Kreate Q1'26: Outlook is promising, price not yet prohibitive

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 4/28/2026 at 7:45 am EEST.

Kreate's Q1 result was, once again, significantly stronger than our forecasts in terms of both growth and profitability. We believe the record-high order book will continue to strengthen during the spring, improving visibility for the end of this year and next year. We estimate that the market situation in Kreate’s main markets remains very positive. The company's outlook has strengthened, especially in private sector customers, and we believe Kreate is in a strong competitive position, for example, in the growing data center construction segment. Given the solid order book and outlook, our valuation places more weight on the future than before. We raise the target price to EUR 20.0 (was EUR 16.0), and our recommendation remains Accumulate.

Order book generated greater revenue than we expected during the quarter

Kreate's Q1 revenue grew by 86% to 97.6 MEUR, clearly exceeding our 78.0 MEUR estimate. According to our assessment, this growth was driven by the acquisition of SRV Infra, a record-high order book at the end of the year, and strong project execution. The company's growth in Sweden also clearly exceeded our expectations. The order book grew to a record 689.0 MEUR (12/25: 401 MEUR, 3/25: 226 MEUR). We see that the strong revenue growth was directly reflected in the result. EBITA was 1.5 MEUR (estimate 0.6 MEUR), and the margin was 1.6% (estimate 0.8%). According to the company, relative profitability was still burdened by front-loaded personnel investments in preparation for growth, yet absolute earnings and margin clearly exceeded our expectations.

Our estimates for the coming years rose moderately

At the end of the quarter, Kreate raised its guidance. The company now expects revenue to be in the range of 510–550 MEUR and EBITA to be 18–22 MEUR. In addition to its robust order book, Kreate has projects in the development phase valued at approximately 200 MEUR that will transition to the order book once the execution phase begins. Based on its order book and the progress of projects in the development phase, Kreate's expected revenue exceeds 480 MEUR, which the company anticipates will be realized in 2026. We believe that a significant portion of the projects in the development phase will be added to the order book during the first half of the year already. We have slightly raised our forecasts and now expect revenue to be closer to the upper end of the guidance range. We expect Kreate's very strong order book growth to slow down in the second half of the year, and we now estimate that the company's order book will total around 600 MEUR at the end of the year. This is still a very strong figure compared to the company's history. Thanks to the solid order book, we have raised our forecasts for next year as well. Given the company’s front-loaded growth investments in areas such as recruitment, we believe that it will also be able to improve its relative profitability next year. Nevertheless, our forecast still falls short of the company’s EBITA margin target of over 5%, which was set for the 2024–2027 strategic period. Despite the strong outlook for demand, we still expect Kreate’s revenue to peak in the short term next year. We anticipate that the 2027 elections will affect public sector demand and the initiation of new projects in the short term, resulting in a negative impact on 2028 volumes.

Our valuation leans more strongly toward next year

With the rise in the share price, Kreate’s valuation has become neutral based on our current-year estimates relative to our accepted valuation range (P/E 10-13x, EV/EBIT 10-12x). However, the earnings growth we estimate for next year brings the multiples down to an attractive level overall (P/E 11x, EV/EBIT 9x). Given the improved outlook, we rely even more heavily on next year’s forecasts as well in our valuation. In addition to the forecasted earnings growth, the stock offers a dividend yield of around 5%, supporting the stock's total expected return.