Thank you for standing by, and welcome to today's Q3 2021 report conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today on Thursday, the 28th of October, 2021. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Henrik Essén. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Good morning, and welcome to this Nordic Paper quarterly report for the third quarter. My name is Henrik Essén, and I'm Head of Investor Relations of Nordic Paper. With me today, I have the Nordic Paper CEO, Anita Sjölander, and CFO Niclas Eriksson. With that introduction, I hand over to Anita for the presentation. Thank you, Henrik, and thank you all for calling in and participating in this reporting of the Q3 report today. This is our fifth quarterly report as a listed company, and a few days ago, we passed the one-year mark as a listed company. Of course, we are very proud of that. First of all, we would like to share the key highlights for the quarter. During this year, we have moved from a strengthened market situation at the beginning of the strong market in Q2, and that strong market is continued in quarter three for both kraft paper and Natural Greaseproof. That is the combination of long-term underlying increased demand for specialty paper and also getting back to normal situation in some countries' economies, like the U.S., which is resulting in a very strong market. Quarter three, that is the quarter when we are performing our scheduled maintenance shutdowns, and the cost is at a level of SEK 123 million, impacting the operating profit. That is also in line with the guidance we have on the seasonality effects, just slightly below. The strong market is driving price increases, and that goes for the both segments, kraft paper and Natural Greaseproof, and also for all our products. Prices for pulp continues to be high. We see announcements on lower prices in other parts of the world, but so far, the decrease in Europe has been very marginal, so we're still waiting for something to happen here. Our energy, the electricity costs have also been high, and both of these components impact our segment Natural Greaseproof the most. Yesterday, the board took the decision to postpone the decision on the new wood room in Bäckhammar. The pre-project that we have worked with for a new wood room has now shown that the investment does not reach our previous estimates on profitability as a standalone investment. There is a need of increasing production volume. Therefore, it is not possible to take any decisions until we get the new production permit, and that we also know what terms that will come with that. Net sales in Q3 is 711 million SEK, and that is an increase by 11% compared to last year Q3. EBITDA for the quarter is SEK 15 million, which then gives us an EBITDA margin of 2.1%. Yes, I think we can move over to the next slide. Sales volumes are just above last quarter previous year Q3 previous year. It's 1,000 tons more. We have a slight shift to Europe. We have a 2% increase of our net sales in Europe compared to last quarter, that is to the last quarter, and also a reduction of the same level in the Middle East, Africa. Americas is on the same level as quarter two. We then go to the segment kraft paper. Continued strong demand in the market and the increasing prices. We have a +8% in local currency, which is giving a good net sales for this quarter. Maintenance stops that are performed in this quarter for this segment hits the profit by SEK 88 million. Input costs are stable for kraft paper. Wood price is on a stable level. In this segment, we are also producing some of our electricity needed. Altogether, an EBITDA margin of 11%. We then move over to our next segment, Natural Greaseproof. As for kraft paper, the market situation is also strong for this segment. The professional sector is returning with the demand, and as we now are able to go out to restaurants and coffee shops. Also in this segment, the two production units here are performing their production shutdowns in this quarter, and the negative impact on the operating profit in this segment is SEK 35 million. As I said in the beginning, the pulp price still high, and also electricity high in this quarter. We have worked with price increases, and we have now improved to the level of last year's average prices in local currency. The price increases that we have achieved so far has not been high enough to compensate for these increases. These volumes higher than last year, this makes an improvement in net sales of 10%. EBITDA margin is low in this segment, below 0.89%. I would like to hand over to Niclas for more details in the financial results and comparisons. Thank you, Anita. We start with the net sales bridge. We can see in this quarter compared to Q3 2020 that we have increased the net sales 11% to SEK 711 million. The volume is higher, and the mix is improved, which gives a total effect of SEK 41 million. Price increase effect is SEK 34 million, and currency gives only a minor effect of -SEK 4 million, since the euro and the US dollar, the main invoicing currencies we use, have been stable since Q3 2020. We continue to the EBITDA compared to Q3 2020. The reported EBITDA is SEK 15 million, increase of SEK 28 million compared to Q3 2020. The increased volume and improved product mix gives a positive effect to the EBITDA of SEK 26 million. The price effect is SEK 34 million. Raw material costs have increased by SEK 50 million, of which pulp is the main part. Energy is another important part, of course, compared to last year. Fixed cost is positive by SEK 15 million. We, as a lot of other companies, have got personnel insurance paid back by SEK 11 million. Currency is negative by SEK 15 million, and other, including the IPO costs we had in 2020, is a positive effect. The net sales year-to-date, there we have increased the net sales by 2% on the total level. Volume and product mix gives a large positive effect of SEK 154 million, but this is to a large part set off by the negative currency effect of SEK 103 million. Prices year-to-date are in average more or less on the same level as last year, a negative deviation of -11%. The adjusted EBITDA year-to-date is 310 compared to 314 in 2020. The positive effect from volume and product mix year-to-date is positive SEK 92 million. Price effect -SEK 11 million, but raw material is giving a large negative effect of -SEK 98 million, of which pulp and energy gives the large negative impact. Partly this is set off by lower wood prices. Fixed cost is SEK 23 million lower. Currency gives negative effect of -SEK 49 million, and others, including the IPO cost in 2020, gives a positive effect of SEK 38 million. Reported EBITDA is SEK 234 million, affected by the provision for environmental costs in... Looking at the cash flow and working capital, we consider the cash flow as normal for the quarter. Working capital is on a low level in the graph since it's affected by the provision for Säffle of SEK 76 million. We consider the working capital as normal for the period. The CapEx for the quarter was SEK 54 million. This is a bit higher compared to normal, and we see the deviation in the investments we do in the Säffle plant, in the pulp for the change of pulp mill there of SEK 17 million. The total investments in Säffle is calculated to SEK 70 million, of which the main part will come in Q4, but some amounts could occur in Q1 2022 as well. Net debt is SEK 630 million. Cash position is good, SEK 590 million. We have a leverage of 1.7 compared to the target to be below 2.5. We still have the available unutilized credit facilities of SEK 800 million, and during the quarter, we have also prolonged the finance agreement to 2024. With that, I hand over to Anita again. Thank you, Niclas. To give you some update on the strategic initiatives, Niclas touched upon the Säffle restructuring. We announced in our last quarterly report the restructuring of this plant, and the project is running according to plan. We will close the pulp production end of this year, and the restructuring here will then increase the production by 10% from next year. Yesterday also we shared the information that the board decided to delay on the wood room. The profitability, as I said in the beginning, doesn't reach the targets that we set up for the first part, the wood room. It's necessary to get increased production volumes. Therefore, it's not possible for the board to take a decision on this until we have got the production permit for the entire expansion plan, and also that the demand in connection with that production permit is known. We estimate that we can have a new production permit in place earliest in the beginning of 2023. The summary, the market is strong. There's a strong demand for both kraft paper and natural greaseproof. The market picked up during first quarter and has now continued to be strong, quarter two and quarter three. Stable performance from the organization performing the maintenance shutdowns, and the negative impact on profit according to our guidance on seasonality effects. Price increases in both segments are now showing up in our numbers. The high cost for pulp and energy is hitting our segment Natural Greaseproof. Again, the investment decision for a new wood room is postponed until we have a new production permit, and we know the conditions for that. Finally, we give you some outlook for next quarter. The agreed product price increases will continue to realize. If the pulp price is continued to be on the high level, the profitability in Natural Greaseproof will be impacted. The Säffle mill is finalizing the investment to be ready for startup on external pulp. The largest part of the CapEx will be carried out during quarter four, as Niclas commented on. When closing the pulp mill, we will have the write-down of SEK 30 million of the residual value of the pulp line in Säffle mill. We have the full year 2021, and we continue with the guidance that the financial net will approximately be on SEK 25 million, and tax rate average approximately 21%. That concludes the reporting, and I hand over to Henrik Essén. Okay. Thank you very much. It's time for questions and answers. Operator, do we have any questions? We will now take our first question. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. We do have one question. It's from Martin Melbye. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Could you indicate the quarter to quarter effect from electricity and pulp, please, for the group? The quarter-to-quarter effect is for the pulp. It's lower of course than the quarter effect compared to last year. We are in the region of SEK 10 million, a little higher for energy. This was quarter-to-quarter or year-over-year for Q4? Quarter-to-quarter, Q2, Q3. Yeah, I'm talking about Q4 now, not Q3. We can only estimate that the price levels will be on the current level. For Q4. Yes, you have also the lower production for Q3. Maybe the price increases that we could have seen in Q3, that will happen in Q4. That's the reason why I'm asking. That figure I don't have it top of my mind, but the production increase will give maybe SEK 15 million-SEK 20 million in the cost increases. Okay. About the price increases on kraft paper and greaseproof in Q4, can you indicate a percentage please, to be realized? Mm-hmm. In the kraft, we can see in Q3 that we have had approximately 7%. In Q4, we expect further price increases, but not on that level. On a bit lower level. On greaseproof? Yeah. On greaseproof, we have seen in Q3 2%-3%, and we expect price increases in Q4 on the same level as that. Okay. Thank you. Star one if you wish to ask a question. Take our next question. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Yes, good morning. It's Harri Taittonen here. On the kind of CapEx, is it too early to talk about the CapEx outlook for next year and the year after with this Bäckhammar decision? Also to give some color on how to base our CapEx assumptions on now that the kind of delay is a fact. We can have a view on the CapEx in 2022 at this stage. Mm-hmm. There we expect to have the CapEx related to the running business of approximately SEK 100 million. We will also have something fall over to Q1 2022 from the investments that we do in Säffle. Okay. We'll also continue with investigating the project in Bäckhammar. With the running pre-project for the Bäckhammar program. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably going to be some tens but not hundreds. No, no. That's right. Correct. In that region. Yeah. Correct. Okay. The other one on the, I mean, looking at the Q1 in January, I mean, and sort of the contracts that you have, you must have been negotiating quite a lot of contracts already for next year. I mean, or can you say roughly how big a percentage of turnover you would have or you already have some visibility on prices for next year? Yeah. There is ongoing negotiations right now about next year, of course. Not all of them are finalized. Kraft paper is more gradual type of business. For Natural Greaseproof, they are in the negotiations on the coming year. A little bit early right now to conclude any results from that. Fair enough. Okay. Thank you very much. We currently have no further questions. So once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. We have no further questions. Please continue. Okay. Thank you very much. With that, we conclude this quarterly presentation. We look forward to talking to you again. Next time will be in conjunction with our Q4 report, which will be published on the twenty-eighth of January. Looking forward to talking to you then. Thank you very much, and goodbye. This concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.
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