Paving Services continues to shine
Infrea delivered a solid Q3, with flat sales y-o-y but strong adj. EBITA growth and margins. Organic sales growth was 0% (ABGSCe +7%, +8% Q2'25), due to Land & Construction (L&C) facing a tough market in the north while the other regions are developing in the right direction. Adj. EBITA improved by SEK 12m y-o-y, SEK 7m above our expectation due to strong delivery across all segments but mostly in Paving Services (PS). There was a one-off cost in L&C from the divestment of Mikaels Grävtjänst (SEK -1m). Water & Sewage grew both sales and earnings in the quarter, which is encouraging to see, but we do not extrapolate too much on only one quarter of delivery. PS delivered strong margins (11.5%), and even though some PS subsidiaries' performances were weak, this was offset by better performances in others. Cash flow was strong at ~140% of adj. EBITA, and yielded a gearing of 1.5x.
Earnings growth to continue
We raise '25e-'27e adj. EBITA by 16-7% mainly on the continued good performance in PS and the underlying performance in L&C. We expect 8% organic sales growth in '25e, which together with gradually improving margins should support SEK 37m adj. EBITA growth (+SEK 17m '24) and a 38% CAGR '24-'27e. The lower gearing makes us more confident that Infrea could add growth through potential M&A.
Margins to improve and FCF to stabilise
We believe that Infrea is well-positioned to grow organically and improve its margins, given its exposure to underlying demand and to public customers (~55%), as well as support from M&A (13% sales CAGR in '21-'24). For '24-'27e, we expect Infrea to deliver sales and profitability growth and FCF above peers but with slightly lower margins. The share is trading at 8-6x adj. EBITA on '25e-'27e with a 26-16% lease-adj. FCF yield, while peers are trading at 7-6x.
