B3 Consulting Group: No signs of additional improvement - ABG
- We cut '25e-'27e adj. EBITA by 5-4% - Pressure on demand and hourly prices - NTM EV/EBITA below 7x
ANNONS
What to expect in Q2'25 We expect sales of SEK 343m for Q2'25, implying y-o-y growth of 29% (of which the organic decline is -4%), along with EBITA of ~SEK 23m, corresponding to an EBITA margin of 6.6%. Data for demand, hourly prices and net recruitment for IT consultants all remain weak, suggesting that the market has not yet turned in B3's favour.
Poor conditions weigh on estimates We cut '25e-'27e sales by 2% on continually soft IT consulting market data. We also cut '25e-'27e adj. EBITA by 5-4%, as we assume slightly lower margins related to hourly price pressure and soft demand. In general, organic growth should return once margins sustainably recover to a mid-to-high single-digit range. While it is somewhat more difficult to estimate the timing, we would not be surprised if this occurs sometime in '26 in the case of B3. That said, even though B3 consists of a set of decentralised IT consulting businesses with autonomy, we believe that the group will act similarly to the market on aggregate.
Valuation Based on our revised estimates, the company is trading at nearly 7x '25e EV/EBITA, which is ~25% below current peer multiples. Moreover, B3 is trading ~25% below its historical EV/FTE multiple, which implies that it is expected to generate 25% lower earnings per consultant than historically. In our view, current earnings are depressed due to a cyclical downturn rather than a permanent impairment of B3's ability to generate earnings. We reiterate our fair value range of SEK 130-200, as we assess that the current margin profile does not represent a steady-state margin in the coming five years.
