Hello, everyone. It's Juha from Metso's IR, I wanna welcome you to this conference call, where we discuss our second quarter 2023 results, which were out earlier this morning. Results will be presented by President and CEO Pekka Vauramo and CFO Eeva Sipilä. After the short presentation, we'll be having your questions. In the presentation slides, we also have the forward-looking statements that you need to take into account and remind when listening and following this presentation. We intend to limit the length of this call to 60 minutes, so hopefully, you can take that account as well. With these introductory words, I'll hand over to Pekka to start the presentation. Please go ahead. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Juha. Welcome to this second quarter call. We enjoy still continued healthy market activity and environment around us. Of course, there are uncertainties because of macro, when we drill down to our customers' businesses and to the segments, most of the segments are enjoying really strong and robust trading environment despite of this concern. I'll come back to that one a bit later. We delivered a very high sales growth. That's obviously from our backlog, which has been on high level and still is on high level going forward. We delivered record high profitability on group level, 16.6% EBITDA, and that is well in line with our target to deliver 15% EBITDA for as we have said in our sort of financial as set as our financial target. What is very specific for this time is that green transitioning is really driving our business now. All metals that have a role in electrification, there's a lot of activity around them, including orders, and then a lot of research activity, a lot of work that we do, front-end work that we do for our customers in sort of lithiums and many other metals, including also battery recycling, which is starting to be visible there in the front-end work that we do for our customers. This work is not yet visible so much in the orders, even though we have a few sort of lithium programs that we have in our order book at this moment. When we look at the group numbers, orders received, just a couple of million short of EUR 1.4 billion. We have a really tough comparison from a year ago. We had bigger orders there, and that contributed to EUR 1.6 billion a year ago. This time we had very few orders that were larger than EUR 20 million. For example, in June, we didn't have a single order that exceeded EUR 10 million in our minerals side, and that's very typical for this time. Bigger orders take longer time to decide, and they are, as they always have been, very difficult to forecast. Those bigger orders, they are in our funnel as well, and of course, remains then to be seen when they come through. Some of these are already signed contracts that are waiting for down payments to come, and in some orders, that is a criteria which need to be fulfilled before we report it into orders received. We are not concerned about the sales funnel what we have ahead of us, but of course, understand that 1.4 is somewhat short of the expectation. The difference to the expectation is either two or three bigger orders. It's not more than that we were not able to move over the line during the quarter. Sales, 15% increase from last year, that, of course, is visible in our profitability and in the margin. Adjusted EBITDA, EUR 246. That's near close to 60% more than a year ago, and 16.6% as a margin. Operating profit, good, healthy growth in there. Of course, the biggest part of the growth came from comparison, since we booked last year, EUR 150 million provision for Russian wind down, which is still ongoing. We haven't consumed all the provision yet, but we feel that we will need that provision before the final settlements have been made and reached with our previous customers there in Russia. Earnings per share is the same drop through naturally to there, now EUR 0.18. Cash flow still on low side. We would like to see somewhat higher, but we do have inventory reduction programs ongoing in the company now, and we can expect that one to firm up as we move on to the second half of the year. Looking into segments, aggregates, we have said that first of all, there is seasonality in aggregates, and seasonality is visible already in the second, and even more so in the third quarter of the year. Therefore, we have slightly reduced our guidance for aggregates outlook in general, and we are seeing a slightly slower second half than what we had year ago for aggregates. Orders EUR 330 million, about 10% below last year's order bookings, mainly because of the European softness and North America continued stable. Equipment came down 8%, services down 11%. Good execution of the order book, nearly EUR 380 million of sales, and services share declined because of more rapid decline in services to 28.8%. There we see some destocking of consumables mostly, and spares by our dealers at this moment. Adjusted EBITDA, EUR 66 million for the segment margin of 17%. Good, healthy improvement from a year ago because of the naturally volume and strong execution, as we have seen from aggregates over the past several months. In the mineral side, orders, EUR 980 million, short of what we would like to have seen. Like I said, I mean, there are bigger things in the pipeline which we're not able to move over the line. Activity as such is very healthy. What I said earlier about the electrification and related metals, there, that's where the activity is at this moment. We see somewhat slower activity in iron ore, not in the services, but in the equipment side. Then metals like zinc, that play a smaller role in electrification. There we see some slowness, but that is then compensated with very high activity in copper and nickel and the other battery metals. Sales EUR 978.8 million. Equipment growth 9%. Services growth 29%, so a very healthy services growth and mix absolutely contributed also to the margin of the segment. Services share 63%, which is growth of about 4% from year ago. Adjusted EBITDA on record level, EUR 178 million, that corresponds to 18.1%, and is a clearly sign that we do have potential. What we have said that our target is to deliver towards 20% EBITDA margin in minerals, and I think signs are there that the potential is out there. Good execution altogether from good price and cost management also from minerals as it was in the aggregate segment as well. Metal segment suffered a little bit in orders the same way as minerals. There are bigger things in the funnel, but we were not able to report those in the orders yet. They are there to come. Sales more or less on the same level as year before. Services share very stable, just above 10%, adjusted EBITDA EUR 14 million, translating to 12.2% margin. Good execution there as well from the Metso team. I'll hand it over to Eeva for more details in financials. Good morning, good afternoon on my behalf to everyone. Pekka already presented our strong operative figures. I would only add a comment on the group items in adjusted EBITA. We had 11 million group items related costs in the quarter, which is on the high end of the typical EUR 5 million- EUR 10 million per quarter. Whilst we expect that quarterly range to hold in the second half of the year, our full year estimate is slightly up from previous guidance. Net financial expenses were also slightly up sequentially to EUR 20 million as our debt and interest rates are slightly higher. Effective tax rate for the first half was at 25%, a level we expect to be a good proxy for the full year rate as well. Our earnings per share for continuing operations were EUR 0.18 for the 2Q, and year to date, we are at EUR 0.35. Moving to our balance sheet, total assets are up some EUR 150 million from the beginning of the year. A small decrease in intangibles was matched by a similar increase in plant and equipment following ongoing CapEx projects, but otherwise, the changes are in working capital items and liquid funds. A few words on them in the next slides. Before moving on, noting that net debt at the end of June was EUR 840 million, up from the start of the year. This next slide gives a few figures on the working capital items. Net working capital at the end of June was EUR 874 million. At the start of the year, it was some EUR 600 million, at the end of March, around EUR 700 million. The trend in the second quarter was still up on all items, as you can see from the graph on the right. Still, due to our strong sales growth, this results in an okay-ish working capital percentages over sales of 11%, visible on the left-hand side. We have continued to see global logistics improving, and hence, we have continued to slowly reduce buffer levels, but the progress, admittedly, is a bit slow. Reflecting the strong sales growth, we continue to focus on the turn rates of the working capital items rather than the absolute values. We do want to see progress in reducing working capital going forward to support a better cash generation in the second half of the year. Cash flow in the second quarter was an improvement year-over-year. Looking at the six months, we are making progress compared to a year ago, thanks to strong profitability. Net cash flow from operating activities was EUR 62 million for the quarter and EUR 173 million year-to-date. The year-to-date cash impact from increased net working capital was EUR 344 million. I'm moving on to my final slide and main points on our financial position. There's not really much change on this from our last quarterly call, when it was already public that in April, Standard & Poor's Global upgraded their rating on Metso to BBB with a stable outlook. Looking at the table, liquid funds are down from the year-end as we paid the first part of the 2022 dividend in May. Net debt being up, as mentioned a few slides earlier, moves gearing at the end of June to 35.5%. However, debt to capital is down to 31.7%. With that, handing back to you, Pekka. Okay, thanks, Eeva. I will say a few words about sustainability and then finally outlook before going to the Q&A. Like I said earlier on in the beginning, that electrification or sustainability is really driving our business as we speak. Planet Positive sales, which we have followed up for now for quite some time already, this is a rolling 12-month follow-up that we do provide. Year-on-year growth with that measure is now at 43%, and that translates to nearly EUR 1.5 billion of Planet Positive sales. We have seen very steady, roughly 40%-50% growth throughout the time that we have provided this KPI. It's also guiding our activities and it's a clear sign that our product development efforts for Planet Positive products have been rightly sort of sized and allocated to sustainable products. We are also progressing with our suppliers. As part of our science-based targets, we have committed to increase the share of suppliers having a similar program, either science-based target or similar, and now we have 23% of the spend with suppliers that are committed to these programs. There's more than 400 suppliers that have rolled into science-based or similar programs. We continue with our implementation of our top priorities, and one of those is our performance culture, and we do measure that one on quarterly basis. Amongst the employees, we have a very high response rate. The latest one, just a few weeks ago, that ended a few weeks ago, we had 87% of all our employees responding to that one. Our employee NPS, ENPS score continues to grow, and we are firmly now in top 10% of our benchmark group of companies, international companies in similar business where we are. There's nearly 100 companies that we are benchmarking our sort of ratings, and it's clearly a sign and a good tool to see what shape and form the organization is, and how well they perceive the efforts that company is doing in all areas of business. The market outlook, we sort of retain the same outlook for minerals. Strong activity there in. Healthy activity in that market. In the aggregates market, we see a slight decline comparing with the second half of year before. With this guidance, we can move now on to the Q&A side and start that one. Thanks. Thank you. Operator, we can now open the conference call lines. If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Christian Hinderaker from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Thank you, Pekka, Eeva. I'd like to start with the aggregates business, please. I recall from your CMD regional splits here for the top markets, around 37% North America, 34% Europe, 7% India, and 6% China. Just wonder how we should think about your revised outlook statement as it relates to those regions, given Europe's been weak for some time, and we might view China as potentially approaching some form of recovery. Then you mentioned destocking here. Is that region-specific or global? How should we view the sell-in versus sell-out dynamic? The destocking was mainly referring to the aftermarket that we see. To some extent, there's some new dynamics that we saw specifically in North America. Our dealers, they also run the rental fleets, and the rental fleets are very busy at this moment. This moment, but the machines are not moving or changing ownership very often. The rental agreements, they lead to the sale of the machine, and when dealers sell a rental machine, then they normally place an order for a new piece of equipment, and these rental fleets are not typically moving at this moment. This is what we see in North America. Market has been stable there. We are a little bit cautious about really the next quarter or so. It, of course, remains to be seen how the seasonality kicks in, the high season kicks in. Normally, it does, it is visible in our December orders, but for that, we need to wait, of course, until end of the year before we know that one. European market has really been the slow and particularly Northern Europe. Central Europe has been in a few countries on quite normal level, and then again, Southern Europe has been very, very slow in Europe. Some signs in China, but like well known, from the macro, China seems to be returning slower than expected from the pandemics. That's very helpful. Thank you. I think you mentioned last quarter that European customers and aggregates becoming a bit more price sensitive. I wonder if that's still the case, and if so, whether you would intend to hold price and forfeit volume or look to be more competitive, maybe put some discounts in to be commercial? Also, just given the sort of sub-assembly model for this business, how should we think about fixed cost absorption as volumes decline and the potential impact on margins? We are, of course, following the developments, and we have taken already actions in order to balance with the, with the, with the current level of order bookings and expected near-term order booking. That's the way how we balance with our both fixed and fixed and variable costs especially in places where we can have temporary layoffs, as, for example, in Finland. We can do it rather flexibly. When it comes to pricing, of course, we were very active in managing our prices both ways. Of course, of course, we do see cost reductions in the supply side at this moment as well. It's not only that there is a price pressure. There are clear cost reductions as well, specifically in logistics and some other parts and components. It gives us a little bit of headroom to protect our margins. Understood. Then on, maybe on the mineral side, I think if we adjust for large orders at sort of more than EUR 50 million ago and mid-sized orders of EUR 20 million plus, looks like order intake down more like 23% year-on-year, book-to-bill for the division overall, closer to one. Just wondering if that's reflecting a more slow pace of equipment demand, given effectively a brownfield-focused market. You know, can you comment on the trends in, in minerals as it relates to sort of underlying activity? Yeah. I would say that it's particular issue with big, bigger orders that. It has obviously something to do with the discussion on interest rates and things like that, uncertainty relating to that one. That's how I would rather see it than being anything more, say, macro-related thing. We really talk about one or two orders in minerals that would have made a big difference here in this debate. Then individual orders, like I said so many times before, we know what we're gonna win, but we don't know when the day is. Exactly. Maybe to add, Christian, on that, actually, obviously, this brownfield focus cycle is nothing new. We've had that for the past couple of years, and we really see a very good, healthy activity on the smaller end of deals coming from geographically all areas, from all metals. Actually, in very many ways, a very strong and broad health of the market activity in Q2. As said, you obviously need very many small ones to compensate for not having any bigger ones, and hence, the discrepancy. Very good. Thanks, Pekka. Thanks, Eeva. The next question comes from Max Yates, from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Good afternoon or good morning. Could I just pick up on the large order point? I think we've seen this kind of across a couple of other companies as well, where maybe customers have become a little bit more hesitant on large orders. I mean, when you speak to your customers and you look at the pipeline and discussions that you're having, and I guess acknowledging that commodity prices in kind of some areas are 20%, 25% lower than where they were kind of this time last year, is anything changing or do you really put this down to just these are lumpy orders? Is there anything in customer conversations where you're seeing a slightly different approach to maybe the way they were thinking in terms of timing of these orders? Well, your comment on metals prices, that might be true for iron ore, but we haven't seen too much iron ore activity for quite some time in the new equipment or bigger orders. Zinc is another metal, but everything else that we see, metal prices are still on such a high level that there's not question of metal prices being high enough. I mean, copper went in the beginning of second quarter, down to very close to EUR 8,000. I think it was EUR 8,100 or something like that, at the lowest, but it recovered to current EUR 8,400 quite rapidly. Nickel is holding about EUR 20,000. It has come down, come down from EUR 26,000, EUR 28,000, where it was right after the pandemics. There is some drop, the nickel volume for us is quite low and most nickel activity is in fact in battery-grade nickel, which on the other hand, is very active business for us. I wouldn't say that it's a concern on metal prices other than in these two areas, but they haven't been really the main drivers for us before either. Permitting, once again, is an issue there. Even in battery metals and electrification, that seems to be an issue. I would say that the rest is, of course, uncertainty. I mean, funding is an issue for everyone who needs financing in these days, and especially interest rates. Maybe people are waiting for interest rates to come down or at least, waiting for message that they will not anymore go higher. Those are the. Okay kind of, environment and sentiment that we work with in. That, that's helpful. Maybe just a quick follow-up on minerals services. I mean, the growth kind of slowed to, it looks like sort of 3% organically, but in absolute kind of order levels, above EUR 600 million is an incredibly good level. Do you when you think about how that business has performed coming out of COVID, do you see that division having sort of benefited from any pent-up demand, any kind of pent-up demand around rebuilds, any restock that means kind of maybe that number is not sustainable or there's anything artificial in that level? Or do you just see that as a kind of reflection of a very strong underlying environment? I think it's this emphasis to sweat all the assets that customers have today is visible in services. We saw some lumpiness, of course, after the pandemics, and the lumpiness was particularly in an area which is currently in order bookings, somewhat slow, and that's modifications and upgrades. People didn't want to do that one during the pandemics, but there was a sort of backlog of work that needed to be done. We booked those orders. We are currently delivering those, and relatively low activity currently in that area. But all the other areas of services and consumables are going strong. Okay. Maybe just a very quick final one for Eeva. just on the working capital, where you showed that chart of how it's evolved since sort of 2021, I mean, when would you expect to see a sort of normalization back to historic kind of levels and of working capital sales? I mean, would you expect that to ever happen, or do you think you will run the business sort of structurally with more safety stock? Or should we be thinking actually about some pretty considerable working capital inflows over the next 12-18 months? Yeah, I think, Max, the sort of strong growth combined with these, with the sort of situation we've had in logistics and supply chain, of course, has been a sort of multiple of events that clearly is taking quite long to unwind out of, especially when the growth continues high. When we look at the turns, we're sort of very happy on both the receivables and payables side, that it's, you know, good, healthy progress. Obviously, like Pekka mentioned earlier, customers are doing well, so it's, in that sense, a good environment. It is really this inventory buffering that we're that we're gradually working to reduce. I absolutely think that we have to sort of gain back some of the efficiency to the levels where we were. This is not something we're happy with. At the same time, One doesn't want to sort of take drastic actions when we are really have a full backlog. Obviously, as you see from the results, we are also customers are willing to pay for the availability. It's a fine line. Obviously, one can then sort of answer in a very long way your question when you kind of highlight that, I think this, when we have less of a global environment, unfortunately, we are seeing more politically driven regional environment around us. I think that obviously does require certain regional strategies. I do think over time that that does imply also a higher working capital. I mean, the whole point of globalization was that it was a very efficient, just-on-time type of a world, and we haven't seen that for now for a few years already. What exactly is that impact? I think that's, it's early to comment on, and something we're obviously working in our strategy work as well. Right now, I think the focus is on that we absolutely need to improve, and that's something we're focused on, and also incentivizing our teams to deliver a better cash flow. Okay. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Antti Kansanen from SEB. Please go ahead. Hi, it's Antti from SEB. Thanks for taking my questions. Bit of follow-up on the mineral services side, and I mean, from absolute levels and from year-over-year growth perspective, it's been a bit of lumpy ride past three quarters. Is this kind of only reflection of the lumpiness of the modernization and project business as kind of the progress on the spare parts and consumables being more steady? Perhaps, Pekka, you mentioned that the mods demand is a bit slow right now, or are you just referring to the similar timing issues as on the OE side? Yeah. More of a timing issue, but there is an impact of the pent-up demand that we saw in mods and upgrades area after, right after the pandemic. There is a comparison within that one. We haven't opened it, and we don't go to that sort of breakdowns. Internally, I mean, when I look at those things, yes, we did enjoy very strong order bookings in that area after the pandemic, and now it's sort of normalizing that one. There's some seasonality in that one because it's always linked with the shutdowns, and shutdowns are normally timed with the vacation period and so forth. Delivery takes place during the vacations or right after the vacations, and order bookings between the sort of vacation. We are, of course, in north and northern and southern hemisphere, and these are. There is a timing difference. There's like two seasonalities in that area. Okay. Maybe I wanted to clarify a bit on the timing issues on the OE side. I mean, you talked a little bit about more kind of a slower decision-making, but were you also pointing out that there were some specific deals that actually slipped from quarter to another, like, you know, it's typical in the business, or how should we think about that? Yeah. Maybe it is a reflection of slowness in decision-making since they slipped. There are some things that we expect to come through, but they didn't come through in this time frame, so. Okay, the last one is on the aggregate margin, I mean, if I understand correctly, the weaker outlook on second half mainly relates to U.S. coming off from a very high level. How should we think about the impact on margins? I mean, we've been discussing that the U.S. business has been a mixed positive for you and has been supporting the strong margin- Mm. -profile in aggregates in the past couple of quarters. Is this a notable change that we should kind of, factor in? I don't think we see any sort of big changes, but we clearly wanted to highlight it with the outlook that we don't expect the market to grow, just also referring to the relatively high order intake assumptions that the market had also for this quarter. That people don't just assume that it's seasonality. Mm. that it's a sequential issue only, but really, it's looking at year-over-year, we expect Q3 orders and activity to be slower and guiding on that. It's not I mean, like Pekka mentioned, the activity in also North America is super high. I mean, our customers and rental fleets are super busy. It's a question more on sort of the willingness then to, than to make equipment orders, and that's what we wanted to highlight. I think overall still the backlog is on a, you know, a good level where we're quite comfortable that we can manage the fixed cost portion in a way that will still be generating solid margins in aggregates, even if obviously not necessarily on the sort of, on the level that we saw in Q1. Like, you already saw now in Q2, that we're slightly down, but still on a very, very good level. Last housekeeping question regarding the group costs. Did I understand correctly that we should think about the EUR 5 million-EUR 10 million quarterly for the second half? Correct. I mean, that's if you also look at the past, that's where we typically been, obviously, then influenced by many valuation and currency type of issues that are really hard to predict. Hence now, clearly, we were a bit higher than we originally expected in Q2 but don't really see a reason now to expect that we wouldn't be in that range in the third and fourth quarter. All right. Thanks so much. The next question comes from Andreas Koski, from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good day. I have two questions. First, on input cost and pricing. I think we've seen raw material prices coming down over the past six- 12 months, and I would guess that have given you some support on your input cost. Do you think there is a risk that you will have to lower your selling prices in the coming quarters as a consequence of that? It's a long answer, which I would repeat from sort of a previous calls. We have so many different pricing models, three basic pricing models. One is in our projects, where we work mostly with the cost-plus model, and that, of course, is protecting the margins in input costs, fluctuations, both ways. That's a sort of automatic that we do. We have products where we have price lists, and these are typically products that are pre-engineered, and we know well the product structure and so forth. We also know the cost structure, and we then use, of course, the market information. We try to price our products into the market, depending on the competitiveness of our product. Then one reference point is of course, the cost base that is sometimes going up, sometimes going down and depending on the market conditions, we either increase prices or lower the prices. Then we have our contracts. That's the third model, where we have introduced the index clauses for raw materials, and of course, if input costs are coming down, then over time, also the prices are coming down, but they protect margins quite effectively. Yeah, it sounds like there is some risk to price decreases in the coming quarters then. Then my second question is on the free cash flow and what's on the working capital side. Do I read you correctly, and that we should expect a working capital release in H2 2023 and also in 2024? If that's the case, what do you consider a normalized working capital to sales ratio going forward? Well, I'd maybe be a bit cautious on guiding on what's normal in an sort of, a less normal world. As said, this needs a bit more reflection. Yes, I do expect that obviously our AR will go up as long as sales go up, sales growth, so that in that sense... Again, of course, it turns, so it's less of a concern. AP, I expect to slow because we are, as said, reducing on the, on the inventory buffers, so that should impact AP. Of course, it is also partly linked to sort of the sales growth. Then on the in-inventory side, we would expect that we don't need to, we don't, you need to see that grow, apart from the sort of project, work in progress, which, of course, again, is a reflection of the sales growth. If we're able to, and the target is really to sort of impact the other areas where it's more on what we have on stock, for instance, and through that then, at least see, that the working capital is not a drag on the cash flow, if not necessarily a positive. Okay. If you look at your different businesses, is this mainly related to any specific business? I mean, is it metals, minerals, or aggregates mainly driving this working capital tie-up? The supply challenges have been in all businesses, and hence, it is really throughout the group. Of course, in the aftermarket side, the aggregate side, we're more operating on sort of a standard offering, which then is where we sell availability. Whereas, on the metals and minerals side, part of the business is project work. T he working capital tie is very much based on what we on the backlog and hence kind of turns quite naturally, as those projects evolve. As said, sort of the challenges that we've seen in the past three years obviously have been both, and now it's a question about slowly unwinding the unnecessary safety buffers going forward. Understood. On CapEx, what should we expect in terms of CapEx in 2023 and in 2024? I was surprised about the CapEx level that we saw in this quarter. Okay, was, were you surprised up or down? I think it's quite reflective of the fact that we obviously sort of have quite a bit of growth CapEx ongoing, that are not necessarily sort of a single big ones. We've mentioned our sort of growth and a new, building a new factory in Mexico. We're setting up a new service center in Australia, adding to capacity in India. In that sense, we have had quite a lot of growth-related CapEx ongoing. I would say that the first half is a pretty good proxy for the second half as well. Some of those projects, obviously, are closer to completion, but some are more in the sort of still in a very active phase. So it's a relatively a good number. With the sales growth and really to support better availability for our customers, we do want to continue with those regional investments. Yeah. Will you have completed those investments this year, or should we expect EUR 140 million, EUR 150 million or so in 2024? These tails, I think there's some tails going into early next year, but they're not very long, long-term, massive projects, so they will be then completed. Then we'll, we have some further ideas. Of course, they will be then balanced as, and, kind of 2024 sort of decisions yet to come then. Also as how we see the market environment moving forward. Wouldn't yet want to really comment on that. We haven't done the homework. As said, this is a rather good balance of clearly sort of various smaller growth investments on top, certainly much higher than just the maintenance CapEx. That's absolutely true, but something that we've seen in the, in also in 2022. Understood. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Elliott Robinson from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. My first question is actually on the minerals adjusted EBITA. Obviously, there were a few currency reversals last year, but it's still after taking them out, it still looks like the drop-through is very good. I was just wondering if you could quantify any sort of operational improvement or anything on the price or price and cost impact that might also have pushed that up, or should we just be looking at this as pure drop-through? Yeah, I think it is. Actually- It is a drop-through, drop-through, but I think we've taken a sort of much more thorough view on our projects since the merger. Now we are, of course, delivering mostly those ones that have been booked during Metso Outotec. We still may have some tail ends, tail ends of the older ones in the pipeline, but these are healthy projects that we are delivering. There was nothing extraordinary that would have boosted the margins. Yes, comparison was weak because we had a huge negative currency impact a year ago. To my understanding, there wasn't anything major positive on this one. Eeva, do you have anything on minerals or any other business? I think maybe just to add what you already said earlier, but just to make sure, Elliott, took note, that the mix was obviously very positive in this quarter. We had a high share of services, and that was maybe something just to add. Great. Thank you for that. One other question is just to do with lithium. I was just wondering if you could quantify how much of the battery metals is lithium, and what sort of, like, vague growth rates are you seeing here? Just trying to work out how material this will be in the longer term for the group. Of course, lithium plays a sort of very small role at this moment on our sales. Somewhat higher in order bookings, but the whole lithium capacity needs to be built. Built and we talk about... I mean, depending on what year we take as a comparison, but let's say from 2020- 2030, 10x more lithium is needed. From 2020- 2050, 50x more lithium is needed. You know, just for e-mobility, I mean, that's electric vehicles, so passenger normal passenger cars, but that includes then also heavier vehicles like trucks and buses and so forth. It will have to play a relatively bigger role. will also copper play important role because drivers are exactly the same. I mean, one will happen, one won't happen without the other one here. Nickel as well, will have to grow. When we go into other metals, it starts to depend a little bit how the battery composition evolves over time. Of course, at one point, the hydrogen will start to play a role, which will then, of course, reduce at one point the usage of batteries and in EVs, in particular. It's a very much a moving field at this moment. Perfect. Thank you for that. That's all from me. The next question comes from William Mackie from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning, Pekka, Eeva. Thank you for taking the time. I guess my first question is general, we continue to see a lot of political effort towards focusing on the localization of critical mineral supply chains. Given the permitting timeframes, normally, that would be a long time before realization. In general, my question would be to that subject: do you see any shorter-term pickup of investments to support the localization of critical supply chains in your mineral customer base? Specifically, when we look at South America, what would you say are the prospects in South America? I'm thinking that perhaps some of these orders are delayed currently, and as the political or commercial environment stabilizes, your booking potential could improve. Yeah. Of course, permitting is an issue, and then the politics and the more local we talk about, the more power, of course, there is with the local politicians, always in this one. Somehow, we need to solve the problem of getting these critical minerals and more of these critical minerals. Otherwise, we will fail in delivering the electrification, which starts to be so critical for us, everyone on Earth. Yes, Latin America will play important role, at least in lithium. I think like 60% of lithium reserves are in South America, all together. You asked about if there's anything short-term. Yes, some governments are pushing more forcefully their own projects, mostly for lithium. At this moment, we see things happening or activities taking place in Argentina, for example. Chile is a well-known source for lithium and some other countries also in southern part of South America. Thank you. That's helpful. You mentioned in your statements that there were a number of large orders which you signed, but which came without prepayments and hence not recorded in backlog. Could you give at least a size or scope of the large orders which are over the line and awaiting the PDPs? We normally don't disclose those orders because we don't count them as firm orders before the payments are in place. Let's say that we have orders like that in minerals and in metals. Thank you. My next question would be more generally within minerals. The performance, the operating performance, driven, as you've highlighted by drop-through, has been exceptionally strong, and your trajectory towards the 20% goal is coming up fast. What factors, remain, you know, need to happen to drive you towards the 20% goal? What sort of time frame do you think that that goal is now a realistic, target? Yeah. Of course, when we talk about target, we don't necessarily mean one single quarter. It needs to be a sort of sustained performance over several quarters. I think this proves, like you said, the trajectory towards that we have the potential. We have a solid execution currently in our minerals, both in equipment side and in services side. We still have improvement potential in our consumables. As we speak, several actions there, and we need to go through, like earlier discussed here, we need to go through the regionalization from a global supply to more regional supply, and that might take some time before we are there. I mean, it will make our consumables more efficient, of course, if we do so, and reduce then our CO2 footprint quite a bit from the logistics once we fully in that sort of operating model over there. We do continuous improvement in all our businesses that will contribute to that fact. About a year ago, I said that I wish a little bit more normality to show what can we achieve with sort of Metso or Metso Outotec at that time, as we were. We have seen a little bit of that normality now in this year. This, in my opinion, is a good reflection where we are as a company right at this moment. Super. Thank you. Maybe a last question would be can you please provide an update on where you are with the sale process of the remaining metals businesses and when you should be able to book them into discontinued operations? We're moving forward during this quarter, hopefully to a more formal process. Ideally, we would still have something to report on before the year-end. I don't think we're gonna close anything, the processes with the ADDs and such are will go into 2024. Then it's really a sort of evaluation that we need to do quarterly as per IFRS on whether we are sort of well enough in the process to realistically argue that we will be in conclusion. Hopefully we'll move forward faster or fast in the sense that obviously the sort of better for the business and the people involved, as well as just the clarity of the Metso portfolio. Of course, we'll need to we need to see how the M&A market develops and activities on that. We'll definitely be updating you and the market on our progress then at reasonable intervals as we have something to report on. Super. Thank you very much. The next question comes from Christian Hinderaker from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you for squeezing in my follow-up. I just wanted to come back on Max's question on the discussions of the pipeline with customers. We've seen Chile confirm their tax royalty rates now, and obviously, cost of capital and permitting still headwinds, as you mentioned. That's a bit of an improvement in terms of the certainty for CapEx decisions. I wonder if you've seen any movement in decision-making in Chile, specifically. Also, you said that you know what orders you're going to win, but not when. Just wonder how you rate your competitive chances to win in Chile versus your competitors, and how that stacks up to other regions. Thank you. Yeah. Of course, I mean, it's never safe and secure before signed and sealed, and in most cases, also before the advanced payments have come in. Our sales in South America, that's the biggest region for us, for us, of our eight regions. We are, I would say, the leading supplier, I mean, by size at least. If that is the biggest region that we have, and Chile is the most important mining country in that region, so it tells how competitive we are there. There, but on individual deals, orders, I will not comment anything on them. Thank you. The next question comes from Tomi Railo from DNB. Please go ahead. Hi, Pekka, Eeva and Juha. Tomi here from DNB. Can you give an update on the temporary layoffs in Tampere aggregates? T hen maybe whether you see or plan for any capacity adjustments or cost-cutting exercises. We have this annual, what we call productivity improvement plan that we do regardless of the market conditions. The temporary layoffs in Tampere are ongoing. Most of the personnel is involved in that one, and we will continue that one until the order intake level remains on this level, and the inventory levels remain on too high levels. We have negotiated them. I cannot remember when would they end. I think was it end of September or something like that at this moment? Yeah. Of course, if need be, we're prepared to negotiate an extension into it. Just as a follow-up, you don't see any other needs or preparations for capacity adjustment? not at this moment. We of course, we use extensively suppliers and adjustments are not 100% visible. We are not sort of taking full impact in sort of Metso's books on those capacity adjustments. Thank you. The next question comes from Klas Bergelind from Citi. Please go ahead. Thank you. Hi, Pekka, Eeva and Juha, Klas at Citi. Sorry, I was late here on the call. Maybe you touched on this, but I just want to ask briefly on services and minerals. Pekka, growth here slowed sharply, but it seems like spares and wears still grew nicely at some 10%. I guess that's the majority of the business, which suggests a big decline in modernization orders. Is this also slower decision-making on modernization, as you see in equipment, or just lumpiness of the order? Not really slower decision-making as such, unless we sort of take the fact that customers are sweating their assets right now. There was lumpiness earlier on that was sort of pent-up demand from the pandemics days. Those orders have come in, and we are delivering some ends of that one now in the services. Then there's, like we discussed earlier in the call, there is some seasonality in this activity always. Two seasons or maybe four seasons, as we see in this activity. There's the vacation time of Southern Hemisphere and vacation time of the Northern Hemisphere, 'cause customers tend to time these shutdowns where that normally require the delivery and assembly of these things. Some seasonality in there, but I think we are seeing normalizing level of that activity. We have also, which we have not discussed earlier today in the call, we have also taken a critical view on some of the service activities that we do, and we have discontinued services that are not fulfilling our profitability criteria. That activity is there, but I don't think it's visible so much in the top line. Top line numbers may be in the bottom line margin, more so. Okay, perfect. My quick, very, very final one is on the U.S. aggregate outlook. Everything we hear out of the U.S. on the construction infra side, not commercial and pure resi, is still quite solid. Are you taking into account seasonality here, or are you actually seeing weakness on infra U.S.? Not really weakness on infra. This is more about how fleets are being deployed at this moment. The rental fleets are, I mean, our dealers don't have rental units in currently available. They are all busy working. But these rental units, they end up very often being bought by customers. But now this activity is not happening for some reason, and therefore, customer and the dealers are not replenishing their new equipment, because the rental fleet is not sort of moving to customers' ownership. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are a couple of minutes past the hour, and we need to stop here discussion about our second quarter results. We thank you for listening. We thank you for participating, asking questions. Q3 will be reported on October 27th, and we look forward to seeing you all soon, and enjoy your summer. Thank you. Bye-bye.