Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Uponor's first quarter 2022 results briefing here in Helsinki. My name is Franciska Janzon, I'm from Uponor's Investor Relations team. Today we'll be starting the presentation with our President and CEO, Michael Rauterkus, followed by a presentation on financials from our CFO, Markus Melkko. After the presentations, we will open up for questions from the audience in the studio and also over the teleconference line. With that, I hand it over to Michael. Good afternoon also from my side. Good afternoon from Helsinki. I'm very happy to talk to you about our Q1 results from the Uponor Corporation. Q1 in brief: we had good sales growth over 13% to EUR 349.5 million, versus last year of EUR 309.2 million, and also a very solid comparable operating profit of 13.5%. Very solid result. Our safety performance has also improved with an LTIF rate, and this came down from last year, 9.1-6.4, so also improvement there. By the way, we had no accidents in March. That's also very good. As you know, we launched a new strategy and financial targets at the last CMD back in March. What we also did, as you noticed, we have a new Chief Human Resource Officer, and she joined a few weeks ago as part of the ExCo to really drive the people first agenda. Also very exciting, Uponor launched the world's first bio-based PEX pipes. Why is this remarkable? It's almost exactly 50 years after we launched PEX pipes in Virsbo in Sweden, 1972. We come back to PEX pipes and innovation a bit later. Also, clearly, and this is, of course, always a conversation in every company, what's going on with Russia and Ukraine. As you know, we suspended the shipments and any business to Russia early back in March. We are currently exploring options related to the situation. Coming back to the results. From a group perspective, very solid. Almost the absolute group, or the comparable operating profit is at the same level, almost by division. It's EUR 47 million, and that's very good. 13.5% on a margin level. Group net sales grew 13%. The organic growth was 10%. I think the good achievement was the improved flexibility in passing on the sales price increases. We learned the lesson from last year, with raw material prices up. Again this year, we had to fight against these price increases, and still the process is going on, and we are getting much better at that. The group comparable operating profit, however, was a bit lower than last year, almost at the same level, but the pricing action just compensated for higher input costs, but we couldn't completely cover the lower cost comparison versus last year, of course, which was impacted positively from a cost perspective due to COVID. Again, comparable operating profit, 13.5%. Very important, the guidance statement for 2022 is unchanged, so it stays as it is. From a market perspective, it looks very positive across the board. All markets are in positive figures, from the United States in higher single digit growth, also in Germany. The only negative market, which is a little bit of a seasonal impact, but no sell-through issue, is Holland. All in all, it's a good start from a sales perspective into the year. Let's go a little bit, region by region. It's remarkable, Europe had again a record sales quarter. EUR 162 million is a record sales quarter, Q1, and it's the highest quarter ever. Of course, it's a combination of organic growth, 10%, and the total growth is 16%, and a bit, of course, came through the acquisition through Capricorn. The comparable operating profit decreased. We could really do strong pricing actions and compensate for higher input costs. Here the comparison to the overhead costs last year was significant, and we couldn't completely cover this. The integration of Capricorn looks really, really good. The acquisition is fully on track. In Europe, we launched the first PEX pipe based on renewable raw materials, and we're really proud of this, and it's starting in Norway, in Sweden, and in Finland. Now talking about North America, also strong operational performance. Price actions support profitability. They have more flexibility even in the U.S., and they can pass on prices within 30 days. You really see this in the numbers. Net sales grew 9%. Good progress in U.S. and also in Canada. To be very clear, currency movement had a positive impact both on sales and also on the operating profit. We have seen, again, a strong operational performance through price increase. On Infra, we saw, again, strong net sales growth, 14%. However, comparable operating profit was a bit lower versus the comparable quarter in last year. It's always, this business is more cyclical, so the 3% was always a bit of the range. Clearly, we want to get better. To be fair, we had a few one-time costs like consultancy costs, et cetera, to help with our strategy. This impacts Infra a bit more relatively than the other regions. All in all, a solid start also for the Infra business. Again, safety performance improved. You have on the left side the full-year performance went down 36%, and also the year-to-date performance. We continue, really look at health and safety. It's always first on our agenda. If it's our management meetings and our board meetings, we spend a lot of time because we care about the people. As I said, people first. I think we are really well positioned to drive profitable growth. I like our strategy because it combines two things. It maximizes the core with the assortment and the potential we have with our existing portfolio. Clearly, as I announced very strongly, we really want to differentiate more, invest in technology, invest in innovation, and we're starting a really good process here to get even more competitive on the innovation side. Clearly, we will not. Whatever happens, we will not forget about the sustainability agenda. We really drive the sustainability agenda really hard, and the launch of the PEX pipe is one example, and people first. I'm really happy, you know, when we could announce and reconvince Jennifer to join us. She has led the HR group in the Americas, and she's now part of the executive committee, and she will help us a lot to really, you know, attract, develop, and retain the best talents of the industry. I'm really happy to have her on board. Again, Uponor launched world's first PEX pipes. We should really celebrate this. 50 years after the first launch in Virsbo in Sweden. What's the impact for the society? It's up to 90% lower product to carbon footprint. This is significant. There are not many products or solutions out there in the market where you, the customer, can achieve a 90% reduction. It is certified, and it's really also a part of our commitment to renewable raw material. It will start on a small base. We just launched it in three markets. Today, there are a few fairs going on in the Nordic markets, one in Sweden, and the response, the immediate response of the customers has been really great, and that's really important. What are the key operative focus areas for the year? Maximizing the core, if it's portfolio, but also this year, for the next three quarters, really, we will look at improving our pricing power. Strategic pricing on product. We need to make sure we can pass on the increasing raw material costs to the market and much faster than in the past, and we really make great progress in this. We continue to add flexibility, not only to pricing, but also to terms, and that's really important. We reduce and continue to reduce our product costs, improving productivity, so this OpEx program is about to be completed, and we have a really strong focus now on productivity measures. We have to manage a very challenging supply chain, as you know, and this is really our main focus. You could argue it is price, but really what concerns us is availability of product. So far, we don't have big issues, but this is really something we monitor very, very closely. Of course, we drive differentiation. We are via our value-added systems and solutions. We have a lot on the plate, and I think the right focus, and we combine a really good strategy with a strong operational focus for the next three quarters. With this, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Markus Melkko, CFO, to talk about the financials. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Happy to be here, and I'll share some of the highlights on the Q1 2022 financials. Just building on what Michael said, the net sales growth altogether on group level 13% obviously a really great growth across all divisions. I think we are proud about the progress there. We grew the net sales mainly with the net sales price increases. On the bottom left-hand side corner, if you look at the comparable operating profit bridge, we see that there was a significant impact on the operating profit from the input costs. The light blue bar, the other change in comparable operating profit, indicates that we were able to pass on the price. Added on with the continuous great progress we do with the operational excellence program savings that helped us to boost the profitability. Then the other part is more or less related to the other, say, overhead cost development, which is a tough comparison which we are up against. Q1 2021 both from input cost perspective as well as from the overhead cost perspective, where so sort of even exceptionally low. It's a tough comparison point from the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2021. All in all, comparable operating profit Q1 2022, like Michael mentioned, at par with previous level year levels. When we look into more detail on the gross profit development, we want to highlight here a sort of a bit longer time series starting from Q1 2021 over to the year of 2021 to Q1 2022. The absolute gross profit grew, obviously driven by the really magnificent net sales growth. The gross profit margin was below last year, but at the same time, like I said, last year the input costs were on an exceptionally low level. The gross profit margin compared to the progress during 2021 is actually now improving. As you can see, I mentioned on the chart with the solid black line there, I mentioned while we introduced the Q4 2021 results that now we're leveling out and I'm happy to report that now the pricing actions are starting to bear fruit and we're actually gradually increasing the gross profit margin. Big thanks to the Uponor teams who've been working really hard on the pricing part. Like Michael mentioned, pricing continues to be on our agenda. We'll continue to rigorously be sort of capturing the value we deserve for our products. The environment continues to be obviously quite turbulent. The other element I mentioned in the operating profit bridge, the Operational Excellence program. We're nearing its completion. We've announced that by the end of H1 2022, we are aiming to have EUR 25 million of savings on it. At the end of Q1 2022, we were at some EUR 22 million. From the P&L perspective, if you look at the profit and loss statement, you can see that during Q1 2022, we had some EUR 400,000 of items affecting comparability, which were basically related to the operational excellence program. Good progress there. Moving over to net working capital development. Again, a bit longer time series there to illustrate the seasonal progress which we typically have had. Q1 tends to be a really small cash flow quarter for us, negative even like you seen in 2020. This year, cash flow from operations during Q1 was EUR -22 million. The difference between the Q1 2021 and 2022 is more or less related to the higher cost levels that we are at, driving the inventory values up. From the financing and investment perspective, no dramatic news during Q1. Basically our financing position stayed really strong. As you can see from the net interest-bearing liabilities, the gearing at the end of quarter one was 18%, and the 4% rolling gearing average was 4%. The higher net interest-bearing liabilities are related to the net working capital development and the decreased cash flow compared to year-on-year. Like I said on the cash flow slide, I think it's quite typical for our business to have low cash flow contribution at the beginning of the year and then towards the end of the year, the net working capital is released and then obviously cash flow sort of piles up, as with that annual cycle. From financing perspective, no dramatic changes during the quarter. All in all, balance sheet in a good level. The gearing 18% as of 31st of March, obviously clearly below the target that we've set ourselves. We've announced in the updated financial targets as well that we aim to keep the gearing between 40% and 80%, so well below those target lines. On share metrics, again, a bit longer time series to illustrate the on the top left-hand side corner, earnings per share. Year-on-year, the quarter one earnings per share increased to EUR 0.45 per share, and it was EUR 0.43 the year before. During March, the annual general meeting decided on the dividend for the fiscal year 2021, which is then EUR 0.67 a share. The first installment of that dividend was paid in March. The second installment of the last year's dividend is planned to be paid in September this year. All in all, would like to conclude my part with taking a step back and looking at the financial targets we announced at the Capital Markets Day a bit more than a month ago. We said that for this year, through 2024, we are aiming for an organic growth of more than 4%. Like you probably remember, if you joined the CMD, our financial targets are based on a sort of two-phased approach. We have realistic but ambitious targets for the next couple of years and while we invest in further growth, like innovation, and then we aim to accelerate our growth rate in the years to come. We also set ourself a target to keep our operating profit margin above 12%. The gearing discussion, the gearing target I already discussed, and the dividend we said that we aim to be growing. For Q1, we can report that the organic growth met the targets we've set ourselves, the profitability margin met the target we set ourselves, and the gearing, like I said, is on a healthy level within the boundaries we've set ourselves. Actually below those. With this financial highlights, I would like to hand over back to Michael for the outlook for year 2022. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Markus. Let's talk about the quarters to come, and I use basically only one chart to explain a little bit the situation. For the quarters to come this year, all looks good. All indicators we have, if it's Americas or Europe, all the indicators are quite positive. Also I've put here the US housing market, but also the just published ifo Business Climate Index from Germany. You clearly see where they report the situation currently is much better than what they expect for the future. Future then means, okay, in the quarters to come, 2023 and so on and so forth. What concerns them most, what concerns the market most is not price. What concerns the most is availability of product. This sets a bit the agenda, also the focus for the coming quarters. What we will focus on is really what we can influence, is basically managing pricing, strategic pricing, tactical pricing terms. Tick in the box. The other thing is really what we focus on, that we really improve wherever we can the service levels to our customers. This is our main focus. We look at any improvements on supply chain service levels, availability. That's really high on the agenda. We have the positive factor from the market still, so very good. Also, I believe the upside from the increasing energy prices will also generate more demand for industry, because the only way to cope with this is less consumption of the high-cost energy. This will be our challenge, and this is what we focus on. Let's also talk about one thing. Uponor is a very robust company with a very experienced leadership, both in headquarters and also in the markets, and I think we have all the right things on the agenda. This is also why we stick to the guidance statement for 2022 and don't change the outlook for the year. With this statement, I would be open, or we would be open for any questions. Thank you. Now I'd like to connect over to the telephone conference moderator also to be ready. We're open for questions also from the room. Yeah. Hi from Danske Bank. Could you elaborate a bit more on those price hikes and impact in Q1 organic growth was double digits, but how big part of that really came from pricing and did the volumes grow? Thank you. I can take that. Well, we don't disclose separately sort of price versus volume, mix. What I can say is that we had really significant price increases. Actually, last year, we did get benefit from certain, well, quite a lot of sort of pent-up demand from 2020, if I put it like that. That gives you an indication of the net sales drivers. Continuing with the cost inflation, do you think you have already seen the worst, or is there much more coming? What's your view on that one? That's the— The crystal ball. I would say that's the million-dollar question. I would say the only true answer is nobody knows. The only recipe is flexibility. As you know, this is a very traditional industry where it takes up to 6, 9 months, or I must say it took up to 6, 9 months to pass on prices. In this environment, this of course had to change, and this is the recipe. Because we need to be prepared to pass on prices, but also at the same time to stay competitive. For the market, these permanent price changes is a permanent challenge also because the calculation of big projects which materialize in a few months is even harder. I'm with my customers here. We need to find a way to stabilize, but now we have more visibility, and we are in permanent contact with our customers, and we have more flexibility than in the past. I would like to know, but I don't know. Then maybe the last one from me. Have you already seen the sort of, some delays or postponements in new project startups? So far not. What I realize is that, let's say, the implementation of projects takes 3 to 6 months longer than in the past. Because if there's one piece missing somewhere, then the delay starts. We haven't seen from our commercial business a postponement of projects. This is, of course, for me also one of the leading indicators when this starts to get pushed out. That's for the time being not the case. Thank you. Are there any questions over the teleconference line? If you would like to ask a question over the phone, please press star one. Star one to ask a question over the phone. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Svante Krokfors from Nordea. Good afternoon. Svante Krokfors from Nordea. Yes, Mika had already some of the questions that I had regarding price and volume, but I take that answer. How much in 2022 have you gotten some tailwinds or how much tailwinds have you gotten in 2022 from the fact that completions, especially in the U.S., were postponed from 2021 to 2022 in the housing market? Could you precise a bit your question? Is this what you mean the spillover of projects from last year? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. That's correct. Yes. Yeah. Look, so what we measure is basically the funnel of projects we have and is this, let's say, that total funnel increasing, decreasing. I must say this project funnel stays pretty stable. It looks like the rollover from last year and, of course, everything, there's always a bit of this effect. We see this through new projects coming, so this pipeline looks pretty stable. What I can say in the US, we had last year, because of this very specific or special situation, Q1, Q2, a bit of a backlog because prices were rising really fast and wholesalers put a lot of pressure to getting goods, and this took us quite some months to work through the backlog. This now is stabilized, so we are in a much healthier position right now. Because of course this, you know, push the pedal and brake also is, increasing the cost. Now we are in a much more stable, production cycle again. Okay. Thank you. In Europe, regarding the situation in Ukraine, have you seen the different kind of market reactions in different parts of the European market? I haven't. To be honest, I haven't. It's, I was even a bit surprised when you look at also the, let's say, market range. I was expecting a bit more cautious markets in Eastern Europe, of course, ex-Russia, ex-Ukraine. The opposite is the case. For the time being, I don't have any indicators that, for example, markets closer to Russia have an impact, if that's the question. Yeah. That's very helpful. The last question, I think, which also correlates with your share price and the expectations by the market. How do you look at the U.S. housing market and the mortgage rates now passing 5%? What's your honest thoughts about that and the impact on you perhaps in 2023? I know you don't want to guide for 2023, but could you elaborate on how you look at it? Well, I guess if we start from the sort of mortgage rate perspective, obviously I'm not a U.S. citizen, but when I talk to my colleagues in the U.S., 5% mortgage rate is sort of historically not dramatically high. I think it's somewhere where it's been. Obviously it's a big hike compared to the situation where it's been for the past two years or so. Obviously, in a way, now on a shorter-term perspective, it's a big increase, but on a longer perspective, it doesn't seem to be sort of anything exorbitant. The other element that we look at from the U.S. housing market is, in a way, what's the sort of housing inventory or the stock of housing compared to the population growth. We see that the US housing market is actually doing catch-up after the financial crisis because the drop back then was so dramatic that it's taken them more than a decade to, in a way, sort of just do a catch-up to the pre-Lehman Brothers times. Then at the same time, the population has grown. These are the type of indicators that we look at. In a way, Svante, to your point, I hesitate to give any guidance on 2023, but in a way, just to give you an idea on what type of indicators we follow and obviously sort of we keep our finger on the pulse on the topic. Well. Okay, thanks. That's a good answer. That's all from me. Thank you, Michael and Markus. As a reminder, to ask a question over the phone, please press star one. We'll now take the next question from Anssi Raussi from SEB. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, guys. It's Anssi Raussi from SEB. Thank you for the presentation. My first question would be that still about your guidance, because if you look at the consensus estimates, for example, there are clearly some suspicions if you are actually able to reach that 2022 guidance. How good is your visibility to this year actually, and do you have visibility to H2, for example? This is my first question. Thanks. Well, if I turn it the other way around, if we, in a way, had some doubts for delivering this year, then we probably would have in a way tweaked the guidance. I mean, I would like to have the crystal ball. With the geopolitical situation and the war in Ukraine, I mean, things can change overnight. Based on the sort of in a way underlying demand and with the discussions with our business who have the feet on the ground, that's what we base our guidance on. That's it basically. I mean, the visibility is what it is, but we feel confident that with our. Especially on the pricing side, we're doing the right things and we continue to deliver on that path. Like I said, I mean, if the world collapses around us, then everybody's impacted, not only Uponor. Yeah. Yeah, that's clear. I understand that. Maybe second question would be that if we continue with this year, do you still think that your gross margin, yeah, that there's room for gross margin to improve? Like you said, I think you mentioned that you actually expect it to improve, but what is the level you see reachable during this year if you look at your gross margin level? Good question, Anssi. Unfortunately, I'm not gonna give guidance on the gross margin levels. In a way, if we look at it from the operative perspective, like Michael also said, I think our teams, we're doing great work on actually not only to talk about what's the price increase percentage, but rather on what's the mechanism and the process to in a way pass on input prices and working together with the customers to sort of make the industry a bit more agile on that front. Having said that, I mean, that should give us the flexibility in a way to react on the changes. As a CFO, I think it's fair for me to comment that obviously I'd like to see us to see the gross margin to continue to increase not only in 2022 but in the years to come. That's the reason why we also laid out our strategy with a bit of a two-phased approach. Later on, hopefully with the innovation and the new products, we continue to drive that gross margin expansion. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to give you an exact answer on the 2022 GM percentage that I'd be happy with. Okay, that's clear. Thanks. As you mentioned, the pricing, of course you have implemented many price hikes, and I think you will continue with those later this year as well. Do you still see that you are able to defend your volumes as well as you're implementing these price hikes, or do you see that the end customer is not willing or able to pay that much as they should? Yeah. It's a good question. How do you see this? Yeah. It's a good question. I think this is also my concern because prices go up, and when we talk to our customers, a new built house price go up 25%, 30%. De facto, they don't see a drop in the volumes. They sell as many houses before and have as many projects as before. Is this the guarantee for future and further development? No. The honest answer is we don't see at the moment a reduction of these volumes with our customers. Yeah, perhaps. We have this on the radar. That's very clear. Also on the pricing, clearly we need to make sure, you know, at the end, pricing is an art, and we need to make sure we pass on price, at the same time we stay also competitive. Yeah. Uh. Exactly. Okay. Thank you very much. That's all from me. We will now take the next question from Paul Catiri from Arker Advisors. Yes. Good afternoon. Well done on a good set of results. I have two questions, really regarding strategy, looking forward. The first concerns something you mentioned in your Capital Markets Day, which are the synergy opportunities between your U.S. and European business. Am I right in saying that you believe there are some productivity, manufacturing productivity benefits that can be transferred from the U.S. to Europe, and then perhaps some of the technological innovations produced in Europe they can use in the U.S.? Let me know if I'm correct there, and just give a little bit more detail of how you see those developing, please. Yeah. I see for sure. Thanks for the question. It's an excellent question. I think it is also part of, you know, our focus for the future. As you know, the starting point, let's take the Americas, they have a very focused, and by the way, that's good, PEX pipe business. In the conversation with the management, I saw they haven't really looked at really expanding that portfolio. I think the first thing is you look basically in-house. We saw a lot of the products they are really interested in, I mean, taking on from Europe to United States. I mean, PEX was invented in Europe, let's not forget, and they really maximized this in the U.S. I would also say some of the developments we see in Europe, some of the underfloor heating, cooling systems, manifolds, some of the prefab solutions, the U.S. market and customers seem to be really interested in. Of course, the market and the regulations, et cetera, are different, so there's always product adaptation, very clear. We will make sure, at least from a strategic level and top-line development, our management has total global visibility of this innovation. This is also a way to maximize our resources. I think that's very important. On the flip side, also, we see our U.S. business, they have a really good operational organization. What they do in manufacturing is really world-class from their processes and also some new manufacturing technologies. Then, of course, the question is, why can't we take this one back into Europe? So we have a very good conversation among the divisional leaders and Markus and myself. We really look at these opportunities. I think that's very good. I think this should be also our number one priority to, I call it, always steal with pride. It looks like the customers are really interested in. By the way, the next week, the next ten days then, also in Canada and U.S., we'll visit some of the customers, and I will check personally a bit on the opportunities. Yeah. Great. Many thanks. It's a great answer. Can I, Y ou put out a press release today regarding the PEX pipe, the bio PEX pipe. You said you've received some extremely good interest in the market launch so far in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Could you give some detail on what type of customers you're seeing who are expressing that interest, please? Yeah. You know, we have started this technology on the infra side already last year in September, October. Now this is the PEX version of it. You know, what I hear from the customers is I mean, their number one target besides completing their projects is also how the hell can they comply with all these, you know, regulation, and how can they deliver on their CO2 and sustainability agenda. They are really looking for products which help them to deliver their targets. I think that's really a great example when we can offer something which reduces CO2 consumption by 90%. The challenge is, as always, an innovation is a bit more expensive in the beginning, okay? We are talking on the infra side as price up 30%, 40% versus the comparable product. Clearly, over time, when volumes come through, this will come closer. I really want to make sure, you know, we are all talking about this sustainability agenda, and our customers are really pushing for this, that we have an offer here. The development of these products takes years, and I'm really happy to see that Uponor has something to offer here. Yeah. That's very good. Okay. Thank you. My last question, if I may, concerns pricing power. You mentioned there's a difference between the U.S. and Europe in terms of how quickly you can price pass on price increases to your customers. Forgive me by the way if you've already answered this, but could you just give a little bit of insight into what's happening here? No, it's very simple. The maximum I've seen with customers was up to nine months from the announcement to implementation and that's of course in this environment almost not manageable. This will be drastically reduced to maximum of three months. Once in a quarter we can increase prices. Under exceptional circumstances we can always increase prices because that's of course important that on one hand the customer has stability, on the other hand, clearly, who knows if tomorrow we have another 20, 30% price increase, then we need to be able to pass on this pricing. There's no way out. We will not ship products and make losses, to be very clear. The customer, to be honest. Yeah. No, No, that's all. They are concerned and they need to really look at their mechanisms. At the same time we are all in one boat. Don't get me wrong. We need to make sure also this process continues to work. We are in close contact with them and this process is established and they understand also we need to make sure we deliver. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. That, those are all my questions. Thank you. There are no further questions on the phone at this time. Okay, very good. I would like to close the session. Thank you very much for your participation and all the question. I think also the possibility for you to ask on the phone seems to work very, very good. Let's really stay in contact and see you then for the Q2 release. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Markus. Thank you.