Interim Report Rejlers AB January – June 2026

Q2 (Apr–Jun) net sales rose 9.4% to SEK 1,313.6m (from SEK 1,200.4m), but EBITA edged up to SEK 82.1m (SEK 81.6m) while the EBITA margin fell to 6.3% (6.8%). Operating profit (EBIT) declined to SEK 53.8m (SEK 61.3m), pressured by acquisition expenses of SEK -6.8m (-4.0) and an EBITA headwind of SEK 6m from an extraordinary recruitment of ~125 employees in Division Buildings in Sweden.

Analysis

The quality of growth looks weaker than the headline: this reads like a company buying revenue and capacity rather than extracting operating leverage. In a labor-constrained building market, an extra 125 hires is effectively a pre-investment in throughput, but if utilization does not rise quickly, the cost base steps up before pricing catches up. That makes the next 1-2 quarters more important than the print itself.

Second-order, this is more bullish for subcontractors and staffing/interim labor than for the prime contractor, because the pain point is execution capacity, not demand collapse. Competitors with tighter wage discipline and less M&A dependence should widen the margin gap even if they grow slower on the top line. The market usually rewards revenue growth in this group, but it should discount growth that comes with acquisition charges and shrinking EBITA conversion.

Contrarian view: the move may be over-penalized if this hiring wave is a one-off response to a full backlog, since margins can snap back once new employees are productive. The key falsifier is organic growth re-accelerating above ~3% and EBITA margin returning toward the high-6% area by the next reporting cycle; if that fails, this turns into a structural margin reset rather than a temporary timing issue.

Key Decisions for Investors

• No immediate long: wait 1 quarter for evidence that the 125-person hiring surge is translating into higher utilization and not just cost inflation.
• Relative value: long SKA B (Skanska) / short NCC B for 1-3 months, favoring better balance-sheet discipline and less apparent integration drag; cover if Nordic construction order intake or PMI data re-accelerates.
• If already exposed to Swedish construction, reduce gross and re-enter only after EBITA margin stabilizes above 6.5% for two consecutive prints.
• Watchlist alert: if acquisition expenses remain elevated next quarter while organic growth stays near 1%-2%, treat this as a multiple-compression risk rather than a temporary margin hiccup.