Good morning. Welcome to Lassila & Tikanoja January-June 2026 earnings release. My name is Eero Hautaniemi. I am the President and CEO. Together with me this morning, I have Joni Sorsanen our CFO. Content of today's presentation is here. First, a few highlights. We will go into market environment and what has happened there. Efficiency and operations, followed by sustainability. Joni will go through the financials. We will conclude the presentation with the outlook that we updated in July. First, a few financial highlights. Our net sales grew by 5.9% to EUR 211.1 million, and we saw growth in all of our service lines. Our adjusted EBITDA was EUR 32.8 million, compared to EUR 36.9 million in previous year and our adjusted EBITA was EUR 10.1 million compared to EUR 15.9 million in 2025. Our free cash flow was in line with previous year's cash flow on comparable basis, and Joni will cover that more in detail later. Some operational highlights. We had very strong sales growth in hazardous waste and remediation business, where we saw a 33.2% growth year-on-year. The reasons behind that I will cover a little more later. Our strategy execution progressed according to our plans despite a challenging market environment. I will go through corrective actions or measures that we have implemented or are in process of implementing because of the challenges we have been facing during the first half of the year. First, let's look into the net sales development. As I said, we had healthy growth, 5.9% in the first half, of which 2.8% was organic growth. Net sales for second quarter amounted to EUR 116.2 million, and the growth year-on-year was 5.7%, and organic growth, 3.5%. This growth that we have seen in the first half is a continuation to the positive development that started already in the last quarter or end of 2025. By service area, in waste management the growth was 1%, which was driven mainly by the acquisition we closed summer 2025. Organically, sales in waste a little bit. Mainly due to the fact that we had a very strong remediation pipeline and overservice of services is still very strong. We expect the positive development to continue in this part of our business. In hazardous waste, the demand was stable, and our performance was solid. In industrial services and water treatment, we had a 3.7% growth to EUR 39.9 million. We have to remember that in 2025, especially the second quarter was very strong. This year, the seasonality is somewhat different, and we expect the third quarter and the beginning of fourth quarter to be the strongest in the year. This is due to the fact that large Shutdowns, industrial shutdowns are scheduled to happen in Q3 and beginning of Q4. This is the case both in Finland and in Sweden for our customers. Our adjusted EBITA for the first half was EUR 10.1 million, as I said, which is 4.8% of sales and obviously a lot less than a year ago. Main reasons behind this drop were the approximately EUR 3 million year-on-year increase in diesel prices. Obviously, this is due to the fact that there is a lot of turbulence in the Middle East. Obviously we don't know exactly when the situation is going to stabilize, but the impact for the first half was EUR 3 million. Also, what affected negatively to our performance was the increase in gate fees for waste to energy, which is driven by the oversupply of incinerable waste in the market. EUR 0.8 million amortization related to our new ERP system investments. There was also some impact line in waste management volumes, but this was minor. What compensate this headwind that we have experienced in the first half of 2026? We have impact of price increases in April, May, and June. We will see the full effect of those price increases in the second half of 2026. We have efficiency program targeted to waste management, and I will go more into details later in this presentation. We have done a number of actions to manage our fixed cost base, and also that I will cover later in the presentation. Let's look at what has happened in the surrounding market. Economic activity continued to recover in the first half of 2026, following the sort of subtle growth that we saw already at the end of 2025. Currently, the forecasts or the consensus is 1% GDP growth for 2026. But based on the sort of first and second quarter strong growth, there is a possibility that these projections will be adjusted upwards, but what we will see later once we see the forecasts. Right now, the consensus is around 1% growth. Industrial activity is clearly improving. The fact is that in construction, it is still slow, and this is especially the case when it comes to the household and sort of office construction projects. Data center projects are very active, and we have a good market share in that market. We have to remember that there is geopolitical uncertainty, and there are risks because obviously no one knows what happens in the Middle East and when the situation will stabilize. If we take a little different look to the market development, we have now statistics for the retail volumes till the end of June. As you can see from this picture, there is a recovery that started at the end of 2025. For the municipal solid waste, unfortunately, we only have statistics for 2024. But our expectation is that the sort of the volumes of municipal solid waste develop with a small delay. Our expectation is that we will see a gradual recovery of waste volumes starting second half of 2026. Another important thing for us is the development of fuel prices. From this picture, you can see that there is a similar pattern that we saw in 2022. Right now, or at the end of second quarter, the fuel prices were approximately 35% higher than they were a year earlier. So it is significant. As I said, we have implemented several price increases, and let's say that the customers have been less receptive than they were in 2022. But we're working hard, and we are gradually getting the price increases through. We expect a positive impact from those price increases to be visible in the second half of 2026. A few graphs about the prices of recycled raw materials. As you can see, they are pretty flat. Nothing significant that I could point out from this development. A couple of points from what is happening in the regulatory environment. First of all, the government of Finland has published its proposal for a new Waste Act. There is important theme there that is to promote fair competition. There are a number will be beneficial for us if the legislation is passed as proposed for in-house sales will be tightened from current 10% to 5% or EUR 500,000. Important thing is that municipal waste companies' opportunities to operate in the market will be limited by tightening the criteria for secondary waste management liability, TSV. The municipal waste companies will always have to run a tender process when they acquire or purchase services. The dividend distribution possibilities will be more limited for the municipal waste companies. There are certain measures to promote recycling in the future. Perhaps most significant change is going to be the fact that there is going to be a ban for collecting recyclable waste as energy waste. That will promote the recycling. We already have started the preparations towards this change. We are ready for this change to happen. In EU level perhaps one thing that I'd like to highlight here is the extension of the ETS to non-hazardous waste incineration and co-incineration installations from 2031. Earlier there was a discussion that this should happen already 2028. There is a three-year delay, earlier information. The good thing is that it is happening. To our own operations next. As I said, to execute our strategy successfully. Here we have a few highlights that I'd like Organically. We have won a number of new customers. We have highlighted here a number well. It is actually three regional S retail customers that we have won. Very important. On top of this, we have also some smaller retail customers that we have won in the first half. This is encouraging. Will certainly support our waste management development going forward. We have made certain acquisitions. Already we have discussed about Reinikka and Stena. We have this Kempeleen Siirtokuljetus acquisition that we have signed, which is currently under review by the competition authority. We expect a ruling from them in the second half of 2026. We will see what happens then. Obviously that would be to our operations in the northern Finland. Geographical expansion in Sweden. Blast cleaning is gaining market share in Sweden, which is very positive thing. Good organic development. We acquired the remaining SVB shares in the spring. Now SVB is 100% our subsidiary. A few highlights from waste value and remediation growth. We opened a new recycling plant in Kuopio. We have about 80 people working there. That strengthens our position in Eastern Finland. We have restructured our Kerava recycling operations. These investments will help us to have even higher yield from the material that we receive in the Kerava plant. Obviously the Merikarvia expansion is progressing as planned. Fixed cost development. We have been able to manage our fixed costs pretty well already in the first half of 2026. Obviously the headwind that we experienced was so strong that we had to do additional measures. We concluded change negotiations or union negotiations during the summer. As a result of those negotiations, we will terminate 20 employees and up to 420 employees will be temporarily laid off for 14 or 30 days. Other cost efficiency measures will continue in the second half. A more focused program that we have initiated before summer is targeted towards the operational efficiency of our waste management operations. We have four elements in this program, and this program will continue at least the remainder of this year and then probably in 2027 even. First component is commercial excellence, and we will have more focused and efficient sales organization. As a result of these union negotiations, we reorganized our sales to meet this target. That new sales organization will be effective mid-August onwards. In operational efficiency, we are doing a number of things. Route optimization is obviously in the core because the market is changing, and it is increasingly important to be able to react faster to these changes in the market. We have increased our resources in the route optimization. There are also other measures like improved fleet utilization. We will focus much more on workforce productivity. We will have more standardized operating practices going forward. Also, in the waste management, we changed our organization structure and we have now, effective August onwards, we have a more flat organization structure, which enables us to react faster. Also hopefully this will help us to also standardize the management and sharing of best practices, and through that better visibility and also across the board and more even performance. Right now we have certain units where the performance has been very poor and certain that have been excellent. Now the target is to make sure that all of the units meet the targets that we have set for them. Quite a few changes that we have already implemented or will be implementing in the second half of 2026. I will conclude my part with a few words about sustainability. Overall solid work in the area of sustainability. Our carbon handprint did not increase. The fact is that the recyclable paper volumes continue to decline, which affects negatively to this KPI. The carbon footprint from our own operations continued to go down as planned, which is very encouraging. I'm really proud of our work safety Where we reached a new record for the first half of 2026. The reason for this good performance is very long-term and persistent work that we have done across the board in the organization. With this, I'd like to hand over to Joni. He will go through the financial. Looking into networking capital. Networking capital developed in line with our own expectations, amounting to EUR -13.2 million, compared to EUR -15.4 million in second quarter of 2025. Looking at the first half, we must note that the development was affected by one-off payments to Luotea, which related to the partial demerger and amounted to EUR 5.9 million in the first half of 2026. Looking forward to the second half of this year, we expect networking capital to improve towards the year-end, just like in the comparison period. Capital expenditure in January-June was EUR 10.7 million compared to EUR 19.2 million in the previous year. Previous year's capital expenditure included acquisitions worth EUR 7.6 million, which related to Stena's pallet recycling business. Of note is that even though we acquired the 30% of SVB shares in the reporting period, it is not included in CapEx as the company was fully consolidated into the group already since 2022. Looking more into CapEx in the first half, we can see that it consisted primarily of investments in machinery and equipment. As already noted in the first half of 2026, depreciation and amortization were above previous year by approximately EUR 2 million, half of which was related to the ERP renewal investments, the depreciation of which was started in June 2025. Going forward, we do not expect any more year-on-year increase from the ERP-related amortization. In full year 2025, organic CapEx was around EUR 29 million and business acquisitions around EUR 12.5 million. As already noted, on a comparable basis free cash flow developed in line with previous year. Reported net cash flow after investments was -EUR 2.7 million, compared to EUR 5.4 million in previous year. It is of note that the previous year's cash flow is prepared on a carve-out basis. It does not include for example, interest payments on financing loans. Therefore taking into account these one-off payments to Luotea and also the fact that the interest payments were not included in comparison period's cash flow, we can conclude that the free cash flow developed quite well in line with previous year on a comparable basis. Looking at our cash flow on a rolling 12-month basis, we were able to generate adjusted EBITDA of around EUR 80 million, net cash flow from operations approximately EUR 64.5 million, and free cash flow of EUR 33.3 million, which is around 45% of reported EBITDA. As already noted, financial position remained strong at the end of June, even though the end of second quarter is usually the weakest quarter end during a financial year. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 2.1, while net interest-bearing debt amounted to EUR 171.1 million, consisting or including IFRS 16-related lease liabilities of EUR 64 million. Equity ratio was 32.9% and gearing 106.9%, affected by dividend recognition related to the previous financial year during the second quarter. Also good to note that the financial position figures for the comparison periods are not comparable with 2026 figures due to these carve-out principles. Maturity structure of interest-bearing debt is intact compared to Q1. However, what we did during the second quarter was that we utilized the first extension option of our EUR 50 million bank loan, whereby the maturity of the loan was extended to 2029. We also intend to utilize the second option, whereby we will extend the maturity until 2030. As already noted, IFRS 16-related liabilities amounted to EUR 64 million and thereby gross interest-bearing debt EUR 189 million at the end of the quarter. Cash and cash equivalents were around EUR 18 million and a revolving credit facility of EUR 40 million and also our overdraft facility of EUR 10 million, as well as the commercial paper program, were all unused at the period end. The average interest rate of our long-term loans were 3.3%. To conclude this section, finally, some additional KPIs for the first half of 2026. Reported return on capital employed 8.4%, return on equity 9.1%. Adjusted for items affecting comparability and certain carve-out principles, return on capital on a comparable basis around 10% and return on equity also, on a more comparable basis, 13%. Share of profit from Laania, EUR 1.3 million, in line with previous year. Finally, earnings per share totaled EUR 0.12. Also concerning earnings per share, it's good to note that the comparison figure is not in line with the new L&T's financing structure and therefore cannot be fully compared with each other. With this word, I will hand over back to Eero. Thank you, Joni. We have the outlook. As I said, we released a new outlook. We had a profit warning in July. The new outlook is that in 2026, net sales are estimated to be EUR 420 million-EUR 450 million and adjusted EBITA EUR 33 million-EUR 38 million. In 2025, the numbers were EUR 426.6 million for net sales and EBITA EUR 40.6 million on a carve-out basis. This concludes our presentation. Now we are ready for your questions. Go ahead. If you wish to ask a question, please dial five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Nikko Ruokangas from SEB. Please go ahead. Hello, this is Nikko Ruokangas from SEB. Thank you for the presentation. I have four questions that I'd like to go one by one. I start with diesel prices and related to price increases. In relative terms, how much of the increased diesel prices do you expect to be able to effectively price in? Should the price hikes you will make related to the diesel prices increase to be visible fully already in Q3? If I start from the end, our price increases are fully visible in Q3. Yes. How much of the diesel price increase are we able to cover depends very much where the diesel prices land and that we don't know. We expect to be able to cover most of the price increase in the second half Should the prices remain at the levels of end of June. As I said, we don't know what happens to the diesel prices. There is a risk if the prices increase, that we cannot fully cover the price increase. When it comes to the industrial, there we have a sort of a slightly different mechanism, there we are able to cover pretty much all of the price increases. Especially in the second half of the year. In waste management, the process is slower and the clauses of our contracts cause a certain delay, remains to be seen. I'd say that much better we will be able to cover the price increases than we were able to do in the second quarter. Yes, I understand. That helps. Thank you. I'd like to stay within the inflation theme, from a bit different angle. Have you seen any positives from the renewable raw material pricing related to the overall higher inflation? No, nothing significant. I showed you some of the price development of some of the recyclable raw materials, we have not seen any sort of significant movements that wouldn't be in line with what is normal fluctuation that we see in the market. We have not yet seen any major positive development in the prices of the recyclable raw materials. Okay. Thank you. On hazardous waste and remediation, strong growth. I understand the strong outlook overall you highlighted, was there a bigger concentration of projects on Q2, or does this kind of illustrate the new level you have grown to? It sort of reflects the level of projects that we have currently at hand. Obviously, the nature of the business is such that we can see that there is a healthy pipeline, we have to win the projects going forward as well. Right now, the demand for these kind of projects is very high, and hopefully, we are as successful in the future as we have been in the past, and that the sort of the level on this market situation is much higher than it has been in the previous years. All right. That sounds good. Thank you. The last one from me. You highlighted the data centers and your strong market share there. Is it more significant to you in waste management or in remediation and environmental construction? It is definitely more important in waste management, there the sort of composition of the material that comes from the construction sites of data centers differs quite significantly from the material that we've received from construction sites if there is a house building construction site or office building construction site. It therefore is sort of, I would say, less beneficial for us than the sort of normal or household and office construction. Even though there is a very high activity in data center construction in Finland, that is the reason why it doesn't show more in our numbers in the first half than it does right now. Okay. That is helpful. That is all from me. Thank you. Thank you, Nikko. There are no more questions at this time. We have quite many questions from lines. First one, net sales increased by 5.9%, but the growth was driven mainly by hazardous waste and remediation, while waste management and recycling grew by only 1% despite acquisition support and organic net sales declined. How can management describe strategy execution as progressing according to plan, and what concrete actions will be taken to restore organic growth and profitability in the core waste management business? Yes, a very good question. As we showed in the presentation, we have actually won a number of new and important customers. That is obviously one element. The other element that is more market driven is the fact that obviously when the volume of solid municipal waste has been declining for years. It is very difficult to grow. Right now, it looks like we will return back to the growth path, and obviously that should support also our growth. Obviously that will be helped by these sort of customer wins that hopefully we will have more in the fall. Thank you. How much higher gate fees for waste to energy were in Q2 this year than a year ago? Significantly. We will not disclose the exact growth numbers. The growth was significant as we have highlighted in the commentary of our results. Second one. Adjusted EBITDA margin fell from 12.1% to 8.4% in Q2, despite higher net sales. How much of this decline is temporary, and how much reflects structural weakness in waste management? What concrete measures will restore the margin, and what quantified EBITDA improvement will they deliver in the second half of this year? Yes. The main reason for this decline of EBITDA percent was the fact that our sales mix was different. Obviously another thing was the fact that the profitability in general in waste management declined because of the reasons that we explained. What actions are we doing? I think I went through the actions during the presentation. We will not quantify or give outlook for the waste management at all, and certainly not for the second half, but we have given an outlook for the whole company. There we said that we expect that these measures will support our performance so that our EBITDA development will be more or less in line with the performance of the company in the second half of 2025. Can you quantify what level of cost savings you expect to reach during the second half, and perhaps how significant tailwind you expect to see from price increases? The cost savings from fixed costs will be millions. We will not quantify the impact of the price increases in the second half. You haven't talked recently about the impacts of the municipalization in waste management. Is there any meaningful impact coming from that going forward? Yes, there is. The municipalization affects the overall waste management market. It has affected already end of 2024, all of 2025, certainly first half of 2026. It will continue to impact the market in 2027 and somewhat 2028 as well. That is one of the reasons why the competition is much more intense at the moment in the waste management market. Given the recovering market. Especially retail, your customer wins and price increases, should we see a clear positive organic growth in waste management into 2027? I would say that there are certainly ingredients that would support growth, also organic growth in waste management. Obviously, time will tell how successful we are at the sales front and in our service delivery. Certainly I'm much more optimistic right now than I have been perhaps during the past few quarters. Joni, you described the balance sheet as strong. Net debt has increased to EUR 171 million, and leverage stands at 2.1 times adjusted EBITDA. What concrete actions will L&T take to reduce debt and improve free cash flow? Is a partial or full sale of the 55% holding in Laania included in the company's capital allocation options? Obviously, as I explained during the presentation, the end of June is usually the weakest point of our financial position during a financial year. Definitely, through profit-making in the second half of the year and through positive cash flow, we will be seeing more positive balance sheet figures going forward. That is just a seasonal seasonality fact. As for Laania, we have not disclosed any information on our plans for the joint venture, I will not comment that any further. The fact is that company's balance sheet is strong, and as Joni very well said, end of June is the lowest point every year. We see no reason to initiate any sort of special actions to strengthen our balance sheet. It will strengthen through our operations and we have all reasons to believe that it will be much stronger by the end of the year, as it has been every year. Fixed costs have remained broadly unchanged since 2024. While the demerger has created negative cost synergies and profitability has weakened, what permanent structural cost reductions will management implement beyond temporary layoffs? How large are the targeted annual savings, and when will they be fully reflected in the results? We terminated 20 positions in these negotiations and in this restructuring. We have been doing a number of things to improve our fixed cost efficiency. I wouldn't say that they have remained flat. One has to remember that the inflation, even though it hasn't been very strong, it has been around 2%-3% per year. Considering that, we have been able to reduce our costs and our net sales grew by almost 6%. At the same time, we were able to remain at the same level or slightly decrease our fixed costs. Obviously, these measures that I explained in the presentation will help us to be even more efficient. I'd say that we have taken actions and the actions will be effective, and we will continue to manage our fixed costs also going forward. I'm certain that we will see a relative improvement going forward. Thank you, Joni and Eero. Thank you, all. Excellent questions. If you have more questions, please feel free to contact our investor relations, and we are more than happy to have a one-on-one meeting either live or through Teams. Thank you. Have a good continuation of the day. Bye-bye.
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