Thank you so much. Good morning, and welcome to this Nordic Paper presentation of our Q2 results. My name is Henrik Essén, and with me today I have Nordic Paper CEO, Anita Sjölander, and CFO, Niclas Eriksson. We will soon listen to the presentation, and after the presentation, we will open up for questions. With that introduction, I leave the word to Anita Sjölander. Thank you, Henrik. Thank you for calling in today to listen to our Q2 report. I think we start here, yeah. First of all, we would like to share the key highlights of this quarter. Last quarter, we reported a strengthened market situation. In quarter two, this strong market situation has continued. That goes for both our segments. The strong demand for our specialty paper is a result from the underlying long-term increasing demand for specialty paper. Right now, it is also supported by the effects of the reopening of some of the economies when restrictions that have been implemented during the pandemic are gradually lifted. This has resulted in high sales volumes, not far from last quarter's record level. Last quarter, we announced price increases for kraft paper and also Natural Greaseproof. In this quarter two, we start to see the effect on the product prices for the kraft paper segment. For Natural Greaseproof, it takes longer time for the effect of the higher grade prices to show due to the average longer contract terms in this segment. Some of our variable costs have been high, electricity and external pulp for the greaseproof segment. As a reminder from what we previously have announced, the decision to discontinue the pulp production in Säffle. This gives a provision for costs related to remediations of building and land, and that is SEK 76 million in the five to seven coming years. I think you can go to the next slide. We increased our net sales from last quarter, and we are now in this quarter a level of SEK 790 million, which compared to last year, quarter two, is an increase by 3%. This quarter, we are now reporting an Adjusted EBITDA, adjusted for the SEK 76 million, the provision in Säffle. Our Adjusted EBITDA is SEK 160 million, and that gives then an EBITDA margin of 20.3%. I think we can go to the next slide. Yes, thank you. The good demand in the market results in high sales volumes, and like I said, they are almost on the last quarter's record levels, and that is also an increase by 7% compared to Q2 2020. The geographical spread is stable, and there are no changes to the general picture with our main market being in Europe. If we go into our segments, kraft paper. In this market, the demand for our unbleached specialty paper has gone from strengthened in Q1 to strong, and that gives high sales volumes for this quarter. Last quarter, we communicated the announced price increases, they are now starting to give effect. Prices are now on the similar level as of last year, Q2. They will also continue to have effect in Q3. The effect of higher volumes, price on the same level as last year's Q2, offset by some negative currency impact. The net sales improvement versus Q2 2020 is + 4%. The input costs for kraft paper have been stable. They are in line with Q1 and the same level as Q2 2020. With this, the EBITDA, just to report on the margin, is increasing to 27.1% this quarter. Yeah. We move over to the segment Natural Greaseproof. Again, just a short reminder, the provision SEK 76 million for the future remediations of building and lands will, of course, impact the result of Natural Greaseproof. That these activities that are related to the building and land will be carried out on a period of five to seven years after the closing. In Natural Greaseproof, there is a strong market situation, and what we see now is that also the professional sector is increasing their demand again when the restrictions implemented during the pandemic are gradually lifted. We have also chosen to keep some of our machines running during the red days during quarter two, these days that we normally have planned downtime. Altogether, this has given us high sales volumes during quarter two. Our input costs, energy and pulp, have increased in this quarter, and we also have some negative effects from currency. Product prices are lower than last year. The announced price increases that we made last quarter will come with a delay compared to the kraft paper price increases. This is the normal pattern, that it takes longer for the price increases in this segment to be realized, as our customers typically have longer agreements in these segments. Currently, further price increases are being negotiated in this segment. Net sales, higher volumes, negative currency, and somewhat lower prices gives a total effect on the net sales by + 2%. The Adjusted EBITDA margin is 9.3% for this segment. Then I would like to give the word to Niclas to give some more details. Thank you, Anita. Then we will look into the development for the net sales during this quarter compared to Q2 2020. We have had strong sales, as we have described, the volume and product mix together gives a positive effect to the net sales by SEK 82 million. There is a product mix included there, coming from that we have sold a bit less pulp and more paper instead. The deviation in price compared to last Q2 is almost zero. It's -SEK 10 million still, a small deviation, we have a currency effect of -SEK 49 million, we come to SEK 790 million on net sales for Q2 2021. If we look at the effects on EBITDA compared to last year, we can see that the volume and product mix effect on EBITDA is also quite large, SEK 42 million+. The price effect is -SEK 10 million. We have negative raw material effects coming from the increased prices on pulp, as well as energy, partly set off by lower wood cost than last year. We have a currency effect of -SEK 25 million. We have other effects, including the IPO costs that we had last year of SEK 22 million. We reach an Adjusted EBITDA of SEK 160 million for the quarter. In the disclosed EBITDA, we have the provision for the Säffle pulp line of SEK 76 million. We come to a reported EBITDA of SEK 84 million. Looking at the net sales for the full half year 2021, we have a decrease of net sales of SEK 32 million coming from positive effect from volume and product mix of SEK 113 million. Prices are SEK 45 million lower than last year. The currency effect is -SEK 99 million. The EBITDA bridge for the first six months, there we have a positive effect from volume and product mix of SEK 66 million. The price effect, SEK 45 million, affected the EBITDA as well. We have raw material effects of -SEK 48 million for the first six months, and it's the pulp and energy, again set off by lower pulpwood costs. Fixed costs are SEK 8 million lower. Currency had a negative effect of SEK 34 million, and the other items are SEK 20 million, including the IPO cost that we had last year. We reach an Adjusted EBITDA with these deviations of SEK 295 million, minus the provision for the pulp line in Säffle of SEK 76 million. We reach a disclosed EBITDA of SEK 219 million. We have a look at the cash flow and working capital as well, where we have had a cash flow of SEK 134 million from operating activities this quarter. We consider it as the normal development for Q2. Compared to Q2 last year, we can see that the cash flow is lower. When we look at Q1 and Q2 together, we should understand that last year we had a large increase of receivables in Q1 that was settled in Q2. The working capital is considered normal for the Q2, for the period, also considering the effect that we have from the provision of SEK 76 million, giving a decrease of the working capital. CapEx for the period Q2 have been SEK 26 million. The normal development during the year is that we have lower CapEx for the first six months and then an increase during the Q3 and Q4 in connection with the maintenance stops. This is the situation that we see also this year. CapEx in as relation to net sales is a bit above 3%. The net debt is SEK 721 million. Available cash is SEK 480 million, and that's the same level as we saw at the end of Q1, despite the paid-out dividend of SEK 134 million. The net debt in relation to EBITDA, rolling 12 months, is 2.1, and it's below the target of 2.5. We also have available unutilized credit facilities of SEK 800 million. Then I hand over to Anita. Thank you, Niclas. We take a look into the progress of our strategic initiatives. This quarter, we took the next step in the restructuring of Säffle mill as we initiated a consultation regarding a closing of the pulp mill. The status right now is that the investment required to change the mill structure is ongoing, the CapEx level of SEK 70 million that we communicated, and we are preparing to run the mill based on 100% bought pulp and to increase the capacity by 10% from next year. This will then allow us to grow with the growing market and the demand for our product in Säffle, such as the unbleached baking paper and the baking cups. Our intended time plan is to discontinue the pulp production during Q4 this year. After good work together with the unions, the negotiations are finalized so that we now have an agreed organization and reduction of manning. After the implementation of the new equipment during the summer stop, we will reduce our output from the pulp plant, since then we are not able to take out any sulfite pulp to Greåker. The machines in Norway will run on 100% external pulp from the start-up after the summer shut. This means that approximately 3,000 tons of internal pulp will be replaced by external pulp during the second half of the year. The Bäckhammar expansion program, right now we are in the phase of discussing with potential suppliers of a new wood room. To summarize the second quarter, the market is strong. There is a strong demand for both kraft paper and Natural Greaseproof papers. The market picked up during the first quarter and has now continued to be strong during this quarter. High sales volumes, almost same level as the previous quarter when we reported record high sales volumes. We have an increased cost for pulp and energy that impacts the profitability in Natural Greaseproof. Also we see that the increased product prices now are beginning to give effect during this quarter. Some outlook for the coming quarter. The kraft product price increases will continue to realize during next quarter. If the pulp prices continue to be on this level, the profitability of Natural Greaseproof will continue to be impacted. During Q3, just a reminder that we have the seasonality effect from our plant maintenance stops. When the Säffle mill is starting up production again after the summer stop, the pulp production will be lower until we finally stop the pulp production. Guidance for the full year 2021, financial net approximately SEK 25 million, tax rate average approximately 21%, and the running CapEx level of SEK 100 million, and that inside that is the SEK 70 million for the strategic investment in Säffle. End of the year when we closed the pulp production, we have one-off effect of SEK 30 million for the write-down of the asset value in Säffle. That concludes the reporting for Q2. Thank you, Anita. With that, we will open up for questions. Operator, do we have any questions? Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. All right, our first question comes from the line of Christian Kopfer from Nordea. Please ask your question. Yeah, thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone. First question relates to kraft paper. What we have seen in the market, especially on unbleached sack kraft or kraft paper, is that prices have come up, at least on my screen EUR 200 per ton, which is pretty expensive. If I understand you previously, you have not seen the same price increases on your comparable products. The first question is, how much of these EUR 200 did you see in your numbers for Q2? That's the first question. In Q2, we saw a relatively small effect. The numbers are around EUR 20. EUR 20. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. When the agreements are due and the negotiations we have in line with the agreement, length of the agreement. All right. How long do you think it will take until your prices in your P&L catch up with the underlying market? I think what we will see is that now during Q3, we will realize the price agreements that we have with our customers. It's during Q3 that will give an effect. Also after Q3, or will it be a one-time effect in Q3 and then stable from that on, given that market prices will be stable? The agreements currently with our customers, we will see the effect in Q3 and going into Q4 on the level. Okay. Then on the price that we have seen on the screen coming up, EUR 200 per ton, is that relevant also for you or how do you see that? We do not recognize that really huge level of price increases of EUR 200. That's not something that we have met in the market or even heard in the market. Okay. All right. Those prices that I have seen are from Germany prices. I don't know if you have any comment on that or? Not seen any discussions or seen any competition in Germany on that level. We don't have the information of that really high increase. On greaseproof. Would you say that the market is stronger or weaker or more or less the same as you saw back in 2018 when we had the previous increased pulp price hike? Is the market now on the underlying basis for greaseproof, is that on the same magnitude or is it stronger? Compared to 2018, the underlying growth of this segment, our understanding is that the market is growing and getting stronger. We believe that there is a growing market and demand generally that is now also showing up in this strong demand from the customers that we see right now. Like I said before, partially we see right now then some of the reopening of especially the professional sector, like in the U.S., that the demand is increasing from their side as well. Okay. Last time around, you managed to pull through some price hikes, if I remember correctly. My question is, do you think you will be able to compensate as much now as you were doing the last time around? Yeah, we are now announcing price increases with our customers at the moment. That is our belief that we will pick up on that level. There is a strong market right now. We are a market leader in Natural Greaseproof. We're taking initiatives to drive up the prices on a higher level right now. Is it possible to say anything about the price hike numbers and the timing of those? The timing is with the longer agreement times with the customers, six months is a minimum time before we see them. The announcements and the agreements that we make now, we will not see show up so much in this year's results. They will be in 2022. We haven't communicated openly in the market the level where we are aiming with our customers. We are aiming for 2018 level at least. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Cole Hathorn from Jefferies. Please ask your question. Morning. Thank you very much for taking the question. I'd just like to get a better understanding of how demand is impacting the various segments of your business. If you look within your kraft paper business, I just want to understand what's driving the strong demand in your unbleached sack paper, and then what's driving the demand in the MG side of things. Looking into the Natural Greaseproof, could you just give me a little bit of color? Are you seeing an incremental pickup as the quarter's gone through, as we're getting this reopening? Are you seeing an incremental pickup from the food service side, et cetera, in that business? Just a little bit of color there on the Natural Greaseproof would be helpful. Thank you. Okay. If we start with the Kraft segment and the growing demand, we are growing with some of our customers, together with the customers, but we also see more and more adaptations and new applications for our paper. Our customers want to switch from plastic to paper. That is also an effect from that sustainability trend, that there is now a shift going on from plastic to paper. The combination of growing with customers and new application is the driver for the growing demand in the Kraft paper segment. When it comes to Natural Greaseproof and the professional sector, where our main market is U.S. for the professional sector. Yes, with the reopening of some of parts of that market over there, the requests from our customers in that professional sector in U.S. have been increasing a lot recently. Thank you. Then just to follow up, you talked about the plastic to paper benefits. Could you give me an example of working with a customer and how long it takes to get a new product through and get reasonable volumes in a new product or innovation with a customer? I imagine you're not changing your paper too much, but making sure it works on their packaging lines, et cetera. How long does it take to get one of these projects coming through with decent volumes? Okay. I think it varies, of course. Some are more lighter adaptations, where the customers can easily change their production lines using paper instead of plastic for packaging, for example, in the food segment, but also in the hygiene segment, where they can more or less easily change their existing converting lines to our paper. I would say not so long lead times in that development. We also have some examples where we are now going into completely new applications, where there is a need of developing of the equipment, new production lines, where it takes longer time. We typically work with incremental steps to do new applications for our customers. Typically, not so long lead times too. Of course, it is on the customer side to grow with the new type of packaging as well, of course, in the end market. Great. Thank you very much for answering the questions. I'd just like one follow-up on Christian's question around pricing. Could you give a scale of magnitude across the business where you've seen the most price increases to the least? Have the most price increases been visible in the unbleached sack segment then, I imagine, MG kraft followed by Natural Greaseproof? Is that the order of magnitude, how big the price increases have been? In Q2? Well, looking forward for the year. Which segment overall do you think is going to put through the biggest price hikes? I think for the rest of the year, you have them in the correct order. It's kraft followed by MG and then greaseproof. Great. That's correct. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Martin Melbye from ABG. Please ask your question. Yes, good morning. My questions were regarding prices, which have been addressed already, but maybe you could try to simplify things a bit. What kind of price increases are we looking at for Q3 on the two segments? We are looking at price increases that will come gradually for both Kraft segment and Greaseproof. They are in the region of a couple of% overall on the total volumes. For both segments? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. The last question comes from the line of KJ Bonnevier from DNB Markets. Please ask your question. Yes, good morning. Anita, when you talk about the Bäckhammar investment for the moment, I understand you have had problems contracting somebody to do the wood room investment for. It feels like the process is sliding somewhat. Is that the right interpretation? No, we have not had any challenges to find suppliers. We have a number of suppliers that we are discussing right now, and we are just working through the investment case and our RFQs and follow-up meetings with the suppliers. That process is ongoing, and we have interest from suppliers that would like to be supplying us with equipment. Excellent. I think the original plan, you were supposed to spend already about 20% of the total budget in this year. Is that still relevant? No. That is a relevant question, and I think the original plan, we will come back with an update program for the total program that we are working on right now, because we thought we might be coming up to the board or earlier with the proposal of the decision, not delayed by any lack of interest from the suppliers. We have been working through this program, and we see with the delivery times that we might adjust the total time plan. We will come back with that information during the autumn. We are not on the level, like you said. We are aiming to come up to the board with the proposal during the autumn. That's when we start to have some costs. For all practical reasons, you should be able to do a catch-up of it during 2022 to get back towards the original plan for the implementation? What we're looking into now is, of course, delivery time of the main equipment. That is what we are working with right now to fit into the schedule with the delivery time of main equipment to fit in also with the rest of the investment program. Looking at the environmental permit part of the investment, do you feel that process is going according to plan? Right now it's in the hands of the authorities and waiting for further responses from authorities. No set dates for the negotiations yet. We're waiting for that. No strange challenges to the process or anything like that? Not anything that we have on the table right now. Of course, we hear what other companies are facing right now, but we don't have any indications of anything right now other than waiting for the authorities to get back to us. Excellent. Niclas, I noticed that factoring volumes was at the record level coming up to the end of the quarter. Is that just a timing thing there, or is it a new way of using the credit lines you are having to do, or should we see that normalizing during the second half of the year? We hope that this is a new level coming from the good invoicing that we have. We aim for that, and we think that factoring is a good way to be part of the financing of the business. How do you treat factoring when you look at cash conversion numbers and similar things? Is that outside it? That's outside, yes. Okay. Thanks. That was all for me. Yeah. Thank you. There are no further question at this time. Once again, to those who wish to ask question, please press star and one. There are no further question at this time. Please continue. Okay. Thank you very much for the discussion. We look forward to talking to you again. Next time will be our Q3 presentation, which will be in October, 28th of October. Thank you very much for today, and goodbye.
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