Good morning, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Q4 2022 report of Nordic Paper. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in a listen only mode. The presentation will be followed with a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one. Press the star key followed by zero for operator. It's my pleasure, and I would now like to turn the conference over to Henrik Essén. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much. Warm welcome to this presentation of the interim report for the fourth quarter 2022, and the full year's results for Nordic Paper. Today, we will hear a presentation from Anita Sjölander, CEO of Nordic Paper, and Niclas Eriksson, CFO of Nordic Paper. After their presentation, we will open up for Q&A. Anita, please go ahead. Thank you, Henrik. I would also like to say welcome to you that are listening in today to our live broadcast, but also to those of you that later take the opportunity to listen in to the recording that is available on our website. We are noticing a growing interest in Nordic Paper, and we see the number of shareholders are increasing. Very happy about that. My name is Anita Sjölander. I have now started to count on my fourth year as the CEO of this company, and I've had the privilege to participate also in the IPO 2020. I've been with the company a bit longer than that, and I am a passionate long-timer in the pulp and paper industry, and very proud of what our products, the specialty paper, can do for the quality of everyday life of people. Some of you might know the company by now, but for those of you that are newcomers, I would like to say just a few words. Nordic Paper is a niche producer, supplier of specialty paper to customers, with our main market in Europe. We have more than 800 customers, they are appreciating the high quality of our paper and also the service that we are providing. This over time, of course, creates loyalty and very long-term relationships. Some customers have been doing business with us for more than generations, in several generations. Nordic Paper is divided into two segments, and that is the Kraft Paper segment and the Natural Greaseproof. The specialty paper from these two segments can be found, or you will find it if you go into a shop and you put some bread or vegetables or fruit in a paper bag when you carry your groceries home from the shop, or maybe you have a prescription of a subscriptions of meal service. When you open up that box with the food, you will find several paper bags with food in there. Maybe if you are ordering some e-commerce and you pick it up in a paper bag. Our other paper, the Natural Greaseproof, you will find if you're having some fast food, if you're in a restaurant or in a coffee shop, maybe having a muffin, or maybe you're also doing some baking and cooking at home. This paper is excellent for food contact, especially it is not containing any harmful fluorocarbons, it's a very good way to achieve our greaseproofness. Besides food contact purposes for the paper, we are also supplier for applications in industrial end uses such as protective paper for sensitive surfaces, building and leaving, or also part of some climate control equipment. The latest application where an upgraded quality of our Kraft Paper is used is for pizza boxes. When you hear that, you might think that's not something new. I will come back little bit later on the enhanced features and why our customers turn to us to have something new. Nordic Paper has existed for more than 100 years, that is a proof of our strength and also of a sustainable business. Sustainability is important for us. It's a strong driver for the growing demand. It's also in the nature of our business as with a product based on renewable resources and part of our everyday work to continuously improve. Today, I will also share some great progress achieved in this area during the year. Before diving into the numbers in the report, I just want to summarize on an overall level. First of all, we are all aware of the terrible events during this year when it comes to humanity and the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how that has created large financial uncertainty in the world, inflation, increasing energy prices. However, one very positive thing during this year is the possibility to meet again. When the restrictions were lifted, we could travel to and meet our customers again and of course meet our colleagues also. For Nordic Paper, this year has in several ways been positive, of course. Some examples of that is how we have improved our business by our first acquisition. In the beginning of this year, we met our new colleagues in Canada and in Quebec, and we have now renamed that entity to Nordic Paper Quebec. During 2022, we are focused to integrate this entity with the new customers and the complementing products that is adding to our business. Of course, we also have continued to improve the existing business. In the beginning of 2022, we started a new process area in Säffle. We have now successfully been running Säffle as a paper production unit for more than a year, and we have also reduced our climate impact through this. Altogether, in this turbulent world, we have been standing firm in our product offer. The market demand has been strong throughout the year, and we have substantially increased the product prices. I'm very proud to present our results. We have been delivering several new records during the year. Speaking of records, I would like to start our presentation and share the highlights. A strong end to a fantastic year. In Q4, we achieved new quarterly records for net sales and EBITDA. Compared to Q4 2021, we have increased our product prices by 32% in local currency. Kraft Paper has yet again delivered a very strong result. In Natural Greaseproof, we improved the result substantially, and that was driven by product price increases and energy surcharges. Today, the board of directors are proposing a dividend. It's SEK 4.65 per share, which is in line with our dividend policy. Let's take a look at the net sales and the EBITDA margin, how they have developed during quarter four. Net sales is on the level of SEK 1,206 million. As you also can see in the graph there, this is the fourth consecutive quarter with a net sales above the SEK 1 billion line there. It's also an increase by 49% compared to quarter four last year. EBITDA has more than doubled to SEK 260 million. This is also the best quarterly result that we have delivered ever. Very good. As you can see on the right-hand side in the graph there, all the quarters in 2022, the EBITDA margin has been on a higher level compared to the both of the two previous years. Quarter four, we are on 25.5% level, which is a good improvement also compared to Quarter four, 2021. In December, we have the holiday season with Christmas and New Year, that does not stop Nordic Paper to supply paper to our customers. Let me then guide you through the sales volumes, how they have developed. With a healthy demand of our paper and the loyal customer base, Nordic Paper sales volumes are stable. That is based on us being a supplier for end users in food applications, and also that we have selected less volatile industrial end users for our paper. This together gives stability in sales volumes. You can also see here in the graph that quarter four was slightly below the H1 of the year, Q1 and Q2. The reason for them being a bit lower is that we had slightly lower production output in our Kraft Paper segment. We have also made a change in our delivery terms for some of the business in Natural Greaseproof, meaning that more products are out in transit and valued as stock end of December. In total, our stock levels are low. When we look at the graph on the right-hand side here, you can see that our sales volumes or actually net sales in the geography, they are stable. We continue to have two-thirds of our net sales in Europe. America is second largest market, then comes Asia Pacific and Middle East Africa. I said before, Nordic Paper consists of two segments, Kraft Paper and Natural Greaseproof. I would like to comment these two segments individually. I will start with the Kraft Paper segment. From Kraft Paper segment, we are supplying our customers with unbleached paper from two production units in Sweden. All the paper here is based on our own internal unbleached pulp. Our customers, converters are producing the unbleached paper bags and sacks and packaging for food, packaging for diapers and other in-industrial end uses. In quarter four, net sales in Kraft Paper was SEK 631 million, which is an increase by 35% compared to quarter four last year. Overall, demand has been healthy. We talked in previous quarter of an returning to a more normal market situation, we had some cooling demand, especially for absorbent, which is 5% of the net sales, which was also a result of lack of raw material with the customer from other parts. During quarter four, we have seen some signals of a softer market demand coming forward, and just want to stress that still our prices in quarter four have been stable. EBITDA margins, they remains on a very high level for Kraft Paper, 33.5%, which is 1.3 percentage point above the full year average. Our Kraft Paper has a broad possible end use area, and together with our customers, we developed applications where our paper can be used and where we contribute to good solutions. I would like to share one example with one of our Italian customers that we worked on during the last quarter, and that is one for pizza boxes that I mentioned. The pandemic changed many of our ways of living, our habits. In Italy, land of pizza, the number of home orders for home delivery, they grew to an extent where the delivery times took a very long time. Finally, when the pizza arrived at the customer, at their home, the pizza was cold. The solution for the customer receiving the pizza was to put it in their own oven. In order to do that, you need a paper that is both approved for food contact and also to be oven safe. Our customer turned to us and asked if we could develop our paper in that direction. As a result, now the customers in can reheat the pizza when it arrives in their home. Over to our other segments, the Natural Greaseproof segment. From this segment, we are supplying the Natural Greaseproof paper to applications where paper is in close contact with the food. The paper is used both by professionals in bakeries, restaurants, coffee shops, and also by ourselves at home when we are cooking and baking. The paper is produced in three production units. We have one each in Sweden, Norway, and Canada. The demand for Greaseproof paper has also been healthy. There has been some normalization in the European market. But in this market situation, we have been able to increase our product prices by both implementing price increases and addition of energy surcharges, leading in total to an increase by 30% compared to quarter four last year. Net sales in this quarter reached to a highest ever level at SEK 594 million. In this quarter, the EBITDA margin improved significantly to 12.8%. This is in line with the level we had beginning of 2021 before the energy prices started to increase. Also our acquisition in Quebec is contributing positively to the margins during 2022. For the full year average is on 6.9 percentage point. Thank you. As this is the last quarter, let me also summarize the full year. Full year 2022, a fantastic year. The market demand has been strong throughout the year. Net sales increased by 44% to the new annual record of SEK 4,440 million. With several records for on a quarterly basis for net sales, obviously, we have also a new annual record, this one. You can see in the graph visually how this big improvement by 44% looks compared to the previous year, what we have reached. The new full year EBITDA record reached SEK 821 million, and the EBITDA margin reached 18.5% in relation to our target of 20% in a midterm perspective. A great performance for the company combined. When we look at the two segments, I just want to highlight the outstanding performance we have had in Kraft Paper. On the segment level, for Kraft Paper has contributed with SEK 768 million to the EBITDA, corresponding to an EBITDA margin of 32.2%. The high cost of pulp and the increased energy prices during 2022 mainly hit the Greaseproof segment. We have increased the product prices during the year, in Q4, we reached a level to compensate for the cost increases. The new asset in Greaseproof segment, Québec, has contributed positively to the margin. For the full year in the Natural Greaseproof segment, we reached an EBITDA margin of 5.9%. We've now spent 1 year with our French-speaking colleagues in Québec, in the next slide, I just want to summarize a bit of the year together with them. We finalized our acquisition the last day of 2021, welcoming them into a new ownership of pulp and paper business. We have had a great relationship from the start. The integration has been running very smoothly. Our first focus was, of course, together to work on the customer, the first task to combine and set up the sales channels. We are now serving our North American customers in the best efficient way, some directly and some through our former agent. Together in cooperation, we can now summarize the first year reaching an increase in net sales and also an improved EBITDA in Quebec compared to previous year. With that, I have Niclas Eriksson beside me here, the CFO of Nordic Paper. I would like to hand over to him, he will guide you in more detail in the changes quarter-to-quarter and also, of course, the year-to-year development. Over to you, Niclas. Thank you, Anita. I will give you an analyze of the financial development for Q4 and the full year 2022 compared to the same periods last year. You will see how our pricing power and the cost development have affected the report, and we will start with the net sales bridge. In 2022, we have seen price increases all quarters, and Q4 is another period with significant increased net sales. Net sales increased 49% or SEK 396 million compared to the same quarter last year. The total price increases summarized to SEK 261 million. In net, in Natural Greaseproof, our price increase together with the energy surcharges have amount to price increases of 30% or SEK 110 million. Kraft Paper, we see 32% or SEK 150 million. Our invoice and currencies have been stronger compared to last year, which gives a positive effect to the EBITDA. In Nordic Paper Quebec, the new acquisition of ours, have had net sales of SEK 93 million this quarter, giving us a good contribution to the net sales of SEK 1.2 billion for Q4. We move over to the EBITDA. Volume and product mix includes Nordic Paper Quebec net sales, offsite by the slightly lower sales volume. The implemented price increases, SEK 261 million are the same on EBITDA level. Variable cost is significantly higher this quarter compared to last year. The variable cost in Quebec is included in the increase of SEK 143 million. The other largest effect comes from pulp costs, where the market prices are significantly higher than last year. The deviation to last year also mainly includes energy cost and the cost for pulpwood. Larger part of this cost inflation also hits Natural Greaseproof. Price increase are significantly higher than the variable cost increase, which is the main reason for the improvement of the EBITDA from SEK 124 in Q4 2021 to SEK 260 this Q4. From the quarterly analysis, we go to the full year figures. The market conditions have been strong all throughout the year, and the implemented price increases is the largest contribution to the increase of net sales of 44% compared to last year to SEK 4.4 billion. Price increases summarized to SEK 862 million. In Natural Greaseproof, we see an increase of 23% or SEK 320 million. Kraft Paper, we see 30% or SEK 540 million. Invoice and currencies have been strong all the year, giving a positive effect to the net sales. Nordic Paper Quebec have had a very good development in 2022 with a full year net sales of SEK 332 million. Let's move to the EBITDA for the full year. We have all seen the cost inflation in 2022. In Nordic Paper, we have had significant increases in the variable costs with pulp and energy as the main reasons. Pulp is the fiber raw material for Natural Greaseproof, and the segment have been hit by the largest part of the cost inflation in 2022. The increase of variable cost in this chart also includes the variable cost in the Nordic Paper Quebec. The implemented price increases summarized to SEK 862 million, which is significantly higher than the cost increases. Higher price increase is the main reason for the increase of EBITDA from SEK 434 to SEK 821 for 2022. In 2022, we have seen increased prices both for our own products, but also for the input material. As a consequence, the values for inventory and accounts receivables have increased. Our working capital have been on a higher level for all quarters in 2022 compared to last year. We are very satisfied to see that we continue to decrease the relation between working capital and net sales even further. Our good results and our focus on improving working capital efficiency have resulted in a strong cash flow for the year, supporting the financial position for the group, which we will see on the next slide. Our strong cash flow continues to have a positive effect on our net debt, which is now below SEK 1 billion. We have a good cash position at the end of the year. Still we have managed to repay the final SEK 200 million of the credit we utilized at the time of the acquisition of Nordic Paper Quebec. The strong EBITDA. Including the addition of Nordic Paper Quebec have had a significant, have meant a significantly improved net debt to EBITDA relation. We are very satisfied to see that we have decreased the relation from 3.7 at the end of 2021 to 1.2 at the end of 2022, which is even lower than before the acquisition of Québec. In the report, we also present the proposal of dividend from the board. The proposal is a dividend of 55% of the net result corresponding to SEK 4.65 per share. This proposed dividend is inside the dividend policy. You have now seen how our net sales and EBITDA have developed strongly in 2022 and how our focused work with working capital and cash flow have resulted in a strong position as we now enter 2023. Important in our sustainability work is to reduce the climate impact, you will now hear Anita describe how we have reached a great progress in Säffle, as well as give an outlook for 2023. Thank you, Niclas. Yes, as I said in the beginning, sustainability is important for Nordic Paper with a strong driver in our demand, and also integrated in our ways of working and how we continuously to improve, focus on improvement. We want to share here some improvements during 2022. For the full year, we have decreased our emissions of fossil greenhouse gases by 12.5%, excluding the acquired operations in Canada. That's for the company in total. We also want to highlight the great work done in the Säffle mill. In the right-hand side in the graph there, you can see how our decision to focus on paper production in Säffle has meant that we have been able to substantially reduce the fossil fuel consumption. This has been a great work done by our employees in the daily operations to continuously decrease the fuel consumption. With that, we would like to now change our focus on reporting outcome to share a view and an outlook for the coming quarter. Like Niclas said, we have a strong situation right now financially, and we are entering the 2023 from a very strong position. We've had good cash flow, good margins. We have low stock, as we are only producing against firm orders. This is, of course, something that feels really good entering into 2023. We have been talking previously about normalized market situation, and now we see during quarter four some signals of a more softening market condition. We expect with that we will have some pressure on our product prices going forward during the H1 of the year. Of course, when going into more uncertain conditions, the support of our well-diversified portfolio when it comes to customers, geographies, and product offers, this is something that is also giving us flexibility. Electricity price most likely will continue to be volatile, and if the price will increase, this will hit our segment Natural Greaseproof the most. I would also like to point out as a reminder that we have a large part of our electricity prices in contracts, and that the hedging level for 2023 is on 70%. We repeat the message from the market that the pulp prices are expected to decrease. We've seen some steps during the end of 2022 and also beginning here now of 2023, but we expect this direction to continue downwards. When we look at our other input costs, there is some increases, some decreases, but we expect when we summarize this, that in total, this will be on a stable level for Nordic Paper. That finalizes our reporting of this quarter and the full year, and we are very happy, of course, to take any questions you might have. I will hand over to Henrik. Thank you, Anita. What I will do then is to ask the operator, are there any questions? There are no questions so far, but I can do the instructions. Ladies and gentlemen, we will start now the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star followed by 1. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. Meanwhile, we can, we have received a couple of questions in written as well. The first question would go to Anita. It's about the price pressure that you described. Could you elaborate on the magnitude of price movements that you talk about? Yes. We are coming from a very, very high, high demand, great market, situation, and we have continued to increase our prices all the way in quarter four. In the market now, there are some expectations from customers with the decreased prices. I just want to point out that in January so far, no changes, stable prices. Discussions ongoing with customers right now and nothing in contract yet, but we see some expectation in the level of 3%-5% of the current level. Thank you. The next question is regarding volume. I think that will go to Niclas. We saw low sales volumes in Q4. Would that mean that there is a pushover effect into Q1, and we can expect a strong volume development in quarter one? We can't expect a pushover effect from Q4 2022, which is strong. We have low stock at the end of 2022, since we both focus on the stock levels and have had strong market situation in 2022. That will not be the case. Thank you. Back to operator if there were any questions. Yes, we have a question from Jani Deme. Your question, please. Good morning, Niklas, Henrik, Anita. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yes. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I have two questions from my side. The first one is regarding demand. We have been talking about that a bit here, or you have been talking a bit about that on the conference call. You have stated that you have seen some maybe over reserving or overcapacity from your customers at your factories during 2022, and that you have been a bit skeptical that they would actually use this. Should we see your comments regarding somewhat weaker demand going forward as a confirmation of that in some sense? Also in what time horizon should we view the statement? Is it H1 2023, H2, or even further in 2024? I guess you have some visibility some time ahead on the demand from your customers. That would be my first question. Mm-hmm. Of course, coming from the very strong demand, and customers really wanted to secure the volumes. There are also long delivery times during 2022, part of at least. Customers have been securing their own capacity to supply customers by ordering and securing that they had in stock. There is probably some destocking ongoing, that our customers are coming into quarter one with high stocks. That is something that we think the signals are coming from. Of course, it is an uncertain environment right now when it comes to our behaviors as consumers, how much we will consume. Those two factors, of course, is something that we are counting into our message that we see softer markets. We saw quarter three, like we said about the absorbent paper, that was not related to end market demand. It was more about, well, slightly a combination of less building as it goes into laminates, but also that our customer had lower stock of their own other raw materials of wood. That was only 5% of our net sales, so it, we didn't consider it significant. I would say it's very difficult to look more now than into the Q1, maybe a little bit into the second one quarter. We expect that the customers will react to maybe a slightly lower demand out in the market if we consumers continue to act like we are right now, being careful with our money. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Understood. The second question would be around the product output. I think you said something in the report that you were not entirely satisfied with the product output and that there could be some work on this topic in 2023 or some potential for that. Can you please elaborate a bit more on this? Is there something special that has caused this lower output, and what can be done to then make the output higher? It's in our Kraft Paper segment that we had somewhat lower production output. Of course, in the process industry, production output does vary quarter to quarter depending on if there is something that we need to do in the process. It's not nothing unnormal that has happened. It's just that we had to do a work, and we had to take down the production for a few days. That's the reason for the slightly lower production output. Just adding to the comparison of quarter one 2023 to the Q1 in 2022, that we had great production output previous year. We have a high figure in to compare to for 2023 Q1 now. Both Q1s and also the Q3 was good in production output but slightly lower in quarter four. Okay, perfect. Thank you. That's it for me. Have a good day. Thank you. Thank you. And- Are there any more questions? Yes. We have one more, and that is from Axel Persson from Nordea. Your question, please. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Do you hear me? Yes. Yes. Good afternoon. Yeah, great. Good afternoon. Yeah, okay. Of course, a very A very significant uptick here in the margin development for Natural Greaseproof. I was just wondering here if you could elaborate a bit more here on the EBITDA bridge sequentially from Q3 and what's the main items here driving the significant uptick in the margin especially? One important issue here is that we work with the price increases and have worked during all year 2022 in Natural Greaseproof segment. We reported in the last quarter that we observed the energy cost increases to the end of Q3, and that we have added to the normal price increases, also implemented energy surcharges. That's important component to the EBITDA increase. Okay, great. Also a bit on the same topic, my last question here. I mean, of course, we had the outlook here on some competitors today. Of course, a more stable cost situation apparently in the U.S. and on demand as well, and a bit tougher in Europe. At the same time, spot prices on energy going down. Looking here sequentially from Q4 to Q1 2023, what can we expect in an EBITDA bridge if looking here on pricing effects and also on the cost development? What's a reasonable outlook here in the very short term? Yeah. We hope to see that the pulp prices continue to go down. We see signals on increasing, continued increasing pulpwood prices. We also have hopes to see some reduced input material costs because of lower demand on the markets. All right, great. Maybe a final one also on working capital, of course, a nice trend there in working capital management. Basically also here, what to expect for 2023. Is it the same pattern as we've seen or could you also expect a reversal in working capital? What to see there? What we have seen in this year, 2022 What we can see going forward, yeah, sorry. Yeah. Is increases in inventory values and accounts receivables because of the price increases, both from our sales and from the input material. If the prices starts to go down, we will of course see changes in the working capital. Stable or a trend downwards is to be expected, but we will of course keep our focus. Yeah. All right. Great. Thank you very much. That's, that's all from me. Thank you. Thank you. Operator, any more questions? No, that's it. There are no further questions. Thank you. We would just like to repeat our message again and a very strong end for a fantastic year. We have presented several new records for EBITDA and net sales for quarter four, as well as the full year of 2022. Yet again, another strong quarter for Kraft Paper, delivering great result. In Natural Greaseproof, with the implemented price increases and also addition of the energy surcharges we have done in quarter four resulted in an increased EBITDA margin. The board of directors has a proposal of dividend in a level of 4.65 SEK per share, which is in line with our dividend policy. For the outlook is that we see some signs of softening market conditions. We will expect that we're to continue into some pressure on our prices going forward. Over to you, Henrik, for some final words. Yeah. Thank you very much, Anita. With that, we dive into the Q1 of 2023. We look forward to seeing you again at our presentation of the Q1 results in a while. Looking forward to seeing you then. Thank you very much, and goodbye. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you very much for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.
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