Atlas Copco AB (PNK:ATLKY) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 24, 2024

Atlas Copco AB isn't one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Welcome to the Atlas Copco Q1 2024 Report Presentation. For the first part of the presentation participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to CFO, Peter Kinnart. Please go ahead.

Peter Kinnart: Thank you, Operator. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening for all of you on the call today. I’m happy to welcome you to our first quarter earnings call for 2024. Together with me is Mats Rahmstr?m. But before I hand over the word to Mats, I would like already now to ask you that once we start with the Q&A session that you please refrain yourself to only asking one question at a time in order to make sure that all people that have a question are able to bring their question forward and we can provide them with an answer. Once we get to the queue then of course you’re more than welcome to ask additional questions. So thank you for that already now, and with that, I hand over to Mats.

Mats Rahmstr?m: Thank you, Peter. We have a tradition that we honor one of the business areas with the picture and I just want to shortly describe what it is. This is a self-piercing rivet machine. So you can see the aluminum panel and it’s important that it’s aluminum. It’s very difficult to weld and then many of the car customers then use the self-pierce riveting and between the rivet it could be dispense equipment and you can also use vision for these types of applications. So that was the training for today. So we go to Slide #2 and I start by looking at the graph and if you can look at the Q4 orders received in dark blue then -- and then the orange in Q1 you can see the sequential growth for orders received. It came in better than we expected and when we guided you earlier.

A construction worker using a mechanical tool for maintenance on a large industrial machine.

So we came in at SEK45 billion, which was minus 4%, but it’s still the second best quarter we have had, and of course, we are building a little bit on orders on hand as well since invoicing was slightly slower down. So, Compressor Technique, SEK21 billion, minus 1%, so pretty flattish, Vacuum Technique at SEK9.1 billion and slight positive development in semi. On the other side then a little bit negative development for Industrial and Scientific. Industrial Technique as they were honored with the first page, you can see they were plus 3% and SEK7.8 billion and then on Power Technique there was SEK8 billion, down 17% which was expected versus the very tough comps from last year. Very promising as well that we can see continued growth for service in all business areas.