Ambea (Stockholm:AMBEA) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ambea Interim Report Second Quarter twenty twenty six Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press 11 on your telephone keypad. You will now hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw a question, please press 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

0:30 I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Marc Jensen, CEO. Please go ahead. Thank you so much, and welcome to Ambea's presentation of the second quarter twenty twenty six. I'm Marc Jensen, CEO, and with me today is Benoit Liesen, CFO. We'll 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. We operate through strong local brands and business areas covering elderly care, social care and staffing and competence solutions. To clarify the breadth and scale of the group, we have redesigned this opening slide to provide a better context. On the left side of the slide, we see the care segments of business areas served and the respective segment share of the Ambea Group net sales.

1:22 To the right, we see the actual rolling 12 net sales per business area, the corresponding share of group net sales and rolling 12 EBITDA margins. In the last twelve months, reached over billion in net sales and delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 10.0% on group level. We continue to grow through both organic expansion and acquisitions in a resilient and risk balanced business model with continued strong growth potential. And from here, let's go straight to the highlights of the second quarter. Quarter two was characterized by solid organic growth, opening of new care places within social care and a new acquisition in Finland. Net sales increased by 7%, mainly driven by organic growth. At group level, adjusted EBITA amounted to million with an adjusted EBITA margin of 9%.

2:13 The improved result is driven by higher occupancy and operational improvements. Adjusted EPS grew by 88% and amounted to SEK2.13 in the quarter. The strong growth is primarily driven by higher earnings. At the end of the quarter, AMBEA announced a recommended public offer to the shareholders of Humana and linked to that we initiated a program to re purchase own shares. At the next slide, we will look at the development of our organic pipeline for new care places. Already during the first six months of 2026, we have signed agreements for new care places that exceed the entire year of 2025. This is based on society's high need for more qualitative care places as the demand is rapidly increasing, not least within elderly care. Elderly care is also the area where we have the most new places in pipeline.

3:01 New nursing homes are always minimum 60 apartments of size. Within social care, a new care home is smaller, typically from six to 10 places. We will continue to expand the pipeline in line with the needs of society and where municipalities welcome private operators in the welfare mix. Over time, we foresee the need for our contribution will increase. Our pipeline ambition is to meet the 2025 full year numbers for LawDogger also in 2026. We expect further increase in Altidon's elderly care pipeline in the second half of the year and remaining business areas will also contribute positively year to go. Approaching the Swedish elections in September, we trust that the new ruling coalitions will face the supply channels with new ideas and a focus on care receivers and their relatives. We will constructively engage in dialogues to provide sustainable and qualitative care solutions as we have always done.

3:52 And turning the page, let's review the total organic pipeline. Organic growth is targeted to deliver approximately half of our growth target. The increase in signed rental contracts we saw on the previous slide positively impacted the total pipeline, which is now above 2,200 new care places to open between 2026 and 2030, an increase of more than 60% compared to same quarter last year and clearly industry leading. Fully ramped up and in 2026 prices, the expected total pipeline revenue will accumulate to approximately SEK2.7 billion. A ramp up normally takes twelve to twenty four months from opening date depending on size and type of care home, as well as local demand. Looking twelve months ahead, we will open four eighty new care places in The Nordics, which supports continued growth and improved economies of scale.

4:43 With mid single digit organic growth coming from pipeline expansion, it is important to maintain and develop our position as an employer of choice, while we will continue to invest in our workplaces, work environment, career opportunities, competence and leadership development. We will now have a look at acquired growth. 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 in the quarter. During the quarter, Validea expanded and closed the third acquisition within child welfare services, adding SEK40 million in annual net sales. At the end of the quarter, we announced a recommended public offer to the shareholders in Humana, aiming to combine the companies. 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.

5:33 Let's have a closer look at total revenue growth on the next slide. We have now cycled the acquisition of Validia in Finland and total revenue growth have slowed for that reason. Anyhow, the quarter showed good growth of 7.3%, driven primarily by a stable and industry leading organic growth of 4.4%. This reflects the strength of our business model. We grow by improved occupancy, expanding capacity in our existing operations, signing rental contracts for new care units and by successfully integration acquisitions. Overall, this creates a balanced and sustainable growth profile. At the core of our model is quality and people, so let's turn to that. During the quarter, during last quarter, we introduced a new group of our quality management system in Gardog and Niltida named miraQ.

6:20 By bringing our quality process and data into one common platform across business areas and geographies, we can identify improvement areas more quickly, share knowledge across the organization and further strengthen our systematic quality management. And the rollout will continue in our remaining business areas during the remaining part of the year. In a highly labor intensive business like ours, our employees are truly at the heart of everything we do. Our latest employee Net Promoter Score, which measures how likely colleagues are to recommend Ambea as an employer, remains consistently high. This reflects the positive culture we are building together and strengthening the foundation of our employer brand. Diversity and inclusion are an integral part of our culture and long term people strategy. During the quarter, we participated in the European Diversity Month in May and continued our partnership with Stockholm Pride, reinforcing our commitment to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone is treated with respect and has equal opportunities.

7:16 You can read more about our quality and sustainability work in the quarterly report. And now I would like to hand over the presentation to Benno for a financial summary.

7:25 Thank you, Marc. Net sales grew at almost 300,000,000 or 7% in total, and all four countries contributed well. LinkedIn and Balaga grew relatively 46% from higher occupancy and Stendis 11% was this quarter helped by a stronger Norwegian currency, but also higher occupancy within child welfare. Bolivia grew with 19%, primarily driven by the new business segment child welfare, where we have made three acquisitions in the last 0.75. And turning to the EBITDA development. This slide shows how the different business areas have contributed to the adjusted EBITDA of the group. We can see that also when it comes to EBITDA growth, all four countries have contributed. Vardaga Nikita Vardaga showed solid improvement in EBITDA as well as EBITDA margin, driven by good occupancy and high level of operational efficiency.

8:18 Stendi improved to a more stable occupancy situation and improved operational efficiency, helped by a one off this quarter of SEK8 million. Altir showed a continued EBITDA improvement for the tenth consecutive quarter and contributed with SEK12 million in the EBITDA improvement. Adjusted EBITDA in total increased by 28% to SEK $397,000,000, and adjusted EBITDA margin in the group was 9.0%, up from 7.6 last year. Volume 12 adjusted EBITDA margin now reached 10 for the first time. Cash flow. Operating cash flow in the Q2 was very strong. This is both an effect of the strong profitability, as well as a normal pattern after a softer quarter like we had in Q1 and demonstrated the strong underlying cash generation that Ambea has.

9:13 There are always some quarterly fluctuations in payments, but over time we are delivering a solid cash conversion of around 95% year after year. 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 million, an increase as expected from last quarter by a bit more than SEK 200,000,000. The increase in EBITDA and more normalized net working capital are the driving factors behind the positive development. And our solid cash generation gives us both flexibility and strength to continue investing in quality and growth. And the next slide shows the utilization of the free cash flow. You can see how we have used that generated SEK929 million, SEK212 million was distributed to our shareholders as dividend, SEK187 million was spent on the four acquisitions, and SEK521 million was spent on the two share buyback programs. And net debt has decreased by 87,000,000.

10:19 So even with this over SEK 700,000,000 delivered in different ways to our shareholders, we have reduced our leverage from 2.7 times EBITDA last year to 2.4 times at the end of this quarter. This is well below our financial target of 3.25 times and give us good flexibility for the future. And then to the earnings per share. The strong development in sales and profitability, together with the share buybacks we have conducted, have delivered a strong growth in earnings per share over the last year. In this quarter, the reported EPS grew from SEK 1.13 to SEK 2.13 or 588% compared to the to to last year. The growth rate over the last year is very high. The compound annual growth rate the last two years are 25% in reported EPS, and if we adjust the EPS for IFRS 16 and items related to acquisitions, the growth rate is at 23%.

11:19 Then turning to the business areas, we're starting with NetEDA. Net sales increased by 4% in NetEDA, with both acquisitions and ramp up units. EBITDA rose by 17% to 148,000,000 compared to the SEK 127,000,000 last year, thanks to continued good performance in previously completed acquisitions, together with improved occupancy for ramp up units and adjustments made in the service offering. We have continued to adapt our service offering in favor of services with more expected higher demand as well as successfully adjusted the capacity. This is the fourth consecutive quarter with higher margins compared to previous year, and the rolling 12 margin now increased to 13.2% from twelve 0.0 one year ago.

12:10 And then we turn to elderly care and Baader Gang in Sweden. Baanhagen continues to deliver solid growth as net sales increased by 6%, but sales in old management continues to grow at a higher pace this quarter by 10%, reaching SEK 1,027,000,000, driven by new openings and good occupancy in the new one, as well as the existing nursing homes. The nursing homes we opened in Q4 last year and Q1 this year are showing better than expected occupancy development. Net sales in contracts management decreased by 3% as we handed back two contracts that expired to the municipalities. We will exit the contract with an annual turnover of 199,000,000 gradually within the next twelve months.

12:58 EBITDA increased by 24% to SEK 143,000,000. The profitability development in mature units continues to be strong as we are running the units with historically high occupancy and thereby improve operational efficiency. The negative effect on margins that normally comes from newly established units was lower than expected. In total, the EBITDA margin increased by 1.4 percentage points to 9.9% in the quarter and to 10.0% rolling 12. And then turn to Standard and Norway. Standard delivered a stronger quarter than last year. Net sales increased by 11% in sick and 5% in local currency. Occupancy for care services for adults was still slightly lower than last year, but more stable than in the last quarters, while our services for children and youth had higher occupancy than last year in this quarter.

13:55 The second quarter is the weakest quarter EBITDA quarter from a seasonality point of view since most of the banking holidays in Norway in the quarter, and this drives higher staffing costs. EBITDA amounted to SEK 54,000,000, and the EBITDA margin was 5.9%, which was 25,000,000 or 2.4 percentage points better than Q two last year. And more stable occupancy together with operational improvements following measures implemented to adjust operations improved the profitability. We were also helped by positive one off effect of SEK8 million. We are strategically working towards units with high capacity, and better operational efficiency, and are phasing out smaller units. We expect to see more effects of these various improvement measures in the second half of the year.

14:44 We are now at the rolling 12 EBITDA margin of 7.4%, which is up from 6.8 last quarter, and we expect the margin to improve further. Then turn to Finland and Valyria. For the first time, we now have a quarter to compare with the Finland. Validia showed continued solid performance together with the completion of the third acquisition in the new segment of Shyde Welfare. The latest acquisition was closed at June 1. Net sales in the quarter amounted to SEK $446,000,000, which is a 20% increase from last year. Of this growth, 15 percentage points was from the new segment, William Shine Welfare, and five percentage points was from the other segments. EBITDA reached SEK 41,000,000, an increase from SEK 39,000,000 last year, and margin in the quarter reached 9.2%, and we are now at 10.5% margin on the rolling 12 basis.

15:43 The startup of the new business segment and the integration of the acquired businesses have affected the margin negatively short term. We expect the margin in new segment to gradually increase as we improve occupancy and implement our system of processes. Over time, we expect the margin within Charlotte Weilster to be in line with average margin in the other segments in Finland.

16:05 Validia was acquired as a growth platform in Finland, and we will continue to create growth with new establishments, both on acquisition and continued development of the existing operations. So now turn to Denmark. Alpubl) in Denmark once again delivered an overall very strong quarter with continued strong revenue growth, driven by higher occupancy across both elderly and social care. Net sales increased by 7% in local currency. In sick, net sales were up 6%. Net sales in old management increased by 12% in local currency. Contract management decreased by 8% due to the termination of one social contract last year. The second quarter are from a seasonality point of view, the weakest for the same reasons like Spain and Norway, but the profitability improvement versus last year continues at a high pace.

16:57 EBITDA this quarter increased to SEK13 million, corresponding to a margin of 3.7%, which is up from 0.3% last year. The positive earnings development was driven by the higher occupancy in our management and by operational improvements. We now have 10 consecutive quarters with margin improvement in Denmark, and the rolling 12 margin has gone from negative 3.3% to positive 6.1% over this period. Our extensive work on the new project in Denmark resulted in signing rental agreements for another new nursing home with a total of 88 places scheduled to open for care receivers in 2030. We have now three rental agreements signed this year, which demonstrate the improved market condition in Denmark following the twenty twenty five AB report.

17:47 Additional capacity expansion is expected with our own management, where our focus and future growth potential is in Denmark. And finally, Clara. Clara saw lower net sales due to the weaker demand across several of the services. Net sales decreased by 11% to SEK 93,000,000. Historically, a strong supply of nurses in the labor market has led some customers to employ their own staff instead of purchasing external services from companies like Klara. For Klara, we now, however, see signs that the negative revenue trend is starting to change, and we expect better revenue development going forward as we now also are improving the mix towards services with higher demand. EBITDA amounts to SEK8 million with a margin of 8.6% in the quarter and 10.5% on a rolling 12 basis. To good margin levels reflects the well managed cost adjustment and

18:41 continued focus on profitability, even in a softer market environment. And with that, back to you, Markus. Thank you, Benno. Our financial targets remain as we drive profitable growth, strong margins and disciplined leverage. In line with our commitment, we continue to deliver on all three targets also in quarter two. The rolling twelve months growth rate is now at 13%, which is well above our growth target, thanks to the high pace in acquisitions and good organic growth.

19:09 Rolling twelve profitability landed at 10.0%, which is above the target of 9.5%. We will continue to invest in people, quality and growth. Our leverage is slightly down to a ratio of 2.4 times net debt to EBITDA below our target of 3.25 times. We maintain our financial capacity to engage in the right acquisitions. And before we open for questions, I would like to provide an outlook post quarter two. Ambea is the only Nordic care provider with a new tailor made group wide quality management system. We will continue the rollout of the new system to all business areas during the remaining part of the year. With miraQ, we have further optimized and standardized our operational quality work, improved system performance and features, as well as data quality and access to predictive analysis and cross country quality improvements.

19:58 For the remaining part of the year, we will see more bolt on acquisitions in several business areas supporting growth and value adding capital allocation. Care needs are increasing and we remain committed to sign rental agreements for more care homes adding to the future organic growth supporting the Nordic society. And regarding the recommended public offer to the shareholders in Humana, the prospectus is scheduled to be published on August 24, with the acceptance period expected to commence on August 25.

20:27 Over the next five years, we will employ 3,500 new care professionals to support the organic capacity expansion. Being an employer of choice is important and to maintain a strong employer brand, we will continue to invest in work environment, competence development and local leadership. Once again, our teams in four countries across more than 1,000 care units have delivered qualitative care to 18,000 care receivers, all with a need for a good and independent life.

20:54 It is an important and rewarding contribution to people and society for which we are proud. Thanks to our employees, their high competence and attention to operational delivery, we also reached healthy financial results, which gives us the opportunity to do more of what we're here for, making the world a little better one person at a time. And this concludes our presentation, and we will now open for questions.

21:36 And now we're going to take our first question. And the question comes from the line of Bjorn Olsen from SEB. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Good morning. First, a question on the pipeline. One of your first slides, you illustrated the pipeline and clearly, Alterdan is the main driver of the increase. What type of pace of additional contracts are you expecting to sign for H2?

22:06 How should we view the sort of the trajectory of growth here? Yes, thank you so much. I mean, we expect to sign contracts also in the second half of the year. And as I mentioned, when we went through that slide, I mean, are aiming for VORDOG to deliver in line with the full year numbers for 2025. You can see we are not complete there yet. So that would mean a number of new contracts for War Dog a year to go. We also expect to sign further contracts in Altid and Denmark in the second half of the year. And then we will see contributions also

22:44 in Norway and Finland, but as the care homes there are in general smaller than the nursing homes we are signing in Rordeauga and predominantly in Altiden, those additions for Norway and Finland will more limited. Okay. Thanks. And you also started by mentioning the election coming up in Sweden in a few weeks.

23:08 Have you any I mean, you are in touch with several local politicians and municipalities. Have you any sense of any risks in conjunction with the election? Because, I mean, the national debate is probably more noise than actual impact for you. Or how should we view this? Yeah. I mean, election year is always

23:32 exciting as the various parties are launching their plans and ideas for the next four year period. And in Sweden, you have all the elections on the same day, both for municipalities, regions and the national parliament on the same day, which is a little different from the other Nordic countries.

23:54 And that means that we will see changes in the ruling coalitions for the next four years. Our customers are the municipalities and we work with municipalities that are led both by left side of politics, right side of politics and by coalitions in the middle. And we have done that for many years over many elections, and we will continue to do that also after this election. In general, we think it's good that the public debate on the future of the welfare society is taking place and especially within the care sector as the needs are increasing significantly over the

24:31 next two or three mandate periods for the politicians. And it is very important that society as such will accelerate the capacity expansion, especially within eldercare. And we believe we have an increasingly important role to play in this field also in Sweden.

24:52 Makes sense. And just finally on the Humana acquisition, do you have any update on the progress of the acquisition?

25:02 Or have anything sort of changed in your view of the deal? We are following a plan exactly as we communicated when we announced the public offer to the shareholders of Humana on the June 29. And we plan

25:20 to launch the prospectus on August 24, as I said, next week, and everything is following plan, as we have communicated earlier. So there's nothing else to communicate on that particular matter. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Now we're going to go next question.

25:47 And the question comes from the line of Christopher Levyaag from PMB, Carnegie. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Yes. Thank you. First one relates to the margin target and the fact that you're now trending above that. So what's your view on that? Second question,

26:07 if you maybe could give a little bit more explanation for what appeared to be a very fast ramp up in new elderly care units in Sweden? And then my third and final question relates to Norway. And you mentioned the higher compensation. Was that just a pure mix effect or more of a general trend? Thank you. Yes.

26:33 So the margin target, we are holding on to the 9.5% margin target, and we think it's also a wise thing to do in the light of the potential acquisition of Humana and the offer to the shareholders of Humana, as we communicated when we launched that in June.

26:58 So changing that now is not relevant and it's also important for us to make sure that we have sufficient funds to invest in people, capacity expansion, competent development, local leadership and quality overall. So we are holding on to that, as we are holding on to our other two financial targets. In terms of the ramp up pace for Swedish Elderly Care, Werner, will you comment on that? Yeah, That's correct, as you said, that we have had very good ramp up or very rapid occupancy improvement in all, more or less all of the new establishments. And there have been a little bit, can say, little bit coincident that the municipality closed one of their own nursing homes in one of the municipalities.

27:48 In another municipality, they have actually, just before we opened, also closed one of their own, and then we have a third municipality that was built up for a queue before we opened. So it's different from every new establishment, a little bit different. But this time, we have a really good pace in at least three of these five that are more or less already full.

28:14 And then the final question on Norway. I mean, we have not seen, you know, any changes in compensation as such, but in terms of occupancy in social care for adults, it has been more stable as Benno commented, which has been the issue in the previous quarters that we have had quite high frequency of move outs and move ins in different parts of the country, which makes it difficult for staffing efficiency. That has been more stable this quarter, has helped us. We have had also a high occupancy level in childcare in Norway,

28:50 which is performing very strong again this quarter, which has helped us. And then we have implemented various operational improvements in the Norwegian business over the last quarters, which has proven to show results already now. And as we also said, we expect that we will continue to improve performance in Norway over the coming quarters.

29:16 Excuse me, Christopher. Any further questions?

29:19 No, sorry. Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. And the next question comes from the line of Julia Angeli Strand from Handelsbanken. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I'll take them one by one. I'll start with Stendi.

29:43 So given the strong performance here and given that you have communicated that H2 will be even better in terms of margins year over year, so could you give some color on how much this quarterly performance had improved your H2 outlook?

30:05 Is it unchanged or has it improved?

30:09 It is basically unchanged, the outlook for the second half of the year. We have said that a margin level of 8% to 9% in Norway with the size of the business we have now is a good level. We are not yet there. We are approaching, of course, the 8% and the likelihood of getting into that range is higher now than it was last quarter from the strong quarter two performance. But let's see where the year will take us. But the outlook for the second half is unchanged, but still positive.

30:44 Okay. Got it. And then on Valudia, you mentioned some margin pressure and that '2 will be

30:55 year with high opening pace. So how should we think about the margin pressure when you have a lot of openings there during H two as well?

31:07 There is the margin pressure, you can say now a little bit from the new established business area in child welfare. We said that 15 percentage point on the growth from last year is the new area where the profitability now is lower and also there are some transaction integration costs related with three acquisitions. That will improve going forward gradually, we hope. And then in the second half, we are also

31:34 opening two new units in the beginning of fourth quarter that will short term probably hurt the margins a little bit. But as it always does, when you open large units with the full rental cost and and gradually coming in occupancy. That will probably affect a little bit in in the later part of the year.

31:58 Okay. So if we adjust for normal seasonality effects, will the margin pressure increase from this quarter or the seven?

32:10 A little bit hard to say. I think in the third quarter, the margin pressure from lower margins in child welfare will ease a little bit gradually, as we say. But then, of course, depending on how fast we can ramp up the new unit in the fourth quarter, that could also, of course, as I hurt the margin. But how much

32:33 it's still to be seen because we don't know about the potential development in after the start of that unit. Okay. And then my last question on the Mona. They have some units facing some challenges or has varying performance and normally being one of them. So given that you have experience from managing a somewhat challenged Norwegian business following a large acquisition, could you share some thoughts on how you plan to address it in terms of profitability and occupancy levels?

33:17 In general, we can say that what we said when we announced the offer to the shareholders of Humana still stands. And on the presentation there on the June 29, we were talking about the strength of combining the two companies. We think that is unchanged and we have no other opinion than what we communicated on June 29. In a process like this, which is quite complex and when there are certain steps to be taken in a specific order, we need to take it step by step, which we are doing and in that order, and we will come at a point in time, hopefully, to a place where we can get more insights on the business and we can start the integration planning and all that, but that's too early for now.

34:03 So we basically have no other view than the view we communicated on June 29. Okay, got it. Those were my questions. Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. And the next question comes from line of Jakob Anderson from Danske Bank. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Good morning, Mark and Daniel. I hope you can hear me. I just have a few couple of questions. Starting off with Nikita. So you continue to deliver strong margins once again. But was the improvement in occupancy broad based across both disability as well as individual family or mainly driven by specific segment? The improving occupancy was rather broad. It's not a huge improvement from last year, but still some improvement from last year, and that is in all sub segments.

35:02 We have more carriers either both in the disability care and the interior family care. So that is a rather broad based occupancy improvement on a low single digit number. Okay. Perfect. And just one off then. So you mentioned a slight uptick in demand, but occupancy is still lower year over year. But is the improvement in demand specifically within adult care or where you previously had seen challenges or somewhere else in standard? So the occupancy was higher in child welfare in Norway this quarter compared to same quarter last year. In adult care, it was a little lower, but more stable. So so that's the occupancy level in in Norway. If that is the answer to your question.

35:50 Otherwise, please repeat it. No. No. That was the answer. And then just a final one on Vardaga. So you said in Q1 that contracts with total revenues of SEK 200,000,000 is set to end in the coming twelve months. But could you just clarify the underlying reason for why these contracts are ending? Is it your own decision not to renew because it's no longer attractive or competition or municipality is choosing to bring operations in house or? Yes. Is a These contracts manage, they run out at a certain point of time, and then the municipality needs to re tender. If they don't re tender, they can also have the possibility to take them back to run them by themselves. This is, I think, seven or eight units or something. I think more than half of them are units that the municipality decided when the conference ended to take back home, so to speak.

36:40 And a couple of them are that we have lost the reseller to another operator. I think in this case, it is all non listed operator with lower prices than we offered. So this is a combination of these two. Okay. Perfect. No more questions for me. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. And the next question comes from the line of Philip Eckengrain from Nordea. Your line is open, please, after question. Yes, thank you. And good morning all. So just going back to the election, I appreciate the comments you made earlier, but have you noticed any changes in dialogues with the municipalities or regions over the past, let's say, year or two years? Or have you seen a shift in the way that they have discussions with you, please?

37:41 It's difficult to say, because we have several 100 municipalities that we have as our customers and partners. So, of course, there are changes from municipality to municipality and shifts now and then in different directions. But I would say over the last election term here, the last four years, it has been quite stable, so no big surprises from what was said at the beginning and how they have decided to run the welfare services within the municipality's responsibility over the last four years, so I won't say that. If anything, can hear from more municipalities that of course the needs are increasing. We can see it in the data also that the needs are increasing.

38:27 We also know it's increasingly difficult to get the permit to move in to a nursing home, as we sample within elderly care, and that the welfare services as such is more constrained from a municipal perspective because they're looking for new projects, they're looking for ways to handle the increased pressure from the demographics as the population is getting older. So if anything, that is, you know, more evident now than it was three or four years ago. And we think, we know, of course, that this will continue, and we are certain that with our solutions and our qualitative services, that there will be a higher need to use us in the mix going forward.

39:18 Thank you. That clarifies a bit. And then just one final thing, going back to Stendi. You talked about some year on year occupancy down in adult. What's constraining that? What's the problem there? I think the economy situation of the municipalities in Norway, there are even more municipalities in Norway than in Sweden, and many of them are small. And their financial situation is increasingly constrained, which of course gives them headaches in terms of making sure that the budgets will meet the needs. And we can see some municipalities that have changed the purchasing behavior versus earlier, and we are adapting to that, of course, and changing our offering.

40:12 We are focusing on units with high capacity to make sure that we can deliver high quality care at a price that the municipalities can afford. And some of these changes are giving impact in this quarter and they will continue to give impact in the coming quarters. But even in a rich country like Norway, municipalities are constrained financially, many are, and it's of course important that we can deliver high quality services at a price which is in line with both the needs of the care receiver, but of course also the financial situation of the municipalities. Perfect, thank you very much. I'll get back into the queue. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question.

41:01 The question comes from the line of Philip Wetterquist from SB1 Markets. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Good morning, guys. I have three questions. I'll take them one by one. The first one coming back to the contract terminations in Vardaga. Can you give us some color on the like quarterly split? When are we expected to see the contracts? And are they front or back end load that hard? Some color on that would be helpful. I don't have the exact date, but I know that there will be every quarter now, the coming four quarters, some contracts that will be handed back. I think it's rather evenly spread over the coming four quarters.

41:50 Alright. Thank you. And then in Niti, have you seen any shifts in the length of stay and in childcare? Do you see any changes in the average age of the children staying at your units? Not particularly. I mean, in general, there's a tendency towards somewhat lower length of stay across social care services, but obviously that is very individual because that depends on the progression of each and every care receiver, depending on the plan for that care receiver made by the municipalities, the social worker, so in collaboration with our teams, of course. So I would say no general trend in this quarter, but over time we see shorter stays across social care services in general.

42:47 So you say that there's some risk of some lower occupancy going forward if we see trend of No, I don't think it's that evident that it will impact and should be flagged as a risk for the coming quarters. That's not what we see. And of course, we are I mean, you look at Nudtida and Nudtida services, I mean, the majority of the services are in disability care where the length of stay are often long, they can be lifelong. So we are not as highly exposed to individual or family care as to disability care and where you have the shorter length of stay is predominantly individual and family care. So I will not flag it as a risk and nothing that should be counted on the negative side for the coming quarters.

43:37 All right. Perfect. And then last question on the Humana acquisition. You guided for about 120,000,000 of synergies, which I as I understand it, mainly relates to overhead or group functions. So do you see additional operational synergies within the business areas as well? We have no other view than what we communicated on June 29 in regards to synergies. So that's the 120,000,000 that we communicated there and predominantly in group functions and group costs overall. And then we also confirmed the financial targets on June 29 if the companies will be combined, meaning that the EBITDA margin target that we have of 9.5%, we will hold on to that.

44:30 And we also said that we believe that we will be back at that level on a run rate basis by the end of twenty twenty eight. And that will, of course, include some operational improvements to get there. So that's just repeating what we communicated on June 29. All right, perfect. Thank you. Thank you. And now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Julia Angeli Strand from Handelsbanken. Your line is open. Please ask your question. Hi. Just a follow-up question on the bolt on acquisitions. You mentioned that we should anticipate Image two.

45:22 Does this materially affect the indicative debt level that we received on when you announced Mana acquisition? Sorry, the bolt on acquisitions, will that will they materially impact the debt level? No, it's no, no, it won't. With this cash generation that we have that sold, 900 millions a year, we can we think that we still can have a lot of bolt on acquisitions and dividend and also room for share buybacks included in the cash flow that we are generating on a yearly basis.

46:07 Okay. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mark Jensen for any closing remarks. Thank you all for joining us today and for your continued interest in Ambea. The report for the third quarter will be published on 11/04/2026. So I wish you all a nice day. Stay safe and healthy. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.