As resilient as always

Swimming in krona - not dollars

Fortnox (No_rec, TP: SEK) - Recommendation and target price withdrawn

This morning, EQT X and First Kraft (Olof Hallrup, Fortnox’s chairman of the board, who owns 18.9% of the shares) announced a take-private offer for Fortnox at SEK90/share or SEK58bn (38% premium to the last close, 13% premium to its recent highs in February). Fortnox’s board of directors recommends the bid, and the consortium said the deal is “best and final” (the consortium will not raise the price), corresponding to a 2025–2026e EV/EBIT of 47–35x and P/E of 61–46x on our numbers. The acceptance period runs from 14 May to 18 June 2025. The press release includes no comment whether the instit...

Airthings (No_rec, TP: NOK) - Recommendation and target price withdrawn

As a result of DNB Markets acting as financial advisor in conjunction with the company’s announcement (link) of a strategic review prompted by a non-binding letter of intent from Firda AS to explore a potential sale of its business segment assets, we have withdrawn our target price and recommendation.

SpareBank 1 Helgeland (Hold, TP: NOK167.00) - Softer margin, but lower costs

Helped by still-solid core revenues, cost reduction YOY and moderate loan losses, HELG reported a Q1 ROE of 12.3%, despite some margin pressure. With solid earnings generation, the bank increased its CET1 ratio by ~20bp to 18.0% and still guides for a 0.8%-point benefit from the implementation of Basel IV, boding well for meaningful distributions. We have lowered our 2026–2027e EPS by 0–1%, That said, we reiterate our target price of NOK167. With the stock trading at a 2026e P/E of ~12.4x, we continue to find the valuation fair and reiterate our HOLD.

Smartoptics (Buy, TP: NOK27.00) - We remain optimistic

Smartoptics’ Q1 results marked a slower start to the year than we forecast, primarily owing to weaker sales in Devices, which seems to be back to near-term tariff-induced uncertainty. On the flip side, we understand the slowdown seen towards end-Q1 has already caught up again in order inflow, and thus we remain upbeat for the quarters ahead. Following an estimate reduction, we have lowered our target price to NOK27 (30) but reiterate our BUY.