Welcome everyone to Ahlstrom's first quarter earnings call. My name is Johan Lindh, and I'm responsible for investor relations at Ahlstrom. We will start the call with a presentation from our CEO, Helen Mets, and our CFO, Niklas Beyes. After the call, you have the opportunity to ask questions either using the chat box or in person or with the phone lines. So let's begin. Over to you, Helen. Thank you, Johan. And good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. As always, delighted to get the opportunity to present what today are the highlights of our first quarter 2024 performance. I'm here together with Niklas, so I want to do a couple of things today. One is I want to start the call actually sharing what I call the next steps on our growth transformation, and I'd like to share what we have been doing in terms of the refinement of our strategy and the announcement that we made around the simplification of the divisional structure. I'm then going to hand it over to Niklas, who will talk us through work that we've been doing around updating and strengthening our company positioning as we're heading towards becoming the sustainable specialty materials company. I think for me, this is just a really strong way to present the strength of the positioning of Ahlstrom because if we take the left-hand side and we look at what I call the big trends, the big issues in the world, and just how our technology is placed against it, we all know that the world needs clean air and clean water. We see those developments. We all know that there is much more movement towards personalization of our healthcare. We see the move from single-use plastic to sustainable packaging and protection alternatives, the whole decarbonization agenda, which requires a decarbonization of buildings and homes, and electrification. Those are the big trends where we've got the technology, the material science to actually address them. And if we go to the middle of that slide, for me, what is important is not only does this give us the opportunity, but actually also we have a responsibility, but we also have incredible proof points, as Ahlstrom, in our material science capability. We have 171 years of history in what I always talk about originally as cellulose-based fibers, where we figured out how to create strength, how to coat, how to convert with the most agile asset base in the industry, 38 manufacturing facilities with highly agile coating capabilities. Now, we also in that middle bubble have an incredibly strong reputation with customers. So co-creating applications, co-creating solutions, our Net Promoter Score is strong. It is one of the reputations that Ahlstrom is built on. So you pair that together with our history, our unique technology capabilities that address those issues, then here's where we're headed is in terms of ensuring that we're constantly creating safe and sustainable by design solutions to address the global challenges. And of course, that then ties so clearly into our financial ambitions of organic growth, so above GDP growth, healthy specialty materials margins, and strong cash conversion. I always like to talk about what I call the incredible purpose that we've got in Ahlstrom, which is to purify and protect with every fiber for a sustainable world. And I think with the strengthening of our positioning, it's getting easier and easier to get 7,000 people, our 7,000 employees, out of bed every day with clarity of what we do and why we do it. If we can go to the next slide, what I just thought would be useful to do is we will start to bring more of the innovation, more of the applications that we're bringing to market every quarter. These are a few of the more recent ones. I just want to talk through a couple because for me, these are real strong proof points of the actual developments that we're bringing to market that tie back to the trends, that tie back to the capabilities. You can see a few here, and I'm just going to pull out. If we talk about the Cristal transparent technology, I always say this is our ability to dial up or down the transparency of paper. I think that makes it very easy and obvious to see the applications, the type of applications that we can move into. Now, today, where we're growing with Cristal is in what we call the windows of pasta packaging, of sandwich packaging, of bread packaging. But those applications are growing in the intensity as people are looking for solutions to move from single-use plastic to alternative sustainable solution. And where we've got that sweet spot is where people are looking for both the transparency but also actually the coating or, let's say, the barrier properties required for packaging. I could go through all of these, and we'll certainly start sharing more, but that, I think, helps understand and bring to life how we think about the applications that we're developing, which are safer and sustainable, address the trends, and are within the business units. Now, if we can go back to the next slide because this has taken it back up to what I call our world map of Ahlstrom. Again, at the top, you see the global trends that we are really focusing our organization around. But then I think equally importantly is what are the proof points for the drivers for demand? Without doubt, there is the increasing regulatory requirements. There's the knowledge of the consumers. And there's also the sustainability agendas that companies are out there with their Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3 because when I talk about those targets for 2030, they're not that far out. And if I just talk through again, let me use a different example. And we take that mega trend of decarbonization, and we get specific for Ahlstrom. It's the decarbonization of buildings and homes. We know that that is driven by the energy efficiency of buildings and therefore the requirement of lightweight construction materials. So that, of course, ties into our highly technical, unique lightweight glass fiber tissue capabilities, which we're starting to really penetrate both flooring, roofing, insulation. And again, you know we've made that very big investment in our glass fiber tissue line in the U.S. So again, I think just incredibly strong proof points around our growth, around our investment. Now, if we can go to the next slide, this is a slide which is not something that we've talked externally much about. It's more what I call a nuancing of our strategy both externally and internally. But I wanted to share with you what we call our five strategic pillars, which are really across the company to drive the growth and the execution of our strategy in the business units. And let me just take a couple of minutes to talk through. The first is growth acceleration, which is really leveraging our market understanding to strengthen our leadership positions. What we talk about here both internally and externally is making it crystal clear the target markets that we're focused on, you see those in the business units, making sure that we understand the markets, the technologies, the problems that those markets have, and how our technologies solve for it. We're building capabilities on that outside-in viewpoint. The second strategic pillar is safe and sustainable innovation leadership. That's elevating our fiber-based solutions to new heights. Behind this pillar are our innovation platforms and our innovation pipeline. Here is where we're focused on innovation for today. Just shared some of the applications for today but also for next year and the decades to come. The third pillar is our operational strength, so running safe and efficient operations because, of course, with 38 facilities around the world, we've got to make sure that we're running efficiently, effectively, that we've got safe operations. You know safety is one of our key non-financial indicators, but it's also about our own internal energy transition. Fourth strategic pillar is really about our execution on cash discipline, so delivering continuous cash conversion. And Niklas, I'm sure when you talk about the Q1 results, you can see how we're tying this back to the pillars because, of course, with the organization, it's really important that we are educating and ensuring that we are driving a very strong cash conversion for the investment in growth. And then finally, engaged employees, so igniting high-performing teams of best people in the industry. Our employee engagement is a critical indicator for the leadership of our company. We track this three or four times a year. You know that we doubled it last year, but for me, this is a really important indicator of the health of the organization. Now, why I share this with you is because these are the pillars that we use within each division to help ensure that we're really focused on in some business units, our operational strength is paramount. In others, our innovation pipeline is paramount. And then where we allocate resources is specific to the business unit. So it's really driving clarity of strategy and focus of execution. Now, if I can go to the next slide, we announced earlier on in the month a more simplified divisional structure for Ahlstrom. And that's really to build on what we've just talked about there, is to ensure the execution of the strategy with agility, with simplification. And we've formed three divisions, our Filtration and Life Science division, which we call it here, and it's our purifying powerhouse. So that's really built off our filtration technology, which we know goes into automotive. It also goes into industrial. It's broadening in its scope into bioprocessing. We've got our lab and life science business there and our medical segment, which also builds on the filtration technology. Our Food and Consumer Packaging, there's no change there. And that is really all about making sure that we are extremely well-positioned for the transition of single-use plastic to alternative solutions. But it's really about also our product innovation capability and the innovation platform build. And then finally, Protective Materials. This is the combination of what was our Technical Materials Division and our Building Materials division. And this is really predominantly driven by the decarbonization of our buildings and homes and electrification. These are highly technical application segments that we've got. They're unique. They're specialized. We're differentiated. And actually, we were already starting to do a lot more work together across the divisions. So this does a couple of things for us. One, it simplifies our divisional structure. It's in alignment with the growth trends. It also, below the divisions, simplifies the plants because our business units and our plants are the hearts of our operating models. So it takes out complexity and ensures that we're driving speed and execution. So if we can go to the final slide, you can see what now is in the new divisions. We will actually start reporting on these as of July 1st, so the second half of this year. Then we'll start showing the financials around these three divisions. But I have to say confident, enthusiastic, highly motivated about the steps that we're taking in providing the next level of clarity on the growth transformation that we're on and ensuring that that translates into the execution of our financial results, which I think is a great leeway into the Q1 2024 results with you, Niklas. Thank you, Helen, for handing over. Welcome also from my side to today's call. I think we can switch to the next page, please. We all can say that the overall financial performance in Q1 2024 was good, very solid Comparable EBITDA and operating cash flow. We saw the market activity improved with volume deliveries increasing both to the fourth quarter of 2023 but also quarter-over-quarter to the first quarter of the previous year. We have seen a year-over-year improvement of EBITDA plus EUR 10 million, you see on the right side here, from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024, or plus 2.4 percentage points, if you want to say, supported by a higher margin over variable cost thanks to our transformation activities. And I will get back to this. We have seen a solid operating cash flow supported by also a very efficient working capital management we did. And last but not least, we announced on 19th of April 2024 also a possible divestiture or closure of our Bousbecque plant in order to centralize also the parchment paper production to the Saint-Séverin plant. So one more step, basically, to ensure long-term future and competitiveness of our specialty material business. You see it on the right side, the numbers I already talked about. So therefore, let's go into the more details, starting with the net sales, which increased due to improved market activity. Also, the volume deliveries, basically, were above Q4 2023 but also above Q1 2023, comparable if you look at them. You see here on the bar chart, so to say, that quarter-over-quarter, we had +6% volume increase coming basically across all divisions or five divisions, in the future then three divisions. Helen talked about this and also basically refers to most of our business units. You see the clear, if you look on the right side of this bar chart, the clear turning point in the market coming from EUR 692 million in sales, so to say, Q4 last year to EUR 735 million in sales. Compared to last year's Q1, it's lower in terms of sales, -8%, basically due to the fact that we had lower selling prices. And I'll come to this on the next page, why this has happened. You see on the right side also how it's composed, our sales. Basically, we have 20% on filtration business, 5% of healthcare and life science business. So if you combine them, it's round about a quarter of our business overall. We have food consumer and packaging division with 40% in sales. Technical materials, 25%. And building materials, 10%. And if you combine those two, like Helen mentioned, we are there at 35%. So we're getting also to a much more, let's say, balanced, let's say, size in terms of sales for all our divisions going forward. As Helen said, financial reporting will follow by the 1st of July. If we go now into the more detailed analysis of net sales and profitability development, you see here on the one side the net sales on the left side, so to say, so coming from the EUR 801 million in sales of Q1 2023. As I said, we had a slight volume increase of 0.3%. So it's slightly increased. So therefore, slightly positive upturn. But on the price side, we dropped, basically. And that's also the reason why we are only ending up with EUR 735 million in terms of Q1 2024 sales, although our volume was higher, basically due to the fact that we had negative price impact due to lower average selling prices. And the reason behind it is, of course, that you might remember that in the first half of 2023, we had the highest peak of, let's say, material prices. It was the highest peak of inflation, if you want to say. That led also, of course, due to our strong pricing path through mechanism and strength to higher selling prices. Now the prices are down. Therefore, that's the reason why here this column is leading to the negative side and at the end leading to the -8% in terms of net sales. Looking at this on the right side of this page here, we see the Comparable EBITDA. The Comparable EBITDA, even though we have achieved only less in net sales, we have basically achieved a better EBITDA in terms of absolute numbers, plus EUR 10 million, but also in terms of, let's say, margin going from 10.9%-13.3%. So you see when we start at the EUR 88 million, it's only a slight volume upturn, if you want, this uptick here also on the EBITDA side. But what it drove, basically, this higher EBITDA is really maintaining the good Margin on Variable Cost, if you want to say. And this is in spite of lower selling prices, as I mentioned. So basically, our percentage in terms of, let's say, Margin on Variable Cost, we increased from 36%-40% in terms of margin over variable cost. I think that shows it. On the next page, I will also show you how this develops in terms of EUR per ton. Why? Because this is, of course, thanks to our transformation activities and initiatives, which we meanwhile also internalize. So it's driven by internal capabilities, if you want to say. And we are, of course, benefiting from lower input cost and improved cost efficiency. So that basically overcompensates any of our lower pricing, if you want to say. Going to the next page, what I just promised, here we show over the quarters the solid margin on variable cost per ton. We can really say since Q2 2022, we are on a high level, means for us here, more than EUR 900 per ton. We ended up with the first quarter at EUR 903 per ton, coming from EUR 935. Again, of course, topic here is that clearly the pricing have come down. But on the other side, we have still kept it on a very high level due to very much spend control and lower input costs and improved cost efficiency. Those are the drivers here, again, which you see that we keep it on a very high level and leading to very healthy margins for us going forward. And I just mentioned that the EBITDA margin has come up again compared to last quarter of last year, if you want to say. Yeah, if we look further into our Adjusted EBITDA, we're also showing on the one side the Comparable EBITDA, we're also showing the Adjusted EBITDA where we take into account all our cost initiatives, cost down initiatives, transformation initiatives, we should say. On the one side, the already implemented projects, like we see here on the line 2023 initiatives, those are implemented in the course of 2023, and they still have an effect right now in 2024. We have our 2024 initiatives, basically, which will be implemented in the course of 2024, which have increased from EUR 48 million last quarter to EUR 55 million. And we have the 2025 initiatives, which are to be implemented and which we are seeing benefits on then in 2025, around EUR 30 million, includes there, of course, really initiatives in terms of material cost, basically lower input cost, of course, lower indirect spend, energy, chemicals. Everything is included there and continuous improvement measures. So overall, we increased the total saving potential from EUR 67 million to EUR 76 million, so plus EUR 10 million, with our comparable LTM EBITDA, which gives us another EUR 10 million. We are EUR 20 million above last quarter's EUR 487 million, now ending up at EUR 506 million, which I think is, again, a strong number. And of course, the more volume comes back, of course, the more all these initiatives will pay back, if you want to say, since we have optimized also our supply chain. And of course, if we are fully using all our capacities, including the digital capacities we invested into, for example, the GFT line mentioned by Helen, I mean, the better we will come out here also in terms of EBITDA. Yeah, now cash. I mean, we shouldn't mess around. Cash is king. And cash conversion as one of our strategic pillars, as Helen already mentioned, one of our five strategic pillars. And we are driving the cash discipline throughout the whole organization. This is also reflected in the cash flow in the first quarter of 2024, which leads to not only, of course, significant net cash from operating activities, but also to positive free cash flow, as well as to a positive net change of cash in general, as you see on the bar chart below. So we're starting with a Comparable EBITDA. We have our transformation costs on a moderate level continuing. We have a very positive change in working capital, which is majorly driven by higher payables in Q1. The cash conversion cycle after also interest and tax payments is around 80%, which is a very good number. You saw our target of 70%. So we have there, let's say, done a good performance. The CapEx spend, the run rate is very much normalized right now. We remember that we spent the last two years more than EUR 200 million in terms of CapEx, especially in those kind of, let's say, also capacity increases like the GFT line or the Gas Turbine line in the U.S. And now we are coming down with the intention, also coming down with our run rate and CapEx, since now it's all about using the capacity we have, basically, we have installed. So therefore, here, you see it's clearly reflected in terms of our CapEx. And then we did a small acquisition also of a power plant in the U.S., which cost us -EUR 60 million. And the rest is then basically just showing positive, let's say, through the positive direction. And if you look on the right side, of course, the net operating cash flow, I think we show the robust cash flow over the last two quarters, for sure. Of course, we are working on this, so to say, that this continues going forward. That also helps us, of course, on our adjusted net debt, which has come down slightly, so to say, and also our, let's say, net senior secured debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio. But I will get back to this in one of the next slides. Here, a little bit of deep dive in terms of capital expenditures overall the quarters. As mentioned, peak on capital expenditure was the end of 2022, but 2023, overall, still EUR 200 million, very high, so to say. You see that in Q1 2024, if you take out the gray part of the bar, which relates to this power plant we bought in the US, we have the lowest quarter CapEx spend since Q2 2022. And I think that's also somehow the way going forward. So that's somehow normalizing on the capital expenditures, as I mentioned it. And on the working capital side, you see, of course, business is ramping up. We have seen market uptick. So therefore, also our inventories, receivables went up, so to say, but they are still by far below 2023, the first two quarters. And on the payable side, of course, we, let's say, steered this very well. That which helped us, of course, to show a very good working capital impact here on our cash flow. If we go to the next page, last but not least, have a short look on the net debt and leverage. I mentioned this already. Adjusted net debt is somehow stable, slightly decreasing quarter-over-quarter, if you want to say, since Q4 right now, now into Q1. On the other side, on the right side, you see the lower ratio of net debt to LTM adjusted EBITDA. And this helps us very much because we're coming from 3.6, 3.4, now 3.2. And this definitely helps us because we are then also paying less interest since we're coming down in our margin grid, a notch lower, if you want to say. So we're saving there EUR 1 million per quarter right now also in terms of interest. So that helps going into the right direction, if you want to say. And of course, we are working to further improve here the leverage position. So I think all in all, a very solid quarter leading into the right direction. And if the market really plays into our hand right now, when we saw a good start into the year right now in Q1, then I think we will show some solid and good numbers going forward. With this, I would like to hand over to Helen again. Thank you very much. Thanks, Nicholas. And just to conclude then with the highlights. So as we started with a refined strategy, simplified divisional structure, really to ensure that we're capitalizing on the market opportunities and bringing absolute clarity to our growth transformation, both internally and externally. The market, as Nicholas said, we're starting to see improvement. We started to see improvement, deliveries increasing. So that's a little bit of the, certainly, the good news. But you combine that with our ongoing strength in our selling price management. And that's ensuring that despite the fact that we saw the increase in some of the inflationary costs, our Margin on Variable Cost continues to stay strong, and we're delivering on our transformation initiatives while reducing our transformation costs. So year-over-year, in Comparable EBITDA, we see the growth and solid operating cash flow due to our efficient and improving working capital management. So that's Q1 2024. And would love to open it up for Q&A. Thank you, Nicholas. Thank you, Helen. Really, it's time now for questions. And let's start with the phone line. So over to you, operator. Do we have any questions? If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers. Thank you. There appears also not to be any questions. Okay, there is one question in the chatbox here. Could you provide the numbers on the factoring and reverse factoring balance as end of the first quarter? So we are there basically on the same level as of the Q4 quarter 2023. So factoring level round about EUR 325, so to say. So therefore, it's at the same level as in Q4. So it has not changed at all. There's another question concerning the market dynamics here. Could you please comment on the markets by segments, please? Yeah, thanks for the question. I think this time around, I would say that across the board, so Q1 still, we started to see the increase in certain segments. We are now seeing, without giving any forward statement, we are now seeing a much broader growth across all of the segments in the portfolio. So certainly, we are seeing the breadth of the recovery across segments. Now, I caveat that still a little bit with the visibility that we've got still is low. So we have some weeks of extremely strong and then a bit lower and then extremely strong and then a bit lower. But I would say across all segments now, we're starting to see the recovery. There are some follow-up questions concerning the market. Do you anticipate a restocking now happening after the destocking cycle that we experienced last year? A simple answer is, not seeing any signs of that right now. Of course, in some areas of the value chain, as it gets tight, people tend to have that behavior. But I certainly not seeing anything that I would call out right now. All right. Thank you. What about margin on variable cost development for the second quarter? Would you like to comment on that? Yeah, I mean, coming now from the 903, which we showed, so to say, we mentioned also by Helen, we see some inflation, of course, in the market on the input costs, if you want to say, especially on material. So therefore, and with our price strength, if you want to say, we have in the market, in all our segments, so to say, there's a good likelihood that it's getting a little bit higher again, so to say, our margin of variable cost. That's all I can say here, I think, in terms of forward-looking information. Maybe I can just add a little bit of context as well from the market dynamics and our own internal capabilities because this is certainly something that I think you've all seen us lead in and build on is the strength of the pricing muscle that we've got in the company. And what we did see, as we've talked about, is we did see the inflation coming through. So very quick to act in all of our pricing rooms, in all of our business units, on putting prices through. So we continue to lead there. But there is, as Nicholas is alluding to, there is an element of our business that there is a time lag just in terms of the inflation coming through, the price increases impacting. We are actually moving even more of our business onto index contracts, which actually reduces that, let's say, that dynamic. But as we said, Q2 is where we'll start to see it kick in. The next question concerns guidance on CapEx for full year. Any comments? Yeah, I think I commented already when I talked about the CapEx development compared to the last two years, so to say. Our run rate has come down. And we expect, of course, also going to the next quarters, that the run rate will be lower than in the previous years, if you want to say. That's, I think, what we can give as a guideline going forward. Very good. Thank you. There does not appear to be further questions in the chatbox. So I hand over to you, Helen, for final remarks. No, thank you, everyone. A good start to 2020, a solid, a really solid start to 2024. With the caveat that we see across the board, the volume, the industry is hopefully returning. Thanks, everyone. We look forward to giving you the review of Q2. Yes? Thank you. Thank you. From my side.