Alfa Laval Corporate AB

level and sequentially stable despite clear signs of a slowing global economy. Demand is expected to continue on about the same level in Q3 with some adjustment for normal seasonality effects. Regarding the supply chains, after years of challenges, the supply situation continued to improve with increased invoicing and cash flow as a result. The positive trend is expected to continue and the group's focus to improve customer service, lead times and working capital remains. Finally, the earlier supply-demand imbalances in parts of our energy and marine division that we talked about during 2022 are now removed based on the recent restructuring program and a strong order intake during the last three quarters. The earlier guidance of a gradually improved margin in the marine division starting from Q3 and onwards is confirmed, everything else being equal. And with that, let's go to the key figures. The organic growth of 9% was strong given the economic slowdown. Alfa Laval was negatively affected in the short cycle transactional business, but this was more than compensated for by strong growth in service and projects. Although customers face increasing difficulties in project financing, a reasonable share of a strong project pipeline converted to orders in Q2. The margin at 15% was a bit lower than we like, driven by a 1.5% margin decrease in food and water, mainly a mixed effect from increased project share and partly currency effect. So, while the drop-through from high invoicing did not fully materialize on the EBITDA level, it did fully convert on the net profit and EPS level. Moving on to the energy division. The global energy transition continued in the quarter with strong order growth. The capex cycle for natural gas specifically also continued on a high level with project orders more than compensating for a weaker transactional HEVAC market. The margin continued on a high level with good cost control and pricing discipline supporting the result. Please note that the expected OPEX cost related to the capacity expansion program did not fully materialize in Q2 as forecasted, but is expected to do so from Q3 onwards. On to the Marine Division, demand remained firm across almost all applications with elevated demand, especially in the offshore and cargo pumping sector. Service continued sequentially on a record high level. A consistent strategy of investing into service products and capability is clearly yielding positive results for the Division. The rather large margin decrease that occurred from Q3 2022 was driven by a long order book in boilers exposed to inflationary effects and a depleted order book for cargo pumping systems. After another solid quarter of rebuilding the marine order book, the earlier guidance of gradually improving margins from Q3 remains in place. The demand remained steady. Moving on to the food and water division. Order intake was at an all-time high at almost 7 billion sec in the quarter. The growth was strongly supported by Desmet, the acquisition from last year, which continues to perform well above the acquisition plan in end markets with a positive momentum. the margin decreased in the quarter with 1.5% versus last year. In addition to the expected allusion from De Smet, both currency and the impact from a slower transactional market affected the margin. While the margin was not perfect, it is worth noting that the beta result increased to 960 million SEK, 40% above last year. The transactional demand is on a lower level than last year. We may see somewhat of a recovery towards the end of the year, but short-term actions will nevertheless be taken in order to address the demand-supply balances during the third quarter. Then on to service. The exceptionally high growth in service at 20% organically in the first half of 2023 across all three divisions continued. Earlier, we had some concerns that we saw some pent-up demand from the pandemic, but at this point, we feel our investments into digital capabilities, improved management of the install base, and a better service execution is driving a structural growth in the service business compared to earlier. And then let me round off with a couple of geographical comments. Already in the second half of 2022, we indicated a weaker food and water market in China specifically. That trend has continued in the first half of 2023 and to some degree also spread to the transactional part of the energy division. At this point, the transactional short cycle market is clearly softer in most regions. In that perspective, we are in the middle of a business downturn. A strong marine market, demand from the energy transition and a strong project pipeline is compensating for the weaker macroeconomics. And as a result, all regions are showing a positive growth number on an aggregate level across the division. So with that tour around the world, let me hand over to Fredrik for some further financial comments.

Thank you, Tom, and hello, everyone. Order intake reached yet another all-time high, 18.4 billion SEC in the quarter, representing a growth of 28%, whereof 9% was organic, 13% structural, and 6% on currency. After sales, energy division project business, marine pumping systems and desmet orders are the main drivers in the quarter and compensate for a softer transactional business. Improving supply chains and investments on increased capacity made it possible to invoice a record 15.9 billion SEK worth of products and services, an increase of 34% compared to Q2 last year, of which 17% is organic, 10% through acquisitions. Nevertheless, backlog continues to increase with a high book-to-bill in the period. Reiterating, invoicing in the quarter has remained strong and on a high level, with a gross profit margin of 32%, which is burdened by a heavier share of project business invoicing. Sales and administration costs are in line with expectations, given acquisitions, expected inflationary increases, and increased activity levels. Cost-to-sales ratio reflected a positive development, going from 16.4% to 14.7%. R&D increases are mainly related to inflation and increased activity levels aimed at product development, both in existing and new applications. Operating income is up 22% compared to Q2 last year, which increases the earnings per share from £2.75 to £3.63. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter reached 2.4 billion SEK, which is an improvement with 21% on the same quarter last year, of which only 4% is driven by acquisitions. On a total basis, the 15% adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was diluted with 0.6% by acquisitions, 0.3% by currency, and 0.6% by an unfavorable revenue mix largely coming from the marine division. As indicated in previous reviews, we expect that trend to be broken in quarter three. Commodity prices and inflationary prices are well offset. And finally, restructuring programs to address capacity imbalances are well underway and will start to have a meaningful impact in quarter three, as we have previously stated. A bit of a deep dive. Food and water had a rather large adjusted EBITDA movement in the quarter and therefore we have chosen to highlight the margin bridge for the division. It becomes evident that the bulk of the dilutive effect comes from Desmet. Having said that, this was both expected and communicated. Desmet is performing strongly with an order intake of 2.9 billion SEC that exceeds our forecasts at the time of the acquisition and with a strong project portfolio going forward. Finally, although we worked to smooth out the impact of percentage of completion in invoicing, the margin in the first three quarters is lower than the final yield in quarter four. Less visible is the impact of utilization rates in our high transaction product manufacturing units. Here we have taken action to rebalance capacity. Moving on to cash flow. Quarter two generated an EBITDA of 2.8 billion SEK. Cash flow from operating activities yielded 1.3 billion SEK, a substantial increase in the quarter. However, working capital continues to burden cash flow, where inventory levels are the main contributors. We have initiated multiple activities to address purchasing volumes and optimizing inventory levels to reflect the current remaining supply chain disturbances and uncertainties. Acquisitions so far this year include marine performance systems, which delivers a system that reduces the water drag on the hull of a vessel, and we executed an option to purchase further stake in Klimatempo, a geographic addition to marine digital strategy. We expect capital expenditure to accelerate in the coming quarters, bringing 2023 close to the guidance of 3 billion SEK. and we expect a strong cash flow development during the year. Order backlog is now at 45 billion SEC, of which 20 billion SEC is for delivery in 2023, 25 billion SEC in 2024, 53% increase year on year, and a current backlog that corresponds to four months of current invoicing level and pace. Quarter two book to bill was 1.16%. And finally, we reiterate some of our guidances, and we reiterate a guidance on the CapEx level for the next two to three years of 3 billion SEC. And with that, I hand over back to Tom.

Thank you, Fredrik. And let me then repeat and restate our outlook statement and how we look at the short-term development. And as we expressed in the Q report, despite the slowing economic activity, we believe that the demand in Alfa Laval's markets will remain relatively unchanged in the third quarter sequentially. In the energy division specifically, we think that situation is going to be relatively unchanged sequentially, whereas in the food and water and the marine divisions, we may see some seasonal effects as to how the order intake developed in the quarter. All in all, a fairly stable market outlook for Q3. And with that, we are ready for questions. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selection. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. And the first question comes from Daniela Costa from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I wanted to ask on two things, if possible. Maybe if you could give us a little bit of commentary regarding pricing and how you're seeing that evolving, going forward across fewer segments, especially given some of the transactional challenges. weakness commentary in some of the segments. And then the second thing, just related to your marine commentary, I think you've mentioned, the way that you've written the sentence mentions you expect marine margins to improve from Q3. Just wanted to understand sort of Between now and Q3, or I guess for Q3, do you not see an improvement already? Just to clarify that also, because I guess consensus does expect already Q3 to have a sequential significant improvement versus Q2, just to understand the way you've written it, what it means for timing. And why?

Thank you. All right. Thank you, Daniela. So first on pricing, we have been able to pass on a substantial amount of pricing to the market to account and to cover the inflationary pressures that we have seen and the increase in commodity prices, although commodity prices now have stabilized over the last quarter. So I think we're in a very good position when it comes to pricing. That is not the weakness we see on the transactional business or a reaction to the pricing that we see in the transactional business, rather a reflection of the macroeconomic environment we're in right now. And these are, of course, the first transactions or businesses that get affected by the macroeconomic level. we expect to rebalance some of the utilization consequences of that in quarter three. And then when it comes to marine and the recovery of the margin, yes, correctly, we restate, as we've said previously, that we should see a material improvement of the margin in marine in the third quarter. Tom, I don't know if you want to add some more commentary to that. No.

Maybe just one quick follow-up on the capacity adjustments. You also have significant capacity increases. I think maybe they are in different areas, but do you expect out of your capacity increases that you've increased that you will be fully utilized on those still? Maybe you can...

Yes, where we have done investments in capacity, we expect to be fully utilized. So that has not changed. The continued investments that we do going forward for capacity are also in areas where we see clear growth and where we have clear indications from our customers about a continued strong positive trend. When it comes to the rebalancing, just to put that into more context, it's short-term rebalancing for what we believe is also a short-term downturn in the transactional business.

Understood. Thank you.

And the next question comes from Klaas Berglind from Citi. Please go ahead.

thank you hi tom and frederick class at city so my first question i had was in the the margin in energy and obviously some timing issues of not having the optics in there which drove margin above expectations this quarter i guess but was there anything else anything linked to reval or mix which you think is temporary i'll start here well um

There are many moving parts in bottom line result. There has been and there will be. But we tend to point out the issues that we think that we know that are material and There will be things changing in the coming quarter, I'm sure, on a number of levels. But we thought it was prudent since we gave you a fairly clear number of about 100 million SEK per quarter, if I remember correctly, in OPEC spend. And since that didn't fully materialize, we felt in that sense that maybe we were somewhat overstating expectations. the energy division. With that said, clearly the positive book to build may indicate that we see a bit of a stronger invoicing and so forth. So there will be many things moving, but nevertheless, we thought it was prudent just to highlight it.

That's great. Thank you. My second one is on the growth in energy. And I want to just zoom in a bit on liquid cooling and data centers, Tom, which have been very topical recently for obvious reasons. I think you said But this is an opportunity that potentially can be bigger than the heat pump exposures for you going forward. It will obviously take some time, but keen to hear what you see out there, Tom, at the moment.

I think that would be overstating it somewhat. There are a number of positive trends we see across Europe. I would phrase it in a different way. We tend not to build our business based on a single vertical in a single division. So when you break it down, we can live and be without the data center business, and you will not notice so much of a difference on top line and results. It is one of several factors driving the growth. But I think for us, the central part is the energy transition and the rebuilding of the global energy system. That's where... That's where the holy grail sits and how we find our way into carbon capture, hydrogen, biofuels, and energy efficiency more than anything in a whole range of application, including heat pumps. That is the big item for us going forward. With that said, we have a positive tailwind on the data center's business, not least in the U.S., and so it is an important aspect for us, but I would not like to overstate it.

Okay, fine. My final one is on food and water and obviously a softer transactional business. I think you, Fredrik, before have talked about sort of, you know, potential destocking out there. But we've also heard from others in the industry of higher financing costs, pushing some project decisions to the right. Are you seeing that as well or is it mainly sort of transactional?

Yeah, and quite correctly, Klaus, I mean, there are delays in the conversion of orders from project lists to orders booked to Alfa Laval. And a lot of it is based on financing or the final financing of the projects. We haven't seen any projects come off our project list because of it. rather a delay of it but as you see now in quarter two we've had a very good conversion of projects from the project list that that today sort of compensate for the weakness and the transactional business and that's what we see clearly in quarter two thank you and the next question comes from andrew wilson from jpmorgan please go ahead

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I just wanted to ask, on the short cycle transactional demand, which you've referenced a couple of times, was there a particular region or even particular verticals that you'd point to? I know you sort of made some comments around the businesses, but just if it was a particular region, I'd be interested in any detail around that.

Yeah, let me scope that for you a little bit. In a sense, the service business is a transactional short cycle. We have obviously no effect there. On the contrary, that runs very strong. The marine business, apart from service, is essentially a project business. So that is untouched by the question. So we have that situation in the food and water and energy division. In the food and water division, we described that downturn starting in China last in the starting third quarter last year. And consequently, we are now about a year into the business cycle downturn on transactional in China for the food and water division specifically. Since then, I would say beginning of this year, we've seen similar effects in the short cycle business for HVAC applications. We're looking at refrigeration and a number of other applications now. And there we also have an impact on the energy division. Now, that goes in the same supply chains as a project business. So, in fact, we don't have any capacity problems or utilization problems as a result. It's just a mixed change within the energy division. So that's why we don't have any negative effects on the energy division related to that. On the contrary, we are, as you know, short on capacity, if anything, in that division, whereas in the Food and Water Division, we are not compensating for the full value add that we have in those supply units related to, among other things, pumps and valves in the Food and Water Division. So we see the downturn still in China. We see it since... end of year in Europe. India remains very firm. South America remains good. And North America, there's some variations on the theme, but in principle, it's a very favorable market conditions there too. So I think that's scoping it a bit for you, I think.

Yeah, that's super helpful. Thank you, Tom. And then maybe just two and possibly a little bit of housekeeping. In terms of the OPEC spend on the energy side, I'm assuming we're still assuming the same total spend, it's just the phasing of it.

Yeah, it was not a saving. It's just that, you know, when you move into these large projects and construction projects, you know, there is a lot of pre-work tendering processes and things like that. So while you see construction sites where we've started earth moving activities in Italy and Sweden, among other things, that doesn't fully materialize into the OPEC spending. So I think it was more a periodization of the expected OPEX we will have that comes in a little bit later than we perhaps indicated in our guidance. So there is, you know, if I would back to the question that Fredrik talked about before, if anything, we wish we were earlier in our investment cycle here. We are, despite any macroeconomic concerns here, capacity constraints in a couple of areas and so we're going full speed and it's just that the opex i didn't quite materialize in uh in in q2 i i think i i hope that it does in in q3 and i believe it will that's very clear and then finally and it's just a little comment on the the demand side uh demand guide rather uh when you sort of reference the seasonality when i kind of look historically

I sort of see a low single-digit decline over time between the Q3 versus the Q2, but conscious that large orders and FX and acquisitions all kind of throw that around. But is that a decent starting point in terms of those seasonality aspects that you mentioned?

You know, it's a good question. You sort of hint to a little bit of the difficulty. I think at this moment and also after acquisitions, our guidance is a little bit more depending on the timing of projects. And as you know, we convert projects. pipeline into orders uh at the time of down payments and so we are perhaps a little bit more in third quarter now uh dependent on exactly how projects will materialize and and that is affecting a little bit more on the marine side and the food and water side than for the energy side i i don't want to guide you too much on the percentage term we don't see an abnormal seasonal effects for Q3, but somewhat on the caution that we may not be on the repeat level without necessarily seeing a change in the market sentiment.

Very clear as always, Tom. Thank you.

And the next question comes from Max Yates from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. Just the first question I wanted to ask was just on the energy division and some of the sort of end market commentaries. So, I mean, you've talked about kind of HVAC being – or HVAC and refrigeration being more stable, kind of gas and refinery and clean energy and fossil fuel being much stronger. In particular, you call out kind of gas and refinery. I mean, when we think about this gas and refinery business and where you're seeing strength, is this – sort of traditional refinery capacity being added? Or are we talking kind of more about things like LNG infrastructure, LNG terminals? I'd just be curious to know kind of where that strength is coming from and to what extent you see that as sort of structural energy additions around LNG or whether this is more perhaps kind of cyclical refinery. So any thoughts there would be appreciated.

Right. Good question.

And the build-out of the global gas and LNG infrastructure is ongoing. We see it on the marine side in the water bookings there, and we certainly see it on both terminals and pipeline transportation, liquefaction of LNG. So that whole gas trend is at the moment at the high cycle. It affects us positively now, and we believe that will continue for a while. And so that's one aspect of it. On the refinery side, we are looking at the traditional value chain on the oil side. And I think our comment is making clear we are not so much driven participating on the uptrend. upper part of the supply chain, whereas when we come down to refinery and petrochemical, that's where the main exposure on the oil silo is. I think if we take a step back and look at this situation, I think you could say that to some degree the order book of a couple of billions that we cancelled in Russia before and in relation to the war is now happening in other geographies. The energy independence and compensation for the geopolitical situation is leading to an accelerated investment pace in partly Asia, partly Middle East and related to gas partly in Europe and US.

Okay, that's helpful. And then just a quick follow-up on the food and water division. And obviously, kind of DESMET is kind of one part of the discussion on margins, but the organic drop-through that you've seen in that division is very, very different to what we saw in the first quarter. Is this purely an effect of you're delivering more kind of projects outside of Desmet and less transactional that is profitable? And I guess when you talk about the actions that you're taking in this division, could you just outline kind of a little bit more what exactly you're doing there? And would you expect that to translate to sort of better incremental margins on growth as we go into the second quarter?

Yeah.

First, I just want to say that we were very clear on the margin effect when we acquired this MET. We believe that over the full year, with some quarterly variations, Desmet is a business at about 10% margin. We think it's an excellent business. We took that consciously. And the more successful Desmet is in terms of volume, the more the dilution effect will come into play. So I don't want to, you know, for us and for you, create that as a problem. I think they are performing well in line and above all our expectations on all parameters, including the margin. So we are very happy with that dilution, if I may put it that way. At the same time, there are variations on the theme here. We end up with a mixed change. It's not the margin bridge per se, but when we're growing very fast in certain parts of our business, and at $7 billion, we really had a fantastic order intake in the Ford and Water division, when the short cycle transactional equipment business with a higher than average margin is decreasing as a share and some effects of underutilization, then obviously we get a bit of an effect. That's not so visible in the year-on-year bridge where essentially projects and currency is making up the difference. But compared to where we would have been with the food ambition in a more normalized state, that impacts the margins somewhat. And so, you know, that's where we are with the division. We will, as Fredrik indicated, do some adjustments in terms of supply and demand capacity adjustment. There will not be any major restructuring program, but nevertheless we will do some appropriate adjustments there. We sort of feel that we are at the bottom line of of the short cycle business after four quarters of weaker performance, especially from China. So we're not too concerned on this, but obviously we have an ambition to be somewhat better.

Okay. And just one very quick thought. Just on Desmet, obviously, there was kind of very good orders you've been receiving there. When you look at the pipeline for Desmet, is anything kind of changing in quotation activity, or do you see kind of a very healthy order pipeline ahead that we should continue booking kind of very strong orders in that business?

I mean, you should expect, without being alarmed, that Desmet over the quarters, over the years, will have variations. With that said, we have been looking at a very healthy pipeline in their sector specifically, and we see that in part of the traditional Alfa Laval food systems project business as well, that... that order pipeline was not at all depleted by order intake in Q2. We have a fairly healthy outlook short term on the Desmet side as well. But clearly they are adding to positive numbers in this quarter, which is a bit above what we average expect. But with that said, we are in that cycle right now. And we believe, including the Desmet numbers in Q3, that we will see a relatively stable situation also for them.

Great. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Oh, hi. Good morning. Tom, maybe I could just follow up briefly on that in food and water and then come back to Maureen. Just curious as to what gives you confidence that these pressures in the transactional business are somewhat transitory. And I think you mentioned you expect a recovery towards the end of the year. At the same time, you are taking some capacity adjustments. Maybe you could help us elaborate a little bit, if possible, on what those adjustments are, how meaningful they are, and also what gives you confidence of a turn as we get towards the back end of the year. That would be my first question, please.

Well, doing long-term forecasting is normally not a very good exercise, especially not for me. But we thought it was important for you to see that although the top line in order intake and invoicing is going exceptionally strong, I thought it was important to highlight that within that overall performance, we actually are in a typical normal business cycle downturn. We're in the middle of it and we've been in it for a while. I think what's different with the cycle so far. is that it's very sector-specific. And we have for a long time struggled with how do we plan our long-term growth curve based on positive momentum in energy transition and other sectors that need significant capex investments over the next decade or two versus the short-term impact of a downturn. And I think this is what we are seeing in our portfolio right now. uh and that's why we wanted to highlight the question of perhaps a bit overstated but nevertheless now the reason i'm i'm somewhat uh uh optimistic or haven't taken the conclusion that we are head over heels heading downwards and need to go into major adjustment of our capacity in certain sectors is that we've been there for four quarters already uh we have absorbed volume decreases and weaker markets in China and now in Europe for some time. And the food and water market is typically not hyper-cyclical for us. So when we look at the volume curves that we have at the moment and where we've been over the last four quarters, looking two, three quarters ahead, it seems to us reasonable that we may start to see a little bit of a recovery on that market. the biggest drop is related to China. And in China, there is normally an awareness of how the macroeconomics go. There is a significant interest on behalf of the Chinese government to make sure that the economy is developing in a reasonable way. And so normally we do see some positive momentum in weak market conditions. So I think it's based on that that we are you know, guessing as well as you in terms of the future. But that's the basis for why we are not at this point in time too alarmed about the cyclical downturn looking forward a couple of quarters. Don't take me hostage on it. It's my best estimate and guess for how we are reasoning. But time will tell.

Thank you, Tom. Maybe just briefly, if I can, on marine margins. Frederick says the restructuring measures will have a meaningful impact already in Q3. So the near-term recovery marine margins, less to do maybe with some of those transitory headwinds in price-cost effects, much more to do with your internal measures. Wonder whether you can help us scope, Frederick, some of that sort of sequential margin recovery we should expect to see. I mean, you're very clearly confident about your 15% target, at least in the medium term. How much can we gain back already in the second half and maybe slightly longer term if I can? Clearly encouraging to see marine pumping systems come back. Your backlog is building. Recovery, I think, in ship contracting for Tanga is pretty evident. When do you think, Tom, we might get back to, should we say, more normalized load levels and margins in Phuong Muon? 2025, perhaps?

Should I take the first part?

Why don't you take the first part? All right. I mean, we generally don't give you an exact guidance of where the margins are going to land from quarter to quarter. And I won't do that here either, except to say that we should expect a good jump from where we are today towards the 15 percent in quarter three. And part of that is related to, as you quite correctly into, the fact that we are covering some of the underutilization that we've had on the pumping systems with the newly booked orders. A very substantial part also comes from the restructuring and addressing the imbalances that we've had with then the normalization of the scrubber and ballast business to a normal contracting level rather than the retrofit level. levels that we've had in the past so all of those together will drive a better profitability in quarter three or margin development for marine in quarter three so we're quite confident yes we remain confident tom to the second part

I don't want to move into 2025, but in terms of business activity, I think we will ramp that a lot quicker. I think we are moving into normal capacity utilization relatively quick, and that means that by year end we should be... at good utilization levels. Exactly how the in-for-out and the deliveries and the results effect are coming, let's see. But as Fredrik said, we are very comfortable that we see a change in Q3, we see a change in Q4. And based on the order backlog we have now, we believe we have a good start in 2024 already in the books. I remind you also that we did face, as you yourself pointed out, that the capital markets some erosion in the boiler business margin long term. That was down on a low during last year, this year, and we are rebuilding a somewhat more healthy boiler backlog that also will start to kick in during this year and certainly into 2024. So I think those structural things are already in our books, and that's where we are relatively comfortable and want to indicate that the slump that we had since a year ago... is structurally changing strategically, market share-wise and gross margin-wise in the product portfolio. We are not structurally very different from what we were before in those areas. How far it will take us, let's see, and there are other things that are affecting us as well. But on those things, everything else being equal, we will see a clear improvement throughout this year and into 2024.

That's helpful. Thank you.

And the next question comes from the line of wire from UBS. Please go ahead.

Yeah, morning. It's Sven from UBS. First one is on the pipeline conversion because on the one hand, we discussed higher rate sensitivity of clients. On the other hand, you had a great conversion of the pipeline. So is it that clients are increasingly – realizing that rates are going to stay higher for longer, so it's not really worth waiting for a rate cut or what's driving that acceleration and the conversion of the pipeline. That's the first one.

You almost have to ask them. They are good projects out in the market. The downturn in the global economy is not across the board even, and consequently there are still a lot of capital being moved into Capus, and that holds true for the traditional fossil side, which is very profitable at the moment. holds for the marine sector where a lot of ship owners and sectors are making a strong margin and it holds for the energy transition which almost is a given that we have to move forward one way or another so i think the the interest rates hike and the way to cool the economy is is not exactly a typical cycle situation and this is why i've been a little bit uh concerned as to what effects will the interest rates have on the underlying inflationary environment in part of the industrial sectors where we see shortage of labor, shortage of at least reasonably high commodity prices in many areas until recently. So it is a bit of a split picture. But all in all, compared to normal down cycle, the project side has stayed unusually strong, and we haven't seen that change.

Well, the rate sensitivity isn't that high to start with among your clients because they're making the structural investment anyhow.

That's what it seems to be happening, yes.

Okay. The other question I had was just, and sorry to follow up on this short cycle topic, but I was just wondering inside the food division how high a share of the transactional business is outside service? and why we wouldn't see any beef stocking outside of China among the European and American clients in that business?

I don't think we... mainly have seen destocking as the big issue. As you know, those of you who have followed us for a long time, we were almost surprised at how firm the volume growth remained in the food and water really since 2018 or so, and then through the pandemic and whatnot. And we asked ourselves whether we saw some stocking behavior in this because supply chain difficulties and other things forced installers and distributors to put things on the shelf. We never really identified a large stocking behavior among our customer base and channel partners. Of course, there may be some that happened at that point in time, but I just think that the underlying Business activity at our channel partners in the food and water side has slowed, and as a consequence, the water pots go down. So I don't think we are too concerned about destocking effects, a bit more concerned with underlying smaller projects related to retail, related to cooling, related to... small capacity adjustment and some general investments into the food cycle when you know if you look at it the closest we are to the consumer markets when it comes to what people go and buy in the supermarket or elsewhere it is in the food and water division and consequently dairy products and all of that is potentially affected a bit more in our portfolio than let's say the energy transition type of customers very clear thanks tom

The next question comes from John Kim from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning. Conceptual question. When you think about your book of business in the next three to five years, have we seen a sizable impact from the IRA in the U.S.? And how do you think you're positioned on capacity and workforce versus the opportunities that you see now and what you might see in a couple years? Thank you.

I think if I read the situation, we've been a bit more conservative in our estimates for what the IRA means in terms of investments, activities and business activities in the US. We've been a bit more conservative for two reasons. To begin with, there's such a labor shortage in the U.S. that we have a hard time to see sharply accelerating business activities in general. Something has to give in the U.S., so if it moves towards IRA projects, something else has to give. That's one aspect. The other aspect, more importantly, is that IRA is not that crystal clear in terms of how it will play out for the investors. And consequently, we see a lot of pre-work at customers in terms of deciding on how to do and how to go forward. But the material impact of Aira, I think in many areas will come perhaps a little bit slower than people think. And from that point of view, It doesn't form a huge part of our short term growth plan when we look to 2023, 2024. Clearly, as part of the overall capex into the energy transition, IRA will play over time an important role for us. I think we will participate in that as we do everywhere else. We do have a good presence in the U.S., and as you know, about 20 percent of our business is in the U.S. since the late 1800s. So we are very well established and positioned there. But if I look at our supply chain, global supply chain situation overall, we are at this point in time, if we assess the overall global geopolitical situation, we are a little bit heavy towards Asia and we are a little bit weak towards U.S. So in shades of gray, the balancing may require us to put some further efforts into the U.S. footprint. But with that said, we are not in a bad position. But I think in terms of optimization, we have some further work to do there.

Great, thank you.

The next question comes from Andreas Koski from BNB Paribas.

Please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good morning. I have a question on input cost, because I read in the report that you're still explaining some of the margin weakness that we have seen in marine, at least by higher material costs. During this earnings season, we have seen a lot of companies talking about material costs being a tailwind. I guess the reason why you are still seeing this as a headwind is because you hedge a larger part of your purchasing. So can you please elaborate a bit on what you think will happen to your input cost in the coming quarters and going into 2024 based on today's prices?

And I think there's two parts to that question. One, which is the prices that we're purchasing in or doing call-offs for material today. And that is, of course, on a more stabilized, lower level than what we saw six months ago. So that will have an impact and will come through in the invoicing in the next coming quarters. What we have seen then, to your question, is that The margin impact that you see from the inputs is more related to the timing of the order intake in the marine business, which is somewhere between nine to 18 months lead time. And the price at which that order was taken and when it is being delivered and delivered. Consequently, of course, then the input price versus what it was calculated to be at the beginning, all of those have an impact on the margin. And that's what we refer to when it comes to the marine industry, that there is a lag between the order intake and when we deliver it and when we do the purchasing for it.

Yeah. And do you think there is a risk that you will have to lower your selling prices because commodity prices have come down?

Right now, we don't believe short term that we have to reposition our price based on inputs. Of course, if there's a substantial change in material prices or a substantial change in commodity prices, we will have to adjust in order to remain competitive on the market. But we have no such plans right now.

So is it fair to say that your selling prices will sequentially be higher in the coming quarters based on what you have in your backlog at the same time as your input costs will be lower in the coming quarters based on what has happened to raw material prices?

No, I would say that the pricing level that we have today is representative of the purchasing levels and the commodity prices that we have today. And, you know, from a backlog perspective, we may have a positive impact from the calculated margin that we had for those projects, not necessarily the price.

Okay. Thank you very much.

And the next question comes from Sebastian Kühne from RBC Capital.

Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning, everyone. My first question is relating to the heat pump business or heat pump exposure. We now have in Germany a long discussion on the – new heating laws, there was a three-month delay on the ruling of the heat pump laws, and this kind of takes out momentum there. So I was wondering, in your CapEx plans, in your expansion CapEx plans, how much would you say is earmarked for residential heat pump use? So what portion of the heat exchanges are used for heat pumps there? That would be my first question.

I think I will answer the question a bit more broadly.

The capacity expansion plan per se, why we're doing it as fast as we're doing and as intensive as we're doing, is driven by the demand situation in heat pumps. Now, in quickly growing that, and your question is, what's the risk that we sit with unutilized capacity? There are two important things to reflect on. The first one is, As we speak today, we are production schedule including Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. We go 24-7. We go five shifts. It's not a good way to operate our kind of business. So everything else being equal, we will be operating at a better level and at a better cost level if we had another 20% global capacity in place already today. We would just adjust our shifts and our working procedures in a good way. So part of this adjustment is just a healthy way of injecting a predictable production planning process, customer service, and cost levels in operation. The second issue is that, of course, we are reflecting on whether there are some risks in the heat pump market related to the fact that, at the end of the day, policymakers are hugely influencing the volume development in the sector in Europe for the coming five to 10 years. Now, we think the direction is clear, regardless of what happens in Germany. So directionally speaking, we're okay. But for us, the other aspect is that the type of products that we are building on the heat pump side will have its applications also into the hydrogen economy and a number of other areas. So even if we're looking forward three, four years and see that we are maybe not, we are over delivering on the supply side we have a number of good areas where we think we anyhow need to build our capacity in preparation for hydrogen economy and others so we feel really confident about the investment program we're going full speed and even if we see some weaknesses in Germany we are firmly with our core customers to help them drive the business as good we can and so we're comfortable with it Understood

And then another question on food and water. We discussed the transactional versus project business a little bit, but it's still not fully clear what really the margin difference is between those two. I mean, it's clear that project business is much lower because you hope for more follow-up business afterwards, but Are we talking twice the margin between transactional and projects, or is it just a 3% difference, or is it 0% for projects and 20% for transactions? How should we understand the margin difference? It's important because when you talk about change in the mix...

Well, you know, we're not going to do the spreadsheet for you, but I think if you do your homework, you will know very clearly that our performance level and ambition level on the project business is to run that at 10%. And if you compare to any engineering projects type of business, I think you would agree that that is a reasonable and good target, and that's where we are. And we've described the journey we had in our own food system business over seven years from a more or less break-even type of level to a healthy business at about 10%. So that's where we are. So if you take out the project business from food systems and the dismet effect, you will see where we are. and calculate that based on about 10%, you will see where we are in the rest of the business. Understood. Thank you very much. I think we are at the last question, maybe.

Yes, the last question comes from Gustav Schwerin from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Just to follow up on the energy margin, I'm sorry if I didn't pick this up, but the increased objects related to the investments, was that close to zero in the quarter? Because we know how to think about the delta sequentially. Thank you.

No, it was not zero, but it was not to the 100 million that we had indicated in our guidance. It was most likely at a half of that. I think it's fair to say.

All right. Thank you.

All right. And with that, thank you very much. We will meet again after the Q3. And after the Q3, not too far later, we will have our Capital Markets Day, which also will be done from the studio this year, whereas next year we probably again will show you some exciting products in real life. Thank you very much. Thank you.