Transcript

Karsten Warloe — CEO

Hello, and welcome to this presentation of Multiconsult Group second quarter results, and also my first quarter presentation as a new CEO in Multiconsult. I will do this together with my CFO, Ove Haupberg, and I will start with some introduction from my side. First, sharing my first impression as a new CEO. Having now spent two and a half months, I have been warmly welcomed by the staff, and I really see engaged and highly skilled people. It is really exciting to learn about our organization and how we are well-positioned within a lot of areas. I am impressed by our ability to collaborate, both internally and also with our partners and clients, and also how we are able to deliver large and complex projects to our clients, in a good way. I have noticed we have a very good order backlog, we have a healthy sales pipeline, and we have a lot of framework agreements. So good on the market side. One of the things I was curious about when I entered this new role was how we are positioned within digital and AI. Of course, this will be crucial in the coming years, how our strategy and competency is within this area. I have to say, I am positively surprised by how the organization has built up competency. We have structured our data. We have started to apply AI, both internally but also in customer projects. And we are well-positioned to have discussions with our clients and partners on how to apply AI in the projects in the future. Building on this strong foundation, my ambition is that we shall be the preferred consulting company for our clients, and we shall drive growth and profitability to meet our targets. Moving to the highlights for the second quarter. We had good sales across all business areas, and with Energy and Industry and defense as the key drivers. We had the revenue growth of 7.8% with an organic growth of 0.7%. And an EBITA of NOK 108.2 million, giving a margin of 7.8% compared to 4.8% last year, with the comparison being affected by a two-day calendar effect and the Sotra Link project court decision. Ove will go through the numbers more in detail later. Our billing ratio is not on a satisfactory level, but we are taking measure to adjust capacity to get to the right level, and we have strengthened cost control across all units. As in previous quarter, the market outlook remains stable, and we have a healthy pipeline of opportunities. The sales in the