Bravida Q1 2025, Summary

Bravida, a leading partner company specializing in heating, plumbing, electricity, ventilation, and security systems, reported its first quarter results for 2025, showcasing a stable performance in a tricky market environment.

Despite net sales declining by 5% to 6,888 million Swedish Krona, Bravida demonstrated improved margins across all four countries of operation. The EBIT margin rose to 4.5%, up from 4% in the previous year, driven by continued profitability improvements in the Danish business and seasonality factors.

The order intake decreased by 1%, reflecting Bravida's selective approach to new projects and customers. However, the order backlog increased in all countries by 658 million Swedish Krona compared to the previous quarter, indicating a healthy pipeline of projects with favorable margins.

Bravida's financial position remained robust, with an operating cash flow of around 300 million Swedish Krona and a cash conversion rate above 100%. The company's low debt level, with a net debt to EBITDA ratio of approximately one, provides flexibility for future growth and acquisitions.

On the sustainability front, Bravida reported impressive achievements, with nearly 40% of its 8,800 vehicles now electrically driven, leading to a 15% reduction in CO2 emissions from vehicles over the last 12 months. The company's injury rate (LTIFR) also improved, nearing the group target of 5.5.

While acknowledging the challenges in the installation business, Bravida's service activity remained stable, contributing close to 50% of the revenue. The company expects 2025 to be a difficult year, but with easier comparisons ahead and a focus on margin over volume, Bravida is well-positioned to navigate the market conditions.

Looking ahead, Bravida plans to maintain its project-selective strategy and capitalize on opportunities in sectors such as infrastructure, industry, defense facilities, and civil engineering. The company's strong financial stability and competent workforce position it favorably to secure attractive contracts.

With an attractive pipeline of potential acquisitions and a supportive balance sheet, Bravida remains committed to its growth strategy while prioritizing profitability and cash generation.


This summary was written by our AI Analyst Tim! If you find something that does not seem right let us know and we will correct him.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this presentation of Bravida's first quarter report of 2025. My name is Matsias Juhanson, CEO of Bravida, and on my side is CFO. So then we start. Thank you, everyone, for joining. And as you know, Bravida is a partner company who makes your life a much lot easier. We make sure that your daily routines is working. We help you with systems regarding heating and plumbing, electricity, ventilation, security system, etc. So we actually want to create the experience of when it just works and make your life life to a better place to be in. Ravida, we are acting in a very tricky market for the moment and still we are able to show quite a stable performance, I would say. And the reason behind that is that we are in many different places. We work with a lot of different types of customers in different segments. And we are providing our services throughout all 14,000 skilled employees. 84,000 customers, 350 branches in 40 regions in four countries. And when we sum this up, it's actually add up to close to 30 billion in revenue. So, and the highlights from the first quarter, as you all know, we are in a very tricky market and still, or maybe because of a very selective way of working with new projects, customers, etc. And high focus on cost control. We have been able to present an improved margin in all four countries. The net sales is down with 5%. The order intake decreased 1%. And the reason behind that is because the only way to handle a market like this is to be very selective on the business we try to win. Growing this business is the same as we are exposing ourselves to high risk. So we are very selective. But we can see an increased order intake in Norway, Finland and Denmark. The order backlog increased in all countries compared to the previous quarter and all in all with 658 million. EBIT margin is up to 4.5% compared to 4% last year. And one of the reasons is, of course, that we can see a continued improvement in our Danish business. And you also should remember that we have some seasonality regarding the margin. The Q1 is always the lowest, the quarter with the lowest margin. The cash flow is good. The operating cash flow close to 300 million, cash conversion above 100%. And we have a very strong balance sheet. low debt level and the debt compared to EBITDA is around one. And that, of course, gives us opportunity to continue to develop Ravida going forward. We have really good scores on the sustainability KPIs like the injuries and the CO2 emissions in our business. The net sales, the bridge from Q1 last year is that we have a negative organic growth with 460 million. We are adding M&A, 120 million plus, and then we have some currency effect around 50 million and that actually is taking us to the 6,888 million in sales. Organic growth is negative, we can still see a stable performance in the service business, which is good and that is something that is one of the advantages of Bravida. Close to half percent of our sales revenue is service. the other part is installation. EBIT in Q1, despite the fact that the revenue is down, we are able to increase our EBIT money wise and also improve the margin. So the EBIT is 307 million compared to 294 last year and the margin is four and a half compared to four. We see margin improvements in all countries and Denmark is the country who's done the best improvement from 1-3.5% and that is pretty much in line with what we have expected and what we have communicated from before as well. EBIT margin in Sweden and Finland is up 10 basis points and Norway who has the highest margin in this quarter is 5.2% compared to 4.9%. The order intake and the backlog we still are acting in a very tough market, but the order intake very much depending on the strong service business is up. It's up in Norway, Denmark and Finland. It decreased in Sweden, but you should remember that last year we had a really big contract coming into the books in Q1 24, that was the underground in Stockholm. And the order backlog increased in all countries. And the order backlog is only containing the business regarding the installation and not the service business. ESG, we want to be the market leader in this segment and today we have close to 40% of all our 8,800 vehicles electrically driven and that of course give a really solid improvement in the CO2 emissions from vehicles. Down 15% the last 12 months. And if we compare to 2020 as a base and also take into consideration the high growth we have had since that, the Improvement is actually 38%. The injuries LTIFR is close to our group Target now at five and a half. Sweden and Finland is improving a lot. Norway are already on low. numbers. So we hope that we can improve this in Denmark in the coming quarter so we on group level can reach our target. Because it's of course very important for us to have a safe environment for all our employees as well as the customers we're working together with. Acquisitions, it has been a slow quarter in Q1, but last year we did 10 acquisitions, slightly less than we normally do in a normal year, but that is not depending on the low amount of opportunities we're having. We still have a really strong pipeline, but we are very thorough about what acquisitions we are doing. And we have started Q2 by doing one quite large acquisition, adding close to 350 million in the second quarter. And we think that we can continue to use our balance sheet going forward. because of the strong pipeline and the momentum we have due to our model of doing acquisitions as well, because we see that our way of doing acquisition is seen as a more favorable one than some of the other players in the market are using. In Denmark, we haven't focused on acquisitions so far. We have focused on improving our own profitability, but now we are opening up for discussions, starting to work in Denmark with acquisitions as well. And in Norway, been a bit of blocked as well for internal reasons because of the integration of TuneSvett, which is going due to plan in Q1. They actually were merged into our ERP system and it is still in line with what we have expected. Opportunities are many, pipeline is strong and we still see that the price levels are very stable. So, with that, I hand over to you, Osa, and let you present the different segments. Thank you. Then I will take you through the countries. And as usual, we will start with Sweden, where we had a decrease in sales of 6%, ending up at 3.3 billion. And this is explained by the soft market that we have in the southern part of Sweden and also our strict project selection due to that. the southern part of Sweden had a volume decrease of 250 million year on year. So we had a sales service sales that was down minus 10% and installation was down minus three. The organic growth was 8% negative and we had some growth from acquisitions of 1%. EBIT was 165 versus 172. But even though we had a soft market and decreased sales, we managed to defend and also increase slightly our margin to 5.1% compared to 5.2% last year. The order intake was 10% minus year on year. And if you look at last year, we had two larger orders coming in to to the books in Q1. We had an order backlog that increased during the quarter in Sweden. Moving on to Norway, net sales was down 12% to 1.4 billion. This is due to decreasing sales in the installation business. And last year we had a couple of projects, mainly hospital with high production in the first quarter. So the comps were pretty tough. The organic growth was negative 10% and there was a negative effect of FX also on 2%. But I can say that installation growth was actually down 25% due to these high comps that we had last year. EBIT 74 versus 79. and also here we managed to improve the EBITA margin despite the lower sales to 5.2% compared to 4.9% and the margin Improvement is coming from the installation business the order intake in Norway was plus eight percent and the order intake is coming from installation that was up 37% in the in the quarter. And we're happy to see that. We're also happy to see that it's healthy projects that we are getting into the order backlog. And the order backlog increased by 173 million in the quarter. Denmark. Happy to see that Denmark is continuing to improve as planned. And in Denmark we have a growth in sales of five percent. So ending up at 1.6. 7 billion. And this is due to a strong growth in the service business, plus 5%. We also have organic growth in Denmark on 5%. EBIT is 60 versus 16 last year. So we are. I'm really happy to see that this Improvement is continuing and the EBIT margin improved to 3.5. 5% versus 1% last year. And it's due to better performance in both installation and the service business. Order intake is up 4%. This is coming from the service business. And the order backlog increased by 142 million in the quarter. Then Finland. Finland is a tough market. The sales growth was down 4% and the growth in the installation business was minus 10 and the growth in service business was plus 11. Net sales ended up at 548 million. It was a negative organic growth of minus 17. We've done some acquisitions in Finland, so the growth of my acquisitions was plus 13%. EBIT versus seven, last year and also here the EBITDA margin improved. We managed to defend the margin in this tough market also and the improved margin is coming from the installation business. Order intake increased by 20% year on year and this is also a strong order intake from installation, which is improving by 43%. percent in local currency. Order backlog increased by 150 million in the quarter. So that was the countries. And to summarize that, just stress what Matias said, that we have, even though that the sales is decreasing in all countries except for Denmark, we have managed to defend the margin in this very tough market and also improve margin in all countries. And we have a growing order backlog with healthy projects. By that, we will move into the financial position, which is continuing to be strong. If you look at the chart in the middle, you see the operating cash flow. It's still on a strong level, 280 versus 399 last year. And the difference here is actually a supplementary tax payment that we did in Denmark this quarter. That's the main difference here between these quarters. Looking at the financial position on the left hand side, you can see that we have a cash balance of 608. We have a debt of 1.8 3 and we have a term loan and we are using commercial papers. We're not drawing anything from the RCF right now. And the leasing according to IFRS 16 is 1.4. This leads to a net debt of 2.2 billion and with the LTM EBITDA also on 2.2 million we have a net debt LTM EBITDA ratio of one. Cash conversion improved, as Mathias said, to 201% versus 90% last year. We still have two large unpaid receivables, one in Denmark, one in Norway, that we expect to be resolved in end of this year, so last quarter, and then we still have one additional large unpaid receivable in Denmark. That is not to be, that hasn't changed anything since the last quarter. We don't expect it to be resolved until 2028. But to summarize, low net debt, strong cash flow. By that, Matias, I will hand it back to you. Thank you. And I then get the opportunity to talk about the market. First, I think I want to say that service activity continues to be very stable and that is a big reason why we can be as stable as we are today. Close to 50% of the revenue is service as you know. The challenges in the installation business is probably going to continue for a while. There are big differences between different geographies. It is some areas where we have normal market some areas where we actually have quite good markets, and then we have areas where the market is really, really tough. So again, that is what you get when you invest in Brazil. We don't have low demand in all places at the same time, but we still see that there will be some challenges going forward. We saw after in the end of Q4, beginning of Q1, there There were positive discussions with customers and there still are in some areas. We are actually a bit positive regarding the underlying demand in the market. But as I said in the report, it seems like some customers have paused the decision a bit because of the uncertainty in the global environment for the moment. So we are a bit positive at the same time as we really don't know when it starts to kick in. But we can probably say that 25 will be a difficult year, not tougher. I think it has bottomed out definitely. We will have some easier comps going forward, but the orders we are winning now or the coming quarters won't start until 26. There are some areas where there are very favorable market conditions, and that is for example in infrastructure. industry defense facilities and civil engineering, and that gives us business opportunities. And we, Bravida, is a solid, strong, competent partner to our clients in those type of projects. So we think that we are in a good position to actually win these type of contracts. We have the knowledge, we have the financial stability, and we also hear from the organization now that we are not We are not winning projects on price. We can, and also said that we have the orders we have been winning is actually a decent or good margin in those projects. And that is because customers are very interesting in buying from a financial stable partner. And that's us. We will maintain our project selective strategy because that is the only way to go through this type of cycle in the in the market, we will focus on margin before volume. And I think we have proven that in the first quarter where when the revenue is down 5% and we still are improving the margin and have strong cash flows. And then on top of that, we still see an attractive pipeline of possible acquisitions to do. And we have a balance sheet that supports that action and we will do acquisitions going forward. Shortly about the financial targets, you all know that we have a margin target at above 7%, which we won't reach this year. That is a target over the cycle. We will get closer to it for every year now. We have a strong cash conversion. We have reached that target for many, many years. Debt level is below target. Sales growth for the moment is not met. and the dividend, I think it's paid out tomorrow and that is well above the target of 50%. So, if we should summarize the quarter, top line is down 5% and that is mainly due to the installation business. Service business really, really stable. We are growing from acquisitions with 2%. We have increased order intake in Denmark, Norway and Finland year on year. We have increased order backlog with good margins in those contracts in all countries compared to last quarter. And we see improved margin in all countries. Stable cash conversion and good cash flow and the ESG KPIs like LTI, IFR and the CO2 emissions is improving a lot. So before we take questions, just want to mention that we have the next report in beginning of July and then we have the third quarter in 24th of October. Seems quite distanced now because we have a lot of work to do before that. But with that we open up for questions, please. If you wish to ask a question, please dial. Key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial Key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Carl Norren from SEB. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. A couple of questions from my side and maybe if we start on Denmark. you state there that you still have a negative margin in the installation business driven by that you still have production of low margin projects. I was wondering how long do you think you will have to produce on these low margin projects or when are they finished and will we then see a more step up change in the margin, I think. First question, thank you. Yeah, should you start also? Yeah. I think, I mean, there will be some projects that are from the sort of the old days, they will continuously get out from the books. There are also some provisions to take care of those. So I mean, they will fade out. There will maybe some left in this quarter, but by the end of the year they will be out of the books. But it's not correct that you have negative margin in the installation business. We are making money on the installation business, but it's impacted to some part of a few projects. Okay, yeah, that's clear. Maybe I read it the wrong way there, but that's good. And then I have a question on Sweden. I mean, the market environment continues to look quite challenging, especially in the south of Sweden, as you mentioned. Despite this, your margins are quite stable. I'm just wondering, do you think you can expect to continue to protect the margins at similar levels compared to last year, or is it possible to see kind of slightly improved margins year over year underlying. I mean, adjusted for the Norfolk write downs and the one we had last year, do you think it's reasonable to expect continued margin resilience in Sweden? I think we we we will be very stable if that means that we are improving the margin or if we are a bit on the negative side. Of course, that's very hard to answer, but we expect that the south part of Sweden will improve in 25 compared to 24 because we did some quite big measures last year, which was actually giving us some cost and actually impacted the margin as well when we scaled down the business. We have a flexible cost structure, as you know, but that costed something to take out all those resources in 24. So we think that we can continue to improve our margin in the south part of Sweden. be stable in the central part of Sweden, Stockholm area. And then it's, I think the key question is that if the market keeps up in the north part, if it does, then I think we will have a stable margin in North, high margin in North. It might be a small risk that the market weakens a bit in the north part of Sweden, which automatically will impact our earnings. But all in all, I think that we will see stable margins in Sweden and hopefully a bit improved in 25. But that is to be proved. Yeah. Good. And then it's the final one for me on your recent acquisition there in in Borlänge. I mean, I'm just looking at it. It's quite big, but it has varied quite a lot in sales during the last couple of years. I'm just wondering what you expect from that going forward in terms of sales should we think that the 350 million level is that reasonable or do you expect it to come down or how should we think? No, I don't know. We are very thorough in our due diligence work with due diligence and I think that is why we have taken down the pace of acquisitions a bit. We think that they have a solid order backlog, then it's always a question of timing. If you look at 25 specifically, then it might vary a bit, but if you're looking on the Rolling 12, we think that we can keep the top line and I guess that will be, we think we can keep the revenue and top line for 25 and develop it. That is our ambition. Okay, I think that was all for me. Thank you and have a good day. Same to you. The next question comes from Johan Lankvist Sundén from Carnegie. Please go ahead. Good morning, Matthias and Ossian. Thank you for taking my questions. Good morning, good morning everyone. First question from my side is on the Swedish business. And I know your comment, Matthias, during the presentation that the service business is stable. But can you please give some more color because when I look at Slide page 17 in your report. It seems like service revenue in Sweden is down some 10%. How come? Maybe you should. There are some smaller projects in service also and they have actually disappeared during this period. You can say there are less smaller projects that are related to service. Yeah. Then I also think that we have closed down some poor performing branches throughout 24, which was in our books in q1 24, which are no longer there. So I think, I don't know how you measure that or label that. If that is negative organic or actually business that we have taken out, of course, that impacts the organic growth. I think that is the reason as well. So you're not losing the market share on the service? No, we don't think so. Because if we do, for example, the investigation to public customers in the south part of Sweden, last time we looked, those have increased. So it can be that we are losing, I would say like this, in the beginning of this phase where we are probably the first one out to scale down because we know what to do. then we probably initially losing some market shares because many of our competitors are still trying to keep up the revenue. But in the end, we know that when they are forced to do the same, then we are ready to take the growth. So all in all, we think we have done smart things and we are not losing market shares because we are not good enough. What you see in the numbers is that we have closed down branches. and as you know, we have lost a lot of volume in that area throughout from Q2 to Q4 because of closing down of branches. And I think that is what you see now when we compare to Q1 in between 25 and 24. Yeah, but I tried to quickly look through the last four quarters and it seems like there was a step down also here in Q1 in the year of year development. that was why I was curious. If you go to Norway, just curious to hear we're now seeing the order backlog on the installation side improving. I know it's hard to assess, but given what you see and how the kind of timing of when you start to deliver on the projects, when When do you believe the installation side in the Norwegian business should start growing again? I think that's a tricky question because the Norwegian society is such. They are struggling with inflation. They have high pressure on salaries, which means that we won't see, I guess, we can't expect any lowering of the interest rates in Norway, which is something our industry has been we think needs is in need of. So I think the installation business in Norway will be tough a couple of quarters before we can see it's going up. But again, we are focusing on margin in the orders, quality orders when we are selling. And in Norway as well, in some other countries, there are some positive signals in the industry related to NATO expansions, for example, the weapons industry, but also some infrastructure projects. So we, I don't think I can give you a better answer on that one, but the optimal we had wanted to have a slightly higher order backlog in Norway. But again, we are not stressed. We know what to do and we want to do the right things. So when I say a couple of quarters, I Are we, you're thinking Q425 or Q126? Yeah, I think that's guessing. Let's see what happens the coming months, but it doesn't seem like there will be a dramatic pick up the coming quarter at least. But still, Norway is also the country where we have the highest part of service revenue, which is around 60% I think. yeah, perfect. And my last question is, it's on Denmark. And I think Carl, he touched upon it before, but you're just to get a better sense of the seasonality in Denmark throughout 2025 and how we should, should view margins there. 3.5 beginning of, or at least in Q1, should Q1 is often the kind of weakest quarter in a year. Do you think there's other kind of seasonalities that we should be aware of when doing our forecast? I think there can probably be some different positives and negatives throughout the years. But we are still very confident that we will deliver on what we have said before, that we will be closer to 5% this year. And if we are above 5%, I think we are very glad because we still see 25 as a year of transition, you can say. And I think that is something we stay to. and then when you say. Just to be clear, when you say five percent, you mean that full year 20. Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere between. I think we have said somewhere slightly better than five percent. Excellent. I get back in line. See, maybe I can come back with follow-ups later on. Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial 5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Carl Noen from SEB. Please go ahead. Yes, back again here. Just a follow up on Finland. I mean, you had quite big negative organic growth there, but I also noticed that order intake was quite strong in the quarter. So I was wondering if that's related to products that are coming in the coming, let's say, already in Q2, or should we expect quite weakish development also in the near term in Finland, or how should we look upon that? same month. Yeah, but Finland is a tricky Market, as we have said a couple of times. But on the other hand, we have won some projects recently, and I think it's more a question of when those comes into production. And I don't have that answer here and now, Carl, but we have been quite successful the last two months, I think, in Finland. But it takes some time before they starts. to produce. Yeah. Okay, that's good. And then one, one on Sweden as well. I think you got a quite big data center ordering, was it in Q1, but you started to produce some in Q2 and throughout the year. I'm just wondering a little bit how, how that will impact the coming quarter. What is the comparison? How much did you produce on that in Q2 and Q3 last year? If you could provide that or if you have that, it would be helpful. Yeah, I think that will be produced throughout the year. So the one that we got last year, was that what your question was? Because we don't have any. Yeah, exactly. I know exactly how much we have. That was pretty short production time on that one. I think it was finished in Q2. No, there was some in Q4 also. Yeah. Action on that. But around 200 million, then maybe in Q2 and Q3 from that last year, so to say. Yes. I think that would be at least yes. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Good. Thank you. There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments. Okay. Thank you so much for the questions. It is a busy day for our analysts. I know. plenty of companies to cover. But with that, I say thank you so much for joining and have a great day. Thank you. Have a nice day.

Contact us!

Send us a message and we will get back to you as soon as possible!


InvestorCaller AB, Bulevardi 32 B 25, 00120 HELSINKI
© 2026 InvestorCaller AB, All rights reserved