Borregaard Asa

Good morning and welcome to this fourth quarter 2024 presentation for Boregard. My name is Per Sørle. I'm the CEO of the company and I'll be joined this morning by our CFO, Per-Bjarne Lyngstad. And we will take you through this agenda where I'll focus on the market related issues, including the highlights for the year and the outlook for the coming year. And then Per-Bjarne will come back with more details around the financial performance. First, the highlights for the fourth quarter. EBITDA came in at 398 million compared to the 327 million in the same quarter last year. This was particularly driven by increased sales and a strong result in bio solutions. But we also saw higher deliveries and an improved product mix in biomaterials, but that was offset, more than offset by increased wood costs. And we, in this particular quarter, we also saw Low deliveries inside fine chemicals, both of fine chemical intermediates and bioethanol. Also slightly positive net currency effects in the quarter. If I just also take a look at the full year, We delivered another all-time high of 1874 million compared to 1781 million in the previous year. And again, this was driven by increased specialization and a very strong result in biosolutions. We had very high sales volume in biomaterials, but this was more than offset by higher costs, particularly on the wood cost side. The fine chemicals result was in line with the previous year. Slightly negative currency effect for the full year, implying that the improvement in the result came from increased specialization and increased margins rather than the currency effect. The return on capital employed came in well above the 15% hurdle rate at 17.1%, which was slightly down from the previous year at 18.3%. Then if I come back to the dividend proposal, the board of directors have discussed the dividend for 2024. Just to remind you, the policy is that we should pay regular and progressive dividends reflecting the expected long-term earnings and cash flows. So stable and increasing dividends over time. And the dividend should be between 30 and 50% of net profit. The proposal to the AGM from the board is 4 kroner and 25 øre, which is per share, which is a 50 øre increase, 13% increase from last year. This represents 52% of net earnings. I should then remind you that we have a reservation of 30 million under other income and costs this year which if you're correct for that is roughly 50 percent of net earnings this gives a yield of 2.3 percent and a payment of roughly 433 million knock so that's what will be proposed to the agm in march then the buy solutions Fourth quarter, fairly short and sweet, a very strong quarter. The volume increased 7%. And again, as we have seen now over consecutive quarters, it was a very strong sales into agriculture. And just to remind you, Borregård has literally 100 products into agriculture. So this is very broad based and it is no single market segment that sort of stands out in this situation. The average price is in line with the same quarter last year. So it's mainly the product mix and the volume that drives the positive development here. Also a positive currency effect in the quarter. If I summarize the full year in BioSolutions, the sales volume came up 6%. More importantly, the specialties volume came up 16%. So this was really driven by mix and increased volume in the right place. And again, this was a broad-based growth in agricultural applications. And again, across all kinds of applications from the high end like crop protection and plant nutrition to the more low end like animal feed. Also in other specialties like batteries and oil field chemicals, we also saw strong growth. The price was quite stable, so it was 1% above the previous year in sales currency. And biovanilin market continued to be impacted by the high supply of synthetic products. So in other words, the biovanilin product market, the biovanilin business area did not move the needle on this result. This was driven by the lignin-based biopolymers. Just to take one step back and look at it in a more historical context, biosolutions development. Over the last 12 years, we have now trebled the sales into specialties and industrial applications. And usually I remind investors that business development, innovation and market development is not linear. But if you look at this illustration here in the historical context, 2024 was a strong year. It was more than normal, I would say, improvement, both in specialties and industrial, which is quite a positive takeaway from the year and hopefully a signal for the future as well. The important thing about this change over time is that we increased the specialization, which is what Border Guard is all about. We reduced the exposure to low value markets and we reduced cyclicality in the business. So we think that this was a good year in a historical context as well. If I go to buy materials, the average price in sales currency in this quarter was 4% above the same quarter last year. I remind you that we have reduced prices going into 2024, but in the second half, as we have stated before, we had the opportunity to adjust some prices in the mix. So this is a combination of in the portfolio, so this is a combination of product mix improvement and some price increases in selected parts of the market. But the prices are in line with the previous quarter, so I would say that there was quite a particularly strong mix in the quarter itself. Again, higher sales volume versus the previous year and a particularly higher sales volume of high purity grades, which drives the product mix. Really insignificant currency impact in this business area. Then if we look at the full year, as guided, we have very strong deliveries in this year, 160,000 tons, and that's 11% higher than previous year. This was driven by increased sales to high-purity casings and cellulose ethyl grades for regulated applications like food and pharma, which are in line with our target to increase specialization in this particular business area. The closure of Georgia Pacific's Foley Mill in Florida and the suspension of Riam's plant in Temiskaming in Quebec, Canada, contributed to the sales growth and gave us opportunities in the market that we have capitalized on. The average price in sales currency for the full year is 3% below 2023. Just to remind you, we came into the year with a price reduction because there were price cost reductions on our side as well going into the year. Then in the second half, we have gradually increased prices where possible according to contracts. And we had a strong product mix in the quarter or in the year. As you can see, 83% of the 160,000 tons were high value products. They were in the high end of the specialty category, which is close to a record. Negative net currency effects as well in this business area for the full year. Then fine chemicals, the fourth quarter and the full year. If you look at the fourth quarter, we had low deliveries both in fine chemical intermediates and bioethanol. In the opposite direction, we had a strong product mix in fine chemical intermediate. But as you can see, 138 million NOC in sales operating revenues in the quarter is quite low in a historical context. If you look at the full year, the 2024 is quite in line with 2023. uh we had a higher sales volume in fine chemical intermediates uh we but we on the other hand we also reduced prices in in balancing out cost reductions on the main raw material bioethanol increased sales volume compared to the previous year and a slightly positive net fx impact but comparing the two years it's quite similar then the board yesterday approved another investment it's not a large investment it's 55 million knock but this is part of the transition plan for border guard to deliver on our 2030 and 2050 science-based targets around co2 emissions and this in this case we are talking about installing a pre-air preheater technology in the bio boiler that we have in Salzburg, Norway, which burns all the residues from the biorefinery, all the side streams and makes energy out of it. And this will increase the efficiency of this system and it will also reduce the dependency on LNG. So this is straight into our transition plan towards 2030. The special thing about this project is that it's highly profitable, even though it's an environmental project. So it will reduce the energy cost and it will also lower the exposure towards CO2 quotas inside the EU. And the internal rate of return will be well above our minimum requirement of 15%. And this will also, on top of that, reduce the CO2 emissions by roughly 7,000 tonnes. And this will be in operation late in 2025. Then I will complete my presentation with the outlook for going into 2025. In biosolutions, we expect the sales volume to be approximately 330,000 and continued strong sales into agriculture. The sales volume in the first quarter is expected to be in the range of 80,000 tons. We have commented earlier quarterly reports on the upcoming duties, anti-dumping duties on vanilin from China. The investigation is going on both in the US and the EU. The US authorities have now announced preliminary anti-dumping duties, significant duties. However, if you adjust for these duties, the price of synthetic vanilin will still be below the price of plant-based vanilin like Beauregard's category. So we expect this to be positive, but it's still unclear how this will play out in the marketplace. In biomaterials, the sales volume will be more normalized in 2025. It will be in the range of 150 to 155, which will be sort of in line with production. But the sales volume of highly specialized grades is expected to be higher than it was in 2024. So the volume will go up and the specialization rate will then be even higher than it was in 2024. The average price in sales currency is expected to be in the range of 8-10% higher than in the first half of 2024. So period against period, first half, it will be 8-10% higher. The sales volume in the first quarter is expected to be in the range of 38,000 tonnes. Then in fine chemicals, we have talked some time about the EU has introduced very favorable incentives for advanced bioethanol into biofuel. Beauregard being an established advanced bioethanol producer, of course, has benefited from this immediately. And this has been quite good for our results in bioethanol in the last two years. However, these incentives are starting to work, so there will be more supply coming into the market based on agricultural waste and other sources. So we think that the sales prices for Borgas bioethanol will be lower in 2025 than in 2024, and it will be more in line with the results we saw in, or prices we saw in 2022. In fine chemical intermediates, the sales volume is expected to grow even further from 2024 into 2025. Then on the costs and maintenance stop and seasonality, the wood costs have gone up significantly over the several quarters now. In the first half of 2025, we expect the wood cost to be largely in line with the second half of 2024. I just remind you that Borgard's procurement of wood is a mix of different things. It's a mix of pulp wood and wood chips. It's a mix of geographies. Some is brought from abroad, some is brought from shorter and longer distances inside Norway. So when you blend all this together and look at it, it seems like it's fairly flat from the second half of 1924 into the first half of 1925. Also to remind you that the full year impact of already completed investments to reduce energy and CO2 will get full effect in 2025 and this is particularly the electrification of the spray dryers in lignin-based biopolymers that will have started up in the middle of 2024 will give a full year effect in 2025 reducing both energy costs and CO2 emissions in Norway. And then, of course, the general disclaimer at the end here that there is still war and conflicts around us and this can impact the global economy. And we will have to be aware of that and take necessary precautions when and if that happens. Having completed the outlook, I will also mention one more element that's not part of the outlook. Borgard has a currency hedging strategy that delays the impact of currency changes, particularly the weakening of the Norwegian kroner that we have seen over the last couple of years. Taking that into consideration, we have to expect a positive impact from the hedging or from currency changes in 2025. Pebbi Arne will come back more in detail to the expected size of those positive hedging when he goes into the financial details. I should also remind you now that this, if you're watching this live as a webcast, you can submit questions throughout the presentation because we will have a Q&A session after Per Bjarne's presentation. So that completes my presentation. Please, Per Bjarne, you can take over.

Thank you, Pierre, and good morning, everyone. Beauregard's operating revenues in the fourth quarter were 9% higher compared with the fourth quarter of 2023, mainly as a result of higher sales. EBITDA increased to 398 million NOK, 71 million NOK above the corresponding quarter in 2023. Biosolutions had an improved result. The result in biomaterials was in line with the fourth quarter of 2023, and fine chemicals had a lower result. Net currency effects were positive by about 20 million NOK compared with the fourth quarter of 2023. The EBITDA margin ended at 22.8% in the fourth quarter, 2.4 percentage points above the corresponding quarter in 2023. Earnings per share increased to 1.30 compared with 1.20 in the same quarter 2023. Earnings per share were negatively impacted by higher depreciation, a 30 million NOC accrual for remediation of contaminated soil at the Salzburg site, and increased profit attributable to non-controlling interests. For the full year, BG operating revenues increased by 7% to NOK 7.6 billion, and all business segments achieved higher sales. EBITDA reached an all-time high of close to NOK 1.9 billion, 93 million higher compared with 2023. We had a strong improvement in biosolutions in the quarter. Fine chemicals had a result in line with 2023, whereas biomaterials had a lower result. The all-time high result for the group was driven by higher sales and reduced energy costs, partly offset by higher wood costs and cost inflation in general. The net currency impact was slightly negative for the full year by 10 million NOK. The EBITDA margin ended at 24.6%, close to the margin in 2023. Return on capital employed ended at 17.1%, below the 2023 level, but well above our targeted level of minimum 15% pre-tax. Earnings per share ended at 8.25 compared with 8.73 in 2023. A stronger EBITDA were more than offset by increased depreciation and higher interest expenses, the accrual for contaminated soil, lower results from associated companies and increased profit attributable to non-controlling interests. Operating revenues in BioSolutions were 11% above the fourth quarter of 2023 and 8% above the full year of 2023, mainly due to increased sales volume. EBITDA increased to 251 million NOK in the fourth quarter, 79 million above the fourth quarter of 2023. Higher sales volume was the main reason also for the strong result. The volume increase was, as Per mentioned, particularly strong in agriculture. For the full year, EBITDA reached an all-time high of 1.1 billion NOK, 189 million higher than in 2023. The all-time high in biosolutions was due to higher sales, reduced energy costs and an improved product mix, partly offset by cost inflation. The net currency impact was insignificant in this business area compared with 2023. And the EBITDA margin was 25% in the quarter, 6 percentage points higher than in the fourth quarter of 2023. And for the full year, the EBITDA margin was 26%, close to 3 percentage points higher than in 2023. In biomaterials, operating revenues in the fourth quarter were 17% above the corresponding quarter in 2023, mainly as a result of higher sales volume. For the full year, higher sales volume was also the main contributor to an 8% increase in operating revenues. EBITDA in the quarter was 102 million NOK, compared with 103 million NOK in the corresponding quarter in 2023. Higher sales volume, in addition to increased prices and improved product mix, were offset by higher wood costs. The net currency effects were insignificant for this business area in the quarter. For the full year, EBITDA ended at 434 million NOK, compared with 534 million in 2023. 11% higher sales volume was offset by higher wood costs, lower sales prices and an increase in other operating expenses. Net currency effects were negative for the full year. The EBITDA margin ended at 16.6% in the fourth quarter, three percentage points below the same quarter in 2023. For the full year, the EBITDA margin was also 16.6%, about five percentage points below 2023. Lower deliveries were the main reason for a 23% decrease in operating revenues in fine chemicals in the fourth quarter. For the full year, operating revenues increased by 2%. EBITDA was 45 million NOK in the fourth quarter, compared with 52 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. For fine chemical intermediates, lower deliveries were offset by an improved product mix. Bioethanol had a lower result than in the corresponding quarter in 2023 due to lower deliveries. Net currency effects were positive for fine chemicals in the quarter. For the full year, EBITDA increased slightly to an all-time high, also for this business area, of NOK 336 million, NOK 4 million above 2023. The result for phychemical intermediates improved compared with 2023 mainly due to higher sales volume. Sales prices for key products were reduced as a result of price reductions for the main raw material, but being neutral to the result. The result for bioethanol was lower than in 2023, as increased sales volume was more than offset by higher costs. The net currency impact was slightly positive for Fine Chemicals compared with 2023. The EBITDA margin was 33% in the fourth quarter, close to 4 percentage points above the same quarter in 2023. EBITDA margin for the full year was 42% as in 2023. The net currency impact on EBITDA was positive by, as I said, about 20 million NOK, compared with the corresponding quarter in 2023. The positive impact came from a weaker Norwegian kroner, which weakened by about 2 percentage points, using Borregaard's currency basket. Hedging losses were 93 million NOK in the fourth quarter, the same amount as in the fourth quarter of 2023. For the full year, the net currency impact on EBITDA was negative by about 10 million NOK. Hedging losses amounted to 365 million NOK, compared with a loss of 268 million in 2023. Using currency rates as of yesterday, the net currency impact for the full year of 2024 is estimated to be positive by as much as 220 million NOK compared with 2024. And the corresponding impact for the first quarter is estimated to be positive by about 50 million NOK compared with the first quarter of 2024. Borregaard had a cash flow from operating activities of 314 million NOK in the fourth quarter. There was a slight decrease in net working capital in the fourth quarter. However, a significantly smaller reduction than normal in the fourth quarter due to high deliveries and strong production output towards the end of the quarter. For the full year, the cash flow from operating activities was close to 1.1 billion NOK, compared with 1.6 billion in 2023. The reduced cash flow was mainly due to an increase in net working capital. Higher sales revenues and the resulting increase in accounts receivable were the main reasons for the increase. Despite the increase in net working capital from year end to year end, the average net working capital as a ratio over operating revenues were 1.3 percentage points lower than in 2023 and ended at 22.1%, which still is above our 20% target, but we actually had a reduction in the average rate. Investments were 287 million NOK in the quarter and 861 million for the full year. For the full year, the largest replacement capex were related to an upgrade of the wood conveyor belt and the investment to reduce CO2 emissions, improve energy efficiency and increase energy flexibility at the biorefinery in Norway. The largest expansion investments were related to participation in two capital races in Alginor and specialization projects within Biosolutions. Net interest bearing debt increased by 167 million NOK in the fourth quarter. And for the full year, the net interest bearing debt increased by 449 million NOK. At the end of 2024, Beauregard was well capitalized with an equity ratio of 53% and a leverage ratio of 1.20. And that concludes today's presentation. Per Sørli and I will now be ready to answer any questions, both from the audience here in Oslo and from those who follow the webcast. Our Director, Investor Relations, Knut Harald Bakke, will moderate webcast questions.

Thank you. First question from Magnus Rasmussen of SEB. There's really three questions from Magnus. So the first one is regarding net working capital. Weakest working capital movement in Q4 since 2018. Why do we not see a significant release in Q4 2024?

That's what I tried to explain during the presentation now. Different from previous years, our sales were quite good towards the end of the year. And we also had a very strong production, which means that that of course helped on the sales, but also it increased our inventories quite a lot. And there were a few other elements that we normally see being favorable in the net working capital that we didn't see this year. As I said, the average net working capital actually came down for the year. So I'm not concerned about this. This is not a normal fluctuation towards the end of the year, but within the normal range of fluctuations that we have in net working capital.

Second question from Magnus then regarding depreciation. Depreciation increased knock 17 year on year and knock 13 million quarter on quarter. Why? And is this permanent?

Part of it is related to higher investments, of course. We've had higher than our targeted replacement investments over the last two, three years, and that, of course, increases the ordinary depreciation. Then in addition, we have increased depreciation on leased assets. Some of it are related to increased storage. We have some increases in inventory, and there are some other elements there also. We think at some point, at least the depreciation related to leasing will come down. but we can't really tell when that will happen. Increased investments will continue to increase depreciation.

And final question from Magnus, regarding wood costs. How come you are able to keep wood costs stable? Looks to us like commodity prices have increased further.

Well, this goes back to the comments I made during the presentation that we are buying a mix of different sources, both in terms of wood chips and pulpwood, and also from different geographies inside Norway and from abroad. So, I should remind you that logistics cost inbound transportation is roughly 25% of the wood cost. So, logistics also has a big factor in calculating the delivered cost of wood. So, when we have made our assessments of this, it seems like it's a flat development from the second half last year into the first half this year.

Second question, then, from Jo Erlend Korsvold of Centragruppen regarding bioethanol. Sales prices for Beauregard's bioethanol were guided to be similar to 2022 levels. Does this imply a 2022 EBITDA level, or are there volume or cost effects that make such a comparison complicated?

Well, in addition to price, there is a couple of other elements. The result in fine chemicals consists of the fine chemical intermediates and the advanced bioethanol. And in fine chemical intermediates, we have seen a positive volume growth compared to 2022, and we have also guided for a further improvement in volume in 2025. Also, I should say that the volume factor, in addition to price, the volume factor has been positive in bioethanol compared to 2022. So there are other factors that will also have an impact.

Question from Andres Castanos Moller of Berenberg regarding biosolutions volumes 2025. Why guide for about 1% volume growth in bio solutions for 2025, despite having been able to grow specialties strongly in 2024? Do you have lower expectations for demand growth in 2025, or do you have LinkedIn availability constraints?

Well, Remember that the main driver for the improvement in BioSolutions in 2024 was the mix improvement. The fact that the specialties grew a lot more than the overall volume growth. And that's the plan and that's what we will continue to drive for. So there will always be enough volume available for specialties. The guidance, the overall volume guidance for 2025 is based on more what we think that is a normal level of supply coming into Borgard. There could, of course, be deviations on that, but I should just remind that the marginal volumes are usually not a big factor in deciding the bottom line for this particular business area. So a more important thing is the sales of the specialties and also the high price products within the other categories.

Question from Niklas Gehin of D&B Markets regarding LNG consumption. Could you say something about how many megawatt hours in annual consumption of LNG you estimate can be reduced from the new investment?

Well, I think we should refer back to our IR director. That used to be the energy head of Boregard. I think you should answer this, Knut Harald.

I think what you need to keep in mind is that since the energy crisis in 2022-2023, Borregaard has substantially reduced its absolute dependency on LNG. And this latest announced investment, it's a small investment, but it reduces that absolute dependency even further.

And in addition, we have increased the electricity contracts in 2024, which means that we will use more electricity also due to the contracted volumes.

Electricity at long term fixed pricing.

Yes. So LNG is coming down quite substantially, the consumption of LNG.

very well another question from andres costano of berenberg regarding the knock 30 million environmental provision in q4 what triggered this need to provision what makes border guard confident that any environmental liabilities are now fully covered

Yeah, I can say for sure that we don't know or that all environmental liabilities are not covered because when we do an accrual like this, we have estimates that are good enough to make an accrual. The estimates on environmental issues is quite unsure if you go further into the future. but we have we will and we have gone quite deeply into what those environmental issues are in our annual report and we'll do that also for 2024 so you can see what the issues are but to estimate what the cost will be is difficult But over time, we have made some provisions. They've been in the range of 20, 30, 40 million. So that's the kind of provisions we have made in the past. And we haven't done it every year.

I may just comment on what this is. This is a legacy issue. Beauregard used to have a mercury-based chloralkali plant. The reason why we have a chloralkali plant is that sodium hydroxide or caustic soda is an important input factor for several of our products. We changed technology in 1997, from mercury-based to non-mercury-based technology. So this is just preserving runoff from historic pollution in the ground around this mill or factory. And it has been well under control for the last nearly 30 years now, so it's not a huge factor in a historic context. And I should also say that mercury-based chloralkali technology was banned in Europe in 2020. So Border Guard actually changed technology 23 years before it was banned.

Question from Håkon Lunde, a private investor. It's twofold. Can you elaborate more about the trend of increasing wood prices? We have seen the last couple of years. What has been the main driver behind this trend? And the second part, with the guided pricing for the first half of 2025, will we now see a reversion of this trend?

Well, There are multiple factors behind the price development of wood. The short-term factor that has been a big influence, of course, is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because there used to be a lot of export of wood from Russia into Finland. or into the Nordic region, I should say. So when that stopped, of course, there was a lack of wood supply in the Nordic region. But in longer term, there are other drivers, like the United Nations have a forest report saying that the forest should serve three purposes. It should be carbon storage, preserve biodiversity and be raw material for bio-based chemicals and bio-based materials. Of course, the first two could be in conflict with the third. So there is a lot of drivers in the EU and other areas that puts pressure on what sustainable forest management, how much should be preserved of the forest and so forth. Those drivers means that there will be less supply of wood for biochemicals and biomaterials and paper products and cardboard products in the future. The hidden factor or the unknown factor here, of course, this is the supply side. So the unknown factor is, of course, the demand side. Because a lot of the use of wood goes into producing commodities in paper and cardboard. And the question is, if you don't see a similar cost increase in other parts of the world producing those same commodities, when will the supply come down in the Nordic region? Because you can't live with those kind of high wood costs. Beauregard, of course, as you can see, are able to accumulate and live with those kind of increased wood costs. So I think that other people will have problems delivering positive results based on these wood costs well before Beauregard comes into that situation.

Question from Martin Melby of ABG regarding anti-dumping duties. How large are the anti-dumping duties on vanillin in the US and what to expect in the EU in terms of percentage? How large is the price drop? So there's a question also on ethanol. How large is the price drop on ethanol year on year? So we can start with the anti-dumping duties. Yeah.

Well, I think that the general temporary anti-dumping duty, I think, is in the range of 180%, but then for synthetic vanillin. And there are some strange exceptions to that because some producers, or at least one producer in Sweden, in China has refused to give input data to the American authorities. So they have been penalized by having, I think, double duties of what the regular duty is. But if you take the regular duty, which refers to most of the volume, that means a trebling of the price. But even a trebling of the price is well, well below the price that Beauregard commands for its supreme plant-based vandalin. so so that's why it's unclear how this will impact on the market but for sure it's a substantial tariff duty and but i should remind you that it's temporary and it's not been permanent yet we don't have any information as to what the eu will do in this situation so so i think that's what we can report right now

And then the second part from Martin Melby on the price drop on ethanol year on year, if you're able to quantify.

Yeah, it's hard for us to quantify that really, because I think the closest we have made an assessment and the price is not necessarily fixed for the full year for our volume. So that's why we have our best, to the best of our knowledge right now, we are pointing to what we saw in 2022. But this is a thing that will vary with market balance as we go into 2025.

And final question from the webcast, Marcus Gavelli of Pareto Securities. Would you mind elaborating on the price environment for bio solutions in 2025?

No, I think that if you look at the total world economy, Europe is still very slow. And we have seen fairly good markets in North America, in Asia, especially the Asian countries and India. And also we are thinking that maybe it will pick up a bit in Latin America. But I think that In total, it's not a good climate for huge price increases. So as we have seen in 2024, the mix improvement is the major driver for the improved result. And I think that's the best bet also for 2025.

If there's not any questions from the physical audience here in Oslo, I think we will conclude this Q&A session for the fourth quarter of 2024.