Kemira Oyj Ord

Good morning everyone and welcome to Kemira's Q2 result webcast. My name is Kiira Froberg and I'm the head of investor relations at Kemira. We published our half-year financial report today. While revenue remained stable year on year, our profitability was burdened by cost inflation. Here with me today I have our president and CEO Antti Salminen and our CFO Tuomas Makipeska. Before we start the actual presentation, I would just like to kindly remind you that our presentation today contains forward-looking statements. We have our usual agenda for the day and Antti will start by covering the Q2 highlights and he will also discuss the group level performance. After that, Tuomas will discuss the financials in a bit more detail, and his part of the presentation includes also the business unit performance. In the end, we will have Q&A, as always, and questions can be asked either in the webcast chat function or by phone. But with that, it's now time to give the stage to Antti. Please go ahead with the presentation.

Thank you, Kiira, and good morning to everybody. On my behalf as well, it's my great pleasure to present Kemera's Q2 26 results, even if the results themselves are not that pleasant. Let's start with the market environment. The market continues to be extremely soft and weak and that we of course witnessed already last year. So basically the geopolitical turmoil in the world is causing the great uncertainty and unpredictability Thank you very much. When the customers' processes are running with low utilization, there's less demand for our product, and that we have now witnessed already for quite some time, and that these conditions seem to be continuing and continued well into the quarter two of this year. and that is then visible in the weak top line performance. However, due to the continuous investments to grow our water business, we have been able to maintain year on year the revenues on the same level. But that's really driven by the acquisition performance. Organic performance due to the soft market was weak. Now, of course, the Bad news of the quarter is the weak profitability. So 16.1% group level EBITDA performance is far from satisfactory. The main reason behind that was the inflation caused by the war in Iran. So the Iran war impacts our input costs, both raw materials and logistics. And that's kind of a perfect storm on top of the already weak demand. And that's what you see in the quarter two results of Kemira. I will talk later a bit more about the more detailed level of impacts of the war in Iran and our mitigation actions. But of course, we immediately, when the war broke out, we started price increases and inflation. As we have explained earlier, the fact is that these price increases only take effect with the delay. So the real impact in our results of the price increases will be visible only towards the end of the year. And thus the short-term outlook and this quarter performance is what it is. We increased, of course, then our efforts in efficiency improvement, cost-cutting, portfolio streamlining, so that we mitigate the impacts both of the soft demand and the increased input cost to the extent that we can. The positive thing is, of course, that our balance sheet continues to be solid. So we've been continuing to execute on our strategy. We have been kind of in very decided manner growing the water business via programmatic M&A. An example of that was the Clearwater Technologies acquisition in Q2 in US. We continue to invest in innovation, opening up new adjacent markets. We continue to increase The sustainable solutions and services part of our business. There's been actually a very healthy growth in the services business, but as we start from a small base, it's not visible in the group level numbers yet. But really, the strategy execution continues with the full speed. And in core two, we also completed, actually ahead of our original schedule, the share buyback program, and yesterday the board decided to cancel those shares. So, looking at the revenue in a bit more detail, of course, the revenue development has not been satisfactory for several quarters, so the soft markets have been impacting us already a long time. The organic growth was minus 2% in the quarter two, but the overall revenue year on year, as I mentioned already, remains stable, mainly due to the Acquisitions bringing in new business in the water solutions area. And thus the water solutions revenue actually grew. Now in packaging and hygiene solutions the revenue remained stable and then we saw the decline in fiber essentials part of the business. And in fiber essentials it's good to remember that last year The quarter two was still so-called normal in terms of demand. We only started to see the temporary shutdowns and prolonged maintenance breaks of the pulp mills at this time of the year, so for quarter three. So basically the comparison period was still quite normal, but now we clearly see this situation and you've seen the announcements by our customers, so we expect that this weak demand will continue Later on into the year and basically that's what's causing the decline in the fiber essential part. Then if we look at the profitability, of course very unsatisfactory result for this quarter two with the 16.1% operative EBITDA performance. And as mentioned, this is really mostly driven by the cost inflation due to the war in Iran. But there was also a price impact in the profitability. And that price is again an example of this delay in the pricing effect. Pricing-driven profitability decline you see in quarter two is actually pricing decisions that we made in quarter four last year, where we basically saw the demand environment weak. So basically to maintain the volumes, we gave some price concessions to customers earlier. With the outlook to this year, which was basically showing that the overall weak economy will bring down the input costs. So against those forecasted downward input costs, we gave some price concessions. But now then when they actually realize at the same time we have the iron war impact and increased input costs. So basically a perfect storm in a sense hitting this particular quarter two here. The profitability improved in fiber essentials, where we've been now kind of running the profitability improvement program already for the year. It was 11.6%. The increase, of course, is against last year's extremely weak quarter, too, so that's good to remember, but a step to the right direction there. Then if we look at our long term financial targets, this, of course, as we have been communicating, are kind of guide rails within which we are confident that we can long term operate. I've been saying already earlier that there may be quarters or even several quarters where we are below these in one or the other of the metrics. Now, due to the weak market environment, we've been below the We have had an organic growth target already for quite some time, but now this weakness in profitability of course shows that then in the latest 12 months EBITDA being also slightly below the lower end of the EBITDA target range. Lower EBITDA performance combined with the acquisitions that we have made then has caused also the return on capital employed being under the guide rail. But again, let's remember these are long term targets where basically long term we are confident that we will return to these and we can operate within these brackets. Then, as promised, a couple of words about the war in Iran and the impacts of that. So, the war in Iran impacts us via logistics costs, so the transportation, via fuel price increases which is passed on to us, and then via the raw materials. We saw the impact of the logistics cost coming in already early in the quarter. That is quite a quick chain kind of passing those through and hitting us. Then the raw material impact, we really started to see kind of a mid-quarter and increasing towards the end of the quarter. And it's good to remember that our One third roughly of our raw material base is oil derivatives. So basically the oil price impacts directly those raw materials and it's coming through. But we also have impact on fiber essentials, which doesn't really consume oil derivative raw materials. But sulfur is an important, elementary sulfur is an important raw material for fiber essentials. And the... More than 40% of global sulfur comes via the Strait of Hormuz. So that is out of the question. Then we have been getting some elementary sulfur from Kazakhstan, but as a result of the Iron War, Russia stopped all the land transportation through the Russian territory, so we don't get the Kazakhstan material either. And that means that More than two-thirds of the global sulfur supply is out of the game. And it's easy to see what that means then to the demand-supply balance and thus pricing. The sulfur prices have several folded during the past 12 months. And that hits the fiber essentials business. And even if the strait would be open tomorrow for good, The value chains are so long that we would still see the impact burdening our fiber essential business going forward to the year as well. So I'm not expecting any great release on that respect from there. Now, when looking at the impacts of war in Iran, somebody may be looking at the chemical industry overall and seeing that there are several companies that actually are giving positive profit warnings. It's good to remember that some chemical companies operate in the upstream, where they actually benefit from these higher prices of oil derivatives, and then companies like us operate in downstream, where it's only a cost burden for us. We of course started immediately price mitigation actions when we saw the war break out because we knew that it's going to be impacting us. But as mentioned, these kind of come through with the delay that we knew already to begin with. But then what actually surprised us negatively is that in this soft market condition, Thank you very much. Our current estimate, just to give you a magnitude, our current estimate of the gross impact of the war in Iran is roughly 100 million for this 2020 fix for us. Thank you very much. To conclude, of course, with the profit warning, we then updated the outlook for the year as well. The current outlook is that we expect revenue to be between 2.6 and 3 billion euros, and we expect the operative EBITDA to be between 400 and 500 million euros. Of course, some assumptions behind this outlook have been updated as well. We currently see that this geopolitical situation will not very easily vanish anywhere. So the markets will continue to be soft and weak for the remainder of the year. So we don't see any miracle support coming from there. Also, this uncertainty in the world is causing that the raw material markets are volatile. But then also now that the Iran war is continuing and the Strait of Hormuz is not open at mid-year means that even if it opens tomorrow, then the impact on the raw material markets will continue for the remainder of the year. So basically that means that against this we have estimated this annual 100 million gross impact of the cost increases. Now, that said, so I'm not happy with the results. We are fighting hard to get us back on the track, but I'm really happy with the fighting spirit in our organization. The team is really doing utmost and focusing on this. Everybody has understood the severity of the situation, so we are working on efficiency improvement programs, on price increase actions, and all the possible levers to improve the situation. I'm also happy with our organization's capability to focus at the same time on the short-term profitability challenges and the long-term strategy execution. So really diligent work on growing the water business, working on the aquaculture pipeline. Thank you very much. Not immediate because of these delay effects that I explained already, but really confident that the mid-term, long-term, the future will be very good for us. Short term, we will be suffering. And with this, I will hand it over to Tuomas, who will explain in more detail the numbers, finances, and how the performance was.

All right. Thanks, Antti, and thanks, Kiira. Good morning all on my behalf as well. As said so, I will cover the Q2 financials in more detail and also the business unit performance review in my part as well. So let's start with the drivers behind our second quarter overall performance. Revenue remained stable year on year at 693 million euros. The main positive contributor was the completed acquisitions, which increased the revenue by 17 million euros. And this offset lower sales prices as well as slightly lower volumes and some negative currency impacts as well. Year on year, organic revenue growth was minus 2%. Compared to the first quarter, volumes improved while pricing remained stable. Operative EBITDA declined to 112 million euros. And the main drivers behind the decline were lower sales prices and significantly higher variable costs. The cost inflation had a clear impact across the businesses, particularly in raw materials and logistics. And as a result, our operative EBITDA margin decreased to 16.1% as Antti explained. The war in Iran has a major impact on our variable costs and pricing. So let's take a closer look at these dynamics on the next slide. In this graph, it's illustrated the relationship between pricing and variable costs over time. As we explained earlier, the sharp increase in raw material and logistic costs has put pressure on profitability during the quarter. While we reacted quickly by implementing price increases after the Iran-related market disruptions started, there is always the time lag before these increases are visible in our financial results. On average, depending on contracts and business mix, the impact takes up to two quarters to materialize. Consequently, the margin pressure from cost inflation was clearly visible in the second quarter, while the benefit from pricing actions is expected to come through more gradually in the second half of the year. Net impact from variable cost and price changes was 21 million euros in Q2 and close to 30 million euros year-to-date. Let's then move on to the business units and start with the water solutions. Market conditions for water solutions remained mixed in the quarter. Demand from municipal customers was stable, while volatility continued among industrial customers due to the uncertain economic environment. As expected, the second quarter was seasonally stronger than the first one, following the warm weather in the northern hemisphere. Revenue increased year on year to 326 million euros, primarily driven by acquisitions. Organic growth was positive at 1%, with stable volumes and higher prices compared to last year. Q2 was in fact the first quarter since Q4-24 achieving positive organic growth. Profitability, however, was impacted by cost inflation and the operative EBITDA margin declined to 17.4%. The decline was mainly driven by higher raw material and logistics costs, which were only partially offset by pricing actions during the quarter. In water solutions, the logistics costs have increased significantly despite surcharges to customers. Despite the short-term profitability pressure, Water Solutions continues to benefit from resilient municipal demand and remains our strongest business area in terms of return on capital employed. Turning next to packaging and hygiene solutions business unit. The market environment remained challenging, particularly in packaging and paper markets, where economic uncertainty and weak consumer confidence continue to affect demand. Revenue was stable year on year at approximately 240 million euros, with organic growth close to zero. Compared to the first quarter, both volumes and prices improved modestly. The positive highlight in the quarter was profitability. Operative EBITDA margin improved to 11.6% and the improvement was mainly driven by cost savings resulting from the operating model changes we implemented in the beginning of the year. and we continue to execute our profitability improvement initiative and have accelerated performance measures in China to further strengthen our competitiveness and efficiency there. Let's look at the fiber essentials business unit next. The market environment remained weak throughout the quarter. Demand for bleaching chemicals in the Norik market was seasonally lower following a strong first quarter. Our bleaching demand follows the capacity utilization at our customers' pulp mills. In addition, as Antti explained, sulfur availability and pricing were negatively affected by supply chain disruptions linked to the Iran conflict, since a large part of global sulfur volumes is transported through the Strait of Hormuz. Revenue declined year on year to 127 million euros. Organic growth was negative 12%, reflecting lower volumes and lower prices compared to Q2 last year. Volumes and prices also declined sequentially from the strong first quarter. As a result, profitability weakened clearly. Operative EBITDA margin declined to 21.4% and the decrease was directly driven by lower volumes and weaker pricing. Last year, the Q2 was the last fairly normal quarter for fiber essentials in terms of customer demand. The market environment weakened significantly in Q3, when many of our Nordic customers had downtime in their pulp mills. and customers have scheduled maintenance breaks for the second half of this year again and the visibility of coming months and quarter remains low. So this concludes now the part of the business unit review and let's now get back to the group level figures. Our balance sheet remains strong and it continues to provide flexibility for strategic investments and growth initiatives. Our net debt increased year on year to 622 million euros, primarily reflecting acquisitions and the share buybacks. During the quarter, we completed the share buyback program, repurchasing a total of 5 million shares between February and June. Gearing increased to 39%, while leverage remained at 1.3 times, still at the comfortable level. Both buybacks and acquisitions are something that have been high on our agenda, intentionally resulting in a higher net debt and leverage ratio. Operative return on capital employed decreased to 13.5%, mainly due to the lower earnings level and the impact from acquisitions on the capital employed. Among the business units, as said, Water Solutions continued to generate the highest return on capital at 18.2%, although the Water Solutions ROSI has decreased as a result of the acquisitions. Overall, we remain well positioned to pursue value creating investments while maintaining a solid financial profile. Let's finally look at the cash flow and working capital. Networking capital increased to €316 million, corresponding to 11.6% of rolling 12-month revenue. and the increase was driven mainly by acquisitions as well as higher inventories resulting from raw material inflation. Operating cash flow in the quarter was 59 million euros while rollover profitability weighed on cash generation but overall the cash flow remained on solid level. CapEx excluding acquisitions was 41 million euros during the quarter, broadly in line with last year. And looking ahead, we continue to expect full-year CapEx excluding acquisitions to be slightly above 2025 level. Overall, our cash generation remains healthy and continues to support our growth investments and shareholder returns. So finally summarizing the Q2. Demand remained broadly stable compared to the recent quarters, although the overall market environment continues to be soft and characterized by uncertainty. The main challenge during the quarter was the sharp increase in raw material and logistics costs. And while we have taken pricing and productivity measures to offset these impacts, the benefits will materialize gradually over the coming quarters. As Antti mentioned, we are not expecting the customer price increases to fully cover the inflation impact. And on top of them, we have profitability improvement initiatives ongoing. At the same time, our strategy execution continues. We are maintaining focus on cost efficiency, operational excellence and long-term growth investments. Supported by a solid balance sheet, we continue to strengthen Chimera's competitiveness and position the company for sustainable value creation. And with that, I'll conclude the presentation and hand it over to you, Kiira. Thank you.

Thank you Tuomas and thank you Antti. Maybe we can all stay here. So now it's time for the Q&A after the presentations. We have already received several questions through the webcast chat. So those will be covered here as well. But I would now kindly ask the operator to open the line, please, for the telephone questions. So please, operator, let's go ahead.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. To enter the queue, if you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Ansi Rasi from SEB. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi all. It's Ansi Rasi from SEB, and thank you for the presentation. A couple of questions from my side and firstly on your volumes. So did you see any recovery when we had these maybe thin hopes of peace in Iran or was the demand situation basically the same throughout the quarter?

Well, thank you, Ansti. We don't really comment intra-quarter things and basically that's it. And these are so quick, these movements, that even if we would comment, I couldn't say anything because it's one day up and one day down. And these are really kind of quite, I would say, slow value change to move. So these kind of, you know, very quick movements don't typically show through.

Yeah, I understand. And my second question is on your prices, sales prices. And I think the impact on earnings was something like 25-26 million euros negative during the first half of the year. So just to double check that, does your guidance on the impact of raw match and prices mean that the earnings impact of sales prices will turn sharply positive in the second half? Despite the pricing cycle now being longer than before, is it fair to assume that this will happen mostly in Q4? Just thinking about the starting point going into 2027.

Yes, so as I mentioned, basically the delay typically is up to two quarters, and basically you would see the full impact of the price increase actions done now in quarter four. Of course, we started some of those already early in the quarter, and then accelerate it towards the end. So there's not a given date that you can count from, but they would be kind of fully impacting the quarter four. And similarly, like you saw the negative pricing impact now in Q2 results, as I explained, that's mainly due to pricing decisions made in quarter four last year. And that you see now then.

Okay, thanks. Got it. My last question is on your water treatment segment so could you give us any more in detail view like which industrial sub-segments are especially under pressure in this segment right now?

Just good to remind that of course we have the municipal part and then what you refer to the industrial part of the water business and basically we serve any industry that consumes water and practically any industry consumes water. So it's a really wide variety of different industries that we serve and when the overall economy is down then of course all of these are impacted. Now, like the car industry in Europe, for instance, very good example of an industry that is still kind of struggling a lot and will continue to struggle. Now, it would be probably easier to kind of pinpoint a couple of industries within the portfolio which are doing better than the rest of the economy. And there you see really the kind of data centers which are using a lot of water, which is one of the kind of Still emerging things, so not the big thing, but basically that would be one of the benefiters of the current economic situation. You see some positive signs on the mining side because, again, this kind of data boom consumes a lot of minerals and so forth. So there are a couple of examples which you can read from the newspapers every day that are doing well, but really the rest of the economy is quite subdued at the moment.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you.

Thank you, Antti. We can now take the next question, please.

The next question comes from Martin Roediger from Kepler Shoebrew. Please go ahead.

Yes, thanks for taking my question. I will ask them one by one, in total three if I may. In packaging and hygiene, you mentioned cost-savings. explaining the earnings increase in that segment. Can you quantify these cost savings in that segment? And if there are cost savings in the other segments, can you quantify them as well? That's my first one.

Yeah, I mean, we don't go to the business unit level quantifying the cost saving impacts, but we've been doing several different changes in the structure, reducing the overstaffing in certain areas to match the demand and so forth. So those are relatively significant on the package and hygiene solutions level. And then on the group level, the only thing that we have openly communicated is about the The second question is the data between selling prices and input costs caused an EBITDA drag of minus 21 million in Q2. You said that the Iran war will cause a drag of

100 million in the full year 2026 and expect to compensate half of that with price hikes. Thus a net effect of minus 50 million in 2026. That means another 29 million drag is to come in the second half. Is that math correct? Or is it wrong because the 8 million drag in Q1 is also related to the Iran war?

That's kind of give or take right. You have your math correct there. So basically, of course, there are always other things that move around. So it's not the clean cut case. And I say these are approximate numbers. But ballpark wise, yes, I mean, your math is correct.

Okay. And finally, is the border between Russia and Finland closed? And To which extent has that impacted your sourcing, your selling activity? I understood that you mentioned sulfur supply from Kazakhstan is also now interrupted. I guess that is also coming via land. Is there other items, other effects also from that potential closure?

The border between Finland and Russia has been closed for years now and continues to be so. And we basically walked away from any business in Russia the second day after they attacked Ukraine and we remain solid on that. We will not be returning during the current regime into Russian markets. We don't get any raw materials from Russia. So basically the impact is just the transportation via their territory, which has happened via the Central Europe rather than the Finnish border. And basically, as I mentioned, they've now stopped all the energy and raw material related deliveries via their territory because they are badly short of those materials themselves. So this is the situation. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Martin. We are ready to take the next question, please.

The next question comes from Joni Sandvall from Nordia. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks for the presentation. Starting maybe with the PHS in APAC, I'm just wondering what changes or actions are you taking there on top of the changes that you have already done? So you mentioned the acceleration of profit measures there.

Yes, so again, without going into too much detail, we are reviewing the whole business kind of operating model and also the kind of products and services we offer to our customers, looking at where we can be profitable, where not, looking at the asset network we have there. So basically all the angles of the business are evaluated and evaluated. We aim to draw the conclusions and start the kind of definitive access still this year to kind of fundamentally improve the profitability.

Okay, okay, that's clear. Then still one question on the pricing actions. Is there any difference between the segments? I understand the water solutions is more on the fixed side, but how customers have taken the price increases, is there any difference between segments?

Um... There's, of course, always some variation and difference and basically how the customers accept those. But you can pretty much, I think, draw the conclusion if you look at the customer industries and how they are doing themselves. So the better the customer industry is doing, the easier it is to pass through the raw material increases. And the worse the customer industry is doing, then, you know, obviously they are more strict or kind of less capable of accepting the cost increases. but I will not list any industry kind of from the back here.

Okay, that's clear. And then lastly on the 100 million cost headwind, which you mentioned 50% to be covered by the price increases. Just to clarify this, is this your assumption based on pricing actions already negotiated? I mean, is there downside risk on this assumption?

Well, at least there's an upside opportunity to that, because as I mentioned, we continue to push for those. So basically, of course, our aim is to cover as big part of the cost increase as possible. But this is our best estimate at the moment for the year.

Best realistic estimate.

Best realistic estimate at the moment. Okay, thanks. That's all from me.

Thanks.

Thank you. I guess we don't have any more questions on the line at the moment, so we could take a couple ones in the chat. And there are a few that are very similar, so I try to bundle them now. and they are related to the cost impact of the Iran situation. So you expected cost inflation to have approximately 100 million negative impact and about 50 of that mitigated by price increases. Did the price increases have a positive impact already now in Q2 or will it come with a lag in later quarters? And then also a question on impact to 2017.

Well, as I explained, it will come with the lag, and there's, again, you know, there's probably kind of a tiny bit of impact already on the quarter two, but not material, and majority of the impact will come through the Q3 and Q4 then.

Yes, and I guess that we are not yet commenting on 27, so that's then something where we will come back later. Then there is a question on fiber essentials and negative growth numbers. So could you elaborate on the clearly negative growth number in fiber essentials? What is driving the decline in Q2 and is there differences in growth between geographies? Especially in bleaching chemicals, the trend seems to have changed clearly worse in Q2. Is this the right conclusion?

Well, it is and it is not so. As we explained, the comparison period, 25 quarter to the market conditions in the pulp market were still relatively normal, so to say. So the comparison period is kind of normal demand environment. We really saw the downtimes at the pulp mills only taking place this time of the year last year. So basically that kind of weak demand has continued now for the past 12 months. Thus the comparison means that basically the delta to the previous year is relatively high. And now do we see some differences in the market? Yes, we do. I mean, it's a long-term trend that basically the pulp markets are doing Pretty well, actually, in the southern hemisphere. In APAC, where we are not so much exposed, but really in Latin America, and our business in Latin America is doing really well. Whereas the northern hemisphere, pulp assets, as you've seen from our customers' announcement, both in North America and here in Europe, they are taking down time, extending the maintenance break. So the demand is really kind of... Demand pattern is dual in the sense that the demand is weak in the northern hemisphere, but solid and strong in the southern hemisphere.

And then there would be a question on ROSI. So as M&A in water solutions will continue, can one expect ROSI percent to decline, decline to continue as it has done steadily since the second quarter 24?

I can take this one. So of course the nature of M&A when you get the capital employed impact right away on the balance sheet and then the future earnings comes over time. So from that perspective of course the M&A activity has a Thank you very much.

Thank you. Those were now all the questions from the chat function. I'm just going to check the operator if there are any more questions in the line, please.

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers.

Great, thank you. As there are no more questions, so I think it's time to conclude our Q2 webcast. And of course, I mean, like if there are any questions, feel free to contact the investor relations team at Kemina. Happy to help you. And maybe before we are heading to summer holidays, it's time to remind that our Q3 interim report will be published on October 23. So if we don't see before that, then at the latest back then, we will be here back in the studio. And now I would like to thank everyone for the active participation and of course wish everyone A very lovely and relaxing rest of summer. Thank you.