Vestum AB (VESTUM) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Hello everyone and welcome to our presentation of Vestum's year-end report for 2024. My name is Simon Gothberg, CEO of Vestum and together with me I also have Olof Andersson, CFO of the company. Now I'd like to start today's presentation on giving a short summary of the full year We have accomplished so much and delivered on almost everything we set out to do at the beginning of the year. We went into the year with a strategic review with the ambition to increase our focus on core business consisting of leading suppliers in growing market niches and technologies in infrastructure. while also deleveraging. And we have done just that, divested non-core companies and increased the level of specialization in Vestum. Product companies now make up 63% of our profits and our financial net debts, including earnouts, were reduced by 38% to 1.4 billion SEK, down from 2.3 billion. This takes us to a leverage of 2.2 times reported EBITDA, which is well in line with our financial targets. For many of our businesses, the market has been quite challenging throughout 2024. And this can be seen in the decline in sales growth of minus 3.8%, of which minus 6% organically. Sales reached 4.2 billion with an EBITDA margin of 10.5%. Operational cash flows remained stable and increased to 665 million, while free cash flow decreased to 204 million. In 2025, free cash flow will be positively impacted by our improved capital structure that will be in place from March and onward, meaning full bank financing as our last outstanding bond of 600 million will be redeemed, saving approximately 70 million in interest costs per year. Acquisition-wise, we made our first acquisition in two years in Q3. And given our strong balance sheet, we are now in a good position to make acquisitions again. Main foc...