Alcadon: Data centres should hold up better than FTTH - ABG

• Q2 report due on Friday, 11 August
• Organic slowdown and FX headwinds on margins
• Trading at 11x '23e EV/EBITA (adj.)

Q2e: organic decline, weak SEK a margin headwind
We expect Alcadon to report Q2 net sales of SEK 376m, up 74% y-o-y (-3% organic, +74% M&A, +3% FX). We expect solid numbers in the UK, where Alcadon has heavy exposure to data centres. For Germany and Benelux, we estimate sequential growth despite a weaker climate for fibreto-the-home (FTTH) given that the company has a few major agreements in ramp-up phase. In the remaining segments (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark), we expect a weaker trend, due to slowdowns in both FTTH (mainly affecting Denmark) and structured cabling, which is partly driven by newbuild activity. Moreover, the weak SEK should hurt the gross margin near-term as COGS are largely denominated in EUR and USD, and this results in an EBITA of SEK 23.3m, for a margin of 6.2% (5.2%). In addition, we see a risk of FX-driven negative earn-out revaluations hurting earnings, as has been the case before when the SEK has been weak, but we are cautious to model this into our estimates.

Länk till analysen i sin helhet: https://cr.abgsc.com/contentassets/cd036f6d7dbc487fb16c96647d6f7fa7/pdf/data-centres-should-hold-up-better-than-ftth.pdf