Good morning and welcome to the presentation of the SSAB Q2 report. My name is Per Hillström. I'm Head of Investor Relations at SSAB. Presenting today we have our President and CEO Johnny Sjöström and also our CFO Leena Craelius. The agenda is that Johnny will start with an overview of the quarter and also a little bit update on the transformation. Leena will then present some further details on the financials and at the end Johnny will come back with the outlook and then finally we will have time for questions. By that, please, Johnny, floor is yours. Thank you very much Per and good morning. I will start by going through Q2 in brief. First of all, I just want to comment on our safety trend. We continue to show that we've implemented a new safety culture within SSAB and our safety performance shows that we have now implemented a new level of safety within the company. I'm very, very pleased about that and good job all of you in the organization that has been working on this. Now going over to the financial performance, we can see that our operating result was significantly higher than Q1 2025. We ended up roughly SEK 2.1 billion in EBIT for the quarter. I think one of the highlights is that we were able to sell more of the advanced high-strength steel to the automotive segment. It was a record level, primarily sold from SSAB Europe. That is a good performance by them. As you know, the tariffs have been on everyone's lips and been a topic for some time. I think it's worthwhile to remind us about our position in the United States. We have two large production facilities in the United States where we have a very good market position. In the American plate market we can produce roughly 2.4 million tonnes. Now when the tariffs are at 50%, the prices become more regionalized, have become higher, which is benefiting SSAB at this point. Even though we're not happy about any type of trade barriers, we are dependent on exports and we promote free trade and fair trade. Short term, it still has a positive impact on us. Another highlight for the Q2 report is the Special Steels performance. Even though the revenues were slightly lower, we were still able to have a better profitability than we did in Q1 and operating margin was roughly 22% which is quite impressive since this is the second quarter this year that we are able to supply a good profit in a very demanding market. It shows that we have a unique value that we sell to the market. Looking at SSAB Europe, I think the Europe region is probably the region where we have the most challenging market conditions right now. Also, now the tariffs, talking about that, does have a negative impact on Europe. There's a lot of uncertainties, a lot of concerns, but we also see a spillover. Material that used to be sold into the Americas is now being sold into Europe at prices which are extremely low, and that, of course, is impacting the prices of standard material in Europe. The Q2 standard prices went down more than we probably expected, and we can also see now the operating result for Q2 ended up at around roughly $100 million. We are now planning to do some cost reduction measures in order to try to balance the weaker demand in the market, also the lower prices on standard material in Europe. On a positive note, in the Americas, the prices went up, and we were able to ship higher volume in Q2 than we did in Q1. I think the production has been above expectations in the United States, and we are delivering above expectations as well, and with higher prices, of course, that generates a higher earning level. I'm pleased to see the financial performance in Q2 by SSAB Americas. A stronger Krona and a weaker dollar, of course, gave some negative effect, but still it has a very good earning. I also want to mention that we were able to produce roughly 65,000 tonnes of SSAB Zero in our Montpelier facility during Q2. I think that's also important for us in our journey for zero fossil-free production. Our two subsidiaries, Tibnor, they have been working hard on trying to establish lower cost structure as well as try to optimize their pricing for the market. I think that operating result was decent. It is a very challenging market right now, and I know that they're doing everything they can to improve the situation. Ruukki Construction came in on $52 million. I think that's a good performance. Even though the construction segment hasn't really developed as we were hoping for, I still think that Ruukki Construction had a financial performance which was in line with our expectations. Transformation update: it was announced a few weeks ago that we are going to delay our startup in our Luleå mini-mill and that is related to the announcement that came from Svenska Kraftnät to Vattenfall that they need to rebuild the transformation station and transformation grid, and hence that will have a negative impact on our electricity supply that we are planning to get. We do not see that this is going to have a negative impact on the overall cost. We stick to the forecast that we've given, the EUR 4.5 billion. It does have a negative impact on our time plan, of course, with one year, and we're doing everything we can to mitigate potential delay. I also want to highlight that Oxelösund conversion is progressing according to plan. We see now that the building has been fully erected. The big crane is being erected as we speak, and in a few weeks also the electric arc furnace itself is going to come in pieces and start to be erected. I'm also happy to announce the partnership agreement that we signed with Volvo Cars. It doesn't only mean that we will supply as a CBC to them, but also that we will be able to collect their high-quality scrap, so we get a circularity part of that. I'm very happy that Volvo Cars and others are still very interested in our serial material. They're planning to put that into their platform of the electrical vehicle going forward. It is a very positive signal for us. It shows that the market has a big interest in our serial material and we have other partners as well going exactly the same direction. We were also able to secure our financing package extended to roughly EUR 2.7 billion, and that was signed in June. It gives some stability in that investment as such. With that, I move over to Leena and the financials, please. Thank you, Johnny. Let us begin by looking at the steel shipments. The graph on the top right-hand side, the outcome in Q2 was 1,708 kilotons. Compared to the previous quarter, it was 32 kilotons higher. Compared to the previous year Q2, it was actually 62 kilotons higher. If we then reflect that back to our guidance that we gave for Q2, we were guiding that all the steel divisions would be somewhat higher in shipment volumes. The actuals turned out to be that Special Steels was 3% lower. Europe division was spot on to guidance with a 1% increase. Americas was actually slightly higher with a 6% increase in shipments. As the graph is illustrating, Q2 seasonally tends to be the good shipment quarter within one year. We move to the revenue graph. The outcome in Q2 was SEK 25.6 billion, relatively flat with Q1 which was SEK 25.5 billion, but 9% lower than the previous year revenue which was SEK 28.3 billion. If we then also reflect a bit against the guidance we gave with the prices, we were guiding Special Steels to have stable prices and the underlying prices were actually 2% higher. When we take the FX into account, which was then a 6% negative impact, the average price turned to negative. For Europe division, we were guiding to be somewhat higher and the underlying prices were 1% higher but offset by the negative impact of FX by 3%. In the case of Americas, we were guiding significantly higher prices which means over 10% increase. The underlying prices were 15% higher and again offset by FX with 12%. If we then look at the EBITDA graph on the bottom, Q2 EBITDA outcome was SEK 3.2 billion, an improvement compared to Q1 which was SEK 2.4 billion, but again a bit lower than the previous year Q2 which was SEK 4 billion. In relative terms, Q2 was 12%, Q1 9%, and last year was 14%. If we then dive into more details and firstly compare the operating result Q2 with the previous quarter, the operating result in Q2 was SEK 2.1 billion and the previous quarter was SEK 1.35 billion. As the graph is illustrating, there was a big positive impact with the variable cost. The raw material cost was lower in the Nordic mills. In Americas, the scrap cost went up quarter on quarter. Let's start from the price analysis. Overall, the prices on average were 4% higher, but as said already a few times, offset by the FX impact which was then a negative 6%. To split this by divisions, the Americas division was still contributing positively $470 million and then negatively the other divisions, Special Steels division $385 million, Europe $190 million, and Tibnor by -$10 million. To point out that Ruukki Construction also had a positive price impact of $40 million. Already mentioned that the volumes, they were higher. Here the biggest contribution definitely coming from Americas division, which was 30 kilotons higher, Europe division 13 kilotons higher, and Special Steels was lower by 11 kilotons. Big positive impact by variable cost. This is now split between two Nordic divisions, Special Steels $560 million positive, Europe $510 million, and Americas having a negative impact $120 million. Fixed cost in this quarterly comparison, Q2 has higher fixed costs and that is typical summer season impact. Higher cost related to summer workers and also the full effect of the salary index increase. Absorption variance volumes were higher during Q2 compared to Q1, thus the positive impact. There were no maintenance outages during Q1 nor Q2 and there were re-evaluated balance sheet items with the FX impact of -$71 million. If we do the same comparison of the operating result with the previous year outcome, this year was this $2.1 billion against the previous year level of $3 billion. As the graph is well illustrating, the positive impact of variable cost is not fully compensating the negative impact with prices. Prices on average were 12% lower than previous year and a big portion of this is coming through Europe division $1.3 billion, followed by Special Steels division $660 million, and then Americas $450 million negative impact. Also, Tibnor and Ruukki Construction had lower prices with a total impact of $85 million. Volumes, 62 kilotons higher compared to last year. Here Americas again giving the biggest contribution, 205 kilotons, followed by Europe division 75 kilotons, while Special Steels had lower volumes with a negative impact of 70 kilotons. Tibnor also lower 55 kilotons, while Ruukki Construction actually had higher sales volumes this year than last year, thus positive impact of $15 million. Already discussed, the variable cost, they were lower this year and this is now majority related to Europe division and Special Steels division, while in Americas the scrap cost was higher. Europe division contributing $1 billion, Special Steels division $435 million. Americas had a negative impact of $90 million. Ruukki Construction also had lower cost, so they are contributing positive $130 million, only very minor impact from fixed cost. I need to point out that here we also have a supporting factor from FX giving a positive impact, somewhat higher processing cost. As Johnny already mentioned, we are having saving action, so the SG&As were actually lower than last year. Capacity utilization negative $50 million. On average level, slab and rolling production was higher than last year, but the mix between mills was different. Actually, lower production in Nordic mills while in Americas production was higher. The cost of unused capacity is slightly higher in Nordic mills. Thus, the net impact is this negative $50 million and a minor impact of the effects of revaluated balance sheet items. If we then continue to cash flow, just to point out a few items from Q2 cash flow, we did have a negative impact of the working capital as we were sort of anticipated. That's seasonally very typical. Inventories developing actually in raw materials slightly up compared to Q1, but then the slab, finished goods, and work in progress were rather stable. The value in inventory has gone down with lower raw material cost. Accounts receivables went up and accounts payable down. Maintenance expenditures slightly lower than last year. The other line here is reflecting the swapping of CO2 emissions that we did during Q2, indicating that the forward price was higher than the market price, thus the negative impact. Operating cash flow positive, almost $1.8 billion. If we continue to financial items, here we have one-time effect of the fees that we were paying related to Luleå funding that Johnny already mentioned. We had some upfront fees and arranging cost that has a one-time effect here. Income taxes, here we have a positive quarter and we have done some cumulative corrections for the prepaid taxes. Thus, the year-to-date figure here is on more accurate level. Cash flow from current operations still positive $1.6 billion. If we continue with the strategic expenditures, here we have of course majority related to Luleå and Oxelösund investments, and the small amount in the acquisition of shares is related to Tibnor acquisition done in Norway as we have reported also in the report and netted with some sales of assets in Poland. To remind that we did pay out the dividend during Q2, almost SEK 2.6 billion, and thus the net cash flow SEK 2.7 billion negative. This led to the net cash position at the end of Q2 close to SEK 11 billion. The net gearing ratio is still well within the financial targets, - 16%. If we do a small bridge between the net cash position at the end of last year, SEK 17.8 billion, and the outcome in Q2, the big items of course being the dividend, we pay out SEK 2.6 billion. Strategic investments cumulative SEK 2.4 billion. To remind that here also the FX had a big impact. The revaluation of cash position items, mainly now in U.S. dollars, had a negative impact of close to SEK 2 billion. All of these together are sort of bridging the gap in between. If we move to raw material, we have changed the graph a bit. Here we have combined iron ore and coking coal raw material prices. As the graph is well illustrating, the prices during Q2 were very stable, a bit more volatile during Q1, and then stabilizing during Q2. We don't foresee any big increase in our raw material consumption cost during Q3, as the lag with this impact of market prices is one quarter, and with the coking coal, a quarter and a half. The price trend was a bit different in the U.S., where the scrap price was increasing during Q1 but actually coming down during Q2 and being relatively stable throughout the quarter. Also in the case of scrap, we don't foresee big increases; we rather anticipate it to be stable. To remind, the lag in scrap price impact is around one month. Maintenance cost table, this we haven't updated since the last time we showed it, so it's exactly the same. Good to remind that during Q3 we already have quite a substantial amount of maintenances happening in Europe. Division in Borlänge, Raahe, and Tube mills are having maintenance breaks, and in Special Steels division we are starting up the maintenance preparations in Oxelösund. The majority of that will take place then during Q4. In the case of Americas, there's no maintenances taking place during Q3, more so in Q4. The CapEx guidance already mentioned that we are rescheduling the Luleå project, but it does not have impact in this year CapEx plan. We are still starting up the project as planned during this year. Thus, we have kept the same SEK 10 billion CapEx estimate for the full year, SEK 3 billion belonging to RNC Investments. If we split the seven, we have just below three planned for Oxelösund and the rest, the majority of which is then planned for the Luleå project. With that, I give it back to Johnny. Thank you very much, Leena. Presenting our outlook, it's extremely turbulent market right now and things are changing all the time. Based on what we know right now and what we've seen, this is a short summary. Looking at the heavy transport, it's sort of neutral. I think that the heavy truck production in Europe is quite stable. We also see some very good positive signs from the shipbuilding in the United States. It's also very, very healthy. Looking at automotive, which is a very important segment we're going to when it comes to steel demand, I think from a global perspective it's going to be a slightly lower production than we've forecasted in the beginning of the year, maybe down to 2% or something like that. It also varies depending on what geography you're in right now. The automotive industry in the United States is rather weak, but we speculated it might come back during the fall. Looking at Europe, it's also quite weak. There are some automotive companies that are doing quite well and I've actually met a few of them and they're actually more positive than some others. Looking at the construction machinery, I think it's neutral to weak. We see a weak demand in Europe and also in North America. It's a little bit of a wait and see mode. When we talk about material handling, which is mainly related to mining, mining is still a very strong segment. With the increased gold prices, rare earth metals, et cetera, new mines are being opened up all the time. With that we see sort of a neutral level on a high level. We have energy, we see a good demand for energy transmission and that's going to take place for a long period of time all over Europe, but also United States. That's more strong than neutral. Construction has low activity, especially in Europe. Really hoping that the interest rates will come down so this market will improve. Service centers and certain outlook, it's more speculative as such. The sort of the guidance that we give Special Steels looking at the shipments is going to be slightly lower in Q3, but the prices are going to be stable. Looking at Europe, it's going to be significantly lower. We also have the maintenance outage which explains a significantly lower shipment level, but prices will be stable. As I say, Americas, the shipments will be somewhat lower, but the realized prices will be higher than they were in Q2. I think that pretty much summarizes our outlook for Q3. If we want to then summarize the presentation, I think the result quarter- over- quarter was better. It was improved financial performance by SSAB. I think that we have had a strong focus on safety and that can be seen in the figures. Our transformation project is also progressing even though we have a delay in Luleå with over a year, which is not something that we can impact. I still think that what we can control is progressing quite well. We have a very large local production in the United States where we see is beneficial for us right now with these tariffs being implemented. I think that was sort of our last slide. I do want to remind all of you that we are planning to have a Capital Markets Day on the 4th of November. We're planning to have this Capital Markets Day in Oxelösund since we are one step closer to finalizing our investment. Oxelösund, I think it's a good timing to get people to come and see what we're working on, but also have a chance to sort of present and update sort of the uniqueness of not only the steel material that we're planning to produce, but also some of the grades that we have which are quite unique for the market. That's the 4th of November. We're looking forward to that. Any other comments from you guys regarding the Capital Markets Day? No, we wish all of you will join us. Yep. More than welcome. You're more than welcome. With that, we should move over to you, Per. Yes, thank you, John and Leena. We can prepare now for the Q and A. As always, you're allowed to ask more than one question, but please state them one at a time to make the process more efficient. By that, I will ask the operator to please present the instructions. Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will now go to our first question and the first question today comes from the line of Alain Gabriel from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Good morning. Good morning everyone. I have two questions from my side. Firstly, you talked about the phasing of the Luleå CapEx adjusted to the new time plan. Where does this leave us with the spending budget for 2026 for Luleå and for the group? Do you see an opportunity to postpone some of the spending in 2027? I know you haven't given any formal guidance, but any color would be much appreciated here. That's my first question. Thanks. I would say that we are in a process of doing the detailed planning, but like you said, if it doesn't have an impact on 2025 figures, it will sort of make the 2026 and 2027 less intensive with the CapEx plan. We don't have the details yet. Thank you. My second question is on the plate prices that have been weakening quite a bit as of late, yet you still expect prices to rise quarter on quarter by 5%- 10%. Is this divergence purely lag driven, and when do you expect the price weakness to finally start flowing through your P&L in the Americas business? Thanks. Yeah, you're right that we've seen now the recent five, six weeks we've seen the CRU indicating that the plate prices have gone down a little bit. We're expecting the prices to come back. The reason why the prices have gone down is because the demand has been slightly lower than we anticipated. I think that we see a lot of wait and see mode right now, especially from service centers and distributors who are waiting to see what's going to happen with the tariffs. That's the reason why I think the price has gone down a bit. I think the buying behavior is going to come back after the summer and the prices will start to come up again. That is what we are anticipating at least. Does that answer your question? Yes, we can add also that also of course the lag applies still. Yes. Very clear. Thanks. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Adrian Gilani from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead. Yes, hello. I guess following up on plate prices, a question on the indices and why the raise to 50% steel tariffs hasn't really been reflected in the sort of indices that we follow. Do you have any view on if that's going to be the case, if that's going to be seen going forward? I think when these 50% tariffs were implemented, then I think we were expecting the prices to come up like it did when the 25% was implemented. Now it seems as if the market is more speculative, that they're thinking that these 50% will be reduced again to 25% or to zero. That's why we sort of see a wait and see mode on the market. I think with time, customers will learn that the tariffs are probably there to stay on steel, but not maybe 50%. There will be some tariffs. That's what we believe at least. Okay, understood. You mentioned sort of a more skeptical view on the automotive market now compared to at the start of the year, I guess. Does that apply also to your premium high-strength business towards automotive in Europe, or is that more resilient, would you say? I would say it's more resilient. We actually have seen that we have grown our sales of advanced high-strength steel this year even though the overall market is shrinking. I think that what we offer to the market is quite a unique solution for improving sort of the crash barriers. We see a very high demand and big, large interest from the market on this. Right now, we are a little bit limited with our production capacity, hence the reason why we're planning to do the Luleå investment, which is extremely important for our growth of these advanced high-strength steel and the sales that we are planning to increase going forward. We do this in close cooperation with the automotive manufacturers in Europe. Everything that we are designing to do is according to the expectations from the market, from the automotive market. Do you feel confident that you will be able to grow those in the second half of the year as well, even if automotive volumes overall are down? Yes, we are quite confident. Even though that's something maybe I should comment on, because we also exported SI strength from Europe to the U.S., and with the 50% tariffs, it's a little bit more challenging. We have communicated the price increase to our customers in the United States. Some of them accepted it and some of them have not. For those who have not, we're probably going to see a reduction of sales from Europe to the United States starting sometime later on this year, especially for next year. However, these volumes and this capacity, we will be able to sell somewhere else in the world because it's such an attractive product that we have. Okay. A final one from me regarding the cost cutting measures you mentioned in Europe. Can you sort of put a number on how much you are able to decrease the fixed cost base on a fairly short notice? To do these cost reduction activities is something that we're used to. We've done it many, many times. I think it's part of, especially in SSAB Europe, how they work and how they model. We have these flexible tools that we can work with, et cetera. It's a little bit too early to put a target. Don't you really, Leena? Yes. Yeah. Okay. In that case, that's all for me. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Tom Zhang from Barclays. Please go ahead. Yeah, morning. Thanks for taking your questions to me as well. The first one just on. I hear what you're saying around Europe, you know, there's a little bit more uncertainty in the market. A few end markets may be a little bit softer around auto. Are you seeing anything in the market from talks around CBAM being introduced, around the safeguard replacement measure being discussed? We hear could come out in September. Is that creating any tightness or potentially any restock demand into the second half or do you think that is also just adding to the uncertainty and sort of accentuating that wait and see attitude. Thanks. I visited a lot of customers in Europe. Now the last three, four weeks, they all raise the question on the CBAM. They want to secure a European supply. They're a little bit concerned about what might happen, especially if they're importing material from outside Europe. Hence the reason why they're talking to us, and some of them are talking about putting up some buffers, etc., to be ready just in case something happens. It's a little bit vague. To your point, it also adds some uncertainty because the CBAM as such is not super clear. That also is making the market a bit confused, and some of these question marks need to be cleared and straightened out. I think that is a comment on the CBAM. What was your other. In expectation of further safeguards? We have heard from the Steel Action Plan that there might be additional things. Your take there. Yeah, exactly. Together with our colleagues in the European steel industry, referring to other large manufacturers in Europe, we've been to the European commissioners, and we have spoken with a few of the European commissioners about the situation. There is a spillover material that used to be sold into the United States is now being sold into Europe at a very low price, extremely low price. This is hurting the price on the standard material in Europe and also squeezing the margins for the steel manufacturers in Europe to very low levels or negative levels. There's a great concern about the future of the steel industry among the European steel manufacturers. Hence the reason why we're working together with Eurofer to communicate this with the European Union. We also know that this overcapacity being moved over to Europe is subsidized and is not a fair trade. Hence the reason we believe the European Union needs to do something to stop this unhealthy non-market economy approach to selling material into Europe. Okay, no, that makes sense. I was maybe just following up on that point. I mean, with your conversations with customers, you say they've all raised the topic of CBAM. Have your customers been raising the topic of a safeguard replacement, or is that still a little further away? I think the safeguard as such is probably more for the steel industry and also this tariff quota, tariff quota system that we are suggesting to the European Union. Other than that, I think that they're more thinking about how the CBAM is going to work and also securing that they can secure volumes within Europe going forward. Okay, got it. The second question, just maybe sort of a small follow-up, sorry, on European capacity adjustments. As you say, you take advantage of these time banks, I think normally in Q3 anyway, when it's seasonally weaker, but I guess you've mentioned it explicitly in the press release today. Are you expecting the measures this year to be much more significant than usual? Are you expecting a sort of stronger than usual seasonality or are we reading too much into that? Thank you. We start with the normal procedure of using these time banks both in Finland and Sweden, and to remind that yes, we have the maintenance activities that we still need to carry through. Of course, if the market so demands, we cannot extend the measures, but we start with the normal procedures. Okay, that's clear. Thank you. I'll turn it back. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Tristan Gresser from BNP Paribas, please go ahead. Yes, hi. Thank you for taking my questions. Just maybe a quick follow up on the CapEx. I think before you mentioned that 2026 and 2027 would be peak CapEx. Now with the updated project, is it a certainty that 2026 will be a peak CapEx year now? I said that we don't have the detailed plan ready yet, but they will have significantly higher CapEx in 2026 and 2027, and of course spill over then to 2028. I said that we are still planning with the details. All right, that's fair. Maybe just then on Special Steels, I was a bit surprised by the volume performance. From where did the pressure come from? Especially if you saw and if you still see mining demand being stable, and with the large maintenance taking place in Q4, is it fair to see volumes being down year on year for both the next two quarters? I think compared to 2024, I think the volumes are going to be slightly higher. That is our assumption, that's what we believe. The demand for our products is still very, very high. I think that we are more constrained from the capacity point than the actual demand side of it, especially for the unique grades like Hardox 500 Tuf and also the Armox and the armor grades that go into defense and protection. There's a lot of demand for these kinds of products. Of course, there are the market behaviors and also the dynamics regarding the buying behavior and also stocking. Sometimes that's a little bit hard to foresee in one quarter, but I think the underlying demand is still very, very strong. Hence, you can see that on the pricing and the earnings that we have. Okay. That's clear. A question on Europe, we've seen spot steel prices falling quite a bit, but your guidance implies actually some improvement in spreads. I was just wondering what makes you confident in your ability to preserve margins into Q3, and also when you look at the outlook into Q3 and Q4, it doesn't look like demand. I don't know. I would like to have your view if demand should improve in H2, but otherwise, why, if the visibility is quite poor, why not take a bit more drastic measure in terms of capacity adjustment, and as you've done in the past, shut down the blast furnace. Have you considered that? Thank you. I think the demand is still. I mean we're not near talking about shutting out any blast furnaces. That's quite clear. We still see we've had a very good order intake, we've been able to fill the mills, etc. There is sort of slightly weaker demand now towards the fall. Then again, we have the maintenance outage that naturally balances the supply and demand from our perspective. I think what's important for us is, you know, continue our uniqueness strategy thinking that we want to create a superior value to the market and the customers. Something we have done really well in Special Steels, but also within SSAB Europe and the automotive segment, advanced high-strength steel that they are manufacturing, producing, and selling. That's an area we want to grow even further. We are dependent also right now on the standard material. I think 50% of SSAB Europe sales is standard material, and that of course is heavily impacted when the market price goes down. The reason for the market price going down is because it's very import sensitive. As the import increases, we see movements immediately. If there will be any new safeguards, which is on the agenda right now and being discussed, prices will move up very, very fast. We have our hopes up and I think it's extremely necessary for the future of the steel industry that there will be some new updated safeguards implemented by the European Union. Otherwise, it's going to be a really challenging situation for the European steel industry. We, however, will be coming out in a much better position. We have a Special Steels division that is performing really well. We have an Americas division also performing really well that we also believe is going to continue to perform well. Where we are more sensitive is the 50% of the standard steel sales that we do within SSAB Europe. The only measure we can take is to work on the cost structure and the cost side of it. Of course, we're looking at all the areas of the cost side as we speak, which we've done in the past and we're going to do it again. We will take as much necessary measures as we can to try to balance Europe's financial performance. All right, that's clear. Don't you see a risk of imports surging in September, October as distributors kind of preempt the CBAM and hence make the next two quarters even more challenging than what you're seeing at the moment? That risk, that's a potential risk. I think the CBAM works long term in our favor. There might be some short term initiatives. You're right about that. We don't have any numbers or figures on it. We haven't seen much activity in this direction. You're right, there is a risk of this, of course. All right, thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Krishan Agarwal from Citigroup. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks a lot for taking my question. The first question is on the volumes. I mean, as you just specified for Special Steels, that you're expecting the volumes in the second half to be better, better year on year. Do you mind talking about the volume expectation for Europe, is it fair to assume that the year on year weakness would be a kind of a fair assumption for the volume in Europe for the second half, while in Americas a better second half would be a would be a fair assumption? I think it's a fair assumption to say that the demand in the United States is going to be higher. We have segments like shipbuilding, but also the defense industry, which is a very strong segment for us in the United States. We're talking both the Navy and the Army. It's going to be increasing the demand of our material in the United States. Looking at Europe, it's a little bit uncertain. If the tipper market in Germany would come back, that would be an additional 30,000- 40,000 tons of sales. Things can happen really, really fast. It's really hard to predict right now what's going to happen. This infrastructure package that was announced for Germany, we haven't seen much of it yet, but it's around the corner. There are a lot of initiatives in the European Union that will have a positive effect on our sales. The question is when is that going to happen. We're reluctant to see. Looking at the track record, we lost maybe in total 100,000 tons when Russia attacked Ukraine. That was a market both in Russia and Belarus and also some neighboring countries that was sanctioned that we used to sell to. If we compare historical sales with the situation right now, it's really hard. On top of that, we had the energy crisis during the beginning of the attack from Russia. That had a very negative impact on a lot of manufacturing in Europe. If some of these areas would come back, it can go really, really fast. The utilization level that we're at for Special Steels is a very, very high level. From that perspective, it doesn't take much until we're fully utilized. I understand the second question is on Europe. I realize that there's a lot of questions in Europe, but this is one for me. You are saying about production curtailments and sort of cost variabilization through staff adjustments. You have kept your guidance for the maintenance cost around $400 million unchanged. Is there a possibility that with higher variabilization of the cost you end up minimizing the impact on the cost in Q3? With the maintenance, these are planned annual maintenances, so there's not all that much you can do with the existing plans. Of course, like Johnny said, we are looking into all possible options to do cost savings, but for the time being we haven't updated the maintenance cost downwards, and I doubt that there is not much room to do that, unfortunately. Understand. Finally, on the CapEx, you have maintained the guidance for the SEK 10 billion. The run rate for the second half is a big ask. You comfortable of spending that much money in the second half? Taking into account the net cash position we have and then to get the project up and running, I feel comfortable of spending that during second half, yes. Okay. Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Anders Åkerblom from Nordea. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning John Leena and Per. Thank you for taking my questions. First one from me is on your just what you said. Now on defense in the U.S., it would be interesting to hear if you're seeing increasing competition for these volumes from e.g. Nucor and their Brandenburg facility ramp up. As of right now we haven't seen much competition from their side. If you look at the Americas plate market, there are two active players, it's U.S. and Nucor, that's clear. Even though the situation isn't like that right now, the speculation of how much can actually Nucor Brandenburg produce and what is sort of their targeted market, Nucor is setting up a new transformation tower facility, trying to do that in house. There are a lot of value added initiatives ongoing. As far as we see it, they haven't really targeted the shipbuilding industry yet and there are some qualifications that they need to pass in order to sell to some of these customers. So far we haven't seen much of their competition. Okay, interesting to hear. Thank you. Also, looking again at the U.S. and referring to CRU, I mean, looking at inventory levels, it seems as though they remain quite elevated, especially if you consider kind of the more active service centers in the market that kind of contribute with the incremental volume changes. How much would you say that you've considered this in your outlook for continued healthy sequential price development in the U.S.? We always look at the CRU reports and we'll try to get a better understanding of the service center stock levels, distributed stock levels, etc. I think our view of it is that there's still room for restocking and we, of course, look at this, but that becomes more speculative. I think for us it's better to look at the underlying demand and for us it's more industrial. That means energy, gas, these kind of segments that we still see a very strong demand. A lot of projects still ongoing. The onshore wind power tower is still very, very strong. We see transmission towers, pipelines. We've never had as much pipeline orders that we've had this year. We are actually fully booked when it comes to pipeline orders. There is a very strong underlying demand. I think that is more important for us than to look at sort of service centers, stock level right now. Makes sense. Just following up on that commentary, I mean, is it reasonable to expect possibly some negative mix effects in that case in the coming quarters? The U.S., can you be more specific? When you say negative mix effect, what do you mean by that? Yeah. In terms of you selling to your different end markets in the U.S. and how that will impact product mix and thus profitability, not talking about market prices, but in terms of the product mix profitability. Yeah. I think if anything it might be on the positive side. First of all, the orders that we've received in the beginning of the year extend through the whole year. I'm not referring to the pipe orders and some of them are normalized. There we usually have better margins and we have a very, I mean, when it comes to SSAB Americas, we have a lot of yearly contracts. From a utilization point of view, I'm extremely optimistic for the rest of the year based on what we have in our order books and the contracts that we have and so on. Also, to your question, the mix, we have a pretty clear picture what it is that we're going to sell and it's not going to be negative. That's our assumption. Okay, thank you. Just one final one from me. Looking at Ruukk, it showed quite healthy both year- over- year and sequential development, despite your commentary about seasonal construction improvement in Europe being less pronounced than usual. It would be interesting to hear your view of these diverging trends in a bit more detail, and what's been driving that as opposed to the Europe division. When it comes to Ruukki Construction, first of all, we have worked intensively on our cost structure. I think Sami has done a lot of optimization initiatives, moving some production, closing down some production, trying to optimize the fixed cost. He's done an excellent job on this. That gives us a better platform to get the better underlying performance. Now going forward, we see that the demand is slightly higher than it was previous year, slightly 2%, 3%, but still. We were hoping for much higher demand, but still. I think that we've done our homework. I think we've created a good platform for the future and really hope that this will continue going forward. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you for taking my questions. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Christian Kopfer from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Thanks. Operator one little bit more longer term perspective. I mean, Special Steels is doing great profitability wise, but I think you typically talk about the underlying demand on those kind of end markets or those kind of products are going by 5%-6% underlying per year or something like that. If you look at where Special Steels are delivering today, you are basically at the same levels as in seven, eight years ago or so. Maybe a little provocative, but does that mean that you are, you're basically losing market shares? The second question is to really see a volume growth for you in Special Steels is what do you need to see? Is that, you know. Yeah, that is the second question. It is a very relevant question, Christian. I understand why you're asking that question because we've had in Australia material a very aggressive growth. I understand where you're coming from and I think if it wasn't for these rare events like the Russia, Ukraine situation, like I said before, we lost 100,000 tonnes there and then we had this energy crisis in Europe that has affected the demand and the European demand is down. We used to be very strong in the tipper market. The tipper market is down on very low levels, very low levels. We're hoping for it to come back. I think when it comes to yellow goods, the demand globally is still very, very strong. What does it take for us to grow to 1.5 million tonnes of QT material? I honestly think that when the construction segment in Europe comes back, and it will, it's just a matter of time, then that's going to bring us significant new volumes into Special Steels. I don't know if you can say, but if I can guess, 100,000 tonnes only in Europe. On top of this, and normally we don't speak too much about it, the defense industry, the reports that we have received recently indicate that the demand for the type of material that we produce, manufacture and sell is going to be significantly higher than we anticipated before. Including, you know, navy, that means frigates and other ships, but also submarines where we have a very unique position, but also army armored vehicles. I think that we have been maybe looking a little bit too much on Europe's demand when it comes to the defense industry. I think a lot of growth is going to come in the United States as well. There we have a very unique position. To answer your question, Christian, are we going to actually see the growth that we've been talking about? The answer is yes, we're going to see that growth. It's just a matter of time. We need to be a little bit patient. To your question, are we losing market share? We do these kinds of analysis all the time and we do not lose any market share because if we would have lost market share, we probably would have looked at the pricing. My rule of thumb is that as long as we're not losing market share, we do not change the prices. Hence the reason we maintain our prices on a fairly good level. Yeah, okay, excellent, Don, thanks very much. Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Viktor Trollsten from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you very much operator and good morning everyone. Perhaps as follow up to that question on Special Steels volumes, you mentioned that you expect year growth in volumes in the second half, which would be obviously the first time since 2022. Is that sort of the inflection point you just described, that you said better market prospects of actually growing those volumes? A follow up to that is, what would be the expected impact on profitability and mix from that? Would that be incremental to profitability or could it be some dilution effects from that? That's the first. Thank you. Maybe that was a correction I need to make. I was referring to the total volumes 2024 with 2025. That means that for Special Steels the volumes will not be lower in 2025 compared to 2024, and we're quite certain of that. Where is this demand going to come from? I think that goes a little bit hand in hand with the discussion we had previously with maybe some segments will be stronger, segments that haven't been as strong in the past. Like I said, defense will be one of them, certain of that. I just want to highlight the grade Hardox 500 Tuf. That's a grade that we launched maybe three years ago and it's growing really fast. We're reaching over 100,000 tons only on this grade, and it's growing very, very fast. It's a grade that we don't have much competition on and there's a big interest from the market. I think from our side it's more a capacity constraint, and that's the reason we also took the investment decision of a new tempering furnace in Mobile, Alabama to give us capacity to produce even more material. We want to speed up this investment and do it very, very fast. I think also another action we're doing is that we have invested in a sort of a welding line in Oxelösund, and the concept here is that we take sheet material from Borlänge, weld it together, then we do the quenching and tempering. That means if you take a cross section, you're not going to be able to see the weld at all. It's completely harmonized or homogenized. You can't see the weld. You get very unique properties all over the plate, and it's got the same properties all over the plate. That's another way for us to capitalize on the capacity being produced in Borlänge, then using the quenching and tempering facility in Oxelösund so we can supply wider and thinner material to the market where we have a very, very big demand for. We are doing some initiatives that hopefully are going to be realized very, very soon. I'm actually very optimistic for the remainder of the year and also going forward. Could you perhaps just remind us what's sort of your view on a normalized or normal profitability in Special Steels? I guess that, you know, typically you would have quite high volume leveraging in this business now. You obviously have very, very good profitability despite, call it, low, low volumes. Would you expect, you know, growing volumes to be margin accretive, or is a normalized margin below current levels, so to speak? I think the growth that we want to have is a profitable growth. Where we're going to grow is in what we call strategic products. That's typically high ace. It's a high. It's a corrosion resistant, wear resistant material. Also in the 500 tough, which I talked about before, it's also in the Armox. The defense material that we are, that we have is very, very unique in that sense. It's all in these unique materials where the profit margins are, are very, very good. To your question, what is the normal profitability level then for Special Steels? I think that the levels we're on right now is, and I'm afraid to say it because I would jinx it, but I think we are at a point where it becomes sort of stable or normal to that extent. If we sell more to the defense industry, it does have a positive effect on the overall margin because of the mix. It's going to be very mix sensitive going forward. I see more upside than I see a potential downside going forward. That's clear. Thank you very much. Thank you. Just to be mindful of the time, operator, time is running quickly. We can take one more question now. Thank you. We will now take your final question for today. Your final question comes from the line of Bastian Synagowitz from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Yeah, thanks for squeezing me in and good morning all. I'll keep it very brief, just a few quick ones and sorry for following up. My first one is just a quick follow-up on your price guidance for Europe, which I guess reads pretty constructive in the context of the strong price decline which we've seen on the spot market and also the 50% spot exposure you talked about earlier. What's driving, I guess, the stable pricing in Q3? Is that basically better product mix and higher shelf color coded which is helping you to buffer the spot price pressure? That's my first one. In Europe division, of course, we have quarterly contracts and annual contracts keeping the price rather stable and compensating for potential further decrease of the prices. On average we consider that the stable is a good guidance. Of course, the current levels are already rather low, but there is a combination of contract structure which is then compensating for potential spot price drop further. That's on average. It's not mix, basically. Mix is not the driver here basically into the next quarter. We don't see sort of big change mix wise for the coming quarter, so that doesn't have such a big impact. Impact, if I may speculate. I think the drop of prices occurred in Q2, and from what I'm hearing from our colleagues in the rest of Europe, they are saying that they would rather shut down capacity because the thing is that now they also have to pay for the CO2 emissions. If you put another EUR 100 on top, produced steel on top of this, you're going to lose a lot of money. They said we're going to rather close down capacity, hence we don't believe that the prices will go down so much more. I think the drop came in Q2. Okay, all right, fair enough. Okay, and then next one, just briefly on Americas, I think here you're guiding for scrap price to be slightly lower. How far is the 50% import tariff for Brazilian pig iron, something which is on your risk radar? Is this something which could be slightly more disruptive to your scrap supply or metallic supply, or does it not really impact you that much? You mean Bastian, and do we have an exposure to any Brazilian material in the U.S. Y eah, I would say. What is your view in terms of what the sensitivity to your own business would be if the U.S. would basically put a 50% import tariff on Brazil and pig iron? Would that be a risk to you? No, not at all. I mean, occasionally we are using Brazilian pig iron, especially to our Mobile facility. We have learned through the years that if we use clean scrap, we don't need pig iron. The majority of the heat that we produce, we don't use any pig iron at all. It's more preferred to use the clean scrap. That's our normal practice, sort of. All right. Just last one on working capital. I guess by now you will have probably slightly better visibility. Maybe you can give us some color on whether you expect to reverse the full SEK 3 billion working capital increase which is built until today by end of this year. If you look at the reports, we can see that there is a seasonality with our working capital behavior, and it tends to be that the first half is negative and then it will turn more positive. My guess is that or my expectation is that Q3 will be more neutral than Q2 was. there any color on the fourth quarter, and whether you're confident to fully reverse the $3 billion you've built so far? It is too early to say. Of course, we target to have the full year being as neutral as possible when it comes to working capital. Understood. Okay, thanks so much. That's it from my side. Thank you. That was it. Right. Okay, then we can conclude. Thank you. Thank you for the attention. Thank you for all the good questions. Thank you. John and Leena. Thank you. We wish you a pleasant day.