Konecranes Plc Ord

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Conecranes earnings conference. We reported our Q4 earnings and 2024 financial statement release today. My name is Kiira Fröberi and I'm the head of investor relations at Conecranes. And here with me, I have our usual people, president and CEO Anders Svensson and CFO Teo Ottola. Before we start, just a kind reminder, please remember that the presentation includes forward-looking statements. Anders will start and talk about the group level figures, and after that, Teo will focus more on the business segment level numbers. And the presentation is followed by Q&A as usual. You can send your questions either through the chat function or then through the telephone conference. Thanks a lot. Anders, it's your turn now.

Thank you, Keira. And a warm welcome also from my side. So the headline of this quarter is a strong end to an excellent year. And our demand environment held up really well also in the last quarter of the year. It's actually the second highest order intake for a quarter ever, almost at 1.2 billion euros. And we ended up 26% up from the previous year. Our sales execution was also strong in the quarter, and we delivered the highest sales in a single quarter ever, above 1.2 billion euros. And with that strong sales execution, we managed to deliver a new all-time high for a fourth quarter comparable EBITDA margin of 13.2%. Free cash flow was really strong and even excellent in the quarter at 170 million. And the 2024 dividend proposal is 1.65 euros per share. That's 30 cents up from the previous year. I now move into the market environment and I start with the industrial segments. And even though the macro indicators like the manufacturing PMI and the manufacturing capacity utilization are all showing weakness, we managed to deliver a very strong order intake also in our industrial segment. We move into the ports market environment. And here we can see that it's remained high container throughput throughout the year and also in the fourth quarter. And we can see that reflected also in our order funnel within ports and activities there. Up 3% on a year-on-year comparison. I move into the group order intake and net sales. And as I said, very strong order intake, 1,167,000,000, second strongest order intake in a quarter ever, up 26% versus the previous year. And we saw that ports was reporting really strong order intake, followed by also strong order intake in industrial equipment. If we look at the regions, we saw an increase in EMEA and Americas, while we saw a decrease in APAC. Sales execution, as I said, new record for a quarterly sales number at 1,213,000,000. That's up 5.5% versus the previous year. And here we saw improvement in all segments. And when we come to the regions, Americas and APAC were significantly growing while we saw a flattish sales in EMEA versus the previous year. If I then move into our order book, given that we had for a fourth quarter a bit special very similar order intake and sales normally sales is higher in the fourth quarter than order intake so very similar order intake and sales and then if we add on to that our acquisitions pineman the order book there and also the fx effects we actually have a growing order book of 41 million in the quarter If we compare year on year here, we are down 150 million roughly. That's down 5% at the end of the year. But if you look what we will deliver going into 2025 versus what we had in the book for 2024 when we entered into 2024, the difference is 60 million less for the year. So still a very strong order book in historical perspective. I move into our group comparable EBITDA and here we delivered the highest ever at 159.5 million for the quarter. That equals a margin of 13.2% and that's 150 bps up from the previous year. The improvement was mainly driven by volume, good price inflation management and a strong strategy execution. Gross margin improved also year on year. At the end of the year, I think it's appropriate to evaluate our progress towards our financial targets. And I think we can summarize it as a success. I start with the group. And here we had a growth target to grow faster than the market. And the market was defined as nominal world GDP growth. And that was for 24, roughly 4%. And we achieved a 6.9% growth in comparable currencies for the group. And we can also see that our margin of 13.1% for the full year is clearly within the range of 12 to 15%. Looking then at service, and here we also had a target to grow faster than the market, and we achieved that with a 6.2% growth for the full year. And given the volume, the price management and the strategic initiatives, we managed to improve our margins 110 bps here up to 21%. So clearly within our profitability range also here. Moving into industrial equipment and here we had a target to grow in line with the market and we achieved that as well. So we grew 3.1% for the year in industrial equipment. Given the strong strategy execution focusing on profitability and stability we managed to improve together with pricing of course we managed to improve 200 bps in the year from seven percent to nine percent so very strong strategy execution within industrial equipment Then imports, we had a target to also here grow quicker than the market. And we achieved that as well. We grew 10.9% in comparable currencies. And as you can see, we improved 180 bps year on year and ended the year 9.3 for the full year. And also here we are within the profitability range communicated. So in general, all our businesses are performing as to our expectations. I'm now moving to the demand outlook. I'll start with our industrial customer segments. So our demand environment within industrial customer segments has remained good and continues on a healthy level. And we can see that that has been true for basically the whole of 2024. And we believe that it will continue also going forward. Interest rates, as we have discussed previously, has caused some delay in decision making at our customers, especially in the larger process crane orders. But during this quarter, we also had some nice conversion into order intake within process cranes. The funnel continues to be good, both in terms of number of cases and in total value. So we see also new cases coming into the funnel in a good pace. So underlying seems to be stable. With import customers, we say that the global container throughput continues on a high level and long-term prospects related to global container handling remains good overall. And we can see here that our order pipeline looks really good, especially in automation cases, but also in other projects. But as we know, order intake within these project businesses are fluctuating and much depending on customer's decision making process. We had some nice conversion in this quarter into order intake. And we also now discussing other projects with our customers. But to estimate if we get order intake in Q1, Q2 or Q3 is very difficult as we have talked about previously. But we have a good funnel that we are working on tightly with our customers. And now moving to the financial guidance for 2025. Net sales is expected to remain approximately on the same level in 2025 compared to 2024. The comparable EBITDA margin is expected to remain approximately on the same level or to improve in 2025 compared to 2024. So as a summary, I think we can say that the fourth quarter was a very good and strong end to an excellent year. And we will continue with our strategy execution in terms of both growth initiatives but also profitability initiatives going forward. And we intend to discuss that and also our targets with you guys and the market during our Capital Markets Day in May this year. I also want to mention, as you have noticed, that I have decided to leave Corner Cranes at the mid of July and the board has immediately initiated the recruitment of a new president and CEO for Corner Cranes. And our company is an excellent position, very strong. We have a clear roadmap and we are executing on our strategy and we have dedicated teams around the world to continue to execute that and follow the journey that we are on. And I'm fully committed until the mid of July to support this and drive this to the best of my abilities. With that, I would like to ask our CFO, Teo Ottala, to come up and talk more about our strengths moving into 2025. Teo.

Thank you Anders. and let's move forward in the presentation. So before we actually go into the segment numbers, let's take a brief look at the comparable EBITDA bridge between Q4 of 24 and Q4 of 23. Here we can see how the numbers look like. So we actually made a 25 million euro improvement in an year-on-year comparison in comparable EBITDA. And we can start unpacking that a little bit with the help of, let's say, net pricing impact and an underlying volume impact as well. So the price increases in comparison to the situation one year ago were roughly 3% on average, and now that our sales increase was 5.4% in a year-on-year comparison, so that gives the underlying volume improvement of roughly 2.5% in the numbers for Q4 in comparison to the situation a year ago. So the impact of operating leverage as a result of the underlying volume and net of inflation pricing were roughly on par with each other now in the fourth quarter. So it was a very balanced situation from that point of view. So price increases were more than inflation. That generated positive delta, but also the volume as a result of the operating leverage gave positive delta roughly in the same amount in the fourth quarter. We did not have any meaningful mixed impact in a year-on-year comparison now in the fourth quarter. Operational efficiency or execution continued to give a positive delta, positive sort of profitability improvement or profit improvement in Q4, even though we did not have a 100% clean quarter from the, let's say, efficiency or operational execution point of view. But still, the overall delta was positive. We can see in the picture that the fixed costs were very well under control. So there was only a very small increase in fixed costs. Of course, one thing worth noting here is that we received an R&D grant in Finland in the amount of three million roughly in the fourth quarter for the costs that we had already spent earlier. So this is, of course, helping the fixed cost comparison. in this picture. Then we can move into the segment data and as usual, let's start with the service business. Service order intake 392 million euros. That is an increase of 3.5% year on year in comparable currencies. We had growth both in field service and parts, we had growth in all regions and we actually also in addition to year-on-year, we also had sequential growth after a little bit lower Q3 order intake. Agreement base also growth there more than six percent in comparable currencies. Sales 419 million euros, 3.7% improvement or increase in an year-on-year comparison in comparable currencies. Also there, increase both in field service and parts. No significant mix impact in an year-on-year comparison. And then we had also here increase in all regions. So quite balanced from the volume point of view. Order book for 436 million euros, a slight decrease in a year-on-year comparison. Comparable EBIT A, 20.6%. This is 0.4 percentage point improvement in an year-on-year comparison. Of course, attributable to pricing, also higher volume and cross margin increased in service business as well. So overall, a very stable, good performance, excellent performance actually in the fourth quarter, as well as for the whole year of 24, obviously. Industrial equipment order intake 357 million euros. That is almost 28 percent increase in comparable currencies when we take a look at the external orders year on year. This increase is of course supported by one bigger deal that we already announced earlier in the fourth quarter in the heavy end, so that the process grains were impacted positively by that one. But when we take a look at the other two business units, so standard grains and components, so we actually had year-on-year order intake growth in those as well. So the order intake was good overall across the business units. Of the regions, we had increase in EMEA and Americas, but a decrease in Asia Pacific. And then again, sequential comparison is exciting as well when we take a look at that one. So of course, the process grains increased sequentially as a result of the bigger deal that we reported separately. Standard grains were more or less flat in a sequential comparison, but components, which is maybe the, let's say, fastest reacting, was actually growing also sequentially from the third quarter. Sales 6.6 percent higher than a year ago. We had a good delivery quarter in the industrial equipment also. And then when we take a look at the order book, 893 million euros, which is almost exactly on the same level as we had one year ago. Comparable EBITDA 9.7%, as much as 2.7 percentage point higher than a year ago. Excellent, excellent improvement. Of course, the underlying volume growth was good. So that was supporting it. The R&D grant that I already mentioned was mostly impacting industrial equipment. So that is, of course, helping there as well. And then also the optimization program that we have been having ongoing has continued to yield results in this quarter as well. Then ports, moving on there, order intake 461 million euros. This is an excellent level, of course, more than 50% increase in an year on year comparison. When we again take a look at the business units a little bit, we had excellent orders in RTGs. We had very good orders in straddle carriers and port service as well. And overall, one could say that we had a good flow of mid-sized orders in the fourth quarter in the ports business. When we take a look at more early cyclical business units, lift trucks, for example, now in ports case, so lift truck order intake was flattish both year on year and Q&Q, but still on a relatively low level. Sales growth was around 6% and we had a good delivery quarter in ports business as well. But from the order book point of view, of course, we are behind the situation a year ago, almost 9%. The good order intake in the fourth quarter was not enough to compensate for the decline from the earlier quarters, as we have, of course, seen this kind of a development already in the earlier quarters. Comparable EBIT A, 9.7% here as well as in the industrial equipment. Also here a good improvement, 1.7 percentage points or a very good improvement actually due to pricing, underlying volume improvement and also good strategy execution, meaning that in ports the performance, the operational execution was good in the fourth quarter. Before getting into the Q&A, a couple of comments on the cash flow as well as the balance sheet situation. Actually, networking capital, if we start with that one, continued to develop well. 380 million euros, 9% of rolling 12-month sales. This is very well in line with our target setting of being below 12% of rolling 12-month sales. And also, networking capital is lower than what it was at the end of Q3 and of course quite naturally the accounts receivable are more than what they were at the end of Q3 but inventory significantly less as a result of the good deliveries that we did during the fourth quarter. Networking capital as well as the profitability are then of course reflected in the free cash flow. Anders already mentioned this having continued to be on a very good level in the fourth quarter. And the full year number is 427 million euros free cash flow. This is clearly above let's say cash conversion of 100% this year also. So very good from that point of view. And then when we take a look at the gearing and net debt, net debt continued to decrease from the end of the third quarter, even if we made the acquisition that Anders also mentioned. And gearing level is now only 10% at the end of the year. And then also delightfully, when we take a look at the right side of the slide, return on capital employed, now this comparable return on capital employed 20.8%, but even if we take the official reported number, so we are above 20%. So good development also on that side. That slide actually concludes the presentation, and then we can go into the Q&A.

Thank you, Teo. So we are ready for the questions. Let's open the line operator, please.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad.

The next question comes from Daniela Costa from Goldman Sachs.

Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question, Ilya, here on behalf of Daniela. We wanted to ask, have you seen any market share increase in the US as a result of higher tariffs to cranes in China? And also, how do you see this evolving with the new US administration? Thank you.

Yes, thank you. I think if you look at our performance within the industrial side, both in terms of equipment and in terms of service, we are doing very well in the US and it's very difficult to get market shares there. But we believe that we have taken some market shares, especially within service. If you go to the cranes and the higher tariffs on Chinese STS cranes, which I think you're referring to, then that is not something that we will see a quick effect from. There are not that many STS cranes sold in a year and normally the sales process is quite long for these projects and the delivery is two to three years from when the sales is done. So we haven't seen any dramatic change in market shares within STS cranes due to the tariffs which will be implemented then in, I think, mid-May this year. So that we haven't seen.

Thank you. And then on the level of utilization of your install base, how has it moved sequentially?

So utilization of the installed base has continued through the year, you can say, to be below previous year in terms of productive lifts with the same equipment in the two periods. So we can clearly see that it's below. It's a bit in line with, I would say, other macro indicators. We have, however, then held up, as you have now seen, our order intake throughout the year in a very good level, both in the industrial side and in the port side. So we are performing better than macro indicators and our True Connect data would show.

Okay, thank you. Let's then take the next question, please.

The next question comes from Antti Kansanen from SEB. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. It's Antti from SEB. I have two questions. I'll take them one by one. And the first one is on the demand on the industrial grain side. I mean, it's a good growth number even when excluding the impact from the big order. So you're not really the only company to report a little bit of a pickup on industrial demand on Q4. So maybe my question is that have you seen a little bit of an increased activity? And then the second theme is that do you think that this kind of a potential of of tariffs being put up, create some type of, let's say, a pre-buying impact for clients who want to maybe increase their inventories ahead of any potential tariffs.

Yeah, thanks, Antti. I think if you look at our business, we have seen both year on year and sequentially, both components, the standard cranes and the process cranes are performing very well. So standard cranes are, I think, flattish sequentially, but otherwise everything is up both year on year and sequentially. And you asked about the market activity. I think in the US, it's been on a very high level the whole year. And maybe lately, in waiting for the new administration to come into force, we have seen a somewhat softening in the US activity. We believe that that's related to the administration shift. Then when you look at Europe, here we see it's been stable. And here we see maybe somewhat improvements. If you look at APAC instead, here we see stability. It's been very stable, but on a lower level than we would like it to be. And it hasn't changed, basically.

Maybe adding a bit on that one regarding the, for example, European situation, because that is usually something that is being discussed. So the situation continues to be the same as it has been, so that we can say that the northern part of Europe, including UK actually, has been doing fairly well. from the order intake point of view. The eastern part of Europe has not been doing that well, maybe the southern part not that well either. And then of course the German situation, which is important from our point of view, continues to be let's say for us, better than the macro data shows, but obviously not fantastic because the macro data is really, really down and has been for quite some time. So then when we take a look at the funnels in particular, so the sales funnels for industrial, particularly the standard cranes where it is maybe most meaningful, the funnel values continue to be good. But then when we take a look at the number of new cases that are coming in, so at least they have not at least increased. And then, of course, there are regional differences like Andres was mentioning, so that the US has been very strong. Europe has been clearly weaker. So, of course, some kind of a balancing at some point of time may happen there.

But the effect from the tariffs that might be there has not been seen, I would say, in any increased or decreased activity.

Pre-buying because of tariffs before they may be in place can be difficult from the customer's point of view.

Okay, that's clear. The second theme was on the services margins. If I remember correctly, a year ago you had a bit of a soft Q4. There was some extra cost related to, was it the holiday seasons and such? And I think the Q4 margin this time, at least it was a little bit below what I had expected. So was there something kind of seasonal impacting the margins negatively or did we just have too optimistic expectations on it?

I think this is very seasonal, especially this year. We had very relatively few working days, which means always in the fourth quarter we have a lot to deliver. So then we need to pay overtime to get those deliveries done with Thanksgiving, Christmas in the middle of the week, etc. So there were many days that sort of fell away from the normal working days. So clearly there's a productivity from that with increased cost for us, which like last year, but maybe even more this year, impacts the profitability for service. And then sequentially, we also had a mix. We have more field service than parts, always in a fourth quarter. So it's quite natural with lower margins on worked hours than on spare parts, for example. So it's basically in line with our own expectations.

All right. Thank you very much. That's all from me.

Thank you. Thank you. Let's then take the next question, please.

The next question comes from Mikael Dopel from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Thank you.

And good afternoon, everybody. I have a question on the service side and also then on the pricing overall. But if we stick with service and actually following up on the margin discussion just earlier, if you look into this year, what can you do to improve the margin from here? I mean, you have improved the margin already quite a bit in this business overall, but what are the levers to drive further margin enhancement within the service side?

Yeah, so one clear thing that we are working with is improving our productivity. And that means with artificial intelligence, for example, planning our deliveries to customers, planning our workforce efficiency to maximize the output from each of our service technicians. Then we have launched new products and we are continuing to launch new products with added services, with the simpler service contractors that we discussed earlier in the year to suit more of our customers so that we can then sign up more service agreements which is the base basically for driving service growth going forward. So we're working on all of these areas to improve both our top line growth but also over time with a good

volume leverage and making sure that we manage inflation with pricing we are confident on continuing our journey within service profitability also going forward okay and that's clear and I guess in terms of expectations into 2025 I mean we you talked about the customer utilizations in various industries being bit of a headwind and you have managed that in a very good way in 2025. So I guess you are targeting continued growth into this year despite the fact that you have these headwinds.

Within service definitely we are targeting continued growth also in this year.

And then the other question was on the pricing overall. So how do you see the pricing going into 2025 across the business segments, whether you see pressure down, pressure up, and also if you could relate that to what kind of a cost inflation overall you expect for the year.

So labor inflation was quite high in 2024, around high four, maybe five percent even. We expect labor inflation to be somewhat lower in this year. We had some tailwind in a couple of quarters here, less now at the end of steel raw material prices being lower than they were one year ago. and we don't expect that that never continues over time right so it's always someone a bit tailwind someone somewhere a bit of a headwind given that we are not we are not estimating material inflation going forward but we will make sure that we compensate the total inflation with pricing going forward and that's applicable for basically all of our businesses then there can be regional differences like you say maybe it's more difficult to compensate in APAC because there is an increased competition in that market and maybe in other markets we have a bit simpler to compensate for pricing but as a whole we compensate for inflation and with a small surplus to make sure it's not diluting our business. But then we target to get the improved margins primarily from higher efficiency in our own businesses and also from volume leverage.

And maybe as a summary, as understood, the price increases will be there most likely in 2025 as well. So we will need to increase prices because of the inflation. Inflation is most likely going to be lower for labor than it was in 2024. But in some cases it may actually be somewhat higher in material because of the stale impact that Anders mentioned. We benefited a little bit in some product categories of the long lead time of the materials. And now that is balancing out. So the material inflation may be in some cases a little bit higher than what it was. So price increases will need to be done also in 2025.

Right. And in terms of the order backlog, I would assume that the margins there are also higher compared to what you delivered in 2021.

So our backlog margin is at the same level or better, basically. Okay. That's good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. And let's take the next question, please.

The next question comes from Pony Leighton-Markey from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

A couple of questions. Firstly, on the margin guidance, so you expect it to be at the same level or higher. Can you give more color on the assumptions behind that? So, I mean, how does it play out divisionally in your expectations? I assume mix will improve if you grow services faster than ports, which has a lower order book, but I mean, can you kind of give any color? Do you expect margins to increase in all the businesses or how do you expect this to happen?

You know, we always target to grow all of our businesses and increase margin in all of our businesses. That's a given. But as you say, we believe that service will have good growth next year and then the mix would then improve and that would help the group margin as well. we will continue to execute on our optimization program within primarily industrial equipment and we expect that to yield roughly 10 million improvements in 2025 and that was if you remember in 23 and 24 it was 11 million in each year so 22 together and so we expect another 10 in 2025 And then there are other areas where we will improve due to our strategy execution that's not a part of the optimization program. For example, with imports, for example, within service, in productivity, in planning, etc. So with all these initiatives together with the new products that we have launched during 2024, we are confident to improve our margins in 2025, even if the top plan should be flat.

thanks just to clarify that 10 million is to industrial equipment or the total of industrial business basically industrial equipment all right thanks then I just wanted to ask on the kind of order or demand outlook in the industrial equipment you described the regional uh developments but what about the customer segments so which which have been the strongest for you and which are the weakest and and uh yeah that's the question

Yeah, so strongest, I would say power and logistics, they have held up very well or at a very good level. Then stable at a decent or good level, even general manufacturing, mining, chemicals. And then on the weaker side, we have seen, for example, paper and forest, but also construction and engineering.

Okay, that's all from me. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. And let's now take the next question, please, again.

The next question comes from Johan Eliasson from Kepler-Chivriax.

Please go ahead.

Hello, this is Johan at Kepler-Chivriax. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll start with the... Tariffs coming back to, I mean, ship to shore seems now to, if I understand you correctly, to come into effect in May this year rather than August last year. Have you... I also understand that all of you and your competitors are producing these big steel structures in China. Is there in any way that you will not be impacted by these tariffs as well on new orders or on the existing backlog for the ship to shore into the U.S.? ?

So on the existing backlog, we have that our customers will take the cost of the increased prices if they are delivered after the mid of May this year. And then we can produce these in other places as well. We can produce them in Eastern Europe, these steel structures, for example. We can produce them in China. And we have also communicated that we are setting up a network to be able to manufacture these also in the US. But still, the difference between US-made and Chinese-made is huge in terms of cost. So still, there's not a huge amount of BABA requests from customers. We have, of course, these requests. We are discussing with our customers on some of these potential orders. But we should consider that even if it's 25% tariff on those, the difference of cost in producing in US versus producing in China is higher than that. 25% tariff.

I guess the steel cost is one big delta still in these cranes. Then if we look at all of these other tariff ideas left and right, can you sort of remind us a little bit on how your sourcing looks like in North America, in Europe? how big share of your sourcing in these regions would potentially be impacted by any potential import tariffs.

by far the biggest flow that we have between these potential trade blocks is then the flow of goods from Europe to the US. And this volume is actually roughly the same as to which we have been referring when we have been talking about transaction impact. So we are talking about, let's say, 130-140 million euros on an annual basis that is being moved, components, spare parts and those kind of things from the EU or Euro area, let's put it this way, to the US. And then of course in addition to that volume we do have volumes to the US from China for instance and some other places as well, but for example the volume from China is significantly smaller a really small part in comparison to the volume from Europe nowadays, because there already have been to some extent tariffs that have in a way impacted those flows. And then if we take a look at this potential impact to us, this 130-140 million, we have to remember of course that if we take a look at the competition in the US, And this one is of course now in relation to, let's say, industrial equipment and standard type hoists and cranes. So much of the competition also has the topic that they may be importing stuff from Europe. So its impact into the competitive situation is not crystal clear, but the underlying volume that we are talking about is roughly this one. And then, of course, there are, we discussed already the board heavy cranes. There are, of course, lift trucks then, where we do not have manufacturing capacity in the US. So there, of course, can be a situation that should there be tariffs. So some of the US competitors might be having an advantage over us, at least on a short term basis in those cases.

But in general, we would say that we would not be worse off than basically anyone else in our industry, especially when it comes to the industrial products. There is no competition, basically, that has an advantage due to the supply chain towards our supply chain. But as Theo mentioned, maybe imports within lift trucks, but that's the only one in that case, even though some of that supply chain also comes from either EU or China for most companies. So we believe that the exposure from a competition point of view is quite low for us and it would rather hit inflation and consumer in the US. But of course we are working continuously to improve our own supply chains and be better at this. And if you look in general, we have basically benefited from tariffs. It sounds strange, but it causes movement in supply chains normally. And when supply chains move, manufacturing capacity moves. And that normally calls for investments in new cranes, in new places. And that benefits us underlying the global growth in the world. And it also causes new or increased capacity in shipping routes that needs then investments, which is also underlying beneficial for our businesses.

Yeah, that's a very fair statement, I think, in your case. Just tidying up, I mean, are there any sort of, if there are potential tariffs into Europe as a as a sort of offset of the US potential tariffs. Do you have any significant sort of imports into Europe from the US?

No, we do not have any significant imports from the US to Europe, but of course then that there have been these discussions on the northern American continent, so of course we have trade between US and Canada for instance, and in this case it is so that we are actually exporting from the US to Canada, so this kind of a volume flow exists, but to Europe not significantly.

Okay, thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you. Now time for the next question, please. It's all quiet. Can we have the next question, please? No problem. In the meanwhile, we can maybe take a couple of questions from the chat. So first one is related to the main investment or acquisitions planned for 2025. So what are the main investment acquisition plans for this year?

It hasn't really changed, so the M&A strategy remains what it is. We focus on service bolt-on acquisitions, both within the industrial side but also within the port side. Then we look into sort of neighboring product offerings, if there's anything that could complete our offering. We also look into geographical coverage. If we have white spots where we believe that we could invest in an acquisition and then get a better foothold of that market rather than going in a different direction to that market, be it indirect, for example. So those are the sort of directions where we direct our M&A capacity and our teams to work on. But of course, given our cash position and net debt position, we also evaluating other things such as extra dividends, share buybacks and what have you.

And then another question on the new products that were launched this year. So could you comment on the traction of the new X-Series?

Yeah, so the new X-Series has been rolled out in different geographies consistently during last year and also during this year. And we have good traction and we get very good feedback from customers on the lower headroom S hoist and also the X-Series crane. So the feedback has been very positive from customers.

The next question comes from Tom Skogman from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Yes, hello, this is Tom from Carnegie. I wonder whether there are some early signs of companies now considering to invest into the U.S. that you start to see some concrete kind of plans?

Sorry, I missed the question a bit.

Concrete plans on investing in the U.S. by companies in general.

I think there has been for quite some time there's been a drive towards more investments into the U.S. Likewise with Mexico, for example, there's been a massive investments in Mexico over the last couple of years. So I think That regionalization has been going on for quite some time. I don't think it has escalated due to the new administration, but I think that is a trend that has been there and most likely will continue to be there also going forward.

Tom, can you hear us? Do you have further questions? OK. Can we then take the next question if we still have in the line, please?

The next question comes from Erki Vesela from Indears. Please go ahead.

Hi guys, it's Eki from Indrus. Just coming back to the 40-50 million euro optimization program you have had in IE and in service. Could you specify the EBITDA impacts you had in 24 and in Q4 in particular and then your expectations for 25 in these divisions?

The impact for 24 was roughly the same amount that we have been talking about for quite some time, so say 11 million or so. We are expecting around 10 million to materialize year on year, additional improvement in 25. The fourth quarter number was maybe a little bit lower than the average from the program, but there was a positive impact of the program in the fourth quarter as well.

And you don't want to disclose how much these were in both in IT and in service?

No, not the exact number. And I guess we can say that by far the biggest part of that was in industrial equipment.

Yes, the 11 million was in industrial equipment. And the same refers to the 10 million in 2025. So that's industrial equipment related. So the service benefits came in already for a longer time ago.

Okay. OK, that's all for me. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey, that was our last question for today. So it's time to conclude. And it's also time to thank you all for the for the active participation and good questions. And as a reminder, Konecranes Q1 interim report will be out on April 24. So back in the studio then. Have a great day. Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye.