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BUSINESS REVIEW JANUARY -SEPTEMBER 2024

Fortaco’s third quarter of the year was a challenging quarter due to the continued market headwind. The overall market remained highly unpredictable and our customers are normalising their deliveries after the high order backlog originating from the large order increase after COVID-19 in 2020–2022.

The business and margin improvement programme we initiated in the first quarter of the year continued to deliver margin improvements in the tough market environment. Our recurring EBITDA was EUR 3.7 (2.5) million or 5.0 (3.1) % of our net sales.

The strategic evaluation of our marine, energy, and heavy project businesses, announced in February 2024, has now been finalised. We remain committed to our strategic agenda and are continuously evaluating M&A opportunities to further develop our business in Europe, the US and Asia in the future.

The strategic expansion projects in our factories in Estonia, Slovakia, and Poland have continued as planned. In Narva in Estonia we are planning to start serial production in the first quarter of 2025. In Slovakia the new assembly shop extension has reached serial production, and the new welding robot line is scheduled to start production at the beginning of 2025. In the Gliwice region in Poland, the new manufacturing hall was inaugurated in October, and preparations for serial production have started. With these investments we will have the needed capacity to fulfil our customers’ needs when the markets eventually pick up.

We remain fully committed to delivering a solid financial performance in 2024 by staying focused on improving our profitability through the ongoing operational improvement programme and strategic initiatives.

Lars Hellberg

President & CEO

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