Suominen Oyj

Good day and welcome to Suominen's Q2 result audiogast. My name is Julia Koivalanaho and I'm the interim head of Suominen Communications. Next, our president and CEO Tommi Björman and CFO Janne Silonsaari will present the result. Janne, Tommi, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Julia, and good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining this second quarter of 2024 release discussion agenda. Yeah, we will do so that actually I will go through the second quarter in brief as well as the first half of 2024. Then Janne will continue with the financial reviews and then I will progress with the strategy and give you the outlook of 2024. And after that Julia will take care of the questions and answers if you may have any of them. So if we look at the first, the second quarter in brief, so we saw five percent increase on our top line then amounting 118.7 million euros which was mainly driven by the increase of the volume and especially the volume search in in the United States and then that drove of course partially the comparable EBITDA to 5 million comparing to the previous region to 2.7 million, which was actually not only driven by the volume, but as well as the improved sales mix. And then driving the whole business overall, the cash flow from the operation ended up in 2.1 million, comparably previous year it was 6.4 million. And then in order to look at briefly the whole second half, the first half of the year, excuse me, We can see that the total amount of the sales was 232 million euros. Janne will come a little bit details about how it was composed. And then comparable EBITDA during the first half of the year was 9.5 million, which was a bit more, 4.2 million better than previous period, which we could say that actually at this case, you know it is satisfactory based on the situation where we are today. Of course then the cash flow was slightly negative and also that on the negative side so that compared to last year so we have some explanation coming from Janne that what was driving mainly those deviations compared to last year. But all in all you know the second quarter and first half of the year we could see that the improvement continued as seen in the numbers okay Janne please let's look at the financials

All right, good morning on my behalf as well. So as Tommi mentioned in the key figure summary on previous slide, net sales increased roughly 6 million or about 5% to 119 million. We have been able to increase the sales volumes, but sales prices have been lower driven by the lower raw material prices. Slightly positive currency impact on Q2. We saw basically the same amount negative on Q1, so the year-to-date level no impact from the currencies. We continued the good trend on the new product sales. As a reminder, that means the products that we have commercialized during the past three years with the sales exceeding 37% of net sales. So we keep on reshaping our portfolio according to our strategy and to watch the more sustainable products. On year-to-date level, after first half of the year, the net sales are 232 million. Last year, H1 being slightly below 230 million. Then on EBITDA, the next slide, comparable EBITDA in Q2 was 5 million, as Tommi mentioned, so we have seen a clear improvement from previous year and small step from the Q1 this year. The main drivers for improvement were increased sales volumes, especially in America's region, and better sales margins. There was a minor impact from the currencies, nothing major, and we can say that the gradual improvement continued, but we are still facing some challenges on our internal efficiency actions and how they contribute. And first half of the year, as said, the EBITDA has totaled 9.5 million euros. Here is a consolidated statement of profit and loss mentioning items affecting comparability. Those are costs related to the Mozart plant closer and restructuring program that we announced the end of the May. In Q2 there was 1.2 million euro severance cost book related to restructuring activities. and regarding the Mozart The Closer, which is targeted to be finalized by the end of the year, we actually saw a small positive impact, roughly 200,000 during the Q1. So really, really the minor cost and any more positive from there. And then on cash flow, the next slide, cash flow from operations was €2.1 million in Q2, resulting first half of the year on close to the zero. And decrease in the cash flow from operations in the first half was mainly due to the negative change in the networking capital. This is really driven by the increased inventory levels and some mix on higher receivables or customer mix driven the higher receivables. On inventories, we have reacted on the challenges on global supply chain. We see that the situation will balance on second half of the year, but at the same time, we want to secure the supply security. So that has really been the main impact on networking capital, but nothing major there either. Next strategy and back to you, Tommi.