HEXATRONIC GROUP AB (HTRO) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

good morning everyone and welcome to this second quarter earnings call for hexatronic i'm rika fröberg group ceo and with me as usual i have martin oberg deputy ceo and head of the data center business as well as our cfo panilla lindian and patrick johannesson head of investor relations and we have a strong quarter to present today net sales were 2.2 billion sec which is 18 percent growth of which 11 organic now adjusted EBITDA was right on 10 margin 224 million sec which is a 33 increase year on year we will talk about uh adjusted EBITDA in this presentation but i just want to mention that there are no adjustments in the quarter this is for consistency with previous quarters. So what you see is what you get. Also, the strategic business shift continues where we see that in particular, the data center business continues to play an ever increasing role at Hexatronic. As of now, data center and harsh environment business representing about 40% of net sales and about half of the adjusted EBITDA. But also on a geographical note there is a shift in the business that's going on. The North American business is growing rapidly and it now accounts for 44% of the total and it was 34% a year ago. We saw in particular strong organic growth in the data center business which grew at 27% organically and fiber solutions which was 11% organic as was the whole group. And for fiber solutions in particular was very pleasing to see that we turned a corner we saw a 56% improvement in the EBITDA level year on year as well as the third consecutive quarter of sequentially improving EBITDA. Cash flow was strong at just over 180 million sec with 84% cash conversion and this is despite a seasonality where were typically more busy in the summer half so normally there's a bit of building inventory and accounts receivable but this has been a focus for the organization and we're very pleased that we saw strong cash flow also in this quarter and because of that and some other factors in that depth as well as the financial gearing was reduced in the quarter. Looking at the quarterly result a little bit more in the perspective of recent quarters on the left hand side here we have the net sales where we can see that the blue bars it's it's rather constant so for number of quarters it's been relatively flat but now in the last quarter here we do see a step up in that but perhaps more importantly if we look at the gray line here is where we take out the effect of acquisitions and also currency this is underlying organic growth and very clearly over time this trend has been improving there are some ups and downs in the quarters this is at the end of the day this is a project-based business and we did talk about last quarter that we saw slow start to the year in January and February but with an impact from the cold weather but since then we've seen a gradual and pretty significant ramping up of the business activity. On the right hand side it is the adjusted EBITDA by quarter and here we can see very clearly that what started as a modest improvement sequentially in last quarter now continues with a stronger sequential improvement but also a quite strong year-on-year improvement compared with the Q2 of last year. Some of the key events in the quarter. We completed the acquisition of Jovo in Germany. This is a defense-oriented harsh environment business that was completed on 1st of April. So we have a full quarter numbers in the results here today. Then in May, we raised some equity, about 600 million sec, and roughly half or a little bit less than half of that was used to fund the second acquisition, which was Superior Fiber and Data Services in Texas. this is in the data center business area and was closed on June 1st so there's one month of numbers in this quarter. Regrettably Martin Åberg has announced his intention to leave Hexatronic after 12 years and we are working on that succession planning and we actually announced this morning an interim head of the data center business in Oskar Wärme as an internal solution and that will take effect on august 1st we are last but certainly not least we're very excited about announcing a strategic partnership with the danish company nkt and associated with this partnership there's also an investment in submarine cable production in our facility in Hudiksvall Sweden and let's take a little bit deeper look on that one as some of you may know we have one production line in Hudiksvall making the submarine cables already it's an old line it's large and strong and big and it's called the Hulk therefore and we have talked for a while now about the growth in this strategic segment it's it's not huge in terms of revenue today for hexatronic but it is strategic and it's also a high margin business and gradually we have been squeezing more and more capacity out of that one production line but now we're at the point where we need to invest in more capacity so with an additional line it will be roughly the same size but a faster line than the existing one we will more than double the capacity from depending on a little bit on product mix and pricing today our capacity is in the range of 150 to 200 million sec we will have capacity to serve over half a billion sec when this line is completed which will be sometime during 2028 so it creates a strong growth platform and with the partnership that we're entering with NKT we have a very good base loading for many years to come on this production line and the line is also faster as i mentioned and therefore we will get higher productivity in in that production which is important but but also very importantly we'll have two parallel lines so we can now take two projects uh in parallel which will give us more flexibility and shorter lead times and better service level to nkt and other customers we're not disclosing the exact capex amount here but it is roomed in the previously communicated about three percent of capex to total sales plus minus one percent that we have talked about previously for fiber solutions we're running a bit lower today but this is this is one driver that we will approach that 3% going forward. I mentioned the diversification and here on this page we see that it continues. On the top we see the group sales and data center and harsh environment business areas now account for about 40% of group sales which is five percentage points higher than year ago and on the bottom it's the adjusted EBITDA and here they account for about 50% of sales so they are above average margins and also above average growth level however this is actually lower than it was a year ago but the reason for that is the restoring of profitability in fiber solutions which we will talk about in a second so it's going the opposite way but it's for a very good reason. So diving in then to the business areas and starting with fiber solutions, which I consider to be the over-performer in this quarter, we saw 11% organic growth and we saw an EBITDA margin of 9.1%, which was 56% absolute terms growth in EBITDA over last year. And then sequentially it was pretty much a doubling of the EBITDA but there's some seasonality here as well Q2 should always be a bit stronger than Q1 but clearly things are moving in the right direction here and we saw already a modest EBITDA margin improvement in the first quarter we talked about that and that was largely driven by the cost reduction program that we launched six months ago we see continued effect of those cost savings but now in the second quarter on top of that we also start to see the growth in the business and that volume growth is really turning into operational leverage that's flowing through to the bottom line the growth momentum as we have talked about before and flagged is coming from the north american market where we have invested we have invested for several years in plant capacity, but we also in the last year invested quite a bit in our commercial footprint, sales and marketing resources, new products launched, etc. And this is continuing to show effects. We see strong growth in the U.S. market and it's both in the fiber to the home segment, which is still the majority of the business, but increasingly we're also seeing strong growth in the transport network segment that we have talked about before and what's driving this is indirectly it's actually the data center build out with the the almost explosive growth in data center builds in the U.S. market we see that simply that data traffic is growing so quickly that the digital infrastructure needs to be upgraded on a pretty big scale. This drive sales in the middle mile and the long haul segment not only in the fiber to the home we're not yet seeing that effect translating in Europe Europe market is still quite challenged and we expect that to continue in the short term but we have a belief that over time if Europe catches up on the data center growth that also we would see a similar effect here on the transport moving on sustainability is an important strategic pillar for hexatronic and we have made a very clear commitment to be climate neutral in our own facilities by 2030 in the quarter we took one small but important step towards this by installing solar panels in our facility in korea so you see a picture of that here. And we expect to generate about 430 megawatt hours of fully renewable electricity for that facility going forward. Next business area is harsh environment. And here, the net sales grew 9%. However, that was largely driven by the inclusion of Yovo acquisition. So So organically, it was a 4% decline year on year, but it was a sequential improvement over the first quarter. We continue to see strong performance for connectivity solutions, which is largely defense-oriented business. However, the dynamic cables we've seen slightly mute the demand in the start of this year. There was, I would say, some level of improvement in the quarter versus the first quarter. and we have seen a modest pickup also on the order book here but a little bit ironically perhaps that with the turbulence in the middle east and the oil price volatility even though long term clearly a higher oil price is good for the customers here in the short term the uncertainty leads to a little bit of hesitation for some of the capex projects So that's what we have seen. We have an outlook that we think there will be a modest stabilization of this business also going forward and we expect the second half to be a little bit stronger than the first half. Innovation, another one of our core strategic pillars. Here's an example from the harsh environment space where we have launched a new a jacketed wire line. A wire line is basically it's a long cable that is inserted into a drilling hole and it's used for sensing and measuring applications either the cable itself or it's connected with some kind of measuring device at the end of the cable and although these wire lines are armored with with steel wire they have a certain lifetime and they tend to break so the new product here which is called viridis it's it was launched in april and it's a jacketed so it's you know the secret sauce here is the proprietary polymer formulation and technology that we're coating this cable with so it may not be rocket science but it's a proprietary formulation and And we know that it increases the lifetime by about 2x versus conventional cables. And knowing that these are cables that are typically, they're tailor-made, always made to specification, and typically from 1 million sec and upwards in price. It's a big piece of equipment on the drilling site. And if you can double the lifetime, even if it's a little bit more expensive, it's a very, very obvious customer value and a total cost of ownership argument. So we launched in April and we're pleased to say already several customers have placed pilot orders or test orders. So they order one cable and they're fully testing those cables now. And as soon as they reach what's considered the benchmark of 500 cycles, we expect repeat orders. So for bigger Hexatronic this might not be a huge business but certainly very promising for Rochester cable and the dynamic cable business. Now we are moving on to the data center business area. I will hand over to Martin to walk us through yet another very strong quarter of growth.

Thank you Richard. Let us look again at the development of our front business area, the data center. And And the strong growth continued in the quarter, including the acquisition of communication soon that we closed end of last year, and superior fiber and data services that we closed last month, sales growth total 56% in the quarter. And we are especially pleased with the strong organic sales growth of 27%. And as in the previous quarter, it is predominantly the US market that drives this growth. even if we have growth in all regions. Looking at the EBITDA margin we ended up at 15 and a half percent and as you can see from the graph profitability has been in the range of 15 to 17 percent of the last four quarters. Well in line with our financial targets for the data center business area. Last year we had a number of larger projects with higher margins that drove the profitability which we also highlighted in the report as of last year. Going forward we expect margins to be at similar levels as over the last four quarters and as always there will be variation between the quarters. Moving over to the market outlook same message as last few quarters there's generally very high activity in the market. The market is expected to continue to be driven by the bill of the very large data centers and this is typically the hyperscale and the collocation segment of the market. If we look at our business we have a healthy mix with a hyperscale and collocation segment that is our largest customer group and this is followed by the more local data centers which we often refer to as the enterprise data centers. And going forward there will be a continued strong focus on organic growth but also a focus to continue our structured search for especially service businesses. We have a very interesting pipeline of potential targets and several ongoing dialogues so superior fiber and data services was one of the targets on our list that we successfully closed last month superior is a service business it's based in dallas it's a short drive no more than five minutes from our largest data center office we have in the us and this was a typical hexatronic acquisition in the sense that our US colleagues have cooperated with them for many years and introduced the owner and the opportunity for a deeper collaboration to their M&AT. In terms of financials, Superior has annual sales of approximately 40 million US and at an EBITDA margin of 12 to 13%. And as the overall data center business area, the company has strong cash conversion. On the right hand side of this slide, you see a slide that we presented last year. And this highlights our ambition to broaden our service offering and also the type of customer segments that we serve in the market. And both the acquisitions that I just talked about, communication soon, acquired end of last year and the more recent now, Superior Fiber, 1st of June. those companies service offering include audiovisual wireless solutions as well as security and access control so basically ticking all the boxes on the application or services side that we presented looking at the customer segment segment side on the same slide superior has a very strong position towards the school and campus environment and this is a customer segment that we previously identified as strategic but prior to this acquisition we did not have exposure to. Looking at the transaction and purchase price, the fixed purchase price amounted to $29 million and then there is a potential earn out of up to 3 million US. In terms of transaction multiple it is 5.8 to 6.4 times EBITDA and this depends on the performance of the business over the next few years. And since we acquired a US S corporation, the transaction could be structured as if it was an asset deal from a taxpayer process, and this effectively reduces the valuation with roughly 0.4 times. And finally, superior data and also the previous acquisition for communication zones. Those both are very good examples of the company that we actively search for in our growth strategy. So with that I hand over to Pernilla to summarize the financials of the quarter.

Thank you Martin. So overall we had a net sales of 2.2 billion in in Q2 that is an overall growth of 18 percent. Organically we had a growth of 11 due to strong organic growth in our data center business but also in the fiber solutions that fully offset the organic decline in harsh environment we had an eight percent acquisition driven growth and that is coming from communication zone within our data center business Jovo system technique within our harsh environment business and last but not least our recent acquisition superior fiber and data services within our data center business and we continue to have a two percent negative effect on exchange rate compared to last year Adjusted gross margin at 38.7% which is 1.4 percentage points lower than Q2 2025 and that is due to the mix between business unit and an exceptionally strong margin in data center during Q2 2025. Adjusted operating costs were at 25.8% of net sales in the quarter compared to 27.6% in Q2 2025 but it is higher in absolute numbers and that increase is mainly related to new acquisitions but also as Rick had said small investments for future growth. Adjusted EBITDA of 224 million SEK with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 10% compared to 8.9% last year. The higher EBITDA margin was primarily driven by fiber solutions through the performance improvement program launched in Q3 2025 and higher net sales in relation to the cost base driven by higher volumes. and earnings per share at 0.61 compared to 0.38 previous year. If we're looking at fiber solutions we had a total sales of 1.3 billion in the quarter an overall growth of 9 percent organically increase of 11 percent in the quarter and the difference between of the 2 percent is headwind of FX. Net sales in Europe decreased by 10%. It is a decline due to weaker demand in the FDTH market, primarily microducts, and price pressure exaggerated by overcapacity in the industry. But in North America, net sales increased by 44%, mainly due to increased activity in the US, both due to ongoing FTTH build-out, but also because of an increased investment in transport networks as data center build-out continues. In the APEC region, net sales grew with 9% driven by all primary markets. An adjusted EBITDA of 122 million or 9.1% compared to 6.1% prior year. And the increase in absolute and percentage is primarily driven by higher sales in relation to the cost base, driven by higher volume and by the performance improvement program. COPEX investments in the quarter, 16 million or 1.2% of sales. That's mainly related to maintenance. If we then take a look at harsh environment, total net sales for harsh environment of 361 million. A growth of 9%, primarily driven by the acquisition of Jovo Systemtechnik. Organically, we had a 4% decline. The strong performance in connectivity solutions could not fully offset the lower sales within our dynamic cable business. And we also saw a negative currency effect of approximately 2%. and as previously communicated the companies within harsh environment have an international customer base and a majority of revenues from large products which means that sales per geography can fluctuate between the quarters. Adjusted EBITDA at 36 million and a margin at 10% compared to 12% previous year. A decline compared to previous year due to different product mix and timing of some projects. COPEX investments in the quarter 11 million or 2.9% of sales and that is related to both capacity and maintenance investments. A record quarter in total net sales for data center of 538 million SEK, an overall growth of 56 with an organic growth of 27. Strong development especially in the US but I would also say that it's pleasing to see that overall all operating units grew in the quarter. Acquired growth of 32% seeming from communication zone and also from superior. Adjusted EBITDA of 83 million or 15.5%. 16% growth in absolute number but lower percentage compared to prior year. The decline in adjusted EBITDA margin compared to last year was driven by continued investment into organic growth initiatives and exceptionally strong margin last year. And COPEX investment in the data center business is quite low, 3 million SIG or 0.7% of net sales. Cash flow from operating activities before changes in working capital of 214 million, a small negative effect from working capital of 33 million in the quarter that is mainly related to increased account receivable due to strong sales in the quarter and a small increase in inventory which is partly offset then by increased accounts payable. So cash flow from operating activities of 181 million representing 84% cash conversion. Maintenance and capacity investments of 30 million equivalent to 1.3% of sales. 524 million is mainly attributed to the acquisition of Jovo and Superior as well as a payment of earn out related to Knet and an acquisition option related to Qubix. 408 million from financing activities, mainly explained by net proceeds from a new share issue of 583 million. This was partly offset by amortization of lease liabilities of 33 million, while borrowings of 160 and amortization of loans of 302. If we then go to next slide and look at our net debt. Net debt which corresponds to net debt excluding lease liabilities amounted to 1.5 billion at the end of the quarter which is a decrease of 202 million compared to last quarter. Overall leverage at 1.7 times compared to 2.2 times at the end of Q1 2026. A reduction of 0.5 times. Leverage was negatively impacted by earn-out payments as early communicated and the acquisitions of Yogo and Superior completed during the quarter. And that was offset by the share issue completed during the period plus a positive effect from increased EBITDA. At the end of Q2 we had 694 million of cash and a 1.2 billion unutilized backup facilities which gives us a liquidity of 1.9 billion and we have a solid financial position.

Okay Thank you Pernilla. So time to wrap things up here before we move on to Q&A and if we summarize the quarter first it was a strong quarter net sales of 2.2 billion double digit organic growth as well as an EBITDA improvement both sequentially and year on over year fiber solutions came back to organic growth driven primarily by the U.S. and also a strong EBITDA margin improvement both year on year and also for the second consecutive quarter sequentially. Partial environment was slightly down in the quarter but it was also a little bit better than the first quarter so sequentially was an improvement and we do expect that slow gradual improvement to continue and then data center continued its string of strong growth again strong organic growth in the quarter for the very first time broke through the half billion sec in the quarter in terms of net revenue and we do as panila just pointed out we have a strong financial position to invest for growth and that's acquisitive growth but it's also increasingly organic growth that we are investing in so if if we take a little bit of to step back and not only about the quarter but I've been here 16 months now and we have been very busy in the last year or so on working on I would say mainly two things one is a turnaround of fiber solutions and we're now clearly seeing things moving in the right direction for fiber solutions and the other big strategic initiative has been to grow and boost the harsh environment and data center business so that we have a better diversification and balance in our portfolio. And I think we're seeing also the effect of that now with those businesses at 40% of net sales and 50% of the profitability. So there's a lot of things that are moving in the right direction. We are proud of that. We're proud of the results this week, this quarter. But we also know that there's a lot more work to be done so we're not resting on any laurels and we hope that there's more to come in terms of performance and on that note just a few words of guidance on how we see the outlook going forward starting with fiber solutions we do expect continued organic growth in the US we've been clearly seeing this for a while now and we expect that to continue in short to midterm. However equally we expect the lower activity level in the European market to remain in the short term. We have I think a speculation or an expectation maybe that at some point the transport network growth that we see in the US should also translate over in Europe something similar but we're not seeing any signs of that as of today the submarine cable order book is strong for 2026 and the majority of the revenue will be in the second half we previously said third quarter what we see now is that some timing of some orders have been moved a little bit so we think it will be more spread between q3 and q4 and all in all if we look at all the puts and take for fiber solutions as of today we expect that this third quarter will be rather similar to the second quarter. For data center strong market strong order book and strong outlook so organic growth to expect to continue there and in terms of the margin we have seen that margin sort of converging towards the 15 percent longer term financial target that we have issued and for the last four quarters it's been relatively stable in that range or slightly above and we also don't see that would change a materially going forward. Parsh environment there's overall robust activity the defense sector is seeing strong demand the temporary effect of some government shutdowns we saw q1 and q2 is now behind us however as mentioned a little bit softer demand from the oil and gas industry so all in all we expect a modest margin improvement in the second half compared to the first half of 2026. and overall we continue to prioritize data center and harsh environment for m&a activity where we have room to continue to do acquisitions and we're also taking an opportunistic view on fiber solutions. I think we're now earned the right to grow in fiber solutions and if something comes up we will take a look at that but it's not where the focus is today. It would be more of an opportunistic approach. So with that, that summarizes the presentation for today and I think we can move over to the Q&A.

If you wish to ask a question please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue.

If you wish to withdraw your question please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad please limit your questions to a maximum of two if you have additional questions feel free to rejoin the queue the next question comes from max bako from seb please go ahead good morning and thank you for taking my questions uh only two this time so i will have to prioritize Perhaps on the horse environment segment, I mean, you have a target of 15% EBITDA margin in 2028, how should we think about the trajectory here in perhaps say 2027 and going into 2028 as well, given the current development? Any comments on that?

Do you want to take that, Pernilla? I will start and then Pernilla can correct me. I mean, as we've been pretty clear before, most of the companies in this business area, also the new one, are in that range. We have one company which is a larger one in the group that's lower. they didn't have a good start to the year things are improving a bit right now we still feel quite strongly that this is a type of business that should make 15% longer term we haven't really proven it to date but we have a modestly improving trend right now and we also have we have activities and plans in place to get us towards that target. And I don't want to be more specific than that.

Okay, understood. And then turning to the fiber solutions segment, which, of course, the growth in North America, very impressive. Perhaps a few questions in one. But first, you mentioned that fiber solution was the over-performer here in the quarter. The question then, should we interpret it as it was perhaps a bit too strong here in the quarter?

And then also, if you could have some comments on the capacity utilization in North America, given the very strong growth, and also how you serve the U.S. market in terms of middle mile and long haul solutions, given that you previously have been very focused on the fabric to the home segment all right a couple of questions starting with utilization i mean we have seen volume growth in the u.s market for a while also last year last year it was offset with uh price declines year on year that's now behind us so the volume growth translates into revenue growth as well and in fact for most of the duck because of the resident price increases going forward there might be you know some some help on the pricing side we've talked about that um how we serve the market um is we sell directly and we sell through distribution we are working to expand our distribution we think there's room and we have expanded the distribution there's definitely room for us to do continue to sell direct to some customers but also get a broader reach through an expanded distribution network and what particularly when it comes to the middle mile we have launched some a product line you may recall max called viper core this is a type of product that is directly aimed at that middle mile with a high fiber count and it's it's looking pretty promising okay understood and And just circling back to the question on capacity utilization, as you stated, you have seen volume growth both in 2025, but also now as well, of course.

So the question being, do you have much more room to grow within existing factories?

Yeah, okay, okay, understood. um we we don't as you know we don't disclose utilization numbers but we have we still have ample opportunity to grow and i think also now i remember you you asked is this you know is it an exceptional quarter um as you know i mean this is a project business so we always say don't look too much on a single quarter look more at the trends i think you know we talked about the first quarter being a little bit soft and there was some weather impact on that but now that's catching up, you probably should look at the half in total. I don't think there's anything exceptional in the quarter, but you always have a little bit of these swings. But like we also said, as of today, it looks like the third quarter will be similar to the second quarter.

Understood. Okay, I will jump back in the queue. Thank you. Yep.

The next question comes from Adrian Galani from ABG Sundal-Collier. Please go ahead.

I used my two questions to just fiber solutions. You, as you said, you're guiding for SIMQ2, and as we know from before, your subsea cable deliveries. I guess I'm interpreting this as you are sort of guiding down fiber to the home sequentially Is this a fair interpretation, and if so, what is sort of driving?

Yeah, I understand the question. I think, fair or not, I think you're perhaps reading a little bit too much into it. I mean, we're 10 days into the quarter. So there's a number of factors here, right? You've got product mix, you've got geographical mix, you've got pricing, you've got volume. And it gets very complicated if we start dissecting all these different levers. Clearly, if there's a big bulk of submarine cable in one quarter, that can have an impact. But as I also mentioned, we now see that more spread out over the half, not only in third quarter. and as of today when we look everything taken together we think that the third quarter will be roughly similar to the second quarter I don't think you should interpret that as there's there's a you know underlying softness there there will always be some pluses and some minuses and overall we don't see that the pluses or the minuses will be in a strong majority so to speak okay that's very helpful.

And then the second one is on data center margins. When you say that margins are going to be similar to the past four quarters going forward, annualized margin guidance?

I think generally, I mean I think we're trending towards the long-term financial targets. There will be variation between quarters and it's a bit early to say exactly where it would be for on a quarter, again, where you're 10 days into the quarter.

That's all for me, so thank you. Okay, Adrian.

The next question comes from Jacob Edler from Dansky Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, Richard, Martin, and Penila, and thanks for taking my questions. The first question is on fiber solutions. And in Q1, you were talking a bit more about the potential negative timing effect on the gross margin related to the price increases we've seen on resin and fiber. Given that you're not as explicit in your commentary regarding this now, should we kind of interpret it as that your view on the timing effect has improved, or is it more kind of related to the mix from the submarine table orders? How should we read that?

Yeah, so again, going back to my earlier, there's pluses and minuses. This is one of the minuses, potentially. I think we're not overly concerned about it. It might be a small minus, but again, that's something that we would then expect to be offset elsewhere. I think in general, we're seeing that the price increases that need to happen are happening. And there's always here and there. There's some customer contracts that there's some time delay. But again, overall, all things taken together, we see that the third quarter would be expected to be roughly in line with Q2.

Okay. And is that in terms of Topline and Ibiza, or what do you mean when you say, yeah, in line with Q2? Oh, yes.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, yeah, sorry.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay, great. So my second question, I guess, is on data centers then. I mean, here in Q2 and in H1, we've seen that North America has been the primer driver of this data center growth. should we expect north america to continue to lead the way here in h2 and can we can we expect positive growth for europe as well are there positive growth to be seen in europe as well or or mainly north america driven it would be quite similar in the sense that i mean we expect u.s to continue to drive but it has been positive in in europe as well and we expect that yeah so you okay perfect those were my questions thank you so much thank you the next question comes from

frederick nielsen from red eye please go ahead thank you hi everyone i want to start with the investments in sales and marketing in fiber solutions in north america and as you mentioned it has gained a few new customers so could you perhaps elaborate a bit on those initiatives what are you doing and looking ahead what does the pipeline look like for new customers in fiber solutions in North America yeah we have a pipeline of course I'd rather not be too explicit about that because you never know who's listening to that but we have a promising pipeline in terms

of what the investment looks like um it is uh manpower we've hired and expanded the team uh mainly on the sales side we're putting a little bit more emphasis also on branding and marketing to really establish exatronic as a credible and major player in the market but it's sales resources it's a big country and you need to have some key accounts resource you need to have some people who are dedicated and focus on the channel or the distribution and then you need to have a regional organization that can visit and find customers in all the corners of what's a rather large country.

Okay thanks and regarding data center you continue to grow well above your expected long-term levels could you help us understand the growth rate in the different segments is it basically hyperscalers driving all of the over performance or is it somewhat more even I think it's a bit broad but the larger customers the hyperscalers or the cloud broader cloud segment has the highest growth okay I see that's that's all for me thank you very much Frederick actually you asked about investments not only in the North American US market we're

also investing a bit in fiber solutions in emerging markets and we're seeing some good traction there as well there are many markets particularly in asia but also middle east and potentially other parts of the world where there are opportunities so we're putting some focus and some investment into also putting commercial resources to go after those opportunities as a reminder if you wish to ask a question please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad The next question comes from Max Bako from SEB.

Please go ahead.

Thank you. Two more from my side, two quite short ones, if that's okay. Circling back to the data center segment and what you said in connection with the Q1 report, you pointed to slightly better profitability here in Q2 versus Q1, and in Q1 you did 16.8%. of course since then you acquired superior which came in with dilutive margins so of course that changed the picture somewhat but was that the entire explanation why the margin was down here sequentially or was it something else to it that could be worth highlighting?

I mean between quarters is it's always a mixed question I mean which type of products and customers that are growing um it's also a mixture i would say and and as we on the facts we as you know we don't have a crystal ball we don't know exactly where we're going to land guidance all was given earlier in this case you know we we thought it would be a little bit higher but then on the other hand the growth came in stronger than we thought so i think in in absolute numbers we're pretty close to what was the expectation okay understood and and then also a question on price uh i listened to you this morning um rickard in an interview where you said that that price increases from

your side had very slim impact in in this quarter q2 but but perhaps slightly more going ahead is it possible to to quantify on a group level how much price might support organic growth ahead no i don't think we should go into that in total as as rick had said we have a situation where we are pushing out price increases at the same time we also have racing for example that is increasing so let's look at it then from a profitability standpoint and we will manage that Okay, understood.

Thank you. Thank you.

There are no more phone questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.

Thank you for that. So we have received a few written questions as well, so we will go through them. So the first question is, what is Hexatronic's value proposition to customer and its competitive positioning when it comes to middle mile and long haul fiber cables for data center deployment in the U.S. market.

So I think, Mark, that our value proposition is rather unchanged. We are providing everything that a customer needs to build a fiber optic network. And that hasn't really changed. I think there's a nuance in the change that as this becomes perhaps more important or equally important as the fiber to the home or the last mile, we have refocused a bit. So we have upgraded our product offering in the middle mile and long haul, and we've launched some new products. You can find them on our website under ViperCore primarily. But the fundamental value proposition and one that does distinguish us from most of our competitors is that we provide everything. We're not only a cable manufacturer, only a duct manufacturer, only a connectivity provider. We have the whole suite of products that you need to build a fiber optic network, whether long haul or last mile.

Thank you for that, Richard. The next question is, when I look at the Superior Fiber and Data Service acquisition, their main business activity seems to be connected to schools and local government buildings to the internet. What, if anything, does this have to do with the boom in AI data centers?

We look at the US schools, they make major investments into the IT infrastructure. So it's very similar installation work, it's like their own IT camp with mini data center infrastructure that they're building. So it's very similar in terms of scope as what we're doing in the other end. It provides a good diversification in terms of customer base for similar type of work.

Thank you for that, Martin. We'll take the next question. EBITDA margin in data centers fell to 15% from 21% despite sales being 56% higher than last year. What explains this negative operating leverage? You say that it was a result of greater investments but depreciation at a group level was flat year over year.

So in the same quarter last year we commented on a number of larger products with high margins and explained there was two to three percentage points higher than above for that quarter. So that explains most of it. And then adding to that, we have made investments in the organization for further growth to really harvest from this great growth opportunities. So investing in all parts of the organization.

Thank you for that, Martin. Next question.

Following operational improvements and rationalization in several production facilities what initiatives are still ongoing and do you expect them to yield material improvements to operating market margin and cash flow going forward yeah so the big ones were um the the performance improvement program and the first step of that that we launched last year where we closed one facility and moved volumes and also So we structured the commercial business a bit in fiber solutions. From here on, it's more of the daily and incremental work on things like lean manufacturing. Scrap reductions is a big one. There are some purchasing initiatives that we have. I do expect these to yield improvements. We have said that they are, for example, they are part of closing the gap towards the 10% EBITDA margin in fiber solutions. We were at 9% now in this quarter. So I think we are getting both volume leverage, but also some productivity improvements. But it's more of a daily grind than big one-off moves that we do. And I think they are also, they're already incorporated in the guidance and the targets that we have set.

Thank you for that, Rickard. And we have a final question. You are delivering a very strong organic growth of 11% in fiber solution, particularly driven by the U.S. market.

Is this performance primarily driven by customer restocking or are you seeing a genuine sustained increase in underlying demand and new field projects? it's not restocking it's it's there's growth in the market and there's new customers that we are onboarding and there is there's always an element of customer mix here we saw last year that some of our larger customers had at a lower activity level and they now have a higher activity level so there's an element of that but there's no restocking that that I'm seeing thank you for at Eckhard and we don't have any more written questions so I want to take the opportunity

to thank everyone for joining this webcast and hope to see you again for the next quarter.