Holmen AB

Good morning and welcome to the interim report presentation for the Holmen Group. Today it's me, Henrik Sjölund and Stefan Lorén. We will go through the presentation and then we're happy to take any questions you might have. I know it's a busy day for you so special thank you for taking the time also to discuss with us. Well, the third quarter, challenging market conditions, a bit the same as we actually had after the second quarter. This quarter, well, low demand for wood products. We also have, despite low utilization, all in all, a bit over 700 million. A decent result when it comes to Holmen. If you look at our industry, not only wood products, but also board and paper together, so far this year, during the first nine months, we've been able to deliver 15% return on capital employed. And if we look at our financial position and what we have done, Stefan, we have We have distributed a bit over 3 billion SEK in dividend and buybacks during January to September. And if you look at five year period, we have roughly the same debt to equity ratio today as we had five years ago. We have distributed 13 billion Swedish in total during the five years. Changing subject to forest and wood market. This time, we do see that pulp wood prices start to decline due to lower activities from the mills. We don't see that saw log prices still or have started to come down. On this chart, it looks like they have. But in our case, it's because there are also big differences in price still between southern parts of Sweden and northern parts of Sweden. And when we buy less in south and a bit more north, then it has an effect on the graph, which is what we mean by mixed effect wood cost. Palmpod, on the other hand, the prices are going down. In our case, it's a lag before lower cost reaches our industry and our P&L sheets. Prices are high, Stefan.

Yes, they are. And the result from the forest division was 538 million Swedish krona during the third quarter. That is an increase by some 20 million compared to second quarter and some 50 million compared to the first quarter this year. The gradual higher profit is due to price increases during the year. Looking at their harvesting levels, we harvested 660 000 cubic meters during the third quarter this year. That is approximately 100 000 cubic meters higher than the corresponding period last year. Year to date, the harvesting levels is still 100,000 cubic meters lower than what we saw last year at this point in time. But we anticipate that we will be on par with last year when we close the books for 2025.

So back on track soon. Hopefully. All right. Change into renewable energy. a very special situation or we've had this situation for quite some time now where we see that prices in northern parts of sweden where we have not all but almost all our production of of electricity well prices are simply very very low And it's not easy to make money when prices are that low. And I think we can just... Well, we know that electricity is locked in in the northern parts of Sweden. And there is a lack of transmission capacity. How long it will be like that, that's difficult to answer. There are so many things affecting... whether the price should go up or if it will stay where it is, cables to, for example, Finland, Norway, etc. Stefan, we have said that we have produced with premium to market price.