Elopak ASA
OSE:ELO
If you don’t study any companies, you have the same success buying stocks as you do in a poker game if you bet without looking at your cards.
Utilize notes to systematically review your investment decisions. By reflecting on past outcomes, you can discern effective strategies and identify those that underperformed. This continuous feedback loop enables you to adapt and refine your approach, optimizing for future success.
Each note serves as a learning point, offering insights into your decision-making processes. Over time, you'll accumulate a personalized database of knowledge, enhancing your ability to make informed decisions quickly and effectively.
With a comprehensive record of your investment history at your fingertips, you can compare current opportunities against past experiences. This not only bolsters your confidence but also ensures that each decision is grounded in a well-documented rationale.
Do you really want to delete this note?
This action cannot be undone.
| 52 Week Range |
26.2
46.4
|
| Price Target |
|
We'll email you a reminder when the closing price reaches NOK.
Choose the stock you wish to monitor with a price alert.
This alert will be permanently deleted.
You don't have any saved screeners yet
Good morning, and welcome to the Q1 2024 Earnings Presentation for Elopak. My name is Mirza Koristovic, and I'm Head of Investor Relations.Today's presentation will be held by the CEO, Thomas Kormendi; and the CFO, Bent Axelsen. The presentation will last for approximately 30 minutes and is available on live webcast on our web page under the IR section. We will have a Q&A session after the presentation. There will be a possibility to ask questions from the audience here in Oslo as well as for the audience following us on webcast through the chat function.So with that, I leave the word to the CEO, Thomas Kormendi.
Thank you, Mirza, and good morning to all of you here in Oslo. It's very nice to see such a room full of people here. And of course, welcome to all of you who are listening in on the conference call. Before we start, let me just say it's a pleasure, frankly, to be able to present today yet another strong quarter and moreover, a very strong start of the year.So let's get into it. As always, we start with a little bit of update, who is Elopak. And we are the world's largest fresh liquid carton producer producing and selling around 14 billion cartons around the world, currently in some 70-plus markets and with 2,700 colleagues spread around 2 regions, Europe, what we call EMEA, consisting of Europe, evidently Middle East, Africa, but also India and Americas that consists of Canada, U.S. and Central America. We have, as you can see on the slide, had a very good development in revenue terms over the years. And we've also seen that our business is spreading more evenly between, on one hand, the EMEA region and also an ever-increasing presence in the Americas market.The portfolio we serve is partly fresh to the largest extent, but also a aseptic portfolio that is we are deploying in the various markets that we are operating. All in all, we are actually in the business of sustainable packaging. That is what we do. And we do that through protecting essential commodities such as, but not only milk, dairy products, juice products, other food products and also nonfood products in as much as we protect detergents, conditioners and avoid the waste that can occur. With all the food focus, we are, of course, enabling the world nutrition and also very, very importantly, we are part of the global trend to reduce plastics around us. So that's us.So let's look at the quarter. And as I start off by saying it's been a good quarter, and it creates -- we have a good momentum for Elopak, which we see in the beginning of the year. Growth in both top line and bottom line, we see a growth of around 3%, ranging to EUR 200 million -- just shy of EUR 300 million in Q1, leaving us with an EBITDA margin of 15.8% and an [ EBITDA ] of EUR 46 million, driven in part by the European business or the European EMEA region market share and also MENA. And at the same time, we are well advanced on our manufacturing and construction of the plant that we've announced and setting up in Arkansas. All of that leads to a quarter with good cash generation, a leverage ratio that is now down to 1.8x. You recall maybe that we moved all the way down to 1.9x in Q4 and now a little bit further down. So we are leaving the quarter and moving into the next quarter with a high level of confidence. We see a good momentum in our business and are confident for the outcome of 2024.Let's be a little bit more specific then. Revenues, in fact, we are up 3%, but if you look at it from an external revenue growth, we are in fact up by 5% because we have an IFRS 15 impact due to a lower buildup of finished goods in this quarter versus last -- versus the same quarter a year ago. That has to do with seasonality and the way we've been planning. So in many ways, actually, we are looking at a stronger revenue growth than what we are reporting here. We're also seeing that interestingly and very positively, we have very good growth in the Pure-Pak segment of our business, the Pure-Pak portfolio. We have that in both fresh. The fresh business is growing nicely for us. And as you know, the fresh business as a -- from a consumption point of view has been under some pressure recent years. And we are now seeing that our market share is growing, and we are seeing the growth of this business, equally, are we seeing growth in parts of the aseptic business and in parts of the Roll Fed business.So let's just continue looking -- look at the regions. And in what we call EMEA region, we are seeing a very solid growth of around 8%. This is driven primarily by market share, market share gained in what you could call core Europe, and that market share, of course, we see the impact of contracts, which we took last year. But it's very much supported by the development we are seeing currently in MENA. And for those of you who have been listening in on some of these calls will know that we saw in '23, a raw milk shortage, a distribution of raw milk more from liquid into the yogurt business and eating milk more than drinking milk. Now we are seeing that the milk consumption, the milk -- drinking milk is returning, and this is primarily in countries such as Morocco. So positive development and very positive clearly also now around the Ramadan.Filling machines continue on a path of growth, and we see that in this region as well. And we also see that our Roll Fed business albeit declining somewhat in some parts of the -- of our region, it is growing in other parts, particularly in India, who is showing very solid results this year compared to last year. In Americas, we have been reporting very solid growth levels. And now the issue is we are reaching some level of maximum that we can get off, hence, why we invested and are investing in the plant to secure that the growth that we can get will continue also there. But we have seen a mix of a product mix change in this quarter from what we -- what is called half gallon, typically roughly 2 liter size cartons into smaller size cartons. So albeit from a volume point of view, it's -- there's not a big difference. There is a difference in the mix.What also characterizes the Americas business is that the school milk -- overall school milk in America is a very, very contentious topic with lack of demand -- sorry, lack of supply, high demand and issues in how the industry as such secures the school milk cartons for the dairies and the schools. We are absolutely taking our share. We are growing our school milk business, but we are also at a capacity level there in as much as how much we can continue to grow. Filling machines, something we've been talking about continues in U.S. We are commissioning machines, selling machines in line with the plans or slightly above the plans that we presented originally. And very importantly, for our growth, which we -- as you can see, [ that ] absolutely need is the upcoming plant in Arkansas, which is coming along with the plans as well. We have broken ground. The construction is on its way, and we look forward to inaugurating the plant in sometime during first half of next year.So what is it that we have been doing? And this is a slide outlining the strategy not in a sequential format, but rather in a form to describe the various items that delivers the growth both in top line, but also the margin improvements that we've seen. We have, on one hand, the Americas business that I just mentioned that is doing very well. We have the aseptic growth business that is linked to both our Pure-Fill system that we are selling and also our development on sustainable materials, such as the eSense replacing the aluminum foil in the carton with another barrier. We have been broadening our geographic footprint with the establishment in MENA. I'm coming back to that. And very, very importantly, as I started off by saying initially, the plastic to carton megatrend that we are clearly a part of.All in all, of course, the commercial excellence, we are seeing very good performance from an operational point of view in the plants. And also, clearly, we are seeing a constant drive for us to work on our cost base, work on our margins to secure the development moving forward.Now talking MENA, if we just take a few moments looking at MENA. And for those of you who recall, when we made the acquisition back in 2022, we had a presentation around MENA, I just want to give you an update of where we are compared to that. So this is in our world, a very significant growth opportunity, and the drivers were a couple, namely a growing population, a young population. Young population tends to mean as well a good milk consumption, a rising income level and a situation where we were fresh and aseptic both play a significant role. We are currently present in about 16 countries in MENA. We have been working with MENA previously in a joint venture. But in '22, when we bought Naturepak, we got the access to a plant in Morocco and Saudi. And our intention is to expand our leadership, in fact, in the market by utilizing the portfolio that we have in the group, meaning the full product portfolio, but very importantly, and in many ways, more importantly, also to utilize the service portfolio that we have in group, use the service technologies we have, providing our customers with longer shelf life, more hygienic solutions and hence, lower waste and more -- and a better profitability.This we have seen with customers where we are currently offering them solutions that can extend their shelf life, which happens to be very short in many countries in the MENA region. But with this, we get into a situation where they can, in some cases, with the same milk, using the same distribution channel, double the shelf life of the product, of course, has a very significant financial impact. We can also see that we talked about at the time of the acquisition, a high growth area. We have actually been delivering somewhere around 6% to 7%. When I say somewhere, it depends on which -- if you disregard the currency effect, it's actually 7% CAGR since 2020 when we originally assessed the opportunity. So what we are saying here is that we are strongly believing in the area. We are strongly believing in the development of the area. We're, of course, concerned as everybody else in the world of the ongoing political unrest in the area and very frightened as to what that may lead to, but we are supplying milk cartons and milk primarily in the area to consumers across the entire MENA region.Another example of things happening in our world and in our market is more around the sustainability trend, because -- we took this example because this is an example from U.K. And it may not look like that, but this is actually a milkman. So it's a different milkman than what we have seen previously. It's a company called Milk & More. It's a -- they called it milkround company now. And this is a company, the largest in U.K., supplying 1.9 million households with breakfast stables. So that means milk, eggs, breads, yogurts and anything you can think of for a breakfast meal, doorstep delivery. And what they found was that more and more of their customers actually asked for more sustainable packaging solutions. And hence, they decided just now in April, in fact, to start with cartons in the supply of milk, simply because of customer demand, consumer demand and driving on the belief of also U.K. customers that we must reduce our plastic consumption and that we must limit the use.In fact, of a study which was just made now in '23, just now last year, 2/3 of the U.K. asked -- the U.K. consumers asked, were telling us that they tried everything they could to limit the amount of plastic they used. And this is one example they came. It's not all about plastics here. They also have other products, of course. Now on that note, plastics, and we've talked about plastic to carton many, many times. And this is, of course, because inherently, we're in sustainable packaging, and we very much believe in this megatrend. And an example here is that Orkla, the Norwegian FMCG company with a wide range of household chemical products, cleaners, detergents, soaps, conditioners are currently further expanding based on the success they have.They have invested in more production capacity. In fact, in these days, they are launching new sizes and formats, more brands. And the argument you can see here on the slide is simply related to the advantages on replacing plastics with a paper solution both from a sustainability point of view, but the sustainability is very much linked to cost as well. In fact, for the -- they have told us that by doing this, they can reduce the number of trucks, transport they use by 96% simply by using flat packs instead of transporting empty plastic bottle. It also means that more than 80% reduction in their plastic use by making these changes. So very, very significant amount and part of this trend that we see in many places.So with this, I will hand over to you, Bent, and we'll join you in a little second again.
Thank you, Thomas. A great start of the year, as Thomas mentioned. I think this is also a different year because this time, these improved results, they don't come from price increases. And it's also interesting to see that we see volume growth in our core business in Europe. So that is a very good development.So let's start with our operating segments, EMEA and Americas. And we are referring to this as adjusted EBITDA, but we have no adjustments, neither in '24 or '23 for any one-off effect. So it's actually EBITDA. If we start with EMEA, we have an EBITDA of EUR 37 million with a margin of around 16%. This is driven by the positive volume development for Pure-Pak in Europe and MENA in particularly. We have seen favorable raw material development, and that is particularly for LDPE and utilities. We have had some minor price adjustments, and that comes from the raw material clauses that have in some of our customer contracts in EMEA. It's a part of our commercial hedging program. Finally, we do have fixed cost increases mainly from wage inflation, but we also have an FTE ramp-up.If you go to Americas, we have rather stable volumes year-over-year with a negative mix effect, as Thomas has explained. So the issue is that we do have this negative mix effect, but we also are very close to full capacity, so it cannot be easily mitigated in Montreal by signing new contracts. So it's really with a new plant in Little Rock that we can pursue the interesting growth opportunities in America. Thomas mentioned the school milk situation, and that has a financial impact for our joint ventures.So those 2 joint ventures, they have -- our share of net profit is EUR 2.2 million. And for those of you that are doing the calculation, remember that this comes in as a part of our adjusted EBITDA, but it doesn't affect the group revenue. So that is actually 3 percentage points on the EBITDA margin in America, just something to remember there. In Americas, we also do have fixed costs increase from wage inflation as well.If we go to the bridge from EUR 41 million to EUR 46 million, which you can start then with the net revenue mix. And what is that? That is basically the effect of price, it's effect of volume and commercial results of the equipment, leading to EUR 2.8 million, for the reasons that I just explained. The raw materials here, EUR 4.4 million. So that improvement comes from LDPE utilities, but it's important to remember that it's still at a rather high level and the board costs are not softening. On operations, we see EUR 3 million for the group. So wage inflation, we do also have FTE ramp-up and especially in our equipment area, where we are ramping up our solution sales in America and also we are adding more people to develop the company. On Other, that is the improved net results in the joint venture. So the results are [ EUR 2.2 million ] and the improvement is EUR 1.2 million. So relatively speaking, a very great development among our 2 joint ventures in Americas.If we go to the cash flow, then I will just start that we have changed the chart somewhat. So usually, we have started with profit before tax and interest paid. This time, we are starting with the adjusted EBITDA to make it more consistent with the rest of the presentation. So we start here with EUR 46 million. We are deducting the net income from the joint ventures. On working capital, we have no change. That is a combination of reduced raw material inventory, which offsetting an increased inventory of filling machine.On Other, that is mainly increased tax payment related to the strong results in Americas in '23 and also '24, and that tax payment is around EUR 11 million for the group, but it's really Americas that drove that increased tax payment. So when you make money, you have to pay taxes. That gives us a cash flow from operations of EUR 34 million. Cash flow from investments is minus EUR 6 million, so that we have the EUR 11 million, which is purchase of noncurrent assets. That is a normal level as far as plant maintenance goes and also an expected level for filling machine investments in Europe. The EUR 4 million is dividends received from our joint ventures in Americas.That leads us to the next, that is cash flow from financing activities, minus EUR 22 million. We have paid EUR 14 million down to our debt. We also had interest payments and lease payments, adding up to EUR 8 million, giving us cash at EUR 20 million. So one remark there is that the cash level is EUR 7 million higher than the beginning of the period, which means that the reduction of net debt is higher than the EUR 14 million, which leaves us to the next illustration, which is our financial position.And we see a further strengthening of our leverage ratio from 1.9x to 1.8x or from 2.7x 1 year ago. The net debt is now EUR 313 million. So that consists of the bank debt, which is reduced by EUR 23 million. We have an increase in lease liabilities that comes from tethered cap contracts during the quarter. On the numerator -- denominator side, the EBITDA LTM basis has increased by EUR 5 million. So with this financial position and with the cash flow, that concludes a very strong quarter and it also enables us to pay a dividend of around EUR 34 million in May, subject to AGM approval and also depending on the currency rate between the euro and the Norwegian krone.So that wraps up the financial part, and then I will leave it to you, Thomas.
Yes. Thank you, Bent. And as I hope you can see and hear, we've been very happy about the -- we are very happy about the start of the year. And we are very happy about the continuation of the strong development we have now had for many, many, many quarters in Elopak. And not the least, and we're, of course, happy that MENA, given the investment we made is exactly doing, as I said, we have a very high level of confidence and belief in the business moving forward.The construction of the plant in U.S., we continue to talk about it. It's very important for us. It's a big move. We think it will be fundamental in the further development of Americas and the Elopak Group. And also here, we see that, that is delivering as it should. And all of that leads us to a belief and a statement that gives us a lot of confidence in our performance. We are confident that the year -- the full year will deliver and support the midterm targets as we have defined them previously. And on that note, midterm targets, because we also announced, of course, in Q4 that we had met the midterm targets and many of you have said, now what? And now what will be revealed here when we have the Capital Markets Day on the 4th of September in Oslo, and you are all cordially invited to this big event. During that event, we will, of course, develop on our strategy moving forward and also on the targets that we are setting ourselves for the next years to come. So please make a note, September 4th after the summer here.With this, I'll hand over to you, Mirza.
Thank you, Thomas and Bent for your presentation. We will now go into the Q&A session. We will begin with the audience here in Oslo before we take on the ones received online. For the journalists that are present here today, we will set aside time after the Q&A session. So let's begin. I would likely -- I would like to kindly ask you to please state your name and the company you are presenting and also please use the microphone.
Jeppe, Arctic Securities. In terms of filling machine sales, both in EMEA and Americas, was this primarily replacements of old machines or new sales?
So it actually varies in EMEA. We have -- frankly, we have both. We have now clearly some old machines that needs replacement. But as I showed, we have -- we are seeing market share growth, and that actually means replacing competitive filling machines with ours and can be different systems, can be same system. In Americas, in a way, given that historically, we haven't been selling filling machines for many, many years, all machines are new machines. But as you know, in Americas, the system is slightly different than it is in Europe in as much as -- it's a -- it's not a system approach as we have here. It's much more solution sales. So some of the machines will use our packaging material, some of them will use other competitive packaging materials.
And in terms of market share in Americas, could you give the split on filling machines and fresh carton on the market share and maybe the development, the last year?
So I can't give you this, the -- what we said and because market shares in filling machines is a little bit of a estimate after all. But what we saw after the COVID period was that we believe, and this is our understanding of the market. You have to take it for this. But we believe that we were seeing somewhere around 40% of the new machines going into market that we managed to sign up. If you look at the total installed base in America, we have a fraction of the market right now. The total installed base is more than 500 machines and the number of machines we are placing to make meaningful impact on market share is going to take many, many years. It's a low replacement cycle in that range.
And last one for me in terms of easing input cost and your solid gross margin in the quarter, how is the price negotiation with existing and new customers, how is that developing?
Could you just take it again, please? I didn't get the beginning.
The price negotiation on existing and current customers.
So when it comes to pricing, and Bent mentioned that this year, of course, we have commercial negotiations with specific customers, but we have not implemented a general price increase this year. So our figures are not impacted generally by price increase. Then you can have movements between customers clearly, where we also are now in this industry, generally speaking -- and this is not necessarily only Elopak, but generally, you tend to have 1-year contracts in the industry. This has been always been an advantage in a carton environment because it gives you as a customer transparency on your costing for a longer time in -- when you use carton as a packaging material. And that also means that at this time of year, we don't have -- we are not discussing generally pricing with our customers. That is done typically at this time of year.
All right. Moving on to the questions received on the chat function from the webcast. We have Charlie Muir-Sands from BNP Paribas Exane. Was there a positive or negative calendar effect year-over-year due to timing of Easter, Ramadan, et cetera? Are you able to quantify that?
So I think it's very difficult to quantify the effect of Ramadan, but Ramadan came in Q1 this year, and most of that fell outside Q1 last year. So that had some impact in MENA. But it's not only a Ramadan effect, it's also economic recovery, it's also access to more raw milk. There are more explanations than Ramadan. I think what we can also say, Thomas mentioned that we built less stock finished goods this year compared to last year. And if you take year-over-year for the group, that is around EUR 6 million in difference versus last year. So that is also one thing to consider.
Good. And did the Q1 margins benefit or get adversely impacted by different material cost rates versus what you expect for the rest of the year?
For '24?
Yes.
Yes. So as I mentioned, what we have seen the softening of is mainly on PE and utilities. If we look at the price curve for LDPE, it moves currently sideways. And as a company, we don't say, speculate externally of what we may think about future LDPE prices. But I think it's important to follow the LDPE prices, and also remembering that we have hedged our positions around 70% as a mix of our commercial contracts and our financial instruments in Europe. And as we normally say in America, we have the pass-through contracts, so that makes us margin neutral from that perspective.
Good. And last one from Charlie, how did your aseptic business perform in Q1?
So on the aseptic side, we saw growth on UHT. So the milk business was growing. That has been a growth factor for us for years and we're installing more machines. And maybe even more importantly, we are seeing that the ones we have installed are really doing very well in the market. Our customers are generally very happy about the installations and the products. On the juice side, we have seen softer market. There is a consumption drop on juice likely, I would assume, related to general economic environment for consumers, et cetera, it's probably considered, I would assume less essential from a consumer point of view than milk is in the household economy. So that -- there is some impact in the juice side, and we have seen that as well.
All right. And questions from Niclas Gehin from -- the analyst from DNB. You report an EBITDA margin of 15.8% this quarter while you guide for 14% to 15% in your financial targets, Is 15.8% a sustainable level for your guiding going forward or are you prepared to come down to the targeted range again?
So I'm going to try to answer this in a little bit round way, because the situation we have after Q1 is we are looking at a business where we think we have a very strong -- we have a good momentum. Our business is doing well. We have all the projects that we've been talking about, and we are very confident about the delivery and performance of the business. What we're also doing is to say we will update the outlook and the mid- to longer-term perspectives. We're not doing that right now because to do that, there's a long explanation on how and where and what it takes, et cetera. This is where the strategy part comes in. So that's why we're saying, look, we are on target. We're absolutely delivering. We're doing well. We're not going to define new mid- to long-term during a quarterly call.
All right. Next one from Niclas. Your equipment sales have been strong 3 quarters in a row. Is this a level you expect to stay at going forward or should we expect to see quarters with single-digit million euro sales figures again?
So overall, demand for our equipment is good. And I see that pretty much across where we are. We -- one of the strategies we had, one of the intentions we had by going into MENA was to allow -- or maybe to offer, not allow, but to offer the region and our customers in the region, equipment of the highest standard in this industry, which is what we are now doing and which is now we are seeing is taking effect. That has a very, very clear effect for them from a economic point of view because it will improve on their hygiene, increase their shelf life, reduce their cost. So demand in that part of the world, demand in European part, as I said, we are growing our market share. There are different areas we're doing it. We are seeing the plastic dominated parts of the world such as U.K. as with an ever-increasing interest around carton, that leads to filling machines. And Americas, we are commissioning machines as fast as we can and selling them also as fast as we can in line with the plan we had or slightly ahead of the plan we had.
Maybe I can add something. If you look at the filling machine sales for Q1, this is a part of our commissioning program. And our machines are signed, so they are existing contracts. So in order to honor those contracts, I think we rather need to pick up our commissioning rate and not reduce it. So we don't see any downside on the commissioning speed compared to what we've seen in Q1. One thing to take note though is that sometimes we sell the machine and sometimes we lease out the machine. So that will affect the revenues in different ways.
Thank you. Robin Santavirta from Carnegie. Can you describe how you have hedged your PE and aluminum purchases for the remainder of the year? That's number one. Number two is, your balance sheet starts to become quite solid. Are you looking for growth through acquisitions? If so, what kind of acquisitions are most interesting for you, small bolt-ons or large transformational M&A?
So I will take the first one.
Yes.
So no. So when we think about LDPE, we need to think about Europe, and we need to think about America. So let's take America first. There, we have pass-through contracts. So then everything is managed through the pass-through contracts. Now when we go to Europe, that is a combination of some raw material clauses typically for our -- on our closures for fresh, in particular. And when that is cleared, we have that transparency, then we lock in the rest with financial instruments. If you combine that effect for LDPE and you take the exposure in Europe, we are around 30% open on LDPE. On aluminum, we have hedged slightly higher. I think there, it's approximately 75% hedged. And aluminum is then a European issue because we don't sell aseptic cartons in America.
So if I then comment on the M&A, it's a very good point, of course, and we are definitely happy about the ski slope that Bent showed here in the ever declining leverage ratio. What we are doing actively, and to Robin's question, are we looking for transformational, are we looking for bolt-ons? So we think we have been -- we're very happy with the acquisition we made with Naturepak. It fits us perfect from a strategic point of view, from a geographic point of view and a whole set of different reasons. So what we are doing is we are actively actually scouting. But it has to be something that is genuinely value-creative. And clearly, for us, a transformational one is would be, should that happen a much more difficult M&A to do and will require a lot more understanding than the smaller ones we do. So I'm not [ ruining ] anyone out actually. It's part of the work we have been doing for the last actually few years to actively and work in this area as well to drive the company and the growth of the company in the right way. Much more on that, by the way, on the Capital Markets Day. I'm giving this teaser on the big, big event we have on September 4th.
All right. And last one from Robin is regarding the outlook for the rest of the year. It's -- there are a lot of questions about this. But could you please give us some color about the volume outlook and the gross margin outlook for the rest of the year?
So I -- color, we can give -- I think we gave color actually. We may not have given much more than color, but we did give color. We see -- we believe that the momentum we have in the business will continue. And that is the momentum of our business. The growth we are seeing is not a one-off. To Bent's point, it's not -- we don't think it's because of calendar issues and Ramadan and things like that, there is an underlying solid development of our business. And that is why -- how we are facing our belief in the delivery of the outlook that I mentioned.
And Hakon Fuglu from SEB. It seems that price increases on liquid raw boards continues in 2024. Will you be able to mitigate this through increase of your prices also in 2024 for EMEA?
So I think that when it comes to board prices, these are prices that are known when we are doing our assessment of pricing strategies. So on board, we do have 3-year contracts. And the caveat to that is that there are some links to CPI on an annual basis and which has been the case also for this year. So when we assessed our pricing for 2024, that was with that assumption and that knowledge about expected board prices. We don't expect any board price increases for the remainder of the year because we are working with long-term contracts and the adjustments linked to CPI are only annual.
Thank you. And then we have 3 questions from Fredrik Windrup from Boldhaven. Can you please elaborate in detail on the drivers of the volume growth in core Europe? That's number one. Number two, India continues to ramp well. How has your ambitions for India developed over the past 3 months to 6 months? Number three is capacity in the U.S. Given you're hitting full output, how do you think about the ability to grow the top line and EBITDA in Americas until the Little Rock facility comes on stream?
Good. Okay. Let me start and you please complement any way you like. So on the European business, in great detail, that may not be the case. But what we are seeing here in -- is that the European market and, let's say, core Europe, our part of the world, the -- which is EU part of the world, so to say, is we are not seeing a change in consumption. It's not driven by some of the fact that consumers are now suddenly consuming more milk. We've talked about the milk consumption declining for many, many, many years at different paces, and that is not something that changes overnight evidently. So what it is, is actually that we are building market share. We are getting some contracts. We are using our portfolio. And we thankfully have a good reception for customers who like to use our equipment. So that is simply stated like that.The second one on India. India, remember, we went into India because India is with a wide margin, the world's largest milk market. This market is dominated by very, very, very simple milk packaging in many -- in most cases, pouches -- plastic pouches, the simplest, different quality levels, let's put it like that. And clearly, we also see a market that develops from a income point of view, a bigger and bigger middle class and a retail development with more cooling chains, higher standard, more expectations, and we want to be part of that transition into more modern, more -- better packaging. So that we also said at the beginning.Before we move into that, let's just make sure we get some meat on the business in India, and we started off the business here with the Roll Fed production that we are currently developing and driving in both juice, also in milk and also in adjacent businesses such as liquor, which is a part of India. So the issue we have to come back to the question, when is it that we move into the next phase of really driving our milk business in India? That is the phase that we are currently working on and finalizing the details around.
Great. And it was just capacity -- well, you talked about the capacity in the U.S. All right. So you have covered all of them. Good.
Yes, I think that maybe we didn't cover that much on Americas now. But I think for Americas, I think the point is that you can't really sign on new business in Montreal based on where we are because we are very close to capacity. And you are close to capacity with smaller sizes cartons and bigger carton sizes. So I think the biggest one to follow is the product mix going forward. So what is the mix between half gallon sizes versus smaller, what we call fractionals and 1 liter, and that will be determined on the top line. But I think the great potential comes with the U.S. plant.
Thank you very much. I do not see any more questions. Well, there's one more.
[indiscernible]. There's been some rumors about [ Fed ] looking to sell their stake and that there's been some strategic interest. So from your perspective, who would be the strategic interest who would have most benefits of becoming a large shareholder in Elopak?
It's a very speculative question. I really cannot answer it. I -- it's from our point of view, we concentrate on running the business honestly. And I have, of course, read newspapers like everybody else, but I have really no comment on that kind of speculation honestly.
No more questions, no more questions online either. So that concludes our session for today. Thank you very much for your attention, and have a nice day.
Thank you very much.