. We’ve been now focusing on add-on acquisition, value-adding add-on acquisitions to our platform for many years. I think that hard work has now put us in a position where we have several good qualified M&A leads in also several of the platforms, leaving us in a good place. With that said, it’s all about getting the whole way and closing the deals. Sometimes it gets paused along the way and postponed. Sometimes you simply don’t get an agreement with the seller. Where we are right now, I see that we are in a better position than we’ve been for, I would say, many years.
Moderator: Thank you, Andreas, for that answer. In the presentation, you showed a slide about the growth gap that needs to be closed. How exactly will you achieve that?
Andreas Stenbäck, CEO, Volati: It’s another good question. I think what’s important here to think about is that, yes, M&A is an important growth driver for us. The way I look at it, we’ve had a good M&A pace the last couple of years. We had a pause, I think it was late 2022, early 2023. Other than that, we have been able to maintain the acquisition pace at a fairly good pace. The growth gap will be closed by organically taking back some of the profitability that we have lost thanks to lower demands in, basically, we have had a tough market in the majority of our platforms. While we have taken the opportunity now the last couple of years to work on these long-term structural measures, that will benefit us once the markets come back. We will see an accelerated EBITDA growth or profit growth.
The gap will mainly be closed by basically organically development and taking back the profit once the markets return.
Moderator: Thank you. That’s a wrap of the Q&A section here. Thank you very much. Andreas, do you have any concluding remarks before we end this session?
Andreas Stenbäck, CEO, Volati: Yes. Basically, what I would like to say is that, and I think it’s very obvious that we have a lot going on, which, of course, gives us a lot of energy at Volati and Salix Group. We do see some positive signs now in some of our end markets. The M&A activity is where it should be. Now we also have a possible spin-off of Salix Group to evaluate. There will be a lot happening around Volati and Salix Group in the next coming years. I think it will be very exciting to follow us.
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