Good afternoon and welcome to Raute's third quarter business review. My name is Mika Saariaho, I'm Raute's CEO. Together with Ville Halttunen, our CFO, we'll go through the highlights of the events during third quarter. We also reserve some time at the end for questions and answers. If you have questions online, you can use the chatbot there. We will go through those. You can also post questions in Finnish if you want. We'll go through those at the end accordingly with the right language. Let's get started. Some highlights on overall where we are as a company in Q3 this year. I would maybe describe that the highlight was that we did get some quite good order intake during the third quarter. This was especially thanks to an important order we received in Baltic area from our long-term customer, Latvijas Finieris. That was EUR 31 million, and then in total, we had EUR 53 million of new orders. After a quite long period of declining order books, we now got actually more orders than we had as a net sale, so the order book went up. Nevertheless, I have to say that this year is characterized by quite uncertain, volatile market environment, and taking into account that the first half of the year was very low in new order intake, I would still describe that the market is challenging. There's uncertainty in the market, and we still need new orders. We are fighting on the new orders. There are good things in our pipeline, and I think we are well-positioned also to capture those opportunities, which is also demonstrated by this good big order that we got now in third quarter. However, it's very difficult to conclude yet that the turbulence would be over. I would expect volatility between the different quarters when it comes to our own order intake. Anyway, good order intake in a very challenging market. The other thing was that we were able to, let's say, safeguard and protect our profitability quite well, despite of the quite significantly reduced top line. We had net sales of EUR 29 million, which is a quite clear drop from the year before figures. This is, of course, due to the fact that there has been low order intake in the earlier quarters. Nevertheless, comparable EBITDA of EUR 3.2 million is, I would describe actually as a quite good result with such a low top line volume. This profitability was supported once again by very good progress with the delivery projects that we have. We are still working on a number of important big projects, and the deliveries to our customers are progressing according to plan. We were even able to, again, release some project provisions related to those projects. This was especially helping Wood Processing business unit, which is the project-based business that we have in our offering. Wood Processing, top line reduced, profitability was reasonably good, I would say, or actually very good, considering the low volume. Services and Analyzers were relatively stable on the year-to-year performance. Obviously, these are businesses which we would like to see growing in this environment, but it's due to the market situation. It's not yet happening to the extent that we would hope. These are maybe the highlights. Overall, I'm quite happy anyway with the quarter and the work that we were able to do during this quarter. Some key figures here. Again, I already mentioned net sales comparable EBITDA. We see the significant drop from year earlier figures. As I said, still, I consider this as a good relative profitability with such a low volume. Order intake, good figure. That was actually higher than a year ago, but then considering the very low order intake during the first half of this year, we still need more orders. Order book is now EUR 85 million, and it came up, which is good development, and we keep on fighting on new orders when we move forward. Equity ratio, balance sheet, we will have a look at those in more details, but we are financially a strong company at the moment. Good position from that point of view. Here we look at some of the couple of years of development in the order intake. We see, of course, the significant drop from 2023 figures, and now we are on EUR 88 million level year-to-date. Still some catch-up work to do to be on a better level in order intake. As I said, there is good things in the pipeline, but it has been a little bit the story for a longer time already now that things do get postponed. But as demonstrated during the third quarter, things also move forward when there is a right time for that and the customer is able to make those big decisions. Order book, here we see the development. Quite number of quarters we have been going down, and now this was the turning point from that point of view, and very happy about that development. Of course, this Kohila Vineer order is now contributing significantly on this development. Net sales, quite significant drop, 33% drop on the top line year-to-date figures or quarter figures. We see also the quite significant drop from over EUR 200 million of annual net sales, last year being EUR 176 million, and now our guidance for this year is EUR 125 million to EUR 135 million. Considering this truly significant volatility and top line, we should be very happy with the profitability turnaround that we have been able to accomplish and still having a solid profitable business even with these low volumes. Here we see the comparable EBITDA. It is about half of the comparable EBITDA compared to year ago figures, but relatively speaking, quite good performance. When I am saying good performance, I do expect that somehow we are experiencing some kind of a downturn in the industry, and in the years to come, I expect, anyway, recovery and back to higher volumes from that point of view. The same trend obviously visible in the operating profit. We see the loss-making years we had, 2020, 2021, 2022, and the profitability turnaround is very visible in these figures, and that is of course the key thing. We have a growth and profitability strategy. I would say on the profitability side, we are making good progress. On the growth side, we have not been able to realize growth in the current market environment to the extent we would hope, and we need some headwind also. Sorry, tailwind. We need some tailwind going forward to be able to realize also this growth going forward. Okay, in terms of personnel, quite stable now during the last year or so. Now, of course, we do expect some reduction on the number of personnel, taking into account the announcement we made today. Also, I will get back to this later, related to Profitability and Competitiveness Program that we are launching. Okay, looking at the segments a little bit in more details, starting with Wood Processing. The story is same as what I already kind of mentioned. We see significant drop in the top line, almost 50% drop on the top line of Wood Processing business due to the fact that there has been low order intake in the recent years, actually, and quarters, although third quarter was now good order intake. So, 46% drop, and anyway, we were able to maintain profitable business. So, I am happy with this performance. Very important for us also, in light of the fact that when now customers are then considering new orders, very good references from us and the good customer work, I believe, is a very strong asset when we fight for the new cases when they realize in the market. So, we have been successful in the customer delivery work and projects recently. Services, pretty much the same level of net sales, 3% growth, roughly the same figure, and profitability also on the same level. So, I think this is okay-ish performance, but we would, of course, like to see this business growing. It is a good business for us. We do see and have seen in the market our customers saving even on this kind of relatively mandatory services and managing their cash flow, so this has impacted our business, and therefore, we have not seen the growth in this business to the extent we would have hoped so far. Analyzers, I am also happy with the fact that we are profitable in this business. I think this should be, relatively speaking, the most profitable business we have. However, the top line is also reduced in this business, but nevertheless, we are able to generate profit in this business as well, and it is in a good shape from that point of view. So, this is an area where we are also investing quite a bit in our product and R&D work, and I expect growth in this area when we move forward, and there are good opportunities in the market. We do have good discussions with current and new customers related to our offering in the Analyzers area. Okay, I would hand it over to Ville with some more words on the financials. All right. Good afternoon also on my behalf. My name is Ville Halttunen, CFO for Raute. I'll jump into a bit more details of our financials now from Q3 perspective. As usual, I'll start with the EPS development, which very much reflects now the lower volumes from the top line as our sales came down 34%. This is visible also in the absolute numbers and EPS numbers, which came down 62% into EUR 0.26. No significant, let's say, surprises. We have posted the financial net items close to zero, and then the tax rate also being very close to normal level of 20% versus 23% last year. Looking into our cash flow performance, as usual, our cash flow is quite volatile in this business, as we are in the project business where the customer payments are much more volatile compared to the revenue recognition that we do in the project business. In this quarter now, we posted or received operating cash flow of EUR 7 million, which was a bit higher than the EBITDA of EUR 3.2 million, and some release came from the net working capital now in the quarter. When we look at the bit on the net working capital development, this developed according to our expectations. We peaked now in Q2 and started to decline from there. This decrease was now primarily related to the new orders that we received and some prepayments coming from there. As we are now still on the positive side in the net working capital, there are some cash still being tied into ongoing projects that we are still in the delivery phase and expect this to come down as we go forward here. Over long-term period, I have also here the very long-term picture here in the lower right corner, which shows that it is very volatile, our net working capital. On average, we've been roughly on a zero level here. Balance sheet side, there we have a strong balance sheet, so 66% equity ratio, strengthening further now in the quarter, and then we have net liquidity of EUR 22 million. No interest-bearing liabilities. We have also facility of EUR 15 million on top of this, so this gives us room to maneuver and investment capacity to execute our growth strategy. The investment level, there we continued to do some maintenance investments, primarily some intangible investments also in the digitalization area, but overall, this is going pretty much according to our plans, which is on last year's level, and the investments overall are somewhat below the depreciation when we exclude those lease depreciations that we have also in our P&L depreciations. The R&D efforts, those we have continued this year according to last year's level, EUR 3.9 million in totality. This cost, of course, gives some headwind to our margins as our top line is coming down, but anyway, that's the case at the moment. That's all from my side at this point, and then I'll hand back to Mika to summarize with the business environment and outlook. Okay, thank you, Ville. Looking at the business environment, I already described it shortly, but if I still try to recap, we have experienced, and especially our customers have experienced prolonged downturn affecting their business. Our customers' businesses are very much in general linked to construction industry development. We know that there's a downturn globally, not just here in Finland and Europe, but also in the other key markets like in the U.S.A. The development has not really started. It's not started to the level expected already for a number of times. However, that need for new housing, for example, in North America, has not disappeared anywhere. So, at some point of time, this has to be fixed, and when that happens, there's also the need for our customers' products, more volume. I expect that this will also then have a quite clear impact on the need for their technology partners like Raute to support them in this development. Despite the fact that it's overall been quite a challenging environment, there are always pockets of good business for our customers, and some of our customers are positioned in a quite different way. They might have their business linked to the transportation business or even LNG business or these kind of special segments, and they might have a different business logic and business situation. These customers are quite actively looking at investments, and they are considering when is the right time for investment on the productivity or modernization or even then, as we saw now in the third quarter, on bigger mill size growth and investments. In this environment, it's very important for us as a technology provider that we leverage and we use these long-term customer relations that we have. We have a lot of good dialogue ongoing with our customers, and we are ready to support them when the time is right from their business point of view. It's a little bit mixed picture also for different geographical areas in Europe, different dynamics than in North America. Nevertheless, specific to the specific customer, we can help. We can also tailor then the right solution for them based on their needs. Despite the challenging environment that we operate and the visibility still being quite poor, I would say on a longer term, medium term, there are strong drivers for our business, I believe. Especially to Raute's offering, which is then linked to the kind of high-end automated offering types. We see that there's a demand towards that. Sustainability also playing increasingly important role, and this is where we can contribute as a company into our customers' agenda. I believe that we are actually very well-positioned when the market recovers to capture these opportunities. Whether this now happens this year or beginning of next year or end of next year, it's very difficult to predict. We know that there are these kind of factors like the elections in the U.S. next week, which quite literally will have an impact on some of the decisions on some of our customers in the U.S. or in Canada region. Really these big geopolitical or political developments do have an impact very directly on the decisions of our customers. Nevertheless, at some point, this investment will take place, and we are there to support our customers as well. Then maybe one thing, I've been talking also earlier that we expect now still volatility for Raute between the different quarters in terms of the order intake that we get. Maybe I should correct a little bit that maybe that will be always true, and always has been true. Even in a good market, this has been true. It's now just that in the challenging environment that we operate, maybe the volatility and the average point has been on a quite low level, and then whether the volatility is such that we get this kind of third quarter order intakes quite frequently and every now and then, still would be a volatile environment, but maybe on a better overall sentiment in the industry. The volatility between the quarters for our order intake is unlikely to disappear in the foreseeable future, I would say. About our guidance for 2026. We did narrow the range within the earlier communicated range. Now we expect the net sales to be EUR 125 million-EUR 135 million. We took a little bit down, actually, the higher end of this range due to the fact that the net sales in the third quarter was on a low level, and that's now the full year estimate. In terms of comparable EBITDA, we narrowed it both from the top and bottom, so now the new range is from EUR 13 million-EUR 16 million, and now we are there around, year-to-date, around EUR 11.4 million or so. That's the expectation for the full year. That's the guidance for this year. Then there's one more thing I want to say a couple of words about, because we did announce also today that we are launching what we call a Profitability and Competitiveness Program, where we target achieving EUR 4 million run rate annual cost savings by the end of next year. First of all, why? Well, it's quite clear from what I'm saying, it's a very volatile environment. We need to be able to also invest into certain new areas where we see growth opportunities, good business opportunities, and therefore, we need to cut on some other areas. It's also about refocusing our efforts, and then also being ready for even whatever kind of market environment there will be next year and year after that, so that we remain a good, profitable, sustainable business. That's the fundamental reason for this EUR 4 million program. What is covered in this program is we look at all the costs. I have to say that during the past years, we've been quite carefully looking at our costs anyway, so there's not too much fat there, but we still think that we need to be even more carefully having a look at all the costs. But it also then means looking at the structures, processes, the organization model that we have, procurement, external spending, and everything, including also then possible reduction in our global personnel. Globally speaking, we are talking about up to 50 positions reduction. In Finland, we are starting change negotiations related to maximum of 40 positions reduction. It's quite significant reduction. Of course, very tough for our personnel, and we'll do it in a best possible way in good cooperation with our personnel. But this work will now start, and we expect towards the end of the year that we have concluded the change negotiations, and then we start implementing these changes at the end of this year, but also it will continue still to the first quarter of next year. We expect these savings, this EUR 4 million, to realize so that the full impact is there at the end of next year. As a part of this program, we are also then, and this is important for our shareholders and analysts also, we are looking at possibility to transition from three reportable segments into two. We have always had this Wood Processing business unit, which would remain as a reporting unit, but then we will have a new unit, which is called Lifecycle Solutions, and this would then combine the current Services and Analyzers businesses. You may have noticed that we already did some changes in the executive board so that we have one person who is looking at both Services and Analyzers business unit today, and now this combination will be under his leadership. But this is part of the negotiations, part of the considerations now during the fourth quarter of this year, and then we will see the decisions at the end of this year. If we were to change this, obviously we would then provide the required pro forma numbers and so forth for the new business as well. It is basically relatively simple from that point of view. We have two units, and you plus these two together, and that is the new unit that we will have. I believe that this could be a very good move for us. It even further strengthens our possibility to offer this lifecycle offering. We are also related to recurring revenue type of innovations that we want to have. They share very similarities. Digital services has always been part of service business. However, it is very much based on our Analyzers as an equipment working on those packages. So, this is really a combination of two strong units, I believe, which can grow as one combined unit even better going forward. Okay, so that was basically the third quarter summary, and also then some words about this Profitability and Competitiveness Program. If I still summarize with my own words without any slides, I am actually quite happy with the third quarter result in terms of the fact that we did see turnaround in terms of our order book development. So now we got new orders in. I am happy with the relative profitability or our ability to protect our profitability, even with the very low volumes that we experienced on the net sale side. On the other side of the coin, I still cannot promise that it is now a very easy environment where we operate. There are big uncertainties, and we need to fight for every order, help our customers also to be successful in this environment. But I think we are very well-positioned to do that job when we move forward. That is all from my side, so thank you very much. I think we will take some questions if there are online or maybe if there is from audience here. I think we can start actually from the audience here, so let's take the audience first. Of course. You said now, and I think that in previous call as well, that some clients are saving money in quite mandatory maintenance work. Have you seen or do you expect to see that these kind of clients have had or will have issues in their production already? Well, I think it's not totally black and white. There is always possibility to, for example, little bit postpone preventive maintenance and these kind of things. But of course, when doing that, the risk level increases. So the risk level increases that then something happens which is unplanned, and that will then mix up the production or something like that. I know these are decisions by our customers. We never recommend anything like that. But in this environment, of course, we are there to help them if that is what they need. We need to realize that, I'm speaking globally now, some of our customers really have been quite clearly unprofitable for some time. It's quite understandable that in that situation, some of our customers are even protecting really their cash flow and making sure that they are solid going forward. However, as I said, we have some customers which have been very nicely profitable throughout these challenging times, and they are investing into new volume, and it's everything in between. Yeah. It is quite obvious that hardwood plywood producers are in much better shape than softwood plywood side and maybe LVL as well. Do you see difference in demand and demand outlook between softwood plywood and LVL? Well, it seems now that overall during this turbulent time, LVL has been quite, relatively speaking, good, better investment. However, we need to realize that there is also a regional aspect to that. We see what has happened that, of course, there is now new LVL capacity coming online. Maybe that is impacting also somehow the dynamics, and if there is not demand at that very moment, it might cause some kind of a turbulence in the market. Then there is a question about the global flows of LVL. We see in some regions, like in Australia, a lot of LVL, I would say low-quality LVL coming from China into Australia market. There is this kind of a dynamics which is then impacting the whole world. Ultimately, it is very much about question how much and how well the U.S. market in particular actually is developing. If they need LVL, they actually need to take it from other regions of the world, and then the flows work. If not, it really will have a kind of a effect on the global flows and everybody's business from that point of view. Not sure if I answered exactly the question, but this is how it works, and it truly varies between different business. LVL has been better than softwood, and especially birch plywood producers have been, in many cases, actually quite successful even during these difficult times. Okay. Then about the Profitability and Competitiveness Program, you are targeting like EUR 4 million savings. Do you expect to get all of this through the bottom line, or do you aim to share some benefits with clients, or maybe invest somewhere else? Well, this is an internal efficiency program from that point of view, that it is not based on. We have another work which we have been doing, and we continue, of course, selling the value to our customers and all this. This is more on the savings side, truly on our own operations. Of course, this will improve our competitiveness, and how this is reflected then in the pricing and the global picture, I do not know, but we want to be competitive. The EUR 4 million is a true cost saving that we are looking in our own operations. A big part of that has already A big part of the savings we have done so far has been not really reducing the number of personnel, but now it actually also includes this. This will be now quite, I would say, material part of the savings that we are looking at. When we I will still use maybe the refocus word here, that when we cut from some other places, it is quite clear that we have some priority strategy areas where we want to invest. We have not stopped investing also into our assets or anything, as you can see from the numbers. We will continue that, and want to be able to do that also in the future. Okay. Finally, technical one. If I add to your starting order book the orders you got in Q3 and deduct revenue, I get a EUR 5 million bigger figure than you reported as order book at the end of quarter. Do you know where this EUR 5 million is, or am I wrong? You are right, and I know where it is. You are exactly right. We did write a short sentence on this statement as well. Unfortunately, and this truly is not typically what happened, there was one cancellation of the order, something from our order book. This was an order we got earlier from the APAC, the Asia Pacific region. Normally, and throughout the history, through my 4+ years in Raute, this has happened once earlier with a very small amount. It was EUR 1 million or EUR 2 million, and now it happened with EUR 5 million. But this is not normal. The contracts we have with our customers typically are very binding to both sides. We do get, if there is a cancellation, we do get covered with all the costs that occurred and all this, and there is even penalty for cancellation and all this. Now it did happen with one of these Asian customers that there just wasn't way forward, actually, and they ran out of the financing for this case. So we agreed together that we'll cancel this case, and that disappeared from the order book. That's the fact. All right, thank you. Did this cancellation have any profit impact in Q3? No. Not negative, but neither positive. It was totally neutral. So, total good profitability was not because we got something extra from them, or neither did it hit us. So, it just disappeared, basically. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions online? Yeah, there are a few questions on the order intake side. Q3 order intake was strong. Do you already see this as a sign of broader market recovery, or is it still too early to draw that conclusion? It's maybe still too early to draw that conclusion that we would be definitely now sustainably on a higher level of the volatile order intake that we get. However, I'm not ruling it out that this would be a good time for starting and getting higher orders in. As I said, we do have very good things in our sales pipeline, and we truly are happy with the third quarter order intake. It might be that there are good quarters like that coming to us, but still the volatility is very high, and also the uncertainty related to the events that will take place, for example, in next week, the elections in the U.S., as was what I mentioned earlier. This will most likely have a big impact to our customers' decision-making. Yep. There's a follow-up question on this same. The order backlog has grown significantly, but profitability remains under pressure. When do you expect the stronger order backlog starting to translate into improved profitability? Well, it's not exactly true that the order backlog would have developed in positive ways. It's been going down. I mean, it is on a quarter-on-quarter down, now that the order backlog increased. Oh, okay. This third quarter, yes, third quarter order intake, which was now- Order backlog trend. Order backlog increase. So, typically when we get an order like what we got now in the third quarter, this will go through our system during, let's say, one-plus year time. So, there's a quite long lead time before it actually travels through our own operations and when it's really delivered then to our customer. But the work starts immediately. It typically starts with this kind of, for example, this bigger mill size order. It starts with the engineering work, and after a couple of months, it actually then moves into our factory operations, and from there then, at some point, to site operations and installation and commissioning. Mm. Yeah. That's all actually from the web, so we don't have any more questions. Okay. So, thank you very much. Thanks for this. If no further questions from the audience here, I think we can conclude the session. Thank you for joining this third quarter business review meeting, and I'll see you again at the latest when we talk about the full year results. Thank you very much. Thank you.
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