Holmen AB (publ)

Good morning everybody and welcome to the year end report presentation for the Holmen Group. My name is Henrik, this is Anders and we will go through the presentation and after that we're happy to take any questions you might have. So let's start. First of all, if we look back at 2022, it has been a quite strange year characterized by energy crisis, lack of raw material, horrible war in Ukraine, etc. And for us as a company to have the base in our own forest land, good control of the raw material, but also our renewable energy situation has made it possible to deliver a record high result, historically high. And based on that, we have also had a discussion internally and the board of directors have proposed to give an ordinary dividend of 8 SEK and an extra dividend of another 8 SEK. Our good result in combination with our good financial position, not the least, that we have a very low net debt at the end of the year, 2 billion SEK. We feel that we can both do ordinary and the extra dividend, but also have the muscles that we need to invest in our operations in our different business areas. So it's a rather good feeling about the situation we have. If we then switch to the wood market and the forest, Anders will come back to the value of forest land.

We have a situation, I think we should actually be

quite proud of what we have done the last, say, 50 years. We've been able to all years increase the standing volume of wood in the forest at the same time as we have been able to increase slowly but safely at least the harvest. But we have also been able actually to improve the biodiversity index, which was introduced a few years ago at the COP15 meeting. It's a way to measure the status in the forest and how much it has been affected by human activity. In the case of Sweden, we've also been able actually to improve over the last, say, 20 years quite a lot. You know, there's a lot of discussions about the forest. When we look internally or when we look at Swedish politicians, our report to EU, etc., we get like one picture. When other people look at us from outside, normally we come out much better. Something we have to come back to in the future. But I think actually we could be quite proud of what we have done. And the wood market, well, I mentioned the war initially and the situation we have now if you look at not only Sweden but surrounding countries and the Baltic Sea. We have a situation where we don't see any Russian pulp wood coming into Finland, which affects the market. And there is simply lack of raw material, especially pulp wood in Sweden. We have no wood coming from the east. We have actually lately seen the tendency that

some of the wood actually is going towards the east from Sweden, which well, we have had that up in the

north, but we haven't seen it further south before. That's the pulp wood sector. And at the same time as the pulp mills are running, I would say fairly full because you also need to have access to raw material, which is not given in today's situation. And when it comes to the saw mills and the demand for saw logs, it's more a balanced situation, even though saw mills in Sweden are operating at quite high operating rates and there is a quite high demand also for saw logs still. And there's higher prices should mean slightly higher revenues for our forest operations.

Yes, as everything in the forest, it goes quite slowly. But if you look back two years ago, prices are now at the 20% high level on average, which means that our underlying operating profit from a forest business have gone up from normally 300 million sek a quarter to where we are today at 360, 370 million sek per quarter. Fourth quarter, we reported earnings slightly above 400 and that was due to us receiving compensation for creation of nature reserves. So the underlying result where we are trading at current prices are 360 to 370. We've also, if we change slide, made the annual evaluation. We do it only in the fourth quarter each year and where we look at the average transaction prices in the regions where we have forest, roughly 300 transactions per year in these regions. And we take the three year average and calculate and translate it into our forest holdings, which means that based on these transaction prices between private individuals, we are now at a value of our forest holdings at 52 billion sek, up 11% compared to a year ago. A lot of people like the forest, obviously. Definitely. You can understand why.

Yes, switching subject to a paper board. And if we have a look at the market situation there, I think 2021 stands out as kind of an artificial year. If we look at demand, we are today when we look in our own order books and we look at the market in general, we see that, well, things are coming back to maybe more normal situation. And during the pandemic, most of the customers, they were almost in panic to get hold of our material. And when you are in such a situation, you have a tendency to order a bit more because lead times are long. And now we inventory levels that has to come down a bit and things are getting back to what we see as more a normal situation. Based on cost pressure, energy and raw material, there has been a number of price increases in the market. And the situation we have now, if you look at the players not competing directly with us, but in white line chip, well, then things are easing a little bit when it comes to fiber and energy. In our segment, we feel that we are in a good position. We have a good customer mix. We have a good market mix. We have a healthy order book. And I think we also, we are more confident when it comes to expanding our business and selling slightly higher volumes to the right customers. And that has been really important when we have discussed internally what we can do. We come to the conclusion that we have to start an investment program over the next five years. We have looked into actually a number of different options, but we have finally come to, I think we landed in a good decision. It takes a number of years, but we will be able to increase production on K1 and K2, the two board machines we have at the IGESUN mill by roughly 25%. It takes some time, but slowly we will be able to increase capacity. And we had quite huge maintenance stop, or huge, but quite big.

We had the annual maintenance at IGESUN. It cost us slightly more than we expected, 250 million SEK. Some things took longer time to work on than we had expected, but that's part of running this kind of operation. In this quarter, we also received the annual green bonus for producing green energy in the UK of 50 million SEK. The amount varies from year to year, but 50 million SEK is a normal annual revenue in Q4 for that contribution.

Then paper. How on earth can we do so well in paper? We have a declining demand for paper in general. Still prices are going up, at least during the fourth quarter, and we have overall operating rates in the industry, which are simply not sufficient, driven by very high cost for vibrant energy. This is the development we have had. In our case, we've been able to control the cost in a very good way. We have also been able to run more full, meaning with a higher operating rate than the average in the industry. And we have been able also to, let's say, follow the price development that has been determined, especially by the players in continental Europe, having the cost based on recycled fibres and energy, which is mixed electricity gas price. It has been quite successful. If we then look at the situation right now, when it comes to those two parameters, the cost for recycled fibres and also power prices in continental Europe, things are changing a bit. Nobody knows. It feels like if we look at the weather forecast, we might know what the power price will be the next week. But as things are right now, the cost pressure is easing a bit. Talking about that, because this is a game between our way of doing it, which is our local wood and our fossil free energy in Sweden, the electricity. And we compete normally with people with recycled fibres and continental power prices as the base. One should remember, though, that we have actually a fair share of capacity, especially in Germany, the dark blue part here, which is also based on the same concept as we have TMP, meaning local German wood and local German electricity prices. And there we have a feeling that I think we have a better position simply, which we have to make sure that we take care of in a good way going forward. Also, that has probably been the base why we have been running at such high operating rates over the last year. Anders, as the increased prices, it said in the fourth quarter, it helps.

Definitely, it's a record year by a good margin. Q4 was strong, prices went up seven or eight percent due to price increases. We had some maintenance stops, but we also had a negative effect of energy costs coming back to what you could say is a normal level. The energy cost was now in the fourth quarter in line with our hedge levels. In the previous Q3 and Q2, we were able to achieve energy costs below our hedge levels due to the active management of downtime. In the fourth quarter, our ability to take downtime was restricted by maintenance stops. And also, the pricing pattern on the electricity market was a bit different in the fourth quarter, which meant that we couldn't really gain as much as we gained in the third and second quarter taking down times. Exactly. And then a few words about wood

products. It was fantastic first half of the year, 2022. And then prices came down, as you know, and customers were a bit more hesitant to order and also a bit of question mark, where is the construction cycle going? It's no secret that demand has been a bit lower when it comes to demand for wood products in general. But I think what we have to remember here is also that actually supply has quite a big, huge impact on the market. And when I talk about supply, I mean, first of all, Russia, which seems to be more or less out of the game. In the beginning, we saw some volumes going towards the east, but not to Western Europe. And now we don't see so much of Russian wood products at all. We have Canada, where the trees are kind of in the wrong place. We have sawmills closing down or capacities taken down, and also slightly higher production cost level compared to us in Sweden. And then we have continental Europe, which also has an impact. You know that harvests in continental Europe has been driven by spruce bark beetle infestation, and it's been on a bit higher level than what is long term sustainable. And as it looks now, that is coming down a bit, and also the cost in continental Europe is some bit higher than at we believe it is in Sweden. So in Sweden, most sawmills are still running at high operating rates, but we have uncertainty where the construction cycle is going. And the feeling is, as we have said here, that prices are stabilizing, and maybe we have reached the bottom, but it's very hard to predict. But even though there are some uncertainty about short term where this is going, we are firm believers in wood products and building in wood. And I think one should not forget that this is one of the biggest challenges we have for this planet. Housing accounts for so much of global emissions, and to be in a position where you are an alternative to concrete, cement, and steel, I think it's a rather good position. We said that for some years. That's why we have grown quite a lot, both organically and through acquisitions. And when we look forward a little bit what we have in the pipeline, we have an ambition to continue to grow both value and volume, of course. We have a program going on in our Igesund sawmill, slightly bigger volume, and also changing the mix a bit. It's quite a lot of money. It's like 400 million SEK. We are establishing also a hub in connection to the sawmill at Braviken for glulam beams in order to have better access to the market, to be closer to the customers. And we're also investing in increasing the production of laminated timber at our Bygdsiljum sawmill by roughly 50%. And on top of that, we have said that before we have discussions, and we are right now evaluating together with the SEA if we could build a jointly owned sawmill at the Rundvik sawmill in the future, which would be a very good fit for both of us because it's simply in the middle of our forest holdings. That's about the future, but we also have a fourth quarter.

Yeah, contrary to the previous quarter, the result was actually was negative in the fourth quarter. And that's of course pricing coming down to what we would characterize as normal from a historical perspective, normal levels, but production costs have increased through high log prices. They are slightly more than 20% expensive today than they were two years ago, which means that you can't make ends meet at normal pricing levels. We did in the fourth quarter make a 30 million sec impairment to finish goods values. That's what you have to do when you enter into negative territory. So the still positive on EBITDA level if you take that inventory right on back. And it was a very good delivery quarter. And we have now normal inventory levels.

Thank you, Anders. A few more words about the energy crisis we have seen in 2022. Lack of energy, we have seen a volatile energy market in the fourth quarter, but also during most of 2022 with very high prices, especially in continental Europe. But in the fourth quarter, we also saw, I think for the first time almost, that the electricity prices in northern parts of Sweden, where we happen to have all our hydropower and the majority of our wind power, well, the prices came up to the same level as in southern Sweden and to be honest, more or less the same level as in continental Europe. We know that Svenska Kraftnet, they have done some things in order to increase the transmission capacity a bit, but it's very difficult to understand exactly what happened in the fourth quarter. But it's a very interesting trend if this is to stay or not. In any way, it helped us a lot and it showed the strength, both of the hydropower and the wind power. We have grown our wind power operations, especially with the Blue Bear Sladen up north, which now pays off a bit. It's actually the best result ever, isn't it?

Yes, definitely by a wide margin in this case as well. Very strong result driven by this strong pricing, the hydropower contributed, the wind power contributed nicely as well. And if we take the next slide, explain what we

have done with the hydropower.

Normally, you earn 20 sec per megawatt hour more from running hydro compared to running a production stable throughout the year. In the fourth quarter, we earn 500 sec more per megawatt hour. And that's all you read. You receive revenues from helping stabilizing the grid. But this effect in the fourth quarter was pre-bondominantly us timing the market not only day and night, but also we moved production from October to November, December, October. Prices were not that great. So we took the decision to not produce that much, but store it in our water reservoirs two times when the society needed it better and the price was higher. How

much flexibility do we have?

You can go up and down. You can reduce the production by to a level of 50% of normal production. That's what you can do.

And if we summarize what we have done, we have not only delivered the record result when it comes to money, we have also helped the planet a little bit more to actually go through or come closer to a green transition by increasing our 7.2 million tons of climate benefit coming from us. Okay, that's it. And then we stop there and we're happy to take any questions you have.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only hands when asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from the line of Gilbert Lars with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Mr. Gilbert, can you hear us? Okay. We're moving on to the next question. The next question is from the line of Grunsellius Johannes with DMV Markets. Please go ahead.

Yes, hello gentlemen. Johannes Grunsellius here. Two questions, but the first one is on your announcement of expanding Igesund with 25 percent. It seems like it's a five-year period. How do we think about that in terms of capex? How do we think about the new volumes kicking in over these periods? Thank you.

We today invest slightly more than 300 million SEC on average in the mill and now we're stepping up to level roughly at six, seven hundred million per year in capex over this five-year period.

And it's bottlenecks and it's other things we do in order to make the mill ready to take on slightly bigger volumes. I think what's important for us is that we today we feel a lot more confident when it comes to our customer mix and where to sell the volumes we'll see coming in the future.

Okay. So and we will work through the whole mill from the board machines all through the way out to the harbor because you enter into bottlenecks all the way and that's why we have to do it over such an extended period.

Yeah. Will you keep the mix pretty unchanged and am I right that it will imply a nice fixed cost observation?

Yes.

We will. Okay.

Yeah. Fixed cost will not change by this. If anything it might be reduced a bit.

Yes. Then I had a question on what you think about the outlook for your publication paper price wise because it appears that you know prices are holding up well in the Q1. What are you seeing in terms of inventories and market tightness etc. Is it fair to think that this strength will carry over into the second quarter and am I right that the new sprint grade is in particular the strongest within publication paper at the moment?

It's not easy to know exactly where things are going but as I said in the beginning we do see theoretically the operating rates for the industry is far too low to be sustainable. So there will happen things in the market that's for sure and you cannot run a mill at 50% operating rate. You have to be at levels where we have been close to full or

somewhere

there and this will play out in a way that I showed the slide where we said that look how much electric intensity how much TMP production actually have in Germany where you need to use a lot of electricity and it's likely different than the rest in Germany where they have the base and recycle fibers etc. I think that will have an impact on what will happen in the market and prices well we are negotiating every day right now. I can't comment on that but it was cost driven and it will be a cost game I think also in the future.

Yeah I mean is it fair to assume that the much lower prices for recover paper and also at the moment lower energy prices in Germany will then fall over to lower prices for for paper in Europe or I mean any comment on that?

That in combination with the operating rates as I said.

Yeah okay okay. It's a complicated game because you need to get hold of the raw material if you're going to step up production and it's not that certain that there is actually recycle fiber available and you don't really know what the electricity price will be when you are going to produce so it's not that easy if you work on the continent. And

remember you have all of a sudden you have one week of cold weather and prices are changing dramatically which has an immediate impact on how people are what they do when it comes to this business. How do you act?

Okay okay thank you for valuable comments.

Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Larsen Linus with SCB. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much and a very good morning. Maybe continuing a bit on capex and just following up on the remarks that you made on paper board but also in other parts of the group. What's capex guidance for 2023 and also beyond that what's the new normal or what should we expect annually in the next three years after 2023?

We have a deposition of close to 1.4 billion SEC. We will invest three four hundred million more per year in the Yggdrasil mill and then we have interesting plans both in the saw mills and there is some potential in the paper. So we believe that we will have be at a slightly higher capex levels in the next few years up towards two billion SEC a year in capex in order to expand the business and also grill. But renewable energy expansion will come on top of that and that's more of a project-based expansion once we get approvals for new wind farms.

Okay so for 2023 is that your guidance as well around two billion?

Up towards two billion yeah.

Okay and when at the earliest is the next wind park investment?

I thought it was last year but it's very difficult to say.

Depends completely on the permitting but it's not likely to be any meaningful capital outflows in 2023.

Okay thanks. And then maybe on renewable energy you gave some well on energy I mean bigger topic than that I guess but in the segment renewable energy are you still unhedged as you have been and could you also talk a bit more about these extra revenues? I mean it's spectacularly high in the fourth quarter what's to stick what's to stay of that kind of new source of revenue if you like?

We are hedged 20 percent in the hydropower or hydro and wind power. That's we don't go much beyond that and that's hedged for 2023. By and large we run the energy division unhedged. There was a very unusual market we were able to move water from October to December and where the price was exceptionally high in December so the 500 margin that's not a sustainable level but in the previous quarters we have been between 150 to 200 and if we have this kind of volatile market we will learn more on hydropower. If the market is becoming quieter and price levels come down we earn less.

And then Linus the transmission capacity will we have prices in the north of Sweden more in line with SE3 or the south of Sweden or will it go different ways again?

So far in January we have been quite close to SE3 but on a lower level than in December.

Great thanks and in your paper what's your hedging situation there? I guess it's in the report but if you could tell us about your thinking and your situation right now.

We have hedged 90 percent of our planned production for 2023 and the hedge price levels is roughly the same price levels we had hedged for 2022.

Okay and for 2024?

We are hedged 60 percent but on a slightly higher level.

Okay wonderful and then just finally if I may on the wood product slide I fully share your long term vision but in the near term I mean you have this 30 million that you impaired in the fourth quarter that's bouncing back presumably in a bridge to the first quarter but apart from that what are your thoughts in terms of price and costs? Are costs still rising? Are prices largely the same?

When it comes to the price of wood products we simply don't know. We have a feeling that we might have hit the bottom but as you rightly point out the cost for saw logs is higher today than it was a couple of years ago when we were on roughly the same price level for the wood products and the competition for saw logs is still rather high.

And are saw logs costs rising sequentially in the first quarter?

Not in a meaningful manner but but the direction if anything on the wood market is still up. It's an intense competition for pulpwood but also saw logs are in great demand.

Perfect, many thanks.

The next question is from the land of Lindström, Oscar with Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Morning Oscar. Sorry. Three questions from me here. First of all just on the capacity increase at Egesund. You talk about over five years. What's going to be the sort of pace of the capacity increase? Is it going to be even all towards the end some front end loading? That's the first question. The second question is on forest and wood supply demand in northern Sweden. I hear that I think it's Sveaskog are reducing their harvesting levels in the northern parts of Sweden. Is that something which is going to impact your operations or directly or indirectly? And then finally my third question is on wood products. So you mentioned that your saw mills are running full and that seems to be the situation in Sweden in general. Are you seeing mills in continental Europe taking meaningful downtime? Is this driven by the market or a lack of timber to supply them with? So those three questions.

Shall we start with the capacity at Egesund? That was the first one wasn't it?

It's a gradual increase in capacity and that's normally the case in board because it's such a difficult product to produce. So even if the technical capacity it takes time to run in the ramp up the production capacity. But this is so many measurements so it will be a gradual. It's so many actions that we're taking in the mill. It will be a gradual ramp up.

But actually it suits us quite well as well Oskar to have some time in order to make sure we sell it into the right segments to the right customers. So we're happy if it comes if it takes a few years it's okay.

And about the pulpwood availability in the northern part of Sweden. We are net seller in the northern part of Sweden. So our industrial activities are not affected by it. But we are seeing that competition is quite intense up north and will most likely become even more intense when the new Kemi pulp mill in the northern part of Finland starts up.

And right now with the war as well then you have a special situation with even fiercer competition for the pulpwood. There was one more wasn't it? Oskar what was the last question?

The last one was about what some of those taking down time in continental Europe. What extent any continental European down time is the consequence of lower harvesting levels in Europe?

There is no good statistics on that Oskar so it's more um rumors going around.

But it's also more logical Oskar okay maybe not tomorrow but something will happen after the last few years where harvesting levels have been on the high side.

All right thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. The next question is from a line of Gilbert Lars with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Thank you. I hope my microphone works now. Good morning. A couple of questions for me. The paperboard market seems to be increasingly at risk for excess supply given you know we're seeing significant capacity increases on the likes of Stora, Metzaboard and your incremental towns and then of course some of those towns is targeting the U.S. which is the same town there's a number of projects coming up in the U.S. What is your thoughts on how this market should develop to be able to absorb this? And the second question really relates to the same exports is typically quite a big business both for European and North American producers and it now appears maybe there's some less opportunities in particular into the Asian markets but if you can comment a bit on the export opportunity and how you think about the market development in relation to this new supply coming on board. Also in Wood cost I just wanted to see what you're seeing you know hear what you're saying about competition from the energy sector when it comes to wood because that seems to be another potential meaningful demand that I guess given the energy price is quite difficult to compete with. And then the final topic is again of wood products. What are you hearing from your customers now and for the next three to six months about their outlook? Of course we're seeing in Sweden a dramatic fall in new builds and et cetera and housing starts in the U.K. and the U.S. for example is coming down sharply so what are your clients saying and how do you view the next six months in this business? Thank you.

First one was export opportunities. Yeah

maybe we can start with that. You can look at we can't comment for the market as such. We have a very focused niche strategy. We also recognize there are a lot big big machines coming on stream and to get make them viable you need to run them full very long runs you need to go into the mass markets to make that the economics work for these all these new machines. We have already since the expansion of Husam and Kotka been focused on niche markets. Market segments that are too too expensive to serve if you run a big machine. Combine that with our sawmilling strategy which means that we have a very strong foothold with own forest and ships from our sawmills which means that we don't have to import any wood to our facilities and the Yggdrasil facility is self-sufficient more or less in energy so we are which is quite a unique position in this market. We have a very strong control over our own costs focused on niche doing this gradually adding value to the to our products. We don't go we can't escape the general market movements but our activities are not really impacted by this mass market if you go into food etc where you have the big volumes.

That's a bit why we we have said on a number of occasions also that we have to make sure that we sell it into the right segment and that that means we do it not too much at the same time but take a step after step but slowly maybe but profitable. And that base of customers I can say I said before we are more confident today I think that that mix and the base we have today is is better than before.

And in Europe most of the production capacity is in Sweden and Finland so a lot of your relative competitiveness will be about your ability to source wood and also your own energy systems. And that alludes to your second question the competition for fuel wood from heating facilities. Yes they are there in the market and they have had the ability to pay and of course they have added to the pressure maybe not so much up in the Nordics but more on the continent where if you can burn wood you make a killing instead of burning gas. That's clearly so. That's not really as strong a case in the Nordics so it's more of a problem down in the continent in my view.

What you might have to add to the Nordics is that for example green steel they if they are going to be really green they need to use also biomaterial to produce bio coal. We haven't seen that yet but it's something that needs to be added to the discussion.

And the third question I believe was about the construction market outlook wasn't it Lars? Yes

I think it was. What your customers are saying in effect right now?

I think it's not easy to see exactly where it's going. You see if you follow the American prices the futures you see it's up down it's hovering around the same level roughly. And as we said before we think that we have might hit the bottom but you're rightly about that okay economic activity should not support a boost when it comes to building right now. But the feeling is not that bad but we will see where it goes and again I think supply is extremely important to understand. It's not only demand.

But what we can see is the demand for building in wood this CLT type of buildings that interest is still there very very strong and that is more or less unaffected by the current uncertainties on the construction cycle.

The order books there are fine but we need to sell the planks as well.

Just one quick follow-up on the Egersund expansion project. In the past it's proven quite disruptive when you made various investments at Egersund in particular but this seems more modular so can you give us some sort of sense of confidence that it's not going to be meaningfully more disruptive than any normal maintenance activity over the next three four five years.

You're right and this is more modular we take it step by step it's also why we do a rebuild make sure that it works we do the next rebuild and we do it and in in a more modular way to reduce risks because it's difficult to rebuild board machines.

It could have been a quicker way to do it but we choose the safe one safer at least. Yeah all

right thank you very much thank you.

The next question is from the line of call for Christian with handles button please go ahead.

Yeah thanks operator good morning Henry 10 members. Just one question left for me on renewable energy. It's on I think you announced in the beginning of the beginning of last year February or something like that that you bought out the wind power park in in Varsvik and if I remember correctly that that park has been around for like eight nine years or something like that so and the turbines there are three megawatts or something so my question is that if you see a pretty you know significant opportunity to repower that we

watch. They are they are 3.2 megawatt turbines they are although they are eight years old they are they were state of the art at that time they run well they produce well and the economics being in that it's great so it's we will run them for 25 years yeah yeah yeah repower after 20-25 years yes my maybe but right now it doesn't make sense you have to remember you can't if you repower you can't put you we have 16 wind mills you can't have 16 with six megawatt turbines you have to have 10 maybe with six megawatts so you don't really get a

in the same area

yeah you have to swap places

yeah okay that's right but in the other areas do you see any any opportunity to to buy out more wind parks on your land

well no we we we don't see it in in the short term we prefer to to focus on building and on on the wind farm permits we should get

okay okay thank you very much thank you christian

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okay thank you very much for taking the time and for good questions and discussions see you soon bye