Borregaard ASA

OSE:BRG

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q3

[Per A Sorlie, executive]

The company, and I've been joined this morning by Per Bjarne Lyngstad, our Chief Financial Officer, and we will take you through this agenda. The highlights from the market or for the quarter, the business segments and the market situation in the quarter. Then we will talk about an investment that we have just approved to further specialize the company, and we will also revisit a couple of the slides from our Capital Markets Day last month regarding cost mitigation and the specialization strategy.

Then I will round off with the outlook for the remainder of the year, and Per Bjarne will come back with a more detailed look at the figures. But before I go on in the presentation, I should also say that if you watch this webcast live, you can submit questions during the entire presentation, and we will have a Q&A session after the presentation, where we'll also pick up on those questions.

So then if we look at the highlights for the third quarter, the EBITDA came in at NOK 434 million, an increase from NOK 391 million in the same quarter last year. We saw improvement in all business areas. In biosolutions and biomaterials, it was both increased sales prices and a strong product mix that contributed to the improvement in the result. Whereas in fine Chemicals, we had increased sales prices and higher volumes. The costs kept going up and we had higher energy, raw material and freight costs.

Positive net currency impact also was good in the quarter, and the cash flow was affected by an increase in the net working capital, which was partly related to the cost increases that we have seen. Then if we look at the market, Biosolutions, the average sales price came up 27% in sales currency compared to the same quarter last year. And this was a combination of increased sales prices and a stronger product mix. The major part of this came from the increased sales prices, but the product mix also contributed in quite a positive way.

And in the quarter itself, it was applications within oil field chemicals, batteries, construction and agriculture that had a positive contribution. Also, like we already said, positive development from the foreign exchange. The sales volume was 9% lower compared to the same quarter last year. We have had lower raw material supply and as we saw from inventories a year ago, but in general, this was affecting deliveries to low-value markets as we have been optimizing the business year-on-year. Also, I should just comment that the market balance for oil-based, that's synthetic Vanillin and Ether vanillin is affected by an increased supply from Asia in the third quarter.

This is not necessarily directly impacting our Bio Vanillin business, but we also have a trading business where we buy and sell these oil-based alternatives. If we move on to Biomaterials, the average sales price here went up 32% compared to the same quarter last year. We saw strong demand for specialty cellulose also this quarter. This is a combination of increased sales prices, mostly put through at the beginning of the year and a surcharge that was put through at the -- now in the middle of the year. So it's a combination of the 2.

There was also an improved product mix in this area that contributed to the average sales price and also the positive foreign exchange impact came in here. Again, we have slightly lower deliveries of specialty cellulose, but this was a combination of timing of shipments and inventory adjustments from a low level. You might remember that we sold a very high volume last year, building down inventories to a below average level. And also, I should remind you that going into the fourth quarter, we have the annual maintenance stop, which is particularly affecting the production of specialty cellulose.

Then Fine Chemicals. Increased sales prices and higher volume for Fine Chemical Intermediates, very strong sales altogether in this business area. Mostly, the biggest contributor, however, was bioethanol where we had a significant price increase compared to the same quarter last year. Then I will go on and talk about an investment that we just approved. And just to introduce that, I'll take one slide from the Capital Markets Day a month ago, where we talked about the specialization strategy and the potential to further specialize the business, but also to realize value growth in the sense that the value of our quite exclusive raw materials will go up over time. We drive this, of course, through the innovation.

And we also made a lot of demonstrations at the Capital Markets Day how sustainability was also a new driver that will mean that we will tilt all the innovation work towards sustainability-driven opportunities. We made large main or expansion CapEx between 2015 and 2019, and we have generated new revenues from those investments, but there is still more potential to be taken out from these expansion investments. But we are also looking at new additional expansion opportunities, particularly at the [ Sisar ] biorefinery.

More specifically, further specialization of lignin-based biopolymers increased flexibility in the integrated production, which means that each business area should be able to develop themselves in the best way without having a ramification on other business areas. And finally, we are also looking at volume expansion through debottlenecking primarily, but there is potential to increase the volume in specialty cellulose, lignin-based biopolymers and bioethanol. Altogether, we think that there could be investments in the range of NOK 650 million to NOK 900 million in the period from 2023 to 2025. And this will be not one project, but a number of primarily medium-sized projects.

We think that Sarpsborg site is a good location because that's a low-risk investment as we see it, and it raises the barriers to entry for competition as well the more we specialize this facility. So now we have approved one such investments, one shaft medium-sized investments inside this range from 600 to 900 million, and this is a NOK 70 million expansion investment in lignin-based biopolymers. This will debottleneck the existing facilities at the Sarpsborg Biorefinery, and these are our most highly specialized products in the biopolymer portfolio.

So we have a range of products here. We have 650 products altogether in this business area. And this is the top-end of the range in biopolymers. So again, we consider this to be a lower-risk investment because it's not only at the Sarpsborg site. It's also based on technology that's already known to Borregaard. As a side effect, since we are doing a debottlenecking, we will also modernize the existing facility, which means that we will see a reduction in CO2 emissions at the same time.

This capacity will be gradually phased into the market and completion is expected during the first half of 2024. The main target for this investment is batteries, but it's also possible to go after oil field chemicals, agrochemicals and pigments and dyes as other options to produce in this equipment. Also, just to round off, there is underlying growth in all the applications that I just mentioned. But as an innovation initiative, we also showed this at the Capital Markets Day, lead batteries and energy storage systems.

Batteries are important for decarbonization and you have electrification of the transportation sector, but the most interesting segment for us is energy storage systems, where there's a 200% growth expected in the period from 2020 to 2030. Of course, lithium ion batteries will be the most probable technology, but the energy storage systems are particularly well suited for lead batteries, and that's because they have a high degree of safety, they have low cost and high recycling rates. So there is significant industry efforts going on to improve the products so that they can be used in energy storage systems.

And the Borregaard's lignin-based expanders is an absolute necessity and a key enabler for this to happen. So this is, let's say, in addition to the natural growth that we already see in the segments I mentioned for this investment.

Then I will take a step back and also mention a couple of slides from the Capital Markets Day. First, cost inflation. In the last 12 months, this has been or the most asked question when we have met investors. How do you manage cost inflation and what can we do with it? And this is mainly driven by energy prices, both directly and indirectly. Fortunately, most of Borregaard's energy costs are fixed in long-term contracts, but we do have a floating share of the roughly 20% of our energy costs are on the spot exposure, and we also buy a lot of chemicals where, of course, the producer of the chemicals have significantly higher energy costs. So we said a month ago that we expect that this cost will go up even further in the second half and energy spot prices remains the largest uncertainty.

The measures to mitigate are sort of 3 ways. One is price increases and surcharges that we have seen in the reported numbers that we have had both price increases and in some areas, also surcharges to more or less fully set, offset the effect of these price increases. At the same time, we have, in recent years, completed energy conservation investments, and we have also increased the capacity of sodium hydroxide, which is one of the most important chemicals. This chemical has its incredible increase in costs in recent months. But Borregaard is nearly self-supplied.

We have an 80-plus percent captive production of this important chemical. Finally, what we said at the Capital Markets Day is that I think it's an important piece of information, and that's the flexibility that we have in most of our costs and particularly in heat energy production. We are not dependent on LNG alone. We have the full flexibility on the steam production to switch between electricity, LNG or light oil. And particularly in the recent quarter, we have burned light oil primarily, which has had a significantly lower cost than electricity and LNG at the moment. So this flexibility is worth a lot of money in terms of managing cost development.

Also, the question that is quite at top of the list at the moment, of course, is how does Borregaard usually fare in a recession. And the whole point of our business model, of course, is to specialize the company. In a specialized world, you have more stable results and you have less cyclicality. So the whole point of the strategy is to take out cyclicality over time. More importantly, in the last 5 to 7 years, we have reduced sales to concrete admixtures and biosolutions by more than 50%. Hence this was sort of a single market that was most exposed to cyclicality in the past.

It's still a decent volume, still going into concrete admixtures, but it is less than half of what it was 5, 7 years ago. Also, the cellulose business used to sell part of its volume into textile cellulose, which is also a very cyclical market. Again, development in the recent 3 to 5 years have taken out that business altogether. So today, Borregaard is selling sort of all our production into the 1.6 million tonnes that's defined as specialty cellulose. Going into a potential recession, we have a much lower exposure in the markets that are typically our most cyclical markets. But having said that, any recession, especially a [ huge ] recession will, of course, affect demand in general worldwide. So no business can be totally unaffected by a large recession.

But just to remind you, the diversified market strategy is there to take risk out of our integrated production model, but it's also there -- the side effect of that, of course, is that it stabilizes the business. It gives us more options. We have 800 products in Borregaard to numerous applications, and we have a global presence and both these characteristics take risk out of the business, but it also gives us a lot of options. The primary reason why we have this very diversified market strategy is to maneuver around cyclical markets.

So I will round off with the outlook for the fourth quarter. Also to remind you here that we normally discuss the next calendar year with our customers during the fourth quarter. That's why we typically come back in the fourth quarter when we report fourth quarter and give the outlook for the next year. That's why we primarily talk about the fourth quarter in this outlook. In biosolutions, the positive market development is expected to continue in Q4. We see some indications of reduced demand primarily within construction. But I should remind you that in the last 2.5 years, we have been completely sold out in Biosolutions and we have been on an allocation mechanism.

So the fact that one market is seeing reduced demand doesn't necessarily mean that we don't allocate all our product in the marketplace. The market balance for synthetic vanillin, Ether vanillin will continue to be affected by this increased supply from Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an incredible price increase for oil-based vanillin and ether vanillin products, but that price has now started to come down. The average price in sales currency in the fourth quarter is expected to be in line with what we saw in the third quarter, and the total sales volume is expected to be approximately 80,000 tons. In Biomaterials, there is a further surcharge implemented in the fourth quarter.

Hence, the pricing in the fourth quarter in sales currency will be 4% to 6% higher than what we realized in the third quarter. The sales volume in Q4 is also expected to be slightly higher than what we had in the same quarter last year. In Cellulose Fibrils, the sales growth is expected to continue. Fine chemicals had a particularly strong quarter in the third quarter but deliveries of Fine Chemical intermediates are expected to be in line with the third quarter, but with a weaker product mix in the fourth quarter.

Bioethanol sales volume is expected to be lower in Q4 versus Q3. As always in Borregaard, we sell what we produce, so we had an above production delivery in the third quarter. Energy and raw material costs are expected to remain high in the fourth quarter and energy spot prices still represent the largest uncertainty, both direct and indirect. But just again, to remind you what we said at the Capital Markets Day, we will benefit from our ability to switch between electricity, LNG and light oil in order to minimize the effect of increased energy costs. Of course, we will continue to monitor what goes on in the marketplace as it's a very unpredictable times at the moment, but we will take actions when we see that necessary. That completes my presentation, and I will hand over to Per Bjarne.

[Per Bjarne Lyngstad, executive]

Thank you, Per, and good morning, everyone. In the third quarter, Borregaard's operating revenues increased by 23% compared with the third quarter of 2021 due to price increases, improved product mix and net currency effects. EBITDA increased to NOK 434 million, NOK 43 million above the same quarter last year. All business areas improved our results. Further price increases and surcharges, improved product mix and currency effects more than compensated for increased costs. The net currency impact was positive by NOK 50 million compared with the third quarter last year.

The EBITDA margin was 24.8%, 2.8 percentage points lower than last year. Year-to-date, the EBITDA margin is in line with last year's margin, which we consider to be a strong achievement in the current inflationary environment. Earnings per share ended at NOK 240 in the quarter, a 13% improvement compared with last year. The cumulative earnings per share after 9 months this year is already above the full year earnings per share for 2021 operating revenues in Biosolutions increased by 20% compared with the third quarter of last year. Increased sales prices, a strong product mix and currency effects were partly offset by the effect of lower sales volume. EBIT increased by NOK 10 million to NOK 261 million.

The EBITDA improvement was as for operating revenues due to increased sales prices, strong product mix and positive currency effects, largely offset by increased costs for energy, raw materials and freight. The EBITDA margin was 25.9%, 4 percentage points below last year. In Biomaterials, operating revenues increased by 19% compared with last year, mainly due to increased sales prices for Specialty Cellulose and currency effects, partly offset by lower deliveries. EBITDA was NOK 101 million, an improvement of NOK 10 million compared with the third quarter of last year. Also here, increased sales prices and surcharges and net currency effects more than offset higher energy, raw material and maintenance costs and lower deliveries.

The EBITDA margin was 18%, slightly below last year. Fine chemicals operating revenues increased by as much as 52% compared with the third quarter last year due to increased sales prices and higher deliveries. EBITDA increased by NOK 23 million, NOK 72 million. The EBITDA improvement was due to increased sales prices for both Fine Chemical intermediates and bioethanol and higher deliveries of Fine Chemical Intermediates. Increased raw material costs affected Fine chemical intermediates in particular. The net currency impact was also positive in Fine Chemicals. The EBITDA margin was 36%, largely in line with last year's margin. The net currency impact on EBITDA was, as I said, approximately NOK 50 million positive compared with the third quarter of 2021.

The positive impact was mainly a result of a 6% weaker Norwegian Kroner using Borregaard's currency basket. Hedging losses were NOK 323 million compared with a loss of NOK 16 million in the third quarter of last year. Using currency rates, so yesterday, the net currency impact in the fourth quarter is estimated to be approximately NOK 70 million compared with the fourth quarter of last year. The corresponding impact for the full year of 2022 is estimated to be about NOK 210 million compared with the full year of 2021. The cash flow from operating activities improved compared with the first half of this year and ended at NOK 312 million in the third quarter.

The cash flow in the quarter was affected by an increase in net working capital, mainly due to higher inventory values, which was partly related to cost increases. Despite the increase in net working capital, the ratio net working capital over operating revenues is still below our 20% target year-to-date, which means that operating revenues has increased at the same rate as the net working capital. Investments, especially expansion investments have been at a low level so far in 2022. Installation on new equipment is planned during our annual maintenance [ stop ] in October and will lead to higher investments in the fourth quarter as it has in previous years.

Net interest-bearing debt decreased by NOK 111 million in the third quarter, mainly due to the cash effect from a strong EBITDA. At the end of the third quarter, Borregaard was well capitalized with an equity ratio of 50% and a leverage ratio, which is net interest-bearing debt over EBITDA of 1.29. And that concludes today's presentation. Per Sørlie and I will now be ready to answer any questions. Our Director of Investor Relations, Knut-Harald Bakke, will moderate live webcast questions.

[Knut-Harald Bakke, executive]

We have one question from Mr. Andres Castanos of Berenberg. Why has the strong bioethanol prices not led to a similarly strong EBITDA margin in the Fine Chemicals division?

[Per Bjarne Lyngstad, executive]

It has to do with the comparison with last year, we had also quite a strong quarter for bioethanol last year with the same high volume. So it's mainly related to the mix on the Fine Chemical intermediates side.

[Knut-Harald Bakke, executive]

There appears to be no further questions on the webcast.

[Per Bjarne Lyngstad, executive]

That's good... Okay. Thank you for today. Thank you for your attention.