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SSAB Ab
1/28/2022
presentation of the SSAB year-end report. My name is Per Hillström, I'm Head of Investor Relations, and with me today is our President and CEO, Martin Lindqvist, and also CFO, Lena Kraelius. And the agenda today, we will start with the summary of Fantastic Year 2021, and then the financials with Lena, a little bit more detailed look at the quarter as such. And then we're also very pleased today to present a plan for much faster transformation of our Nordic production system. So Martin will spend some time to explain what we are looking at there. And at the end, as usual, an outlook and summary. And we will also have a lot of time for questions here, so you will be able to ask your questions at the end. So by that, please, Martin, start with 2021.
Thank you, Per, and good morning, everyone. I will start with a brief comments and a summary of 2021. And it was and is or was a historical year for SSAB with, I would say, a solid performance in a very strong market. And I will give you a couple of examples of that. We had an operating profit of almost 19 billion or 18.8 billion in net operating profit. We had a very strong net cash flow, a net cash flow of 12.4 billion, and that meant that we could close the year in a debt-free position. And the board decided at the board meeting to propose the AGM to have a dividend of 5 kronor and 25 öre per share. Of course, A lot of this is due to a very strong market, but it's also structured. We have seen very strong demand for our niche products. We have seen good and solid internal performance. If we take safety as one example, we have improved the number of LTIs a lot during the year, and I would say that that is structured, and we still are not at zero, but we are approaching and doing a good job in the organization. I think also we had... stable and high production. We saw a successful ramp up during the autumn of 2020 after a very challenging 2020. We saw record output in several production lines. We have managed, I think, in a decent way to handle problems, even though they are not fully over with COVID-19 at the production sites in the organization. We have also had problems with the supply chain issues, shortage of rail cars, sea transports, trucks, and so on, both during the full year of 2021, during Q4, and also into Q1 2022. It was a remarkable year in many aspects, and I think the first volumes of fossil-free products that we delivered, the first commercial volumes to Volvo was landmark for SSAB. And we have during the year and are continuing with that to announce a number of strategic agreements with customers. And the board has taken a decision to speed up the transition and taken a directional decision for a faster transformation. I will come back to that in the end. But we have not also market-wise only surfed on a strong market. We have actually been able to continue to deliver on our strategic targets. If we look at special steels in 2021, they almost reached 1.5 million tonnes. And I would say that they would have reached it if we wouldn't have had the transport quality challenges. So they are going to reach the strategic target of 1.6 million tonnes at the latest 2023. Services is moving on. We haven't done any major acquisitions during the year, but we are on our way to reach the strategic targets. America's premium share improving over the year. And looking at SSAB Europe, we are fairly close to the strategic target we have for 2023. 43% being the outcome of premium share 2021 and still a lot of things to do. Automotive, of course, a segment affected by a shortage of semiconductors. but still a good growth. And if we look at the premium volumes in SSAB Europe, we already 21 reached the target for 23. So ahead of plan, still a lot to do and a lot of interesting prospects. And the Nordic market share in line with our long-term target of between 40 and 45 percent Nordic market share. As I said in the beginning, it was a marvelous year. We had record earnings in all divisions. We had Very good EBIT margins, good profitability, and altogether the EBIT summed up to almost 19 billion. But Lena will give you some more details on the financials. So, Lena, I hand over to you.
Thank you, Martin. Yes, it is really a privilege to start in my new role with these kind of figures, which I will go through briefly. In this slide, if we look at the graph on the right-hand side on the bottom, we can see the EBITDA improvement quarter by quarter during this year. And definitely, the market was favorable. Prices were increasing throughout the year. Volumes were on the lower side during the second half of the year, and the problems already Martin mentioned. But if we say that the market was favorable, I would also highlight the good performance of the whole organization. Already discussed about the premium mix improvement. Europe division, America's improving the premium portion of the sales. And also special steels delivered higher volumes this year. So good work in the sales in that aspect. Also the staple production improvement since last year. That is giving, of course, big benefit for the profitability. So we can say that good achievement also in that aspect. And also the cost efficiency. We were sustaining a good cost efficiency during the year. So all that shown in the figures related to EBITDA. And then quarterly figures isolated Q4 comparing to last year, telling exactly the same story. Prices on much higher level. They are compensating well. The higher raw material cost base volume slightly lower compared to last year's fourth quarter. Fixed cost on a higher level. And this is now mainly related to maintenance activities where we had the shift in timing. America's division did the big maintenance during Q3 last year. And this year we did it instead of during Q4. Also, mobile maintenance, which was done during Q4, is something we do only every second year. And then the other half is related to personal cost. With these high earnings, we are realizing profit sharing programs. And then if we compare Q4 with the Q3 outcome, Prices did continue to go upwards, compensating, again, higher raw material cost base, volumes slightly lower, partially seasonality of Q4 related, and also these transportation problems that Martin already mentioned. Fixed cost in this comparison, more related to seasonality, Q3 is a vacation period. And then, as you can see, the utilization of capacity was higher, thus the price Materials and services also higher in line with that. All this good performance led to a strong cash flow. Q4 net cash flow ended on the level of $5.4 billion and the full year $12.4 billion. Comparison high level with last year, definitely the earnings played an important role. They were much higher compared to last year. Some negative impact with working capital with higher inventories, but nothing to be alarmed about because the net operating working capital over net sales did develop really well during this year. Maintenance expenditures on a higher level, financial items slightly lower, taxes naturally higher with this level of earnings. Strategic investments were somewhat higher, and this is now mainly related to the Oxelosund conversion started, and we will continue during next year as well. As said already in the beginning, the target set for year-end to be net debt-free we reached and actually exceeded the gearing ratio at the end of the year being negative minus three, while last year it was 19. So the net debt cash position positive 2.3 billion. Then when we look at the next year forecast on high level, the CAPEX activities will increase during next year, and this is now mainly related to the oxalozoon conversion. We were indicating CAPEX need for this year 3.5, and we were slightly below 3. Net interest to be somewhat lower for next year, and then the taxes higher, and that's due to the incurred taxes this year, will be paid out next year. So on a total level, 8.5 is the total cash need estimate at this stage for next year. Very briefly about the raw material view going forward, or actually this is illustrating the history. The iron ore, peaked during 21, started to come down, luckily during Q4, but the latest development is again upwards. So the outlook for iron ore for Q1 is that it will be on a similar level than Q4 with an upward risk. And then the coal prices, they continued to increase second half of the year, peaking upwards, and they will continue to increase also during Q1 This is only few of the raw materials, the biggest raw materials. And we know that the alloys, for example, zinc and other materials will continue to go up. So overall, the cost base is expected to be somewhat higher for Q1. And very briefly, scrap prices. This is illustrating the U.S. spot prices. They were on a higher level for Q4, coming down mainly seasonality for January. And the outlook for February is that it's stable or might be going upwards. So that's still unknown. But then regarding outlook and other issues, Martin will continue.
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