Good morning, everybody. Here is the Uponor financial results for the year 2021. I'm Michael Rauterkus, President and CEO of Uponor, and I'm here in the studio with our new CFO, Markus Melkko. Welcome. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the webcast. Let us directly go to the results of and the highlights of Q4 last year. The net sales were EUR 329.3 million. That's a growth of 17.4%, and a comparable operating profit was EUR 26.7 million, a slight decrease of 2.3%. Building Solutions North America and Uponor Infra increased both net sales and comparable operating profit. Building Solutions Europe comparable operating profit decreased, which was due to higher input costs, decreased sales volumes, phasing of maintenance and repair, as well as some investments in marketing activation. On this chart, you see basically Q4 for all three years, 2019, 2020, 2021, and gives you a detailed overview both on sales and operating profit. You see here Uponor slightly decreased from 9.7% to 8.1% OP, but it's on the same level than Q4 2019. Building Solutions – North America had a really nice development versus last year from 15.6% to 15.9%, and this based on really strong sales result. Uponor Infra did a really nice job, and they kept their their operating profit margin despite the high raw material increases. The operating profit landed at 3.8%, exactly the same level. Only Europe, as I mentioned before, they had a decrease to 6.4%, but still it is a massive increase versus Q4 in 2019. I come to the European results in total for the year in a minute. All in all, for 2021, it was a record year for Uponor. Strong net sales in all divisions. Net sales were EUR 1.313 million, and that's a growth of 15.6%, and the operating profit grew 12.5%. The Building Solutions divisions increased their comparable operating profit. We made a big step in our sustainability agenda. Uponor is the first building material company who received an approval from the Science Based Targets initiative for the GHG emission reduction targets in April last year. In October, we completed the acquisition of Capricorn, a Polish manufacturer of components for heating and sanitary installations. Again, it was a record year, both in net sales and operating profit, in a very volatile market environment. We increased sales from 90% to 123%, another 15.6%, from 2020 to 2021. The comparable operating profit went from EUR 93 million in 2019 to EUR 143 million to now EUR 160.5 million. I think that's a really great achievement. I would like to thank all the Uponorians for their hard work. Let's go a little bit to the market results. Clearly the gold medal of double-digit growth goes to the United States with 17.7%, Sweden 22.4%, Canada with an unbelievable almost 39.1%, Denmark 18.1%, Netherlands 14.5%, Norway more than 20%, and all the other markets also 19.9%. Germany had a strong growth 6.8%, as well as Poland. On a lower single-digit side, we have Finland with 3.3%, and we have Spain with 4.6%. All in all, very strong growth across all markets. No market was in negative terms. Let's go a little bit into the divisions. Building Solutions Europe had again a fantastic year. Despite the decrease in Q4 I described before, their operating profit grew 30.6%, and that's basically a second year in a row where they have really improved their performance. The improvements were driven by high volumes, price increases, and savings generated by the Operational Excellence program. We see very positive net sales development in Germany, in Netherlands, as I mentioned before, also in Sweden, with more than 22%. North America, it's also a historic benchmark. They just achieved in 2021 $100 million operating profit mark, and that's really fantastic results. The growth of net sales was driven by volume growth, both in the Americas, in the U.S., and in Canada. The strong operational performance, higher volumes, and price increases contributed to the increase in operating profit despite the higher input cost and the supply chain shortages we talked about in Q3. Yeah. We have Infra, of course. Infra had a fantastic results in terms of sales. Basically, they increased their sales in Finland, in Norway, and Sweden, and net sales decreased slightly in the design solution segment. The profitability decrease, however, was due to higher input costs, which were not fully compensated by price increases throughout the full year. They did a really great job in Q4, but the price increases came a bit late in the year. Overall, this impacted the operating profit. We also moved our sustainability agenda forward, and we compared here the results a bit with our net sales of 15.6% growth. The energy consumption went up, was 10%, raw materials 3.8%, water consumption 5.7%. But you see also here the Scope 1 emissions were almost flat, slightly decreased 1.6%. But we also made a significant step in the Scope 2 emissions. They went down 72.3%, because we had an increase in the purchase of green electricity. And we are very proud also because of our health and safety initiatives. The LTIF, the incident rate per million work hours went down another 36% versus last year. We really take care of the health and safety of our people in the offices and in the plants. Markus, over to you with financial statements. Thank you, Michael. I will walk us through a bit more in detail some of the key financial metrics, and then hand it back to you, Michael. When we look at the net sales development, we can see in a way, just to summarize on Uponor group level, the excellent work done across all three divisions. As you can see, the Building Europe net sales growth EUR 64 million, North America EUR 78, and Infra EUR 35 million year-on-year basis. That's a great achievement. On my behalf, I'd like to thank all the Uponorians for their excellent work during 2021. We had a minor negative impact from the currencies. On the right-hand side, you can see the net sales on comparable currency basis would have been EUR 1.318 billion. Moving over to gross profit development. As you can see there on the time series here, last year, Q4, and especially the beginning of this year, the input prices were on a completely different level than they are today. As we know, this is a phenomenon that goes across many industries today. But I'd like to draw your attention to the comparable gross profit percentage that indicates that our pricing measures are starting to pay off. The comparable gross profit margin has now leveled onto the level of some 36%. Obviously, since the net sales were in a super strong growth in Q4, the absolute gross profit is obviously then higher than the comparable period back in 2020. When we look at the operating profit development year-on-year, this is full-year figures. Thanks to the excellent sales volumes, good operational performance, as well as the price increases, especially towards the end of the year, they drove the positive development in the comparable operating profit. As you can see on the bridge there, the input cost had a big negative impact on our operating profit. We managed to compensate that with our pricing actions, good sales volumes, as well as with the operating expenses savings. On the other segment, there are certain elements where after the sort of muted 2020 COVID spending, we've actually also sort of started to invest in growth. That's why the sort of other element has a slight negative impact on the full year operating profit. All in all, with the combination of volumes and price increases, we've managed to capture the inflation. When we talk about the Operational Excellence program during 2021, it generated approximately EUR 13 million. All together now accumulated the Operational Excellence program savings total to some EUR 21 million by the end of 2021. As a consequence, during the year of 2021, some EUR 5 million were recorded as items affecting comparability. In total, since the beginning of the program, some EUR 17 million has been accounted as items affecting comparability. You can see that as the main variance when you compare the reported operating profit as well as then the comparison to the comparable operating profit. Just as a reminder, this program is expected to generate savings of some EUR 25 million by the end of first half this year. Cash flow. Operative cash flow remains strong. Comparing to 2020, which was quite an exceptional year, both were from net working capital perspective as well as from the investment activity perspective. The reported cash flow is below 2020, but still on a strong level. From the operating net working capital perspective, we've leveled back the inventory levels to a sort of more sustainable level. During 2020, we were running with relatively low inventories. Obviously because of the high top line growth, the trade receivables are increasing. At the same time balancing it out with trade payables increase along with the growth as well as with the inflation, balancing the overall net working capital development. When we think about the investments, as I alluded to already in the previous slide, during the year of 2021, we had perhaps a more normalized investment activity levels, compared to 2020. The investments were related to capacity expansions, especially in North America, and then obviously doing the regular maintenance and as well as a fair amount of efficiency improvements throughout our manufacturing plants. From a balance sheet perspective, I'm super proud of the work that Uponorians have done over the past few years. The net interest-bearing liabilities at the end of the year were slightly higher than last year, but the average over three or four quarters average gearing continued to decrease, and it stood at 1.7% at the end of the year. Just as a reminder, the targeted corridor in our long-term financial targets for gearing is between 40%-80%. I think it's with great pleasure that I can confirm once again that we are well below those numbers. Finally, the dividend proposal to the annual general meeting. The board proposes that the annual general meeting would approve an overall EUR 0.67 per share dividend, of which EUR 0.33 would be paid in March this year, and then the remaining EUR 0.34 is planned to be paid then in September with a separate decision then. This is the proposal to the annual general meeting, and I'm also very proud of this message that we're able to increase the dividend once again. I think this is the eighth consecutive year of increasing dividend. Finally, on the long-term financial targets, you can see the graphics there on the right-hand side. Obviously great achievement over the year of 2021. All of the long-term financial targets were met. All in all, financially a very good year under a turbulent environment. Back to you, Michael. Thanks, Markus. Let's talk a little bit on the outlook for this year. All in all, it looks very positive for all the markets we operate in. Talking a bit about Europe, despite the challenges with COVID and supply chains, we still see the economic growth is very solid and all the indicators we get they are really increasing, and they are higher than pre-pandemic levels. That's a very, very good signal. In both residential and non-residential, building permits have trended upwards overall. The demand indicators are all intact and very, very healthy for the European market. For U.S., residential construction is still strong. Non-residential segments, the signals are a little bit mixed. All in all, here again, all the demand indicators we get from the U.S. are really strong. The home builders' confidence, housing permits, and housing starts still solid. The architects' billings is still positive, but less than earlier in the year, but still on the positive side, and that's the most long-term indicator we have in our system. All in all, from the demand side, no problem, still very strong in all the markets we operate. Coming to the outlook for the first quarter, as I said before, residential markets remain really upbeat. The non-residential markets stabilize further. Supply chain and labor challenges persist. This is what we clearly expect for Q1, and the input costs are still volatile. Our guidance statement for the year remains, and this means excluding the impact of currencies. Uponor expects its net sales and comparable operating profit to increase from the year 2021. I would also like to mention again, we have the Virtual Capital Markets Day presented in 2021 for the 14th of March at 3:00 P.M. Finnish time. We can now open the Q&A session. Markus, do we have a few? Yes. Please. I will start with there are a number of questions from Markku Moilanen, OP Financial Group. So if I take the questions here from Markku, and then we'll go to the next questions. In Europe, you had margin pressure due to higher production costs, timing of maintenance, and higher marketing costs. Can you break down those costs and which had the highest effect? Should we expect to see these higher marketing costs to persist this year? And perhaps I pause there. Perhaps I can pick that up. Sure. Well, first of all, I think there are some things that we unfortunately sort of don't break down, and that's the sort of split of different fixed cost items. But to a large extent, we are also talking about here on phasing of activities during the year. I think the most important thing on building Europe right now is to look at the full year results and the performance on full year basis, which was, like Michael said, super strong. In terms of whether or not we see higher marketing costs this year, I think it's a question of, in a way, always finding the balance on how do we want to drive growth, as well as then, in a way, manage the costs. I think, in a way, our team in building Europe is very well on the ball, in a way. Ready to accelerate when there is an opportunity and then in a way keeping obviously the sort of sensible cost management under control. If I continue with Markku's questions. Should we also expect to continue to see margin pressure due to inflation or is that somewhat compensated by price increases? When these price increases start to have effect? I can pick it up as well. Sure. Yeah. I think I tried to, in a way, allude to that on the gross margin picture as well. Well, first of all, I think that we all know that the inflationary situation is rather exceptional, at least for the sort of short-term history perspective. I think we will see, in a way, that unprecedented inflationary volatility to continue. When it comes to the impact of the price increases, when you look at the full year gross profit margin development, it's leveling out and sort of indicating that the price increases are coming through. The impact of the price increases depend obviously quite a lot on sort of market and country where they're implemented. I mean, the price increases have started to have effect, but like we noted also in the financial statements bulletin, I think we will expect to see, in a way, margin management actions and margin development to continue during the first half of this year. There is another question, one more from Markku Moilanen, if I pick that up as well. Is the market, customers absorbing price increases easily or have you seen resistance that could affect your margins in 2022? If Michael, you have a view on that, please. Yeah. Yeah, I have a view on this. I mean, no customer likes to accept price increases, but I must say the customers are more or less in the same situation and they have been really what I've seen the, let's say, published numbers from some of our customers, they have been also really able to pass on price increases. Of course, the whole demand situation in our industry helps a lot, but it is what it is. The raw material prices increase, we have high inflation, and of course need to find a way to pass this on to our customers, as fast as possible and as effective as possible. Thank you, Michael. That covers the questions from Markku Moilanen. There are a couple of questions from Anssi Raussi, SEB. I take the first question from Anssi here. Could you give us some info how you see the growth in sales to split between volumes and price hikes in 2022? Perhaps I can pick that up as well. That's unfortunately some of the information that we haven't traditionally disclosed and we will not disclose it at this stage either. Hopefully you get the sort of needed confidence from the interim reporting. That's something that unfortunately we're not sort of explicitly disclosing. Should we expect improving profitability in comparable operating profit terms, 2022 versus 2021? As one could imagine that 2021 was a year full of surprises, but in 2022 you've had the time to react more proactively pricing-wise. I think, Michael, you can sort of fill in the blanks here, but I think the guidance statements in a way indicates the sort of target level that we're aiming at for this year. I think we will be targeting improving comparable operating profit for 2022 like we stated in the guidance. Yeah. I think what I would like to add, the company will be much more agile in the future to react on these price increases. That's important because these raw material price increases last year, which then hit really in the second half, were really significant, and I would call this really exceptional. This exceptional time also forces us to pass on prices in a much faster time than to what I would call normal years. Thank you, Michael. That actually was the final question that we have posed to us. Okay That was it. Yeah. I can close the session and thank you very much for your attention and have a very good day.
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