Welcome to this presentation of the SSAB Q4 and full year report for 2022. My name is Per Hillström, I'm Head of Investor Relations. With us today here is President and CEO Martin Lindqvist, and also our CFO, Leena Craelius. The agenda, Martin will start to go through the year and the quarter, another record year for SSAB. Leena will go into the financial a bit more in detail, Martin will handle the outlook and the summary. We finish off, as usual, with questions and answers. With that, please, Martin, take the stage. Thank you, Per. Good morning. 2022 was, I would say, a very volatile year with a lot of things that we needed to handle with. It started with the invasion of Ukraine, problems with transports and so on. Having said that, we had a very good year, if we start with one of the most important KPIs, safety, we continue to improve our lost time injury frequency. We were just above 1.0, which is, compared to the history, really good, I would also say compared to the industry on a good level. We are not done. We need to come down to zero, we have, of course, the ambitions to become the safest steel company in the world. We also had record earnings. The adjusted operating profit was, or EBIT, was SEK 29.3 billion, which was the best year we have ever had. 2021 was a good year, this was more than SEK 10 billion better for the full year. We continue to generate decent and strong cash flows. Cash flow before dividend amounted to SEK 14.2 billion, another year with strong cash flow generation. When we ended the year, we had a net cash position of SEK 14.3 billion compared to not that many years ago, a net debt position. In Q4, we also took an impairment write-down of the goodwill related to the acquisitions of IPSCO and Ruukki of SEK 33.3 billion. That affected, as a one-off, the fourth quarter. The board, we had a board meeting yesterday. The board will propose to the AGM a dividend of SEK 8.70 per share. We have, as you know, a dividend policy of putting out dividend between 30% and 50% of net profit, this is smack in the middle, 40%. The board will also ask the AGM for an authorization to buy back up to 10% of the shares in SSAB. We move into the divisions, Special Steels, record earnings. We had strong price realization, good development of the product mix, the EBIT margin for the full year was 24.6%, which is really good. Q4, prices and product mix held up very well. We had planned maintenance in Q4, we also saw a slightly weaker apparent demand in Europe that impacted shipments and result, these two reasons. Still a very good profitability of SEK 1.4 billion in Q4. Another strong achievement is our U.S. plate operations, where we at the full year had an EBIT margin of 38.1%, so more than 38% in EBIT margin. We had record earnings, and we continued to increase prices during the year. If we look at Q4, still a very good earnings of SEK 2.7 billion. We saw that prices decreased somewhat in Q4 from very high levels, but all in all, a very strong achievement from North American Plate or SSAB Americas. If we look into the plate-related divisions and start with SSAB Europe, for the full year, we had an EBIT margin of 17.1%, which is slightly lower than we had 2021. In Q4, we had a planned maintenance outage. We decided to do the maintenance on one of the blast furnaces in Raahe that was planned for the second half of 2023. Given the low apparent demand in Europe, we decided to do that already in Q4, and the idea then was that if the market normalizes, we would start it up again early in January, and I think we started it up second or third January, so it's now up and running again. We saw during Q4, as we knew we would see, lower realized prices. Tibnor, it's a function of the, I would say, Nordic strip market to a large extent. We saw weak demand, weak apparent demand, and lower prices. In this turbulent environment, we managed to continue to take market shares on the distribution market in the Nordics in, I would say, all countries, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. The main reason for the big negative result is the inventory losses that we take then when prices go down. We have this, the underlying EBIT was much better, but including inventory losses, it was SEK -403 million. Ruukki Construction typically run into a lower season in Q4 and Q1, and on top of that, the Nordic construction market slowed up, so they were around zero for the fourth quarter. All in all, three high-performing divisions in the fourth quarter, the strip-related divisions with focus on the European business met lower apparent demand. We then continue over to what we are aiming for in mid-term and long-term, 2022 was a very important year for the transition of SSAB. We actually delivered 500 tons of fossil-free steel to our strategic customers. We start now to see not only yellow goods, we see machines from Epiroc, trucks from Volvo, and cars starting to use now fossil-free steel. We see from the partnerships we have in automotive, heavy transport, construction machinery, and material handling, and also construction, we see a strong demand for these kind of products and a huge interest for this development. I would say overall, our transformation is on plan. You know what we are going to do, we are going to replace the blast furnaces and coke oven plants with new integrated minimills in Raahe and Luleå, so build complete new mills in Raahe and Luleå. We're going to take away the blast furnaces and the coke oven battery in Oxelösund and install electric arc furnace there as well. This is nothing new for us because we have been running electric arc furnaces in our U.S. operations for many, many years. This will give us much better flexibility, much shorter lead times, and virtually no carbon dioxide emissions from our operations. We are now in Luleå and Raahe running our feasibility studies. They are ongoing. We have started in Luleå the public consultation process for the plant. We started that in Q4. We have also in Hybrit development continued to develop the technique, and we have during the quarter filed for a number of very interesting patents at the European Patent Office. One prerequisite for this is, of course, that we have fossil-free electricity, and this transformation will require, for SSAB's part, 3 to 4 terawatt hours more electricity than we consume today. It is in total, we are going to need less energy. We are just shifting from coal as an energy carrier into electricity. This will also, the minimills, help us to get more flexibility in the mix, so we can use either sponge iron or scrap in the melt, and that will also help us to be able to reduce volatility. Because what we are doing in the company, and you see effects of that during 2022, we are reducing, working with increasing flexibility, moving the product mix and everything in order to reduce low point profitability and have a more stable development or a stable situation when it comes to earnings in a very volatile industry. I'm a strong believer in that the most stable steel company in this volatile industry will over time be the winner. When we do this transformation, we will be able to reduce 10% of all the carbon dioxide in Sweden, and all the carbon dioxide emissions in Finland, we will reduce with 7%. We are also leading the way for the steel industry, showing that what was usually called a hard-to-abate industry, that this is actually possible. I usually say that without the steel industry doing its homework, there will be no possibility to meet the targets we have set up in the Paris Agreement. On top of this, the 3 to 4 terawatt-hours we need for SSAB, we will also need for Hybrit's demonstration plant in Gällivare, another five terawatt hours for 2026 in order to start now to produce sponge iron in large scale. With that, Leena, I hand over the financials to you. Thank you, Martin. Pretty much was already covered in Martin's presentation. If we have a look at, first of all, the shipments, start with the steel shipments, we can see that the first half of the year, yes, it was strong, stable demand, volume still growing, then we can see the lower demand on the second half of the year, mainly in the European market, as Martin already indicated, U.S. holding up better and emerging markets as well. If we look at the sales graph, we can see that the prices, yes, they were increasing during the first half of the year, started to go down during the second half of the year, then again, mainly related to European market demand coming down. Summing up these wonderful bars here, quarterly EBITDA for 2022, then analyzing the sales graph, we can say that the sales prices, they were well compensating for the higher raw material cost that we had, higher energy cost, logistic cost, higher maintenance and repair cost, fixed cost, and the lower activity level as well. On top of that, making SEK 10 billion higher result. We can really be proud about the result in 2022. If we then look into Q4, analyzing Q4 2022 versus 2021, prices on group average level, still positive impact. However, the only division here underneath is SSAB Special Steels with higher prices. The other division already had the lower prices, SSAB Special Steels compensating for that. We have also FX impact positive, stronger USD in the price analysis impacting Volume slower, mainly with the SSAB Europe, SSAB Special Steels, and Ruukki Construction. Variable cost related to raw material cost being higher, PCI, coking coal, iron ore, are relatively flat compared to last year, scrap prices slightly lower compared to last year. Fixed cost and capacity utilization were impacted with the Oxelösund maintenance and the repair work in Raahe. Comparing to Q3, we can see the price development during the fourth quarter, also the mix becoming slightly weaker. Prices came down in SSAB Europe, in SSAB Americas, holding better still in the SSAB Special Steels, as Martin said. Volumes only slightly higher. This mainly coming from the SSAB Europe having a higher portion of standard grades, thus impacting actually negatively the average price level. The variable COGS here having positive impact. This is primarily coming from the lower cost of U.S. scrap. Other raw materials were relatively flat compared to quarter-on-quarter. Again, the maintenance and repair activities impacting the fixed cost and capacity utilization. What we were promising during Q3 result release, that we will focus on cash generation and releasing working capital. The outcome we can see here. It is actually providing more cash flow than the actual EBITDA. Organization did a really good job with this task. This is primarily, again, related to inventories. We were heavily reducing inventories during Q4. Year-on-year comparison, more than SEK 10 billion better result. Change in working capital and the deviation here is mainly related to higher raw material cost in inventory. Maintenance CapEx on similar level. Taxes being high, but as you know, big part of this is related to 2021 result. Strategic CapEx up with the Oxelösund conversion program. The dividend paid out this year, you can see here. If the dividend is approved, what is proposed, the dividend payout this year will be around SEK 9 billion. All this led to the very strong financial position that Martin already also showed, SEK 14.3 billion net cash, positive net cash. As already also mentioned, board yesterday proposed to have SEK 8.7 per share as a dividend corresponding to this SEK 9 billion payable, and the authorization for the mandate for share buyback program. The impairment on goodwill was done at the end of the year as a normal annual impairment test process, it led to the write-down of SEK 33.3 billion. It is not affecting the cash flow nor the taxes. Raw material prices, iron ore leveling out. We saw an increase in prices at the end of 2022, mainly related to the China releasing lockdowns. On the other hand, coking coal peaking during Q2 in 2022 started to come down rather heavily. To bear in mind that we do have this lag in the impact of our consumption cost. Iron ore is around one quarter, and it is longer with coking coal. We do have quite substantial inventory still. There is a longer lag with this price impact in our result. On average level, we can say that Q1 variable costs will be on similar level during Q1 than they were on Q4. What we know is that the scrap prices in U.S. started to go up at year-end and have gone up during January. There we know that the cost will be higher during Q1 compared to Q4. I will end my presentation for this familiar graph. The cash need of the business. We were indicating that there is a need, SEK 5 billion for this year. We didn't quite reach that, but we plan to ramp up and pick up, and we plan to spend the SEK 5 billion during this year. With that, Martin will tell about the outlook. Thank you, Leena. If we take a look at Q1 and what we expect for Q1, start with heavy transport, we see a neutral or slightly positive outlook when we look at it sequentially. We see improved supply chain for heavy trucks in Europe. We also see improvement for rail cars in U.S. Automotive, we see a neutral market or a decent market going forward as well, as for construction machinery and material handling. When we look at the energy segment, we see good demand for wind power and other renewables. Wind power and wind towers is a very important segment for us, for our plate business in Europe. The weak market we expect to see and see is construction, of course, both dependent on seasonality, but also on higher interest rates and much lower construction activity, especially in the Nordics, but I would say even in Poland and other parts where we are present with Ruukki Construction. As you know, construction is a big taker of volumes for the whole steel industry. Less so for us, but it will affect. Service centers, we expect to see what we usually see, low apparent demand and reducing of stocks in Q4, in Q1, filling up stocks a bit and having apparent and real demand meeting each other. If we look at how we guide, we of course realize that we live in an insecure world with inflation, with the interest rates and the war in Ukraine. We see a stabilization of the European market. We see that spot prices towards the end of the quarter in Europe is moving up. We see a relatively stable demand in North America for the market for heavy plate, we have introduced price increases from mid-March. When it look high strength steels slowed somewhat in Europe, the apparent demand in Q4. We expect a stable demand there as well. Leena covered the raw material cost. We see that it will be overall relatively stable. When we guide for shipments, we say that in Special Steels, they will be significantly higher, as in Europe, and somewhat higher in Americas. We expect realized prices in Q1 being lower compared to Q4. There is always a lag between spot prices and our contract prices. We have the majority, a bit more than 50% for us is, as you know, quarterly prices. If one would take the opportunity to sum up, I would say record earnings for the full year 2022 in a very turbulent world around us. Continued good trend in safety. We are not yet where we would like to be with the ambition of becoming the safest steel company in the world with no accidents or incidents. We are getting there. This is an everyday's work and you can never give up. You need to continue to focus and continue to strive to become better. We saw the expected release of working capital in Q4 and a strong cash flow, and a strong financial position at the end of the quarter. I've said it many times, you should expect us to continue to deliver good and strong cash flows over the cycle, operational cash flows. Dividend, as said, the proposal is SEK 8.7 per share, corresponding to 40%, smack in the middle of the dividend policy. Asking for an authorization for share buyback program for up to 10% of the outstanding shares. The transition, the green transition, which is mid to long term, extremely important for SSAB, is moving on. We have, as said, done these pilot shipments of 500 tons to grateful and happy customers. Our transformation is on plan. We need help. We need help with, I would say, mostly the most urgent topic for us is power transmission. As long as we get fossil-free electricity at the right time, at the right place, we will be able to deliver on this very ambitious roadmap. With that, Per, I guess there will be some questions. Yes, we can just start by checking here in Stockholm if there are any questions from the audience. Okay, we will turn to the telephone conference. Before that, I just want to remind the audience that if you have more than one question, that's fine, but please state them one by one. One at a time. Maybe also in the first round to limit to two to three questions. We have good time, there will also be a second round, I guess, in case any further topics. By that, please operator, can you present the instructions? We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Krishan Agarwal with Citibank. Please go ahead. Hi, can you hear me? Hello? Yes, we can hear you, Krishan. Thanks a lot for taking my question. I'm more interested in hearing Martin's thought on the underlying demand trends in Europe. Your guidance is for volumes to go up significantly higher, which is more than 10%. Can you help us put the inventory destocking trend into the perspective and how the demand for your products are shaping up for the Q1? As you know, we took a planned outage earlier, almost three quarters earlier than previous planned, because we realized that the apparent demand in Q4 would be lower than the underlying demand or the real demand. We expected to see low volumes, especially the second half of December, with a lot of customers taking holidays instead of working over the weekends. That's what we saw. We also expected to see steel service centers reducing volumes and working with, call it working capital management then. When we look forward, look at the order book, look at the order intake, and also the volumes in the supply chain, we see that there will be higher shipments in Europe. The market in Europe has been, I would say, decent and fairly stable during 2022. Then it has been bottlenecks. It has been bottlenecks in transport, it has been bottlenecks in semiconductors and so on. They are not completely gone, but they are getting better and better or easier and easier to deal with. We see, especially when it comes to transports, that's easing up. It's not perfect yet or not normal yet, but it is easing up. That's why we are then on a fairly stable market, guiding for higher volumes or significantly higher volumes in Q1. Understand. Then concerning the business in the U.S., the plates business, you have recently announced a plate price hike when plate prices are relatively higher level compared to the other products into the U.S. Can you help us understand what is driving that strength in the plate market? It's supply and demand. We see a strong and stable demand in U.S. You're right, plate prices, even though they came down a bit in Q4, they are still on high levels, and margins are on high levels. When we look forward, we see a lot of needs for plate going forward as well with investments, and we see wind towers, strong demand. We see good demand from OEMs. We see rail cars now starting to pick up. It is, I would say, a function of that. We see good order intake, good demand. Okay. Thanks a lot. The next question is from Tristan Gresser with BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead. Yes, hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. The first one on shareholder returns. You flag that the dividend proposes in line with your policy. Can you discuss a little bit of buyback? How should this be viewed within your capital allocation strategy? Explain a little bit the reason behind it. Also, as you're soon to embark in really large decarbonization investment, what gives you the necessary confidence to launch this buyback? Maybe if you can link that to maybe the earnings power you can see on a more normalized basis if it's higher than in the past. Thank you. To start with the last part of the question, I think what we are really working hard with is to stabilize earnings and lift low point profit. It's a number of things. One big part is, of course, the mix. We know that the volatility in more advanced products like special steels and advanced high-strength steels and so on, they are lower over the cycle. Lifting low profitability points and have more stability in earnings. We do that also by constantly looking at possibilities to create flexibility in the production system, in the costs, and so on. We can adjust production, adjust the cost level, and so on. You could say smooth out is probably a bad expression, but even out a bit. I think it's so important, this focus to lift low point profitability. When we look forward, first of all, the dividend is, as I said, in the middle of the range, and after a record year with SEK 29.3 billion in EBIT and a very good net profit, you should expect us to live by the dividend policy. When we look at the company and the possibilities to continue to generate strong cash flows, we see that we can do the investments required. It will be more dependent on when we get the outer circumstances in place, like fossil free electricity and power transmission. I think having a mandate of a share buyback program is good. You can use that when you feel that the balance sheet is strong. I think that the net cash position of SEK 14.3 billion is a strong balance sheet. For the time being, we don't need to pile up cash. We should be able to return cash to shareholders, that's the main thinking and reasons behind these two proposals. Okay. That's very helpful. The second question is on Special Steels. Can you discuss a little bit market conditions, how do you expect 2023 to develop in Europe and rest of the world? You mentioned that demand has softened a bit in Europe, you only guide for 5% price decline. Does that mean you're continuing your price over volume strategy there? If that's the case, How should we think about the 1.6 million tons target on the volume? Is it still achievable for this year? Thank you. I think in Special Steels it is. It's so easy to think that Special Steels is just Special Steels, there is a broad variety of products within Special Steels. What we are doing also within Special Steels, we are moving the mix, we have some products that are profitable, we have some products that are extremely profitable. We are launching now new products like Hardox HiTuf, Hardox 500, they are starting to ramp up, we're introducing, what was 10 years ago, a niche product, 400 Brinell or Hardox 400 is now, I would say, a commodity, we don't really produce that anymore. We are moving the mix as a total, we are also improving the mix. We have this part of Special Steels that is, we call it specialty, which is expandable rock bolts and some other very interesting products. We have these Armox and protection plate products as well. It is about moving the mix. I would say, what we need to achieve is a combination of both: keeping up the stability in the earnings and the profitability, expand volumes. We have been investing quite a lot in order to be able to do that. We are now taking into the phase 2 of the QL6, or the next expansion of the QL6 was taking on stream end of Q4, beginning of Q1, so we can increase with a bit more than 100,000 tons on yearly production. We see that there is still a lot to do on the market development, on product development, application development. If you look back in history, we have been able to grow the QT business with, I think it's around 7%-8% per annum, and we expect to continue to see that growth. Not every quarter, sometimes a little bit lower, sometimes a little bit more, but over time, so to say. When we discuss with the customers and partners and big OEMs, there is a big interest for these kind of products. We're trying to keep up the profitability on a stable level. Last year was really good, but keep stability, which it usually is, and continue to expand volumes and invest for expanding volumes. We will invest when we see that production becomes a bottleneck. That's the plan. Okay, that's very clear. Thank you. The next question is from Dominic O'Kane with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Morning. Thanks so much for taking my questions. I have three quick questions. Just again, going back to capital allocation and I guess the buyback. With the dividend and the buyback, you'll be seeing a lot of cash move out of the business in the first half of the year, so about SEK 15 billion. How should we think about your thinking about the balance sheet longer term? Again, that question's really directed to the sustainability of a potential rolling buyback program. My second question is just if you Please. Let's take them one at a time. We expect, as I've said many times now, to continue to generate good cash flow. We should be a business with good cash flow generation. We are not planning to put the company in a situation where we have a big net debt, but we are not going to pile up unnecessary much cash either, because that belongs to the shareholders. Have a balanced, call it profile of the balance sheet is, as I see it, important. Even though we are working hard and striving to become less volatile, we need to remember that we are in a volatile environment and in a volatile industry, and that requires a decent strength of the balance sheet. You should put that into the equation and also see that dividend in line with the dividend policy, also a strong belief that we will continue to generate decent cash flows over time. We have, of course, done the simulations and the planning for a lot of different scenarios for the coming transformation of SSAB, and we see that will not be the main bottleneck. The main bottleneck will be the availability of fossil-free electricity at the right time, at the right place. Thank you. That's very clear. Just two- Yeah, please Follow-up questions on the accounts. For Q4, within the other line, you had SEK 323 million. Could you maybe just help us sort of dig into that number a little bit more, how should we think about that for Q1? Similarly, working capital, big release of working capital for Q4. Do you think you're now towards the end of that inventory destocking? Can we expect maybe a little bit more working capital release in Q1? I will take the second question and then let Leena answer the first one. For the full year, we have been building working capital, a large part of it is, of course, prices. We have also, when Russia invaded Ukraine, we bought a lot of alloys, we bought a lot of raw material from Russia. Especially, we bought 100% of the PCI coal. We stopped that immediately. When you do that, you need to, in a hurry, find other suppliers. You need to test the new material, then you typically buy more than you will actually consume, because you don't really know if the raw material as such, PCI or something else, will work in the process. When we closed 2022, we had, I think, more than 400,000 tons of PCI coal in stock. We need, under normal circumstances, a little bit less than 200. There are pluses and minuses. Yes, if sales continue and prices continue, we will probably build some working capital, but we still have possibilities to release working capital from raw materials. We are focusing a lot on cash conversion, making sure that the result we make ends up as free cash flow, that will, of course, be dependent on the market and prices and so on. Some possibilities on raw material, probably building up some other stocks. We have not done something abnormal in Q4, we have not done something abnormal in 2022. It is to a large extent the price component, the working capital buildup of almost, was it SEK 9 billion or so, for the full year. Working capital management will always be a priority, regardless if we have a high net debt or a high net cash position. To answer this 300 something in the other line, being positive now in Q4, that line is related to this elimination of intercompany transactions. We have reduced the inventories in our divisions, thus the group-level elimination is positive in Q4. It is moving up and down depending on the inventory levels and the transfer prices we have within the divisional transactions. Okay. Thank you. The next question is from Arokas Braunizer with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, good morning, all. Martin, I have a quick question on the situation in Oxelösund and your stage 1 of your conversion program. Can you give us an update where you stand now on the permissions for the transmission lines for Gällivare and also for the Oxelösund? I think you mentioned before that this is still a priority, so I guess this is obviously taking a bit longer. Any color where we are and when you expect the decision on the demo plant, actually? First of all, in Oxelösund, we have got the permission from Energimarknadsinspektionen in Sweden that we will get the power line. That is appealed, we knew that that would be appealed. I think it's 40 persons that have appealed that to Mark- och miljödomstolen, to the lower court, so to say. The Mark- och miljödomstolen needs to take a decision, it's very hard to say when they will take that decision. Depending on that decision, if they would be as positive as Energimarknadsinspektionen, that might be appealed to the higher court, Mark- och miljööverdomstolen, and then they could either say, "Well, we have a decision in Mark- och miljödomstolen," or they can say, "We will not take this up," or they can say, "This is so important, we will take it up," and then it will take some more time. It's very hard to say exactly when we will get the permission because we are now into the court process, the court process is starting. We are working, as Leena showed, we are doing the investments, we will invest in electric arc furnaces in Oxelösund, that's no doubt about it. We are dependent on the court process and how fast that will go and if there will be additional appeals or not, and so on. We know at least that we have the decision from Energimarknadsinspektionen, which is very important. When it comes to Luleå and Raahe, I would say that Raahe is moving on quite nicely. In Luleå, we are working then with the power transmission, together with authorities and the municipality up in Luleå, and that work is ongoing as well. The most important part short-term or mid-term is the development in Oxelösund, and we are working hard with that. Now that process is beyond our influence or control. Right. Based on what you're saying or not saying, the plan still is that you are being available with the green steel production with the 1.3 million ton by end of 2025, I guess? Beginning of 2026, we have said. I'm saying that we are still on plan. We have not seen anything that we need to change the plans. As I said, the good thing is that we have already delivered 500 tons of fossil-free steel, and we start to see now the first applications also out in the market being used, not just as demonstration examples, but actually being used in production. That's very positive, and that is also building the market and building the interest for these kind of products. We are working very hard, and I am myself spending quite a lot of time discussing with authorities and politicians and try to do whatever I can to speed up that process. I said, it is not fully in our control. No, that makes sense. I have another question on the market outlook for Europe. 2022 was an outstanding year for the plate business because of what happened in Ukraine and the resulting bottlenecks from there. How do you look at the market now for 2023? We are seeing some easing of bottlenecks and some other suppliers are coming to Europe. How stressed, how tight will the build-the-market for the current year, and how do you see demand in Europe actually moving? First of all, standard plate in Europe for us is a very small segment. We only deliver standard plates in the Nordic region. We have had good demand for the fairly limited volume we have for standard plate in the Nordics. When we look at the order book and the visibility we have is typically one quarter, that will continue in Q1. We are a fairly marginal producer of, or we are a very marginal producer of standard plate. We have one plate mill in Raahe, and we produce, what is it, roughly 200,000, 250,000 tons or something on a yearly basis. Yeah. Maybe more generally on demand, I think you made clear in your remarks that the destocking process is seemingly coming to an end. What is your thinking around the underlying demand right now? Are you more in the soft landing camp, or are you a bit more careful on the real underlying demand for 2023 Europe? If you talk about strip products, I would say for Q1, stable demand. We guide for significantly higher volumes in shipments then. We see that the contract prices will be lower because, as I said in the beginning, there is a lag between spot prices and contract prices. We also see that spot prices towards the end of the quarter is starting to move up, and that is, of course, a positive indication if that stands. I would say overall, fairly stable underlying demand, with some segments being quite good and some segments like construction being quite weak, but in total, stable. For us, it's more a situation of what we produce then and what we have in the order book. I said it was very low volumes in Q4 due to very low apparent demand. When we took that outage 2, 3 quarters earlier than previous plan, we thought that maybe Q4 is the low point, and then it's better to do that outage and plan maintenance instead of waiting to Q3 2023, when the market hopefully is slightly better than what we saw in Q4. Okay. Would you say that your comments on fairly stable real demand, is this just for the Q1, or is this your general thinking for the whole year? The visibility we have is the coming quarter. Then we have the order book and the order intake. That I can say for sure. You never know. When we talked a year ago, I couldn't dream of an invasion of Ukraine. There is always possibilities for black swans or what you call it to come up. It will also, of course, be very dependent on the macroeconomic situation and what happens with the war in Ukraine and so on. For Q1, then I don't know, of course, but then we have the order book and the order intake, and that's the visibility we have. No, it makes perfect sense. Okay, thank you very much for your answers. Thank you. The next question is from Bastian Synagowitz with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Good morning all, thanks for taking my questions as well. I just wanted to get back to Hybrit and your green transition. I first of all wanted to check where do you stand on securing the additional funding support, which you talked about in the third quarter? Also on CapEx, so beyond the SEK 5 billion CapEx budget you're guiding for 2023, can you please update us also on the financing for Hybrit itself? Are there any possible additional needs for capital injection into Hybrit in 2023 and 2024 as well? Not for 2023. 2024, I don't really know yet, but not for 2024. Just to be clear, what I was talking about, or at least what I meant when we talked about this in Q3, is the importance of a level playing field. We are not, in that aspect, dependent on financial help. We think it's so important that we have equal treatment for all steel companies in Europe. Now we see some examples and some other signs that that might not be the case. We are stressing that issue, the level playing field. As Leena showed in her presentation, the capital need for 2023, we are fairly certain of, we know the capital need and the investments. The investments will now, in this transition, start to increase a bit over 2022. That is mainly the transformation of Oxelösund. Of course, we spend a lot of cost on the planning and on the transformation office and hiring project leaders and so on in order to do this midterm to long-term as well. We will start now to invest more money in order to transform Oxelösund. What is really important to remember as well then, the option was not to do nothing, because we need to do this. Either do this transformation, which makes a lot of sense, and it is very profitable. The alternative would have been then to build a new coke oven battery, which makes no sense. We are working as hard and as fast as we can. As said many times now, we are also dependent on things that are, partly at least, or to a large extent, out of our control when it comes to power transmission and those things. Okay, thanks for that. Just on the financing support, have you at least seen some early indications? Do you feel like the government is open to still help you on the financing side and basically close the gap to what some of the other governments are doing? Or is this a situation where you obviously went ahead with good intention in the sense of doing it on your own, and now, as they know you want to do it on your own, they basically just leave you with it? Have you been receiving any early response on that? It's not black or white, let's come back to that question if and when we have something to say. I must say that from the government in Sweden and Finland, they look at this in a very positive way, they also realize that the steel industry needs to do their homework in order for us to meet the Paris Agreement. They also realize that this is, at the end, also a very important matter for competitiveness, not only for SSAB, but for the value chain, the demand and the customer interest is there, that they realize and recognize. Okay, thanks for that. My second question is just coming back on your cost guidance for raw material costs. You obviously guide for cost to be flat on a group level in the first quarter, and on the ore side, it's pretty clear that scrap costs are rising. Does this mean that on the European blast furnace operations, are you still expecting cost to come off? I think that's the guidance, but just want to confirm that that assumption is correct. During Q1, the cost of consumption, in the beginning at least, will be on a very similar level than Q4. Minor reduction could be happening at the end of Q1, but only minor. We do have the high inventories with coals, PCI coke, and the also inventory with iron ore. We don't see the benefit of the cost reduction yet. It will come a bit later. Okay. Excellent. Thanks, Leena, and thanks for taking my questions. The next question is from Christian Kopfer with Kallanish. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, everybody. Martin, I have a question on the outlook regarding the realized prices, which you say will be lower in the first quarter, although the spot prices are rising at the moment. Is that because the contracts are quarterly and were signed at an earlier stage? By that logic, would that mean that in the second quarter, the realized prices should be higher? No, you're correct. There is a time lag. We have very limited volumes on spot, and we typically have quarterly contracts. That's the majority of the contracts. We have semi-annual contracts and annual contracts. You typically sign the contracts, I would say, mid or early second half of the previous quarter. That's why we know where the prices will go. You're correct that right now the spot prices have been improving, and that is typically a good indication where the contract prices will move with a lag. Okay. Thank you very much. The next question is from Alain Gabriel with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, thank you for taking my questions. I have two questions. I'll ask them one at a time. First one is on capital allocation. You now have a very different financial framework than you have ever had in the past. Do you think it's time to revisit your capital allocation policy? What factors do you consider in the trade-off between dividends and buybacks? That is my first question. Without answering it, we will have a capital markets day in end of March, we might come back to that topic then. Okay. Thank you. My second question is on the Nordic system, the transformation. You seem to be exclusively focused on the downstream, the investments in mini mills, which is somewhat different to what you are doing at Oxelösund. It seems that the value along the value chain is mostly in the green iron-making or producing the green sponge iron. Are you not worried that by focusing on the downstream exclusively, you are leaving lots of value on the table further upstream? No, I think that is a misunderstanding. What we are focusing on is to create a fossil-free value chain together with partners, starting up when the iron ore is in the mountains beneath the ground until finished products, trying to find synergies and smarter ways of working along that value chain. How that will look exactly in the future, we don't really know. What we know today is that Hybrit is focusing on developing the technique of producing fossil-free sponge iron, is planning to do this pilot plant. Then it could, as we have discussed before, it could look a bit different in different parts of the world. We are producing steel today in Sweden, Finland, and U.S. The exact setup, we don't really know yet, and that might differ a little bit between regions as well. The plans we have communicated so far, we are sticking to and moving on along to those plans. Thank you. The next question is from Andrew Jones with UBS. Please go ahead. Hi, Martin. Thanks for the opportunity to ask. Just on the plans around the mini mills, I know the feasibility studies are ongoing, but can you talk about the timing of when we expect to see completion of those and when the spending is likely to ramp up? Annually, what's your latest thinking on the Scale of the total group CapEx once you get started on those projects. That's the first one. I'll just come back with a second on something else. Let me pause that question until, I think we will cover part of that very important question during the Capital Markets Day. As said, today we don't really know, and the reason for that is when we will be able to execute that. The reason for that is, of course, that we don't know exactly when we will get fossil-free electricity or the power transmission of the fossil-free electricity. In Oxelösund, we are fairly certain that we will get it in time, so that plan stands. In Luleå, we don't know yet. That work has just been started. In Raahe, even though it moves on quite nicely, we don't know there either. We are working with the government and the authorities in Finland as well. To be honest, we don't really know, and that's why we have said, I think we have phrased it around 2030 or so. There are possibilities to do it slightly earlier, but we can also handle if we have to do it due to the power transmission slightly later. When we look at it, an optimal situation for us is to do it in order to avoid blast furnace relinings and big investments or investments in production facilities that we will not run long term. Of course, it is so important with these mini mills. We reduce lead times a lot, and I mean a lot, and that will release working capital needs, but we also increase its flexibility. This is also an integrated and important part of what I talked about before, reducing the low point profits and stabilize earnings over the cycle, which I think is also very important. Last but not least, the huge interest from customers. Coming back to these 500 tons, which is not a lot in the scheme of it, but we see the demand, we see the interest, and we could sell much more than 500 tons today, I can promise you, if we had the ability. We are really working hard. Okay. Just as a couple of follow-ups to that, one is just on a pricing of that product. You've been quite reserved in commenting on green premiums in the past. How are you feeling as we go through time then you're selling more of these volumes? What are you thinking about the potential for green premiums in the longer term once you have meaningful volumes of the product on the market? Also just on that issue with the permitting and so forth, does the new government have a materially different view to getting some of these projects moving compared to what we've seen when the Green Party was more was in the coalition? How are you seeing the changing landscape with regard to regulation? To be honest, I don't see any difference. I think the new government in Sweden, they understand this perfectly well, they are very positive, and they see the same picture as we see, I think. First of all, this is business development. This is developing new products. This is developing new corporations within the supply chain. At the end, this is about competitiveness, and the market is there, the customers are there. It is also very good for the climate. It's a win-win-win-win, you could say, and they realize that, and I think they have publicly said it. We had the European Commission together with the Swedish government up in Kiruna a couple of weeks ago, the full European Commission, we had the possibility, me and Jan Moström and some other CEO, Martin Lundstedt from Volvo, to explain this value chain and what we are aiming for. I think there is a big interest, and then they just need to help us with authorities and others in order to make this happen. When it comes to premium, I'm convinced that there is a premium, and we see that there will be a premium. The reason why I'm a bit cautious is that you never know how long that premium will be there, because I hope that this will be the new way of producing steels, you would rather have, call it a cost advantage or some advantages compared to traditional steel making due to emission rights, due to cost, due to flexibility, and due to the market being willing to pay slightly less for traditional steel, so to say. In our calculations, we have been pretty cautious when it comes to premium for green steel. We think we know that there will be a premium, depends how long it will last, but that's not taken into the calculation in order to justify these investments. Okay. Thank you. The last question is from Yuyang Zheng with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my question. Good morning, all. I've just got a quick one on the time frame of the buyback. Would you give us a bit of guidance of under what time frame are you looking to do the share buyback? No, what you typically do, and I guess I'm not trying to tell you something that you don't really know. The board has decided to ask the AGM for a mandate, and that mandate they will have until the next AGM, and then they need if they want to ask for another mandate. It could at the earliest start after the AGM, and then how you do it and how you sequence it and so on will be a later decision. The decision is to ask the AGM for that mandate, and that mandate is valid until the next AGM, and then you need to come back. It's too early to say. Cool. Thank you very much. Yes, operator. We did not have any more questions. I will thank Martin and Leena. Thank you also for all the good questions. Before we leave, just like Martin said, we will have the Capital Markets Day here 28th of March in the center of Stockholm, and then also a site visit to Luleå for those who are interested in that. Please don't forget to register here on ssab.com for this event, so you save a seat. We would be more than happy to host you up in Luleå as well, and if you haven't seen this and have the opportunity, I would really recommend you to see this Hybrit facility and this groundbreaking new technology. By that, we thank you for the attention and wish you a nice day. Thank you very much. Thank you.