Holmen AB (publ)

Good morning everybody and welcome to the year-end report presentation for the Holmen Group. It's me, Henrik Sjölund and Anders Jernhall. We will go through the presentation and then as usually we take your questions after the presentation. So let's start. Well, in the fourth quarter of 2024, we were able to deliver a bit over 700 million SEK. It's, as you know, a bit slower in the fourth quarter. It was a bit slower also in the fourth quarter for us this year. Bit slower maybe than normal. And we had two stops. And as I said, the market a bit softer. Still a good result. And if you look at the full year of 2024, 3.7 billion SEK, it's in a historic perspective, a really good result. If you look at our industry, we were able to deliver 16%. And if you take it in a historic perspective, we've been able to deliver actually return on capital employed of 19% over the last 10 years. And to be honest, in 2024, we didn't have any contribution from wood products. So if you look at board and paper, we were actually a little bit over 20%. We have had a meeting in the board of directors in Holmen and given the good result, our business model and the outlook in our financial position, the board of directors have decided to propose to the annual general meeting an ordinary dividend of 9 SEK and an extra dividend of 3 SEK. Our position is strong, as I said. And just a reminder what we have done the couple of last two years. We've actually distributed to the shareholders six billion SEK through dividends, extra dividends and some sharebacks, buybacks. Changing subject totally, Anders, before we go through the forest valuation, a few words about the wood market. I think I've been standing here for a couple of years now, at least talking about wood prices only going up. And that was the case also in the fourth quarter, especially timber became more expensive. And as we stand today, pulpwood is maybe slightly better balanced, not as much pressure as it is on the saw log side. You can see also here that there is a spread between the average cost for us, in this case, between saw logs and pulpwood. And it's in south of Sweden where the timber is extremely expensive. And also in the case of us, we are, especially our saw mills down in the south, are in the area most affected by spruce bark beetle infestation, which we'll come back to a bit when we discuss the wood products business. But this has been going on for a long time, and this is a challenge, especially the big difference between the different parts in Sweden now. If we then look at, and this is our own calculation, to see what's left after you have sold wood products and pulp and paid for the wood. If you look at the wood product side, the sawmills operations, well, there the relationship between what you pay for the wood and what you have left is fairly normal. But if you look at the pulpwood sector, still there is a quite good margin, isn't it? It's not bad. So as it looks right now, yes, the pulp mills can pay the high price for the pulpwood in the market. Higher cost for wood, bad for industry, good for the forest.

Good for the forest owner, yes, Henrik. We've seen that these price increases that have been going on for three years now have increased our cash flow from harvesting by 80%. And if you look at specifically the third quarter, we've seen that profit went up a bit due to seasonally normalizing level of logs, which is low in the third quarter. and as usual in the fourth quarter we update our book value for the forests and they this year we are arrived at a figure close to 58 billion sec an update on how do we do this as you can see on this map our assets are spread over the country and there's a price differences what you're prepared to pay for properties where you are located from north to south. But there's also a difference if you're close to the coast, which normally is where you have production facilities, or if you are up towards the mountains where the trees grow a bit slower and you have a longer transporting distance to the wood-consuming entities. And to take this into consideration when we do the valuation, We look at the transactions that have occurred during three years and to get three years worth of... And the reason for that is that individual assets or property sales have a bit too much influences on one year transaction statistics. So we need three years or our assessment is that we need three years to get the accurate valuation methodology. We use three ones. We use two price statistics that are delivered by Svefa and Ludvig & Company. And it's from their databases on how they have compiled all the transactions that have occurred in Sweden. And they slice it a bit differently between them. And then we have our third methodology, which is based on all transactions that have occurred during this three years period, where we take into account which part of a county that you have traded it in. Some of these countries are huge, like Västerbotten, and they have both coastline and inland. And we take into account how much trees are standing on the forest properties that have been traded and how fertile the ground is. And by using these three methods that have slight differences between themselves, we arrive at a value that actually this year was within plus minus one percent of each other. So it's a very narrow range of this close to 58 billion SEK. and it's also and i want to highlight we don't value one million hectares we value 4 000 properties or a bit more than 4 000 properties we own across sweden average size of this is a bit more than 200 hectares and you can compare that to the market statistics over the last three years We have traded a bit more than 900 transactions in these areas and the average size of that has been around 100 hectares. And just a reminder on forest properties, this is a 20-year history that shows the average price expressed per cubic meter in Sweden. And that has been quite a stable development. And this is one year transactions for the whole of Sweden. And so when you see the headlines that prices have moved up or down a lot, you have to take that with a bit of a grain of salt because prices don't really move that quickly. They are affected to a large extent, which population you use and compile for a year. Normally, you have a good correlation between selling prices of wood and the price development for forest properties. But the last year you can see that wood prices have clearly outpaced the price development of forest properties. After these reflections, Henrik, back to you.

Well done, Anders. Yes, let's say a few words about the renewable energy market and electricity prices. It's quite a strange situation we have right now, where we see that prices in Germany when it comes to electricity and energy, for that sake as well, are really high, about 100 euros per megawatt hour. And in Sweden, not only do we have in north of Sweden, where we happen to have most of our production, an extremely low price. It's been below 15 euros per megawatt since the summer. But it's also spread, as you can see, between north of Sweden and what we call SC3, say mid-half south Sweden, where we have our paper mills, where you can see the prices are 40, 50 euros. And this is a situation in which you know what the discussion is in Germany, how the industry is struggling to survive, and simply because energy is extremely expensive. And what we see now is that in Germany, they are a bit scared of, well, how much gas actually there is and if they need more. So when they send a signal to the market, buy more gas to fill up the storage, Prices go up. And to make the calculation, just to understand electricity and gas, well, you need two megawatt hours of gas to produce one megawatt hours of electricity. And a gas price of roughly 50 euros, that means roughly 100 euros. And then you need to buy a bit of emission rights as well, so you land above 100 euros, as the situation is right now. It doesn't help us much that it's expensive in Germany, Anders, but on the other hand, the difference between Germany and SE3 is still, it's a good base for cost competitiveness when it comes to our paper production. But as we're talking about our energy division now, it's the blue line, SE2, where we have most of our production, and it's very difficult to make money when prices are that low. However, at least we've been able to actually get some premium when it comes to the production we have made. And we have got roughly 30%. But as the levels are as they are when it comes to the price, difficult, isn't it?

Definitely difficult to make a profit on producing electricity when the average price has been 12 euros over the last half year. We cover depreciation, we generate a positive cash flow, but not more than that. And as Henrik alluded to, this is sort of not really a sustainable situation that you have this kind of cheap electricity in one part of Europe and very expensive in other parts of Europe. If you look year over year, the drop in profits is completely price-related. Q1 was a good profit level for the energy business, but since the spring, prices have been historically at very low levels.

Maybe we should have mentioned also that when we look at this one here, the difference between SC2 and SC3, well, it's bottlenecks, of course, in our own grid in Sweden, but it's also the new phenomena with flow-based, which nobody understands to 100%, I think. We haven't had that during a number of months at least, but now there is a big spread, which is maybe a bit difficult.

Maybe not everybody knows what flow-based is, but it's a new pricing methodology that is intended to even out the prices in the Nordics. but they actually spread since it was introduced in November. It might be due to that we have unusually much water in the northern part of Sweden, especially actually SE2. We have, for example, 30% more water in our reservoirs than normal this point of the year. Absolutely.

All right, a few words about wood products. I said in the beginning, it's been a bit of headwind for wood products, especially in the south of Sweden, where we have a couple of sawmills. And if you look at the market right now, well, prices are actually up a little bit. And if we compare to a year ago, prices are higher. But on the other hand, it's not that demand is good that put some effect on the price increases. It's not that. It's that it's actually a scarcity of SOLOX. And the soil log situation is not only in Sweden, but it's quite an extreme situation, especially in the south of Sweden. And as I said before, especially in the area, actually the driest area in Sweden, where there was a lot of spruce bark beetle infestation. And we have a backlash now. After a few years when forest owners just needed to take out the wood, now it's a different situation. If you look at the US and the Trump administration and all the discussions about tariffs, which is on TV every day nowadays, to start with, the current US price, when we look at the futures, it's slightly higher than the average price we get mill net when we sell to customers in Europe. But also when it comes to tariffs, we should remember that Already today, there is a tariff between US and Canada where the US, the Americans simply mean that the Canadian sawmills are subsidized by the Canadian state. And that tariff, roughly 15%, has been there for a long time. And then the next question is, well, how dependent is then the US on importing volumes to feed their own demand in America or in the US? First of all, these are the big exporting countries of wood products in the world. If you look at Canada, the biggest, everything from Canada, a bit over 20 million cubic meters goes into the US. And the total consumption in the US is roughly 100 million cubic meters. On top of the Canadian volumes, you also have to include Sweden, Finland and Germany, those three roughly five million cubic meters currently going into the US, meaning that some 25% of the US consumption of wood products is actually imported. We don't know what will happen to the tariffs, but it's at least information that is important to understand when trying to understand what is going to happen in the future. But Anders, this is scarcity of sologs, sure.

Maybe I should just mention on this graph, we have Russia included. This is official statistics that we have compiled. Our feeling maybe is that they are not really that much volumes in the market, at least the markets where we act. But this is official statistics that we have included.

And the volumes from Russia today go most probably more to the east rather than to the west.

Correct. The result then, of course, it's a very lackluster result, as Henrik already said several times. The economics do work up in the middle and the north part of Sweden, but running a sawmill in Östergötland, the county that we have our two sawmills located, it's difficult. It's a challenge. Looking year over year, we have the same lack of profit. The two years after the two super years, 21, 22, we have seen that all the prices have increased 10%. Wood costs have gone up net after income from selling ships and biofuels have gone up a bit more than 200 million sec and have taken away the effect of the rising selling prices.

All right, then to board and paper. The one still delivering a good result. First of all, a couple of words just about the merger we did roughly one year ago. And the idea was to merge the two capital intensive process industry divisions we have in Holmen, board and paper, in order to make best possible use of the competence we have in the company when it comes to process industry. And also over time to make sure that we are as cost competitive as we possibly can be. And now after one year, I must say, I have a really good feeling about what we have done. We see results, which is promising. We worked a lot to emerge, not least the marketing department in those days, the two different business areas, and it's working fine. We have a slide here over the Braaviken paper mill where we now are trimming in our new product on PM52 producing packaging paper as well, which will be interesting to see. So all in all, when it comes to what we've done, I think it's been absolutely the right decision and happy about what we have been able to perform so far. OK, a few words about the paperboard market. Already said, a bit muted, a bit slow at the end of the year. And when you look at the graph, you can see that, sure, 24 is a little bit better when it comes to demand than 23, but not back to where we used to be. And also a little bit more capacity in the market, which means that operating rates are not that good in the market. And in our case, well, our order books are healthy. We've been able to increase deliveries a bit and prices are more or less stable. Over time, demand will for sure increase so that the capacity utilization rate in the industry will come back to normal or really good levels. We have a situation when it comes to paper, but for different reasons which are fairly similar. We have a structural decline over time. We see that in 24, demand was roughly at the same level as 23. On the other hand, we had a big drop in 23. here as it says in the headline oversupplied market for sure it is but here it's also extremely important to make sure that you are not running with too low operating rate because then you have a problem to distribute your fixed ton if the volume is simply too small you have an obvious cost problem Another factor here, which is interesting to follow is, of course, it's not good for Germany. Electricity prices are high, but it's actually good for our own cost competitiveness when it comes to our paper production, that the cost level in continental Europe is a bit higher. We've been able to do well. We have increased our market share. We have some interesting niches where we do really well, like book paper. And also here, prices are relatively or more or less stable as we speak. And we've been able to run with a clearly higher operating rate than our competitors in the business. And as I said in the beginning, we've also been able to make some money.

Yes. After a stellar performance in Q3, where we delivered an extremely strong result, profit fell down in the fourth quarter. We had a maintenance stop at Iggesund Mill, the usual one that we have during the autumn. We also had the rebuild that Henrik alluded to of the paper machine 52 in Braaviken. They took a toll on profit by some 250 million kronas in higher fixed cost, maintenance cost, higher variable cost, and some losses of volumes. But since the market was a bit weaker, we took more downtime anyhow, and that also impacted profit a bit. We had revenues from selling emission rights and a bonus from the UK ROC system of some 100 million SEK that contributed positively. We saw wood cost going up a bit more than 50 million kronas quarter over quarter. This is a gradual movement. We had a step change in fourth quarter, which is more of a technical nature, what harvesting we made. Year over year, we've seen that wood costs have gone up close to half a billion. We have been able to balance that cost increase by increasing volumes. We have increased quite a lot, both in paper and board. We have also been able to run our machines more efficiently, and we've been able to sell more support services to the grid. But the profit have gone down from the high level in 23. This is partly due to that we have had about half a billion of electricity hedge gains in last year or 23. And we also have seen that prices for paper have come down from super high levels in 23. And maybe a word on the fire at the Braviken mill. We had a fire in the biofuel burner just before Christmas. Production was out four days, and then we were back in operation for the paper machines. But the biofuel burner is out of operation, so we have to run a combination of other, a bit more expensive burners. This is expected to cost us some 40 million SEK in the fourth quarter. That's our deductible, roughly, on the insurance. And we're still researching how the rebuild will be of the boiler, but we don't expect more costs than 40 million SEK from this event. And that will occur in the first quarter.

The fire is never good, but we were lucky to be able to run as we can now after the fires. Okay, one last slide. You know about our business model. We are happy to have a business model which we think is working really, really well. And also, we are one of the few companies, we grow trees with long perspective, we substitute fossil alternatives, and we are, which is extremely important, also a company, one of the few actually beyond net zero already today. Thank you. I think by that we are happy to take on any questions you might have.

We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the 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 and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time. The first question comes from the line Ravi Ephram with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Uh, thank you for the presentation. Um, just a couple of questions. Uh, firstly, uh, on the forest valuation, um, it, uh, looks like kind of, uh, the, the wood prices, uh, keep kind of going up, um, and, and clearly kind of the, the, the valuations of the forest, uh, are also kind of relatively stable, uh, compared to, um, uh, your, your competitors. in your areas. On the wood prices themselves, do you see kind of the rate of increase in wood prices starting to taper off, or is the wood price rate of increase still what you are seeing at the half-year stage or the third quarter stage? And secondly, on the dividends, you know, clearly there's been an increase in the base dividend to nine sec, although your profits were lower and your net debt is higher. Can you give us some color on your thinking behind kind of increasing the base dividend as well. Thank you.

Should we start by the forest valuation?

The price increases of wood, as Henrik mentioned, there's still strong demand for logs. But the pulpwood market seems a bit more in balance, probably affected by more downtime taken by industrial producers. So now logs are rising at a slightly higher pace than pulpwood. But it's sort of... I can't comment if the pace has changed, but it may be a bit more stable on the pulpwood side.

When it comes to the dividend, we find it's a balanced way of doing it, given how our business works, the money we make, our financial position. So it's weighing everything in together. And of course, over time, we should be able to slowly increase the ordinary dividend over time.

And I can add to that, we use extra dividend as an expression that we actually, we do have a very strong balance sheet and we have had a shift in levels of profitability and the base dividend more reflects the shift in level while the extra dividend is distributing excess cash to our shareholders and should be seen together with the share buybacks as well.

Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Masvoula Siouani, who's with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much for the presentation. A couple of questions from my side. First, on board and paper, results for the quarter were somewhat low expectations. Can you comment on the product mix here? I believe you had some tailwinds in Q2, Q3. Have these repeated in Q4? Or are we looking at a more sustainable product mix, 44 and potentially into 25? And maybe I'll stop here for the first question.

The product mix in Q4 was quite at the normal level, as we had very strong product mixes, both Q2 and Q3. So we had a normal product mix in the fourth quarter. You can also look at the deliveries. Third quarter was seasonally higher, and the fourth quarter is seasonally low, maybe, as I mentioned, a bit lower than normal for the season. But if you take the deliveries

for the two quarters together they were in a normal level reflecting the run rate that we have right now very clear thank you and second question on renewable energy we've seen weaker pricing in the past couple of quarters um and potentially a rebasing of some of the green power demand projections as some of the industrial projects are pushed out in the future um Can you talk about your growth projects here? And within that, how should we think about 2025 CAPEX?

Yeah, we... You're right pointing out there is excess capacity right now in the northern part, especially it's higher than normal, driven by a lot of water in the reservoirs. It's a bit of an unusual situation. As I mentioned, we have 30% more water than normal at this point of the year. And there is a postponement of some of the green projects. We, CapEx wise, we have half a billion, a billion to spend on, sorry, one billion left to spend on the wind farm that we are constructing. And for the rest of the business, we are investing in line with depreciation. We have one wind farm permitted, Stormyberget, but we're evaluating when it's a suitable time to construct.

I think also when it comes to green projects, you're absolutely right. Right now, you've seen a number of projects not being decided. But if you look at the difference in cost for producing something up in the northern parts of Sweden right now compared to, for example, Germany, which we looked at before, I'm quite sure over time you will see new products coming on stream. Could be data centers, could be other things.

definitely interesting part if you need green electricity which you absolutely need in the future that's very clear and so just to follow up on the capex so is this one billion left to spend going to be incurred in 2025 and in that case is total capex around 2.5 billion uh for for the year

Yeah, yes, it will be spent during 2025, the bulk of it, and roughly two and a half billion in capex expectation for the year in total.

Including the wind farm?

Yeah.

Perfect, thank you very much.

The next question comes from the line of Guldurk Kalvin with Stifel, please go ahead.

I just wanted to check a bit if you're seeing any changes in terms of the dynamics of the industry considering the high wood cost situation and also in Finland of course where wood cost seems to be even higher so ultimately the question is are you seeing any actions to reduce demand for wood or is it just business as usual and the kind of the question that comes next is the European the consumer board industry is quite dependent on exports. And given the sort of isolated wood cost increases we've seen, how does that change the export opportunities and the competition you're having from clearly lower cost regions and increasingly so?

Where to start?

We can't really see that. You can see maybe that all mills are not running full. But we don't really see anyone to see a change in demand. You need to close down definitely. And we don't see that that has happened.

Maybe you saw the slide I showed where we said that it's our calculation based on what you pay for the wood and what you have then left. And when you look at that, it seems like there is still a healthy margin, especially when it comes to the pulp mills. They should be able to pay for the wood, and that's also what we see in the market that they are running.

And when it comes to paper board, we can't speak for the rest of the market. We can speak for ourselves. We sell on quality. And for us, we have a normal relationship between price and variable costs. It could be a different situation for different players, but for us, we're selling on quality and not price. Not in any market and not even when we sell outside of Europe.

Just one more question, if I may. In terms of the rebuild that you've done, you've stepped back to normal operations now and what sort of mix and Are you trying to run on that rebuilt machine?

It's up and running as it should, and especially we are now running the products we've already produced before on that machine, like book, paper, etc. The new products we are just trimming in, so it's a bit too early to say which volumes to what markets, et cetera. It's still to be seen.

I think just to be clear, it's a very novel product and it takes some time to reach the product quality that we are happy with and are prepared to launch in big scale to the market.

Makes sense. Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Harry James with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi, James Perry here from Citi. Thanks for the presentation. I'd just like to ask about wood products. Would you be able to give any more commentary on how you see the trajectory of the market for 2025 and really, I think, any indicators of recovery?

Actually, we don't see any anything for the better when it comes to demand picking up. I think even more important right now, and as I said before, when you see that the price is actually a bit higher, it's because you have to look at the supply side of wood. It is a global scarcity of saw logs, which is restricting what supply actually you can see. And the question is when it picks up, what will then happen, which is extremely important. But so far we haven't seen it.

Thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Santa Vista Robin with Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. First question I have is related to the board and paper segment. I don't know if I missed it, but could you distribute the top line and bottom line or distinguish between the paper board business and the graphic paper business?

You didn't miss it because I didn't say it. 50-50 in turnover. Slightly higher EBITDA margin in paper than in board. But it's not a big difference between them.

All right. Thank you. And then could you just briefly describe how the year has started when it comes to order intake of those segments of paper board and graphic papers? I guess you said that that demand was quite lackluster. We know demand was quite lackluster throughout the year 2024 and especially in the end of it. Has the year started better than it ended in either of those segments?

Robin, you know that January is the slowest month of the year when it comes to order intake. It's a bit too early to say where it's going.

Okay, okay. It's always slow. I understand. The final question I have is related to harvesting conditions in Sweden. And in the Nordics overall, we have had quite a mild winter. Has that impacted harvesting conditions? For you guys, what are you seeing? And then in relation to that, you alluded to the point that there's scarcity of wood, raw material globally. If you would compare the cost of logs and pulpwood for you guys compared to your global competitors, how is that situation at the moment?

With logs, it's quite easy because 70% of your production cost is a log. And our assessment, we are not higher than the most important exporting countries on the log side. Pulp wood, it's difficult. You have to... For example, in paper, it's actually more important. Paper is quite... You don't use that much pulp wood when you produce paper the way we do. We use more power. And then it's more important for us in relative terms how expensive is energy in Germany than in Sweden. That's a key figure for us to look at. In consumer board, we are such a premium producer, so the relative cost of pulpwood is not really key to us. It's an important element, but it's not super important.

And what about the harvesting conditions?

It is difficult when it's not frozen, that's obvious.

Great challenges. We are not in 2018 situation where you had this sort of panic in Sweden, but it creates some challenges and probably will add to some cost in the first quarter, but no significant ones.

All right, thanks. Can I squeeze in the final one? Södra is selling forest assets in the Baltics. Is that something that would interest you?

We can't comment on... It's a good question. It's a relevant question, but we can't comment.

If you can't be interested at all, it would be easy to comment.

Well, then, you know, when we... No comments. Yeah.

All right. Thanks, guys.

The next question comes from the line of Kopfer Christian with Haddelsbanken. Please go ahead.

All right. Good morning, everyone. There's one question from my side on good products. If you look at return on capital employed, you have pretty much zero on that line for two straight years. So if you look ahead, what are you hoping for? I mean, realistically, you should not perhaps hope for lower prices for Solog. So can you do anything internally or is the only thing basically that you hope for is a better market?

We do a lot of things internally, but with 70% of the cost being logs, of course, the situation on the wood market overshadows everything, and especially in the southern part of Sweden. We have taken down production volumes, we have adopted that. We are not going full throttle on production, and we're doing reshuffling of volumes, taking down logs from the northern part of Sweden to the southern part of Sweden. Of course, adding transport costs, but it's a bet. So we're trying to manage situation as well as possible.

I think.

But you need the spread between log costs in the southern part of Sweden, pulpwood, what you get for the ships, the residues when you produce wood products. It's just too wide today in the southern part of Sweden.

It looks like pulpwood is more or less not exactly the same price, but the spread is not so big between the different parts in Sweden when it comes to pulpwood. But in saw logs, it's really a big difference, which makes it a bit challenging as Anders described. But we have a lot of forest, we have logistics opportunities, etc. So let's see.

Right. But hypothetically, if returns on capital and card stays at these kind of low levels, I mean, year in and year out, would you just in that case continue to run it? Would you continue to invest in the in the business unit, even if returns stay at a very low level.

Normally, you don't have these imbalances between different market regions. These tend to even out. It's more of a matter of time. You can see that it's not only us moving logs from the northern part of Sweden to the southern part of Sweden. You have different independent actors that are, of course, going up, fetching logs in the northern part of Sweden, transporting it down to the southern part of Sweden. Normally, these imbalances don't prevail.

Christian, wait for the construction sector to normalize and pick up a bit, and then we'll see how it will be played out.

All right. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from the line of Lindstrom Oscar with Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Good morning. A lot of good questions already. I thought I'd ask you a little bit about capital allocation. You continue to distribute extra dividends, but except for the wind farm investment that's ongoing and will have some cash out this year, you don't really have any major projects. And I seem to remember that you sort of decided not to go ahead with a new sawmill project also. Do you feel that there's sort of a lack of attractive investment opportunities in the forest industry in Sweden for you? And if so, is that sort of a cyclical issue or more of a structural issue? And you know, Could you be interested in buying existing production units or assets instead? Do you have any... Very relevant questions, Oskar.

I would say, if you look at us, we are probably the ones that invest most in our existing assets. We don't take out the old machine and put in a new one. We did that 25 years ago. But in modern times, we have not done that. We are the ones that have invested most in paper assets. And hence, we are the ones that customers want to do business with, if you're a paper buyer. And the board assets, we have invested targeted investments to ensure that our palm mills is in very good shape. We make targeted investments in the board machines so that they actually are able to continue to produce probably the best board in the world. So I would say that we are very diligent in investing in our existing assets. They are in relative terms in very good shape, but we don't really build new assets because there is not any more pulpwood available. There are too many machines in the Nordics for the supply of pulpwood. And hence, we have not felt that we should expand our consumption of pulpwood.

The last part is extremely important, because without access to more raw material, it's very difficult to distribute your costs over a bigger volume.

You did acquire a sawmilling business a while back, and then you also bought some other sawmilling assets. Is this a segment that you're interested in growing in? Perhaps, if not by investing in new capacity, by acquiring existing assets in the market.

I think for a forest owner, like we are, a big forest owner, it's a natural logic thing to own. wood products, saw mills. And that's why we have, if you look at what we have done the last five years, we have invested quite a lot, both organic growth in the beginning and after that, as you rightly say also, we have done a couple of acquisitions.

But you have... Our fundamental value lies in our forest land. And that's quite a low yielding asset, as everybody can see. And we're quite disciplined on When we keep capital in the company and we invest it in the industry, through sawmills and industrial assets, our focus is to get a good return on capital employed, the capital that the shareholders have let stay in the company. Sawmills are quite a good place to put that money because it's not a capital intensive business. It doesn't require a lot of investments to maintain. You can run them. Maybe the curse of sawmills is that it's very difficult to put sawmills out of business. So you have to be a bit careful not to put too much capital into that business.

That wasn't really the answer you wanted, but it's a good description of how we think.

That was a good answer. Just a follow-up on your forests. Do you have any guidance for your harvesting levels, both this year and perhaps two years out? And are you planning to do any sort of inventory, forest inventory updates in the near future?

We have a harvesting plan, which is for the period 2020 to 2029, we should harvest 2.8 million cubic meter per year. We harvested a bit more due to the spruce pine, bark beetle a few years ago. So that's why we're a bit below right now, that 2.8, but that's a 2.8 should be the average level for the years going forward. And normally we do this inventory every 10th year. And that's what most likely will be the case. That will be the stock taking 2029 or something like that.

Right. Thank you very much. Those were my questions.

The next question comes from the line of Larsson Linus with Seb. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much and good morning to everyone. First question on this very illustrative slide that you show on the disconnect between wood markets and forest property pricing. What is Holmen doing to capitalize on that? Or what could Holmen be doing to capitalize on that disconnect, please?

Unfortunately, we are not allowed to buy forest land from private individuals unless we sell the same volume. So it's not really anything we can do to capitalize on this disconnect. But it's sort of the pricing today for what you can note is that especially forest land with a lot of high volume of standing trees that are ripe for harvest, relatively cheap in Sweden today when you compare to the wood prices. But unfortunately, we can't capitalize on that.

Unless you buy land outside of Sweden, I guess.

Yes, you can say that.

And then maybe a couple of follow-ups on your board and paper division, just dissecting the results a little bit. For instance, in the fourth quarter, could you say what income you may have had from energy hedge activities or You mentioned these carbon-related and rocks income. So if you could maybe put any type of numbers on such D&L impact in the fourth quarter, and if there are any significant changes in the first quarter, please.

Hedging, we hedged the electricity price, so that's more or less fully hedged for the quarter. Next year, our hedging levels are roughly in line with what we have today, slightly lower, so some tailwind, but it's not a significant tailwind. Other than that, it's 100 million SEK, roughly, income from emission rights and ROCS bonus that we had in the fourth quarter, where that was sort of out of the ordinary.

So that was 100 million in the fourth quarter, and you're not expecting any of that in the first quarter?

No.

Okay. Thank you very much. And then maybe, I mean, just to the extent that you can comment on pricing, I mean, we've had an environment, a market now with low operating rates, yet prices have held up reasonably well. How do you see that dynamic developed in the year that has just started? And I'm thinking about, I guess, both board and paper, within board and paper.

I think for paper, remember that we've had quite low operating rates for some time now. And it's more about cost rather than the operating rates. And we'll see where it goes. But right now, as we discussed before, cost is quite high on the continent. And when it comes to board, as I said before, prices are stable.

Right, okay. So you're not really seeing any... change in the immediate future at least. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful.

The next question comes from the line of middle, Pallav with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Good morning. A couple of questions. Firstly, on tariffs, so as you were highlighting, there is a significant risk especially regarding the import of wood into us and the key countries right now are canada germany sweden and finland so do you think if there are some tariffs uh imposed then there will be more supply domestically in the nordics do you think that will impact the wood prices and there is a scope that it comes down because of that

very difficult topic, this whole tariff topic to have a view on. It's a lot of ifs. The challenge for the US is actually to how should they live without the imports from, especially from Canada. So it's a dynamic that it's difficult to see through.

Sure. uh in terms of the maintenance uh shutdowns can you just uh clarify how we should expect that uh quarter by quarter in 25 versus 24 because based on the release it seems it will mainly be q2 and q3 in 2025.

Yes, we will have two stops. We have a biannual stop at our English mill in Q2, and we have the Iggesund stop in the Swedish that we have annually in, I think it's the third quarter.

Okay, thank you.

The next question is from the line of Hathorne Cole with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Morning. Thanks for taking the question. I'd just like to follow up on your slide eight, where you're giving the margin gaps between pulpwood and the pulp producers. I'd just like your thoughts on what about the other costs of inflation that we're seeing there? Because pulpwood, everyone knows, has been exceptionally challenging for the market. But we've also seen inflation around labor. We've seen inflation around the non-direct costs. Do you think that margins are probably more challenging than the traditional just pulp price less would cost? I'd just like your thoughts around that. Are margins probably more challenged than just the pulp would suggest?

Yes, they are, of course. Our calculations, based on our experiences, that chemical costs are up 40% pre-COVID or pre-energy crisis. Personnel costs are up 20%. So, of course, you have a margin compression, but you can look at the numbers distributed by all players producing pulp. They're still showing pretty decent numbers. despite these cost deflations of both wood and other materials.

I was just going to say on paper, Holman's done exceptionally well. I'm just trying to understand what you attribute the strong performance in the paper business to and how should we think about it going forward? Is it the what you've talked about the gap between um you know old newsprint and recycled fiber and energy costs on the continent versus how much has been being able to to run your business with low operating rates i mean should we expect if energy prices come down and recycled fiber come down then obviously the margins of the paper division come down with it or can you maintain you know, stronger performance throughout the future just because of, you know, your own self-help running the business with low operating rates. I'm just wondering, you know, how big a factor is the cost versus your own internal actions have made.

I think if you look at what happened between 22 and 23, you saw that prices came down a bit. And that's mostly related to cost in continental Europe, exactly as you mentioned. Recycled fibers are important, energy even more important. And for us, it's energy that's absolutely most important. And then, of course, we make use of... more expensive pulpwood these days. But it's not only cost, but cost is important. We're also quite good in some niches where you actually need the virgin fiber.

You're quite humble, Henrik. We are very good at, or our paper guys are very good at innovation. Of course, a big, very important thing is the energy gap. But we actually help our customers save money by delivering paper that is lighter than our peers. We are committed to paper. We are the ones that have invested in rebuilding paper machines. If you're a paper buyer, you know that we will be here. We never closed down capacity when cash flow was zero. Our competitors did, we didn't. And we help them save not only costs, but we help them reduce their carbon footprint. We are producing essentially carbon-free paper. that sort of if you buy from a german producer your carbon footprint is 20 30 times higher so we add quite a lot of value to our customers as well so it's a combination of factors it's not only and that we have been lucky with the the cost differences and then finally on um saw log and pulpwood costs um if we did get any russia ukraine resolution and i know no one no one can

as a crystal ball, but do you think that any resolution there would encourage smaller Swedish and Finnish forest owners to give up their harvesting rights and kind of give some relief to pulpwood and saw log costs quite quickly if there was ever that scenario?

There is a difference between Zoologs and Palpo. In the old days, when we had imports from Russia, remember that there weren't really coming any Zoologs. It was Palpo that came into, not Sweden directly, but influenced the system a bit. But who knows? It's impossible to know.

To be clear, it's actually only birch pulpwood that entered into Finland and you have chips coming from sawmills. The rest didn't actually come from Russia. But of course, it would have a psychological effect, if anything, if there is peace. Of course, it would add to the feeling that you actually could have a relief and that could have an impact on pricing.

Mr. Hawthorne, are you done with your questions?

Yes, thank you.

The next question comes from the line of Melbae Martin with ABG Sandal Collier. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Do you foresee any big price changes quarter to quarter Q1 versus Q4 on cardboard, paper, lumber?

We don't give the forward guidance, but I think you can sort of... Generally, there is quite a stable pricing environment in all the markets we operate right now.

Okay. And say, what would be the yield on the forest? If you were to buy a forest, you illustrate, you hint that the profitability is good. What would be the yield on the forest today, in your opinion?

Implicitly, depending on how you do the DCF, but it's higher than it has been for 20 years. But I will not comment on a level. It becomes such a complicated topic.

Okay. Thank you.

As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press that and 1 on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Holman Management for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much. Very good questions and for taking your time and showing interest in our company. Look forward to see you soon again. Bye bye.