Alfa Laval Corporate AB

Good morning and welcome to Alfa Laval's fourth quarter and full year earnings call for 2025. So Fredrik and I, we will give you a rundown presentation, a summary of the quarter and the year, and then we will go to the Q&A as always. So let me start with some introductory comments to the quarter and the year. In all, we felt it was a strong year in 2025, resulting in record invoicing and record earnings, with earnings per share for the first time climbing to 20 sec per share. The supply chain was strong, especially in the quarter, and we delivered a record invoicing of 19 billion SEC in the fourth quarter. With that said, we still need capacity additions that are required to support our customer base in the data center applications. And yesterday, the board of directors approved a targeted CapEx program of 1 billion SEC for this purpose specifically. Then finally, during 2025, Alfa Laval has prepared for further growth by simplifying the operating model and consolidating the business unit structure. It is a substantial reorganization of the company. And as of January 1st, the new organization is operational after considerable efforts on many hands. And with that, let's move on to key figures. Orders held up well with a 2% organic decline in Q4. We had good support and strong demand from the US and several important Asian markets. The margin was okay, and as always, a bit affected by the seasonal high share of project invoicing. In addition, we carried approximately 150 million sec of one-off costs, partly related to the ongoing reorganization program. On a divisional level, first to the energy division. Orders reached an all-time high in the quarter at 6.1 billion SEC with firm demand in both HEVAC and cleantech applications. Data center orders were increasing as anticipated and was accounting for approximately 15% of the divisional orders. Service has been slow during 2025 for the energy division, partly due to internal constraints. In Q4, the service was again showing double-digit growth, and the growth trend may well continue into 2026. As indicated earlier, a new CapEx program of one billion SEC is launched to maintain a leading market share for the heat transfer applications in the data center business. The program is spread over our existing footprint in the US, in China and in Europe. We are with the existing infrastructure in a very good position to scale our volumes and capacities in this area specifically. Then to the food and water division. Orders remained flattish organically, both sequentially and year on year. We continue to see considerable growth opportunities in many end markets going forward, and the new growth strategy launched in 2025 is supported by targeted investments into application specialists and the global sales force to cover areas like pharma and protein. The margin in Q4 was impacted by some one-offs, both in weak project execution and the reorganization as discussed earlier. And it amounted to approximately 80 million SEK in the division. In 2026, we will take some cost for driving the growth strategy forward in the areas described with some margin impact in 2026 and possibly into 2027. Then on to the marine division. Orders were stable sequentially and the lower cargo pumping orders were, as before, partly offset by growth in the other application areas. In all, the market is, and is expected to remain, stable to positive for ship contracting. Invoicing continues on a good level based on a solid order book with a positive mix. The order book mix remains unchanged in 2026. Then on to service. After many years of growth, the service business now accounts for about 20 billion SEK of invoicing. The growth trend slowed a bit in 2025 compared to before, but the structural demand trends remain positive and the troubleshooting in the energy division specifically is now completed and resolved. As a consequence, in the quarter, we had unusually large mixed differences between the divisions. with the marine division at almost 40% share of service orders, partly related to lower project order intake on the marine division. And the energy on the other side with just above 20% of service order intake after a very strong capital sales quarter in Q4. The spread between the divisions is expected to decrease going forward. All right, and then a couple of regional comments to round up. In many aspects, it was a positive quarter with good progress in important growth markets like Southeast Asia and India. China was positive in energy and food and water, but not fully compensating for the slower cargo pumping volumes that we expected in the quarter. U.S. grew in many end markets with special focus, obviously, on the data center market, and we had an all-time high in the quarter for the U.S. market as such. And with that, let me hand over to Fredrik for some further financial details.

Right, so let us dive straight into it and take the order intake in quarter four amounted to 17.1 billion with a negative currency impact of 8.7%, a structural growth of 3.3% and an organic contraction of 2.2%. What's notable in the quarter is the continued slow conversion of large project business from project pipelines that are both extensive and with quality projects. The energy division reflected demand strength in HVAC with a 7% growth and on data centers more than doubled. On a whole year basis, order intake accumulated to 66.7 billion with a negative currency impact of 6.1%. Growth from acquisitions of 1.6% and then organic contraction of 6%. Of the negative organic growth, the majority of the contraction is slow conversion of large projects, which lag behind with some 20%, of which the majority stems from the normalization of marine pumping systems and large project orders in food and water. Transactional business, on the other hand, increased with 2% during the year to compensate. The order book stood at 48.3 billion at the end of the year, of which some 7.5 billion is invoicing for 2027. During the year, 1.9 billion of negative revaluation due primarily to currency impacted the backlog and order intake. Quarter four book to bill was 0.89 with a good invoicing and project execution in Q4. Now moving on to sales. Revenues in quarter four reached an all-time high of 19.1 billion with a growth compared to last year of 4.6% of which 10.9% was organic, 3.1% coming from acquisitions and the negative impact of currency with a whole 9.4%. The higher revenue stems from good project execution in the quarter and a good mix of growing transactional sales. Revenue in all three divisions grew in the quarter, energy division with 12%, food and water with 1%, and marine division with 3%. On a year basis, revenues grew with 4.1%, driven by 7.9% growth of organic business, 1.8% structural, and a negative currency impact of 5.6%. Revenues from the marine pumping systems increased with 23% on an annual basis, and project execution in the Food and Water Division contributed with 10%. The large order book we carry into 2026 supports a continued good development in revenues. Now to some key figures. The adjusted gross profit of 34.7 was in line with quarter four in 2024, but sequentially lower than quarter three at 37.8, reflecting the heavier project execution mix in quarter four. The adjusted gross profit margin as in previous quarters continues to be supported by strong manufacturing results. S&A grew with 2%, while R&D grew with 11.6%, as expected in the quarter. Operating income grew with 8.3%, yielding an adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.9%. To be noted further is that the adjusted margin is affected by the last tranche of the acquisition costs incurred in the cryogenics transaction, lower yield from a project's execution in food and water division, and costs arising from the new organizational structure with some 150 million in the quarter. The increase of financial costs in quarter four is driven by higher interest costs and more substantially by the net of exchange rate differences. Profit before tax is on a similar level as last year and finally an EPS of 4.79 for the quarter. On an annual basis, adjusted gross profit margins increases to 37%, reflecting the revenue mix, a strong factory and engineering result, and positive purchasing price variances. S&A grew with 4.5% and R&D with 4.9%. However, both remain stable in relation to revenues at 15% and 2.5% respectively. Operating income increases with 12.6% to yield 11.7 billion and EPS for the year just above 20 crowns, an increase of 12%. Now on to some profitability comments. The adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter ended at 16.9%, an increase of 1% compared to quarter four 2024. In absolute terms, the adjusted EBITDA in quarter four increases with 437 million, despite the negative currency impact and the additional burdening of the result with 150 million in the quarter as previously detailed. On an annual level, the adjusted EBITDA margin was 17.7%, an increase of 1% compared to 2024. Adjusted EBITDA increases with 12% to yield 12.3 billion. Now some comments on debt position. Debt has increased with 7 billion, reflecting the financing of acquisitions during the year of 9.4 billion, with a resulting leverage to EBITDA of 1.21. Net debt after subtracting a health and liquidity position of 7.8 billion is 9.4 billion, which corresponds to 0.66 in relation to EBITDA. Finally, net debt, including lease liabilities, lands at 0.92 in relation to EBITDA. Cash flow from operating activities in the quarter was on a good level, given the increase in revenues. Release of working capital was positive, but on a lower level than quarter four last year. CapEx in the quarter was in line with guidance, bringing the free cash flow for the quarter to 2.6 billion. On an annual level, cash flow from operating activities was 9.2 billion. Capital expenditures in line with yearly guidance at 2.7 billion. Three acquisitions during the year totaled 9.4 billion. And after financing activities, the final cash flow for the year was positive with 168 million. And finally, for some guidance on Q1 2026 and whole year 2026. CapEx in quarter one is expected around 0.7 billion and a whole year guidance of 2.5 to 3 billion. Amortizations at 175 million in quarter one and 670 million for the year, and that includes all recent acquisitions. Tax rate guidance remains in the range of 24 to 26%. With that, I conclude my financial overview and I hand it back to Tom for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Fredrik. So let me give you our forward-looking comments before we go to the Q&A. As we are all aware, the synchronized global business cycles are not so synchronized anymore. So in reality, geographies and different end markets tend to move in different directions. So all in all, we remain in a situation where we don't have extremely clear trend lines With that said, the general feeling we have in the market is that it is overall, everything said and done, somewhat positive momentum in the market. And we also perceive that the slowdown we've been having in large capex projects from customers is maybe easing somewhat as we move into 2026. So with that said, we expect, after a strong Q4, sequential demand in the first quarter to be on about the same level as we had in Q4, with the energy division being somewhat lower, but compared to an all-time high record level, as you remember, in Q4. The food and water we expect to be somewhat higher and the marine division somewhat lower. And all in all, it takes us to market conditions that are relatively unchanged in Q1 compared to Q4. And so with that, we round off the presentation and we are open for questions. Thank you.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star N1 on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star N2. We ask you to limit your questions to allow all callers to ask their questions. Anyone who has a question may press star N1 at this time. Our first question comes from Magnus Kruber with Nordea. Please go ahead.

Hi, Tom Frederik Magnus here from Rodea. A couple of questions. First, light industry and tech obviously posted very solid growth in the quarter and it's a distinct step up from prior levels. How should we think about sort of the trends going forward here? I think it's been perceived that it's been a little bit underwhelming here in the prior quarters and now we see a very big step up. So, just some comments on how to look at that would be helpful.

We don't really guide more than the quarter and the quarter is somewhat lower. So I think that's all we really have to say on the matter. But it is true that we've been a little bit low for a number of quarters previously. We were not surprised exactly by the amount of orders that came in in Q4. It was partly to be expected. And as we've guided you before, when it comes to the data center questions specifically, we are a little bit on a shorter cycle than many of the product orders that you otherwise see in the market. So the pickup of that played a reasonable role in the development. But on top of that, I would like to add that despite concerns on the energy transition and what's going on, we did have a good quarter on clean tech applications. And we see both in the food and water division when it comes to biofuel applications and in the energy division when it comes to carbon capture, hydrogen and other related issues that There is still some momentum in the market on that level. So we are sticking to our energy transition strategy. I think it's going to be a bit slower, obviously, than people thought three, four, five years ago. And it may gradually become more market-driven than policy-driven, but there is still a growing momentum in those areas.

Excellent. Thank you so much for adding the extra details, Superb. Super helpful. You also talked a little about 150 million headwinds here in the quarter from various one-off effects and alluded to that could continue somewhat into the first half. Is the 150 million rate a reasonable level or should it be more sort of benign than that?

Well, it's going to depend a little bit. The 150, you can kind of split 50-50 between reorganization aspects and product execution write-offs. So I hope the product execution issues are not repeating itself. The question on what running costs we will have on the reorganization part, which is now So we are sort of on the top level. All managers are appointed on a high level and the financial reporting is going in the new organization. But there's still a fair amount of implementation work to be done, both in sales regions and in business unit structures. And so if we see a higher reorg cost than in Q4, it's because we have uh so far non-communicated savings opportunities on it so it's going to be on a business case basis let's put it that way but at this point in time we would estimate that the one-off cost level will decrease in q1 q2 unless we identify substantial opportunities going forward

Perfect, thank you. And just one final one. The investments you make in data center additional capacity now, how does that compare with your current capacity? Some way of framing that would be helpful.

Well, I think we are in a unique position to scale. We can work off our existing footprint. As you know, we have done considerable investment that earlier was related to heat pump and part of the supply chain and part of the infrastructure needs and equipment needs do overlap between the two applications. So we get a lot of leverage in the brazed heat exchanger technology specifically. So what I would say to put some framework around it is that we are delivering substantial volumes of both gasketed heat exchanges and braced heat exchanges into these applications and a few other things, by the way. And on the gasket side, we are still very well set with the ongoing investment program that we already have committed and partly executed. So there is nothing that of the one billion that goes there. So it's going to be entirely related to expanding the press and to some degree furnace capacity on the braced side. And so we get a substantial leverage for the applications of that. We expect with all the production plans from integrated into our production planning, this will take us a couple of years forward. That's as much as I feel I can say. Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Our next question comes from Mayher Yang with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, Tom and Frederick. I have one question relating to the China Marine. So was the weakness in the Marine side in China more related to the underlying end markets weakness, or are you seeing any signs of market share erosion to domestic players? And if this continues, do you plan to do any capacity adjustments there? Thank you.

No, I think in all we feel the market is... So as we speak, our main challenge in China is the amount of commissioning and invoicing that we need to do in 2026. We have a substantial order book and a substantial overhang, and we are expanding our technical capacities in China substantial is to cope with it. So if we have any capacity issues, it is that we need to scale up, not scale down. The market conditions in China, they were stable and normalized in 2025, and we believe they will remain stable and normalized on the water intake side in 2026 as well. The Somewhat elevated the invoicing levels that we have right now and last year and partly through 2026 may come down a bit depending on where the market goes. But in general, we feel that the contracting level currently at the running rate that we are at is is supporting perfectly well the infrastructure we have. So we're happy with that. On market share, marine is the only market where we know on the decimal what our market share is for every single product category because we know every hull that is registered and we know every hull where we are in and where we're not. And so we are monitoring this extremely carefully and we are making sure that there is no market share slips in this market and it hasn't happened for the last five years.

Thank you, very helpful.

Our next question comes from Akas Gupta with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi, good morning, Tom and Frederick. I got two questions. My first question is for you, Tom. In your comments in the report, you say that the group function are adjusting to meet new regulatory demand and alignment with the business unit. I was wondering if you can elaborate about what do you mean by these new regulatory demand? That's the first one.

You can say what we've been going through in order to adjust the group in terms of speed of decision making and flexibility to manage towards the 100 billion goals that we have in 2030 and to cope with the doubling of business volume that we've been having over the last six years or so. We needed to take some actions to adjust to that and you could say, First part is to a degree a consolidated business unit structure. So we will move with fewer global larger business units than we did in the previous structure. The second part is that we will go from cluster organizations in our sales companies to more regional setups with a slightly more operational twist to how the regions will operate compared to the previous clusters. And the third part is that the supporting group functions need to be adjusted in various ways. In some areas, we need to increase our resources somewhat to cope with the compliance demands and the regulatory demands and the reporting demands we have related to sustainability, but also related to ensuring that the ever more complicated sanctions environment between EU and US is being adequately implemented and with an adequate control. So there are certain areas where we certainly will continue to build professionalism and capacities. In other areas, we are trying to make sure that we don't end up too centralized in part of our group support functions. So we're also decentralizing out in a clear way to our sales regions and to our business units so that we have responsibility for a number of these staff areas that is being carried by operating units and we are not too centralized in in how we operate those functions so it's a it's a gradual you will not see any impact of it but for us it's a very important part of how we operate the company thank you and my second question is on capital allocation so me i mean when we look at your leverage you have gone below one times at the end of the year

So can you talk about prospects of M&A, particularly in 2026, given you will be quite busy with implementing the new operating model? So would it be reasonable to think something might happen, or is it now probably a lower priority with internal heavy lifting? Thank you.

No, we believe we can do both things in parallel. We believe that the M&A strategy that we presented in the Capital Markets Day remains quite relevant and remains a priority. We continue to look at acquisition targets that fit the criteria that we defined at that point in time. We have a pretty good list of prospects that we're looking at. But as always, it's a long process when it's M&A and we set very high standards. But we have in our capital structure created the... the firepower to continue to do acquisitions and present it with the right opportunity and the right price level, we would do so. So we don't see that the reorganization in any way compromises our ambition when it comes to acquisitions. Tom, would you like to add anything?

We might add that we already closed the first one and a small but still meaningful acquisition in China in the energy sector. So we will, as the beginning of this year, so we will give some further comments to that in the Q1 report.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Sebastian Turner with RBC. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first relates to the energy business and specifically data center products, the breast heat exchanges. I was wondering if you can tell us a little bit about the margin profile. I mean, this is a product business. It's not a service business. It will probably change the blend, you know, the mix, and that might have implications on margin. Can you give us a little bit of an idea of...

where you see the profitability of these products going forward thank you it is obviously difficult for me to to comment on application product profitability levels i think you are listen the If you divide it into the brazed heat exchangers and the gasket heat exchanger, the brazed is a non-service product. It's brazed together so you can take it apart. What happens is that when lifetime is over, it will be scrapped. And that is the cycle of that business. It may grow a bit compared to, you know, the entire product area may grow its share somewhat as a share of the annual division, but I don't think it's going to be a huge mix change on that because we're also growing the gasketed. And as for the gasketed, the data center applications are not extremely service demanding. It's kind of similar to a HVAC application where we're dealing with clean water applications. But that will have its normal HVAC related service program. So I don't see a lot of challenges when it comes to i think overall your observation is probably correct that it may dilute the share of service invoicing a little bit as a whole but i'm not i don't see any meaningful there there are other things that are i'm thinking a lot more about when it comes to the margin development than this one okay

I would try to interpret this information. My second question is actually also a data center again. Can you tell us a little bit again about who the clients are? Because it would help the investors now that the business becomes so big. It would help investors to track a little bit the capex or, you know, the client's revenue. Is it the, you know, the NBAND and Vertiv of this world? Are there other major clients that we should be aware of when it comes to especially the grey seal exchanger business? Thank you very much.

Well, listen, I think when you're looking at a market leader in this area, it is not possible to be there unless you are pretty much covering the market. The customers that are out there are by and large our customers. In terms of the procurement process, and that's why I've been saying that we are probably lagging a little bit in terms of bringing the orders into our order book. because we are supplying components and not systems. We are coming a little bit later than many others into the process because we are selling to the system builders and they are the companies we're invoicing. With that said, there are a number of frame agreements with the final owners who may want to specify suppliers and standardize the way they build their data centers in various areas. area so this is a business which is not just a clear straightforward answer there are frame agreements in place there are frame agreements negotiated as we speak and there are supply relationships with system builders and you can safely assume that most of them that you are well aware of are most likely on on on our customer list

Understood. Last question, just for clarification, you talked about project costs affecting energy. Just for me to understand, does this relate to planting of longer projects where you book at cost or you invoice at cost early on and then you invoice for the profit at completion? Or are we just talking about projects overrunning?

No, the specific project execution problem was in the food and water division, so that was weighing on that margin. What happens in the energy division is that we're invoicing, and we do in all companies doing a percentage of completion invoicing process for our projects, but normally it adds up towards the Q4, and it did also in the energy division on Welder, but... The project pipeline and the execution side on the energy division has been spotless on the Q4. So we are good with it, but it does sort of, as a mixed effect, weigh down a little bit. I may add that we had a very good integration of Fiv Cryo, which is also a project business. They are right on line with our expectations. They are well on track with the energy average margin. And the only thing that is weighing on that side is that we are taking a number of million euros as integration cost, and that has more or less now been finalized. So it's been a very short, concise, and excellent integration process of getting the fifth cryo team into the group. It's been a good process.

Thank you very much. Very helpful. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Max Yates with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. I just had two questions. The first one was just around the pumping systems business and order intake. I guess when I look at the kind of pumping system orders, it looks like they're maybe up 100 million quarter on quarter. And I guess when we look at some of the tanker ordering data in Clarksons, it was very strong, up 60% in Q4. I think we've had a good start to January. So I was just wondering, kind of, what are we missing? Because I'm fairly used to kind of this business. When we see the tanker orders pick up, it filters through within kind of one or two months to your business relatively quickly. Yet that doesn't seem to be happening when I look at Q4 orders or when I look at your kind of outlook for Marine for Q1. So is there anything kind of we're missing or we should understand that's happening in the market? I'm just trying to better understand that dynamic. Thank you.

No, I don't think so. And I think in our books after, and so I remind you that in 2024, The pumping system business, including offshore and aquaculture and another of other applications, we were at about 15 billion second order intake for an operating unit, which historically has been on around five. so we we guided carefully that a we are not a 15 billion unit in bergen so that's not the running rate that is possible in any case b we built the water book for two years going forward and essentially yards and and ourselves are fully booked and running at 110% capacity anyway, so we didn't want to see and didn't expect a repeat. And in 2025, we didn't see a repeat. We ended up approximately at 6 billion, which is 9 billion down from the year before, a good number. Six was a normalized plus level compared to where we historically have been. and well in line with expectations that right now in the statistics that converts to about, if you look at the cargo pumping specifically, it converts to about 250 contracted product and chemical tankers that we've seen in 2025, which is on about a normalized level. So the worry that after high contracting levels, we will go flat down on that market. It did not materialize and we didn't think so. We think the age of the current fleet on the product chemical tanker side is still not all that young. So we think a normalized contracting level is to be expected. And that's what we've seen all in all for 2025. I think we ended the year a little bit higher than we started on it. So the trend curve was positive. And so let's see where we go in Q1. But putting everything together, 2025 was not a weak year for order intake all in all. And so we are not overstating our expectations into 2026. Okay.

And maybe just a quick follow-up on currency. So you've had... You know, in the quarter, it looks like you have had a 271 million impact on your EBIT on a kind of revenue number that's about 520 million headwinds. So I was wondering, would you be able to help us at all with kind of any views for 2026? Because I know historically you've always hedged. So... you know, I wonder whether there is any kind of lagging impact from last year and just any kind of view on, you know, is that sort of drop through from sales to EBIT impact for FX, the kind of, you know, 50% plus, should we expect that going forward? Were there some currency revaluations? So just any framing of how to think about, you know, the FX impact on EBIT as we go into 2026 would be helpful. Thank you.

Right. And so let me try to take that. There's several components to this. You're quite correct. We have a hedging strategy for committed orders. And what we mean with those is usually the large orders. Those get hedged as they come in. And then we have, of course, the... the uncommitted volume, or rather the transactional volume that comes in sequentially over the year, and that we hedge as separate volumes. So we do have a hedging that covers a substantial part of our revenues and turnover. The differences that you are seeing trickling down to the EBIT is, of course, the net of all of those effects. It's the net of the movement of invoicing. It's the net of the hedging contracts that we take. It is also the impact that we see from a translational point of view between two quarters in two different years. When it comes to forward looking, when it comes to FX right now, your crystal ball is as good as mine, but I would assume that the strengthening of the Swedish crown that we've seen over the last quarter is probably going to stabilize or to some degree return to a weakening Maybe not a strong weakening, but it's speculation at this point. What we can do is that we secure as much of our turnover as possible through hedging contracts. Then to refer to another part, which you had in your question embedded there, is the revaluation of backlog. And the revaluation of backlog in relation to currency only happens when we take in an order in a foreign currency into our backlog. And that's primarily in the pumping systems where everything is booked into US dollars. And there is, of course, the movement of the NOC to the US dollar. And there we also have seen a strengthening of the NOC. And we don't see that there is too much more headroom for the NOC to continue to strengthen. But again, it is a volatile FX market out there right now. And any quick movements that we see that happen over a quarter, like we've seen in Q4, will create, of course, a currency impact on the result.

Okay. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from Sven Weyer with UBS. Please, go ahead.

Yeah, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my two questions. The first one is on marine. And just reminding us of the packing order on content per vessel. Is it not true that your content per crewed tankers is actually much lower than product tankers? And that's why maybe, you know, the crewed tanker orders we had in Clarkson that were quite strong were not really affecting you disproportionately or... Am I getting the packing order wrong here on content? Thank you. The first one.

You're getting it right.

Crude is more like an average. Is that fair to say in terms of content?

Well, yes, to the degree that there is a meaningful average in this. Crew tankers are large, they are energy-consuming, efficiency matters, and so it is a meaningful part of the fleet for us. it is compared to a product tanker it doesn't provide quite the same mix that's up it's absolutely true and so you need to shave off um maybe i shouldn't speculate too much but shade off a million euros or so and then you're then you're there

Okay, understood. And then to follow up on Marine, because in the report you mentioned the impact of sanctioned vessels on services, right, and that it has a negative impact. Can you drill a little bit deeper into that comment, how it impacts you specifically?

Well, there's been lots of dialogues about how big is the shadow fleet, which is sanctioned and which we do everything we can to definitely not serve and not ship spare parts. probably the number of ships including that fleet is in the order of magnitude of at least 400. And so 400 large vessels does impact. With that said, I think Q4 service volume for marine was not primarily, the numbers that you're looking at there was more impacted by a very large service order, non-repeat service order in Q4 2024. So we had a bit of a challenging benchmark specifically. So I think the service side has gone well, but clearly with 300, 400, possibly a little bit more large tankers out of reach for us, it's not a favorable situation.

When the U.S. now enforces these sanctions more forcefully, for you it doesn't make a difference because the Shadow Fleet was a Shadow Fleet before and you didn't service it anyhow. So that doesn't make an incremental difference.

Absolutely not. No, it's, you know, on the contrary, we find it helpful that there is stronger action taken because... With all the efforts we are doing to make sure that not a single spare part, one way or another, reach a sanctioned ship is a big challenge. So we're working exceptionally hard in protecting that we are doing everything we can to follow the sanctions. But it's helpful for us if the ships are removed. It makes our life easier and it has no impact on our financials at all.

The final question is on the new food and pharma division. Because I was wondering on those projects where you had cost overruns, did I understand you correctly that this is now done at the end of Q4 and this should no longer have an effect. Is that fair?

I'm always careful in prognosting a future where there are no problems, but we have been dealing with, specifically in the quarter, one specific project, and I think we've taken all the measures needed now financially to make sure that that is completed. It is financially not a good product for us, but we are extremely committed to our customers that we are delivering a well functioning process at the end of the day. And so we should be clear of that now. And I remind you that during When we started the journey 10 years ago, we continuously had a number of project execution problems. We cleaned that up very well, so we've been going on a good level for many years now in the project execution. And in the acquisition of De Smet, it's been the same, and it remains the same with De Smet. So this was the first time for a period of time where we actually got into executional challenges. And I think we've been handling it now. In terms of what we know in our books now, we don't have a recurring item on this coming back.

And if I may, what was, I mean, at the end of 25, what was the share of biofuels within the division in terms of orders or sales?

Good question. I don't have that number in my head. Maybe you can check a little bit as we speak. But it's been... 5%. 5%. Five percent. And so it's been very little. It's been depressed. We see a more interesting market in biofuels coming into 2026. They are typically large orders, so they are a little bit, you know, either they come or they don't. But when I'm commenting on the sentiment in the market when it comes to larger projects, that includes the biofuel segment, where we may see some movements in 2026. We are hopeful.

And that 5% was of the order intake, right?

Correct.

Okay.

Thank you. The next question comes from Umar Samlin with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for taking my question. So first one is a follow-up on marine. So I guess you're guiding somewhat lower in Q1. How should we think about the, you know, the mix of pumping system orders versus other marine categories in Q1? So, you know, from your answer to the questions previously, it seems to me that you're thinking like a relatively, still relatively strong pumping system order. Do I understand you correctly that You know, it's the other thought-bearing categories that drive your somewhat lower guide. Some clarification will be really helpful. Thank you.

We are hesitant. You know, here is the thing. Without the crystal ball, the more granular we are in our forecasting, the more off we're going to be. So on a group level, we feel fairly confident. And as you will notice, if you compare backwards on divisional levels, we have a slightly larger percentage. variation of outcome versus forecasting. And it gets even worse if we break it down into business units and individual product categories. So I'm a little bit hesitant to meet your question. But in terms of our earlier discussion on this call, the activity level and contracting level as forecasted and as what we've seen in Q4 looks relatively stable. So it may not be a bad guess that we are reasonably close in Q1 to Q4.

Thank you very much. That's very helpful. My second one is food and water. If I heard you correctly, it seems that you expect some sort of margin impact from your growth strategy in 2026. Can you perhaps elaborate a bit more? What do you see? think is a long-term margin uh good for food and water because i remember you know this division used to be at 17 18 and after the acquisition of deathmatch it was lower to like 14 15 what is your long-term sort of ambition for the margin profile of the water

Well, we typically don't want to run businesses below 15. So our change in our corporate profitability target to 17 anticipated that part of our business most likely is going to be above the 17 and part of the business may be somewhat below. So we are not running a business strategy in food and water aiming to go below 15. What we have done, and I remind you of this, we are building this company for the future. We are running at, compared to historically, exceptionally high CapEx volume, which in part is complemented with higher OPEX costs running in parallel to that CapEx program. And we are building... both product technologies and capacities in the market additionally. So we have been doing that for a long period of time. And I don't see, I guess what we are indicating with the increased investment program in the data center applications and the increased focus on growth strategy in certain newer areas in food and pharma should give you sort of the feel that what we've been doing historically is what we will continue to do. If we stop doing that, I've said it before, any monkey could get the margins up with a percent or two on the Alfa Laval margin. But we think building us towards the 100 billion is the primary target. And we're going to do so with acceptable margins and healthy business conditions. for food and water that means that we are we are definitely aiming in the short and medium term to be somewhat north of the 15 percent target that's super helpful thank you very much the next question comes from carl degenberg with dnb please go ahead

should do in a cash case thank you very much uh good morning frederick and tom so two questions from my side first of all i wanted to come back on the energy division and maybe specifically on the Hivac side obviously that was a drag for you on the order side in 25 but with some improvements towards the latter part of the year but I do want to understand a little bit is that you see that more as a result of you know these inventory drawdowns on the OEM side being behind you and production rates being more sort of indicative of end consumer demand or Do you still see some elevated inventories there among your customers? Thank you.

I think maybe you want to take that Fredrik, you used to run that business.

Well, I think in relation to inventories, I would say that the inventory at our customers distributor network is depleted. That I think we can reasonably see in the call-off for the frame agreements that we have with the larger OEMs. So that would confirm that we are past the destocking and that we start to return to growth or we start to return to normal production. When it comes to heat pumps specifically, I think we see the beginning of a resumption of a normal business and a normal trajectory of business growth in relation to defossilizing heating, particularly then in Europe. And I think that's a strong indication. There is a shift in players in the market. There is going to be consolidation in the market, most likely. But we see definitely that also on the air conditioning side that we are starting to have larger call-offs on frame agreements. So I would assume that that confirms the case that destocking is complete.

Okay, very well. Then secondly, I wanted to ask also on sort of recent raw material movements. I mean, we've obviously seen some quite dramatic price movements on certain raw materials. I guess one quite important component for you is, for example, copper on the brace side or on the heat exchanger side. And I just wanted to hear a little bit if you expect any sort of tangible price impact on that entering 26 now, given what prices are.

Right. And so without getting too much into detail here, we set the standard cost during the year that is based on the frame agreements that we have with our metal suppliers. And we have more than one metal supplier and they have a little bit of different sort of timing and facings of when we renew those frame agreements with our metal suppliers. So we have a little bit of stability and we have a little bit of visibility going forward to what our material prices will be. We also have some metal hedgings that are in place. So all in all, we don't have, you could say in the short term, it doesn't impact us. But in the long term, it means we need to consider how we plan our productions and how we plan our pricing structure. But we allow ourselves a little bit of breathing space to make those decisions in a foundational way in line with our strategy. Tom, would you add anything? No, good. I could add one thing on the copper, by the way. I would say that if you look at the other metals, we probably have a little bit of speculation creeping into the pricing. When it comes to copper, there is actually a foundational demand or supply problem that needs to be sorted out. So there is probably a more sustained higher price level for copper going forward.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Understood. That was all for me. Thank you very much.

All right. And I think we take the last question here at this time.

Our last question comes from Klaas Bergerlind with Citi. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hi, Tom and Fredrik. Klaas at Citi. So I just had a, sorry, a follow-up question on marine again. A lot of questions on marine. But I want to submit on product anchors. Obviously, crude is strong, but product anchors, It's still pretty volatile where your value is higher. We saw a pretty strong first read in December at 19 contracts, but slowed down again in January, as we could see yesterday. The product tanker market is still pretty soft with mid-single-lidder supply growth against around 1% demand growth, and scrapping doesn't seem to increase that much at the moment. I'm just trying to understand, Tom, how you look at demand here in the product anchor category in 2026. If you share this view or if your discussions out there are showing a more positive picture, because it seems like product anchor, given the short cycle nature of that business, is something that maybe can surprise positively. But I just want to hear your view there. Thank you.

It's a good question. The difficulty on what's going to happen on the contracting side. So I remind you that in terms of deliveries from our side, commissioning from our side and delivering from the yards to the ship owners, the 2026 pipeline is very strong. So what we're what we're discussing now is not affecting invoicing in 2026 and to a degree we we also covered 2027 already although not fully so if you're going to see any meaningful impact in a two-year perspective on this it means that existing slots need to be converted that containers are being swapped into product tankers and that type of switches is happening in the market. People are selling options and production slots. So I don't know. I would refer to Clarkson as the most solid foundation for these forecasts. We don't have I think, a better view of the market than they do. But as I said, we came out 2025 on a pretty normalized level. I remind you that the monthly numbers and the yearly numbers are updated afterwards. So all of the All of the bookings are not registered at Clarkson at this point in time, not for 2025 and certainly not for January. So we will see some movement there. We don't expect tremendous volatility short term, but you've seen the volatility down over a period of time when we were a bit unpleasantly surprised, and then you saw the enormous spike starting in 2023 and into 2024. So we haven't exactly nailed the prognosis historically. I'm afraid we will not be able to do it now either, but we're good for a period of time.

We typically do the six-month revisions to the data as well, but it doesn't look very strong. So that is why I asked the question, but I appreciate your comments. Thank you.

All right. So thank you very much. Thanks for the call. And if we don't run into each other before at some of the investor conferences that are happening in London, Miami, and a couple of other places where we will be, then we will meet up at the earnings call for the first quarter in April. So thanks a lot.