Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q1 2023 earnings presentation for Elopak. My name is Mirza Koristovic, and I'm head of Investor Relations. Today's presentation will be held by the CEO, Thomas Körmendi, and the CFO, Bent Axelsen. The presentation will last for approximately 25 minutes and is available on live webcast on our webpage under the IR section. We will have a Q&A session after the presentation. There will be a possibility to ask questions live from the audience here at Hotel Continental in Oslo and as well as from the audience following us on webcast through the chat function. With that, I leave the word to our CEO, Thomas Körmendi. Thank you, Mirza. Good morning to everyone here in Oslo and everyone listening in online in the webcast. We are presenting Q1, and before I do that, let me just start off by saying that I'm really, really happy to be standing here today. We are presenting a quarter on which has started on a year on a very, very strong note for us. We are seeing very good developments for the business financially, operationally, across all our businesses and actually across all of our geographies. On the note of geographies, just two words on Elopak. As you see here from the slide, we are the world's largest fresh carton liquid packaging company. We do that in activities around 70 countries today, with somewhat over EUR 1 billion in turnover and with a suite of products which is a very extensive suite on the fresh side, and also a roughly 25% of our revenue is generated now through the aseptic side of our business. The majority of our sales is generated through what we call EMEA, including India and an ever-growing part now, as you will see in the presentation, comes out of Americas. Who are we? We are in sustainable packaging. This is what we do. We are, in fact, committed and dedicated to carton fiber only. We're doing that by protecting essential commodities, reducing food waste, and ensuring that essential commodities such as milk, but not only milk, will reach consumers around the world and provide the needed nutrition to consumers around the world. What about the performance then on Q1? As I said, we have started the year on a strong note. We are looking at record high revenues, EUR 283 million, which is up by 26% or 16% actually organic growth. Meanwhile, we also see a very solid EBITA level of EUR 41 million, which is up by EUR 16 million versus same quarter a year ago, and which then represents somewhere around 14.5% EBITA margin. Our business development and our growth is very much driven by our new business, our growth in the existing business, but smaller businesses such as India growing at a very solid pace and delivering fantastic results frankly, in a record time. Americas, where we have been present for years, but where we have a new strategy in place and where the strategy clearly is delivering the results after numerous quarters of strong growth. Also EMEA with solid delivery in the UHT, the aseptic business growing nicely, and also a number of innovations within the fresh business which are currently being installed and used around the market. We are of course also experiencing, like any other company in the world, solid and strong inflationary pressures in our industry. We have input costs which have been going up and which we will impact the remainder of this of the EBITA in 2023. However, we remain absolutely optimistic on the longer-term fundamentals, even though we still believe that the environment around us is volatile and we need to take that into consideration. A little bit on the development. As I said, record high revenue, EUR 58 million growth. If we just take the organic part of the growth, it's EUR 36 million or 16% growth, driven primarily by volumes in Americas. By our business in the new business and of course also pricing initiatives that we have been forced to take during this year as well as last year in fact. We see that after somewhat slow start in Q1, volumes are recovering and volumes are picking up across all parts of the business. While we also see of course, as I mentioned before, that the input costs in industry and the inflationary pressures on salaries, et cetera, also remain quite strong. During this quarter, we did have, which is very important to highlight, we did get some tailwind from inventory of board, which we where we are experiencing and are implementing a cost increase of board of this year, but managed to get the inventory turn of last year, and hence that had a certain impact on the EBITA for this year. More about that later. Overall, we can say profitability was absolutely at a satisfactory level. Now let's look at the two regions we report. EMEA, which you recall consists of Europe, Middle East, Africa, and India. Here we looked, we saw a EUR 39 million or 22% growth, or organically EUR 21 million equal to 12% growth in the market. This was on the back of aseptic growth, mainly in milk, UHT, and also where we also placing currently new filling machines and also placing our new platform, the EMP system. We also have seen in the quarter solid growth of Roll Fed, mainly in the former Eastern European countries, where the business growth is supplied through our factories in Europe, both in Aarhus and also in Ukraine, Fastiv. During the quarter, we are seeing that, and you will see that from other companies reporting that overall consumption, even in base, consumer goods such as milk, is impacted. We've seen a slower start of the year in that, and with some decrease in consumption on milk and juice. As I said, we also seen that has been picking up later in the period. Where we have seen the majority of the impact on the economic side relates to MENA. MENA has seen, and I reported that during the last quarter as well, some impact on raw material production simply due to the economic climate around both in Morocco and of course elsewhere. Overall, we can say that we find the result in EMEA profitability-wise satisfactory. In Americas. Remember this, for those of you who've been following us for a while, this is the fourth quarter with very, very strong development in Americas. This is a development of volume growth, it's a development of implementing the strategy that we outlined back some years back now, where we are broadening our portfolio, where we're implementing filling machine sales and offering our customers new and innovative solutions. We have seen in the period that the average price has come up, thanks primarily to the product mix, and also an impact from the pass-through mechanism that we use in Americas. What is very, very uplifting and positive for us is that the momentum that we have seen on filling machines, and we reported very good signing of filling machines last year, continues out in this quarter as well. Frankly, we do not see any change in the strong demand for filling machines moving forward as well. Organic growth, meaning we have, if you look at the EUR 15 million, three of these relate to the translation effect, sorry, not transaction, translation effect. That brings us to a 21% of organic growth in the quarter in Americas. As you can also, and you will also see what we believe is a strong profitability for the quarter. Talking about strategy and of just a few words on that, you have, for those of you who've seen us before, this is the way we've been describing the strategy ever since the IPO. What we can say is that we are seeing very solid deliveries on all of these five elements. On the Americas side, you just saw the results, fourth quarter with double-digit growth now, delivered by growth in our portfolio, increased number of customers, increasing our market share, and simply building the business to become stronger and better in the future. The aseptic roadmap, I highlighted that when we talked about EMEA, we see a big potential in the long life business, given that we have a packaging format that is the preferred packaging format in both carton and plastic, PET. We have seen the UHT milk growing. We've been placing the new filling machine platform, the EMP, the PureFill machines now with two customers, and we are now going to roll this out as we finalize the tests and beta site on these. The point we had about broadening the geographic footprint clearly related to our acquisition in MENA and India, both of which are delivering and as I highlighted before, India is delivering beyond what we had expected at the time, quite well beyond, while we are seeing good sales development continuously also on the MENA business with the caveat I mentioned before on some concerns around raw milk. I will talk about plastic-to-carton conversion because this is the point that normally most people ask us about how are we seeing that. I'm coming back to that in a second, but just leaving here finally with saying clearly the operational improvements, as I said, is a significant part of how we can deliver the results we have been delivering for the last four quarters in improvements, better operations, lower waste, and ensuring that we mitigate the high raw material impact that we have, input cost impact in general that we've been seeing. Just back on some of the examples of the growth strategy. These are some examples that we highlight on the each of the elements of the growth strategy. We see in Germany, and this example of actually a mouthwash here, we see in Germany that customers and consumers alike are looking for paper-based solution, or rather maybe to be more exact, are looking to replace the plastic solutions that they have in more niche categories such as mouthwash, but also in bigger categories such as you see on the slide with two very, very significant product launches in Europe, with two large-scale FMCG companies, launching this now in detergent. The reason I'm not more explicit about it is because it is being launched, but it's currently a market test that they're doing, and for that reason, we have decided to keep it at this level right now. It is happening, and it's a testament to the fact that FMCG companies' private label at the very, very big levels are now actively replacing their plastic solution to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and deliver on their own promises of reducing the CO2 footprint. Finally, well, actually one more on plastic to carton, which is in the U.K. A few quarters ago, we reported on the movement in the U.K. out of each HDPE and into carton. This is an example of innovations which have been brought to the market as well in a smaller dairy, but is all part of the drive of saying finding small innovations, in this case, openings, closures, and replacing their HDPE solutions with carton in a more sustainable packaging format. The last one I will mention here is the example of how you bring innovation into the Americas. In this case, it's the Brown Board that is so well known in Europe. More than 20% of our fresh milk we now sell in Europe is actually Brown Board. In Americas, that has till now been nothing. We have launched a Brown Board with a customer in Canada, and evidently this is all part of supplying our sustainability-driven strategy to customers in Americas and in all other markets where we currently operate. With this, I think I will leave it to you, Bent, and then let you explain. Thank you, Thomas. It is indeed a nice quarter to present. It is a pleasure. As Thomas mentioned, we started the quarter a little bit slow, but we really caught up in the end of the quarter. Before I go through the numbers, I would like to remind on how we have reported Russia. Russia is excluded from our P&L this year and last year. Russia is excluded from the balance sheet this year, but we have not restated last year. Consequently, the free cash flow statement in our report includes Russia, just as a good reminder there. If we look at the group figures, Thomas mentioned that we have increased the EBITA by EUR 16 million from same quarter last year until this quarter. This is then the breakdown between EMEA and Americas. If we start with Europe, we do have is a cumulative price effect starting from 2022 throughout 2023, and this was necessary in order to mitigate the past input cost increases in raw materials, the current raw material increases that we have seen, and also the expected input cost increase going forward.What we are seeing is that some of these price increases, in particular the board contract that we renewed in 2023, they have not impacted our numbers in Q1 because of the inventory effect, which is a technical impact, you may say. There will never be a perfect match between how we set prices and how we realize raw material costs in Europe, and in first quarter, then the timing effect was then beneficial to our margins. This also means that for EMEA, the current EBITA margin is not representing the run rate that we are expecting for the rest of the year in that segment. I think there are other important explanation for the performance in EMEA, and that is one we are delivering well on Roll Fed. If you remember, when we exited Russia, most of the Roll Fed actually was sold in from Ukraine to Russia. We have a plant in Ukraine. Most of that was sold to Russia, and we have successfully been able to find new markets in Eastern Europe. That's why we have a very attractive growth in the Roll Fed business. We are also seeing a good performance, as Thomas mentioned, in our acquired business, actually representing EUR 4 million, and that is then EUR 4 million out of the 12 for the EMEA segment. That is a real achievement. Europe has a satisfactory performance, but they're really kind of getting back to more normal levels. America's performance is great, and Thomas has explained the reasons why. We are going from 11 to EUR 17 million. I think as a fun fact, if you take the first half EBITA in 2021, two years ago, first six months, we delivered EUR 16 million in America, and we are now delivering EUR 17 million for the quarter alone, which I think is a great achievement. Finally, just to remind that we do have these pass-through clauses in the contract which protect the margins in America. We typically see less volatility in that segment compared to EMEA. Let's go to the bridge. We are going from EUR 25 million in first quarter last year to EUR 41 million this quarter. Let's start with the top line. The top line effect is EUR 31 million. This is basically the contribution effect of volume and price in Europe. It's also the increased contribution in MENA, America, and India, totaling up to EUR 31 million. We have still a raw material increase in first quarter compared to same quarter last year of EUR 8 million. We are seeing higher realized cost on PE and Alu. This is very much because of inventory effects but also, result our hedge positions. We do also have some increases on board already in Q1 due to inflation, transport, and mix. The energy costs, they're also higher generally speaking compared to last year, as well. When it comes to our raw materials, we have seen a lot of volatility, and it is still a volatile market. We decided to hedge more of the exposure in 2023 compared to 2022. Aluminum, we have hedged most of our open position for the full year. PE and energy, we have hedged the majority of the open position for the first half of the year and slightly less than half for the second part of the year. We at least will see less volatility in our cost base for the next few months. When it comes to operations, they are increasing by EUR 7 million. That is mainly related to inflation. It's also related to still increased traveling level, but also it's related to the activity level, the operating cost from the acquired business. Let's move to the cash flow statement, which I have looked forward to presenting, actually. We do have a profit before tax and interest paid of EUR 23 million. We add back EUR 50 million in depreciation from existing and the acquired assets, and then the working capital has actually reduced in the quarter despite a higher top line. What's the reason for that? Well, one reason is that we have slightly shorter credit terms for some of the customer base in Europe. We have collected more of outstanding receivables in the quarter, and we also have some prepayment for the filling machines. We do have some increase in filling machine stock preparing for the commissioning in America and in Europe. We also have a higher board inventory in value because of the inflation, but the inventory in volume is actually down. When it comes to cash from investments, that is minus 10, and it's basically normal levels related to plant maintenance and CapEx for the filling machines that we are renting out. We have cash from financing activities of EUR 48 million and taking us to a cash level of EUR 16. What we see here is that we have EUR 5 million in lease payments. We have EUR 3 million in interest paid, and then the rest is then paying down on our debt and some other items. Which brings me to the financing position, and due to the performance, we have been able to significantly reduce the leverage ratio from 3.3 last quarter to 2.7 this quarter. This is a combination of delivering EUR 16 million higher LTM EBITA, as well as reducing the net bank debt by EUR 25 million. We have a solid financial position, and it's really going in the right direction. Our lease liabilities are stable for the quarter, but we expect those to gradually increase because of our tethered caps installations. Moving to the outlook. We have a strong start of the year and somewhat better than expected actually. We do have the increased liquid board costs that will really take effect from the second quarter, and we also see significant inflationary pressure on other costs, which will also impact the EBITA margin for 2023 compared to the current level in Q1. With that, I will bring it back to you, Thomas. Thank you, Bent. Just on a final note, as we have been trying to explain today, we are very happy about the result and the start of this year, but also recognizing that it is partly due to a tailwind that we have on the financial side with inventory. Very importantly, I think what we're trying to say is that the strategy we have in place with the elements we have in place, from Americas to plastic conversion to the geographic growth, is clearly delivering. We are seeing the delivery in organic growth. We are seeing the delivery in the overall growth, including the acquisitions, and we are certainly seeing also the delivery when it comes to our financial performance. Overall, we remain optimistic. We continue with our strategy and delivering on this in the period to come. With this, I will just change to the next slide and let you highlight the financial calendar. I'm not gonna go into this, but with one comment, that is that we will be inviting you all for a Capital Markets Day very soon, which means September, to be exact, end of September, and more about that later. Mirza, please. Thank you, Thomas, also thank you, Bent, for your presentation. We will now go into the Q&A session, and we will begin with the audience here in Oslo before we take on the ones from the audience on stream. For the journalists that are present here today, we will set aside time immediately after the Q&A session. Let's begin. I would like to ask you to please state your name and the company you are representing, and please use the microphone. While we wait for Oslo, I will check for questions online. All right, we have a question from Håkon Fuglu from the SEB analyst that follows Elopak. Can you please elaborate on the impact from price increases for EMEA in Q1? Okay. Let me just start on pricing and a little bit of general answer before we maybe go into more details. What we did in pricing is we implemented price increases last year when we saw that the raw material input costs were skyrocketing as they in fact were. We saw these very steep increases. We implemented a price increase as of January this year to reflect the significant board increases that is impacting this entire industry. Liquid board, as you will know, is a product that is increasing steeply this year, not the least. The increases we have implemented in EMEA have been implemented with last year to mitigate only and purely the realized cost increases this year to mitigate the board increase and also impact some of the significant inflationary pressures that we all experience from salaries to anything else we touch right now. That is how we've been looking at pricing and how we looked at the price increases that we are implementing in EMEA. Thanks, Thomas. We will continue with the SEB analyst, Håkon Fuglu. For EMEA, how much of OpEx growth quarter-over-quarter stems from other input factors such as aluminum, plastic, and energy? The question is the other. We, and so we are referring to the EUR 8 million, is it quarter-over-quarter? Quarter-over-quarter, yes. Yeah. Quarter- over, y eah. What we when we presented in the bridge, we presented this quarter versus same quarter last year. We do not have the exact figures for this quarter versus previous quarter. It is actually rather stable, because of our hedge positions. We have seen some softening in the spot markets, and that has benefited us slightly, but not as much as the spot prices, which is just, w e really don't have a concrete number quarter-over-quarter, but it is rather stable. Thanks, Bent. How much of the margin improvement in Americas is due to product mix versus pass-through contracts? Do you see any risks for margin contraction in Americas going forward? Yeah. The mechanics of the pass-through contracts is really to protect the margin. The biggest impact of pass-through clauses will be on the revenues, and the aim is that there is a neutral margin impact for the pass-through clauses. Sometimes they can go a little bit up and down in each single quarter because you will never have a perfect simulation. I think that the mix and the pass-through clauses. The mix is clearly bigger than the pass-through clauses because of that reason. We don't have a concrete number for that. All right. Thanks, Bent. Moving on to Martin Melbye from ABG. How large is the carton board price increase in% and in EUR for Q2? How large are your price increases versus Tetra Pak and SIG? Look, It's an interesting question, but not really a question that we can answer. As for the, our board increases, for the quarter, this is also a topic that we are not disclosing, and equally so our competitive situation on pricing. I think what is important for us is we, as clearly in the market we operate, we need to remain competitive. We are competitive. We are growing because we are competitive. That is for us the main point at this moment. Sounds good. Thanks. Niclas Gehin from DNB, could you please be more specific about what you mean by remaining optimistic on the longer term market fundamentals? I can give it a shot. You can, Bent, you can add. Look, I think we are operating in a business where there's a constant and very real demand. We are seeing that throughout the world in the many countries where we operate. We are in basic foods. We are in basic nutrition. We are in an area with a mega trend of moving away from plastics and into as more sustainable, lower CO2 footprint packaging format. That is for me the optimistic part of this. We are seeing that even in times of difficult economic circumstances, this demand will stay even if there can be movements and we're seeing some shifts in demand. Overall, the demand is very resilient compared to many other businesses. In that context, we think we have the right strategy to deliver, and we think that the strategy we have consisting of a strong base in Europe and a very high level of credibility in the industry, together with a leading position on sustainability, brings us into a good position in delivering in the years to come and delivering on the strategy. That actually gives us the comfort to saying we remain optimistic. I agree. I think going forward, there will be segments that we haven't seen before that will find more interests in the carton business. In the future, it's not going to be all about dairy and juice, that we will see new categories. I think one thing I would like to add is that if you look at our portfolio today, the market portfolio, we have a new position in MENA. We have a new position in India. We have a much stronger base in America, which means that we are in market position where we either see higher organic growth or in America where we see a good traction where we're able to continue to strengthen our relative market share. All right, from Robin Santavirta from Carnegie, You had strong organic sales growth in Q1. Can you comment on what the organic volume growth was? He also is asking about the higher paper board prices. Did you see any impact at all from this in Q1? Okay, let me start, Bent, and then you please follow up. When it comes to the volume growth, of course, we saw, we did absolutely saw strong organic volume growth in Americas. We definitely saw, as I reported, organic growth on the aseptic side of our business. We, not the least on the UHT side, but strongly also on the Roll Fed business. This is all organic. We did see some impact and some decline on the fresh business in EMEA. Overall, I can't give you the exact figure on what it means, but it's of course a little bit mix, but definitely organic growth in all of our businesses as well. Except on the fresh business in Europe. The fresh milk in Europe is not growing. Thanks. How about our view on aluminum and polymer prices during the rest of the year? Do we expect any support? Yeah, I can probably, first maybe go to the second question first about the boards. I think it has a, it's fair to say that most of the board costs were at the 2022 prices in Q1 as is a simplified answer. That is, I think that's how it works. When it comes to PE and Alu, I would say we don't have any speculations on forecasts in Elopak that we share beyond what you can find in the open market. We typically don't share our own expectations. I think it still remains volatile. I think for the second quarter, a majority is hedged, so you will not see big movements on raw materials on PE and Alu for Elopak in the second quarter. Then we will have slightly more open position in the second half. It's very difficult to predict, and the same goes for energy. Thanks, and a follow-up from Martin Melbye in ABG, How much of EBITA comes from aseptic in Q1? Yeah, that is information that we do not disclose. Yeah. One last question from the online is. It's a long one, but we'll try to get through it. Given the company's strong start to the year and significant profitable organic growth, particularly in India, can you provide a detailed overview of Elopak's global expansion strategy? How do you plan to leverage and expand your market shares in existing and new markets? Thank you for that question. It's quite an extensive and elaborate. I think, you know, I will take the liberty to push that question to the Capital Markets Day, where we will be explaining this in more detail. Clearly, as I've been highlighting, we are delivering on the strategy. Clearly for that reason as well, we are seeing on the parts where we have delivered what happens then. That's what we're doing now. If you will allow me, I will wait with the answer when I can give a more comprehensive and long answer on that in, at the Capital Markets Day. This is the teaser for the Capital Markets Day. Yeah. More info on that later. Thanks. All right, we just got in a last one from Fredrik Windrup in Boldhaven. How many machines of the stock of orders did you commission in Q1? What's your view of the current supply chain constraints? How confident are you that you will reach the target for commissioning Americas this year? Okay. Let me start and then give you some on the supply chain. We still experience supply chain issues on filling machines. This is a concern for us, absolutely concern. It relates to components. It relates to full machines. We have our issues in getting the machines in time. When it comes to the number of machines to be commissioned in U.S., we will deliver and commission these machines. Absolutely, and that is we do not expect any delays on the American commissioning. When it comes to the overall, we have a very high number of machines to commission this year, we know that there may be some machines which will float into next year. To be honest, that has happened before in our industry and with our companies. That's not completely unique situation. We think it's going to be a very, very significant amount of machines that we will commission also in Europe, in MENA, and of course, not the least, in Americas this year. I'm not sure I answered the entire question. There was something left in the question, Bent. I have nothing to add on. Stock level of filling machines increased in Q1, that's indicating that we haven't had the commission we wanted to see in the first quarter. As Thomas said, we think that we will be able to solve that throughout the year. Thank you very much. I do not see any more questions online. Do we have any more here from Oslo? Nope. All right. Thank you very much for your attention. Have a nice day. Thank you.