Welcome to Brødrene Hartmann's half-year report for 2023. For the first part of this call, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. This call is being recorded. I will now hand you over to the speakers. Please begin. Thank you. Good morning, welcome to this earnings call. My name is Torben Rosenkrantz-Theil, I'm the CEO of Hartmann. With me today is Kenneth Kongsgaard Kristensen, our new CFO, while newly appointed, Kenneth is a Hartmann veteran. Together, we will cover our business and financial performance in the quarter, at the end, we will be taking your questions. Let's go to slide two for the highlights. We delivered a solid business performance this quarter, with increased earnings on a stable revenue in a continued volatile and inflationary environment. The Americas was the main driver of the significant earnings increase, with a positive contribution from Eurasia as well. Investments were in line with expectations, in the quarter, we've decided to continue the ongoing capacity expansion in Europe. Overall, a satisfactory quarter, and with this overview, I hand over to Kenneth to take us through the segment's performance on on slide three, please. Thank you, Torben. The Americas business grew revenue by 3%. The increase came from pricing actions as well as cost improvements and was obtained despite slightly declining volumes in North America, where egg market continued to be subdued. Our business in Argentina contributed positively to the progress, while performance in Brazil was stable. Operating profit increased by DKK 61 million, a significant improvement that was driven by the higher revenue, exchange rate effects, and continued cost improvements in both North America and Argentina. It is still important to note that the economic uncertainty in South America is unchanged, with a challenging market in Brazil and macroeconomic imbalances in Argentina. Our Eurasia business delivered a flat revenue development, where improved product mix was offset by lower temporary charges linked to the energy prices and lower sales in India. Here, operations are being reestablished after the fire last year. In the quarter, we have invested another DKK 19 million in this rebuilding, which is largely covered by insurance. Earnings increased to DKK 58 million, mainly due to lower raw material prices and improved product mix across the segment. Even though we have seen, for example, declining energy prices in 2023, we still remind you that we compare to historically high levels in Q2 last year. We still expect all raw material prices to remain volatile for the rest of the year. Let's turn to slide number four for a few words on the consolidated figures. Consolidated revenue was stable on the back of the strong performance in the Americas and the on-par result in Eurasia that I mentioned before. We doubled our earnings this quarter, which, combined with our Q1 performance, led to our updated earnings guidance on August 3rd. We'll come back to that later. Profit for the period increased to DKK 58 million and included the discontinued operations in Russia. Profit came to DKK 7 million. In the quarter, we have recognized an impairment loss of DKK 55 million after a new fair value assessment of the assets in Russia. This is to be added to a total impairment loss of DKK 117 million in 2022. Free cash flow came to a net inflow of DKK 112 million, and the return on invested capital was 16.3%. Let's go to slide number five, where Torben will provide an update on the strategy. Thank you, Kenneth. We firmly believe that the macro trends setting direction for our markets are intact, despite the current turbulence and uncertainty. The trends that we built our strategy on are, firstly, a continuously growing sustainability awareness among consumers and decision makers. This includes strong headwind for single-use plastic packaging, which drives conversion to molded fiber packaging as a superior and well-proven alternative. This change is embraced by supermarkets looking to ban or reduce single-use plastic packaging. We expect that regulatory changes will be supporting this over time. Secondly, demographic drivers such as urbanization and growing world population will have a positive impact on demand for food products and our packaging. As an example, we expect a shift from sales in open markets to retail packaging sales in supermarkets. Thirdly, continuously increased focus on health, nutrition, local production, recycling, and animal welfare. We expect this to raise egg consumption and lead to a more varied supply of eggs, with a demand for packaging that stands out and promotes specialty eggs in the supermarkets. To benefit from these trends, we are drawing on our four key strength: market expertise, solid footprint, product portfolio, and outstanding technology competencies. Let's flip to slide six for short comment on our progress on our strategic items this quarter. Our key focus areas remain capacity, efficiency, and marketing. We concentrate on growing volumes and maintaining a high utilization rate, and to enhance efficiency through automation, process improvements, and continued technological development at our factories. In addition, we also consider attractive expansion opportunities in existing and new markets. In terms of capacity, we have already mentioned that we have decided to continue to expand in Europe and that operations in India are being reestablished. The efforts to divest the factory in Russia have been impacted by complex legal changes and challenges related to Russian and EU legislations and sanctions. The ease of completing a transaction is becoming more and more challenging. With regards to efficiency, we continued investing in automation and implementation of new technology to ensure smooth operations to reduce raw material consumption and costs. The competency center that we have established in Denmark is now up and running. The purpose is to develop new energy systems and technologies, which are necessary to reach our science-based carbon reduction targets. This quarter, we continued conducting consumer research to further support our customers in targeted marketing and promotional activities, with the aim to increase the demand for eggs and sustainable packaging. Let's go to slide seven and the outlook for 2023. August 3rd, we updated our guidance on our operating profits before restatement for hyperinflation and special items. On the back of our performance in Q2 and first half of the year, which is based on cost improvements and efficiency gains across the business, we now expect to generate an operating profit of between DKK 375 million and DKK 475 million. Our revenue guidance is unchanged at DKK 3.4 billion-DKK 3.8 billion. Also, the expected investment level of around DKK 300 million is unchanged. This amount does not include the reestablishment of our factory in India, which is compensated by insurance. We see a continued challenging macro environment, with inflationary pressure, low visibility, and geopolitical uncertainty, and we expect that prices of recycled paper and energy will remain volatile. With this said, we now look forward to taking your questions. Thank you. If you do have a question for the speakers, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press five star again. We will have a brief pause while questions are being registered. At this moment, we do not have any questions from the conference call, I'll hand it back to the speakers. Well, if no questions, we can assume that we have a very clearly and thoroughly answered any any questions and concerns anyone might have. I think at this time we'll close the call and thank everyone for their interest in in our company. Thank you.
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