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Elopak ASA
OSE:ELO

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Elopak ASA
OSE:ELO
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Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2024-Q3

from 0
C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Good morning, and welcome, everybody, to the Third Quarter 2024 Results Presentation for Elopak. My name is Christian Gjerde, and I'm the Head of Treasury and Investor Relations.

Today's presentation will be held by our CEO, Thomas Kormendi; and our CFO, Bent Axelsen, and will last for around 30 minutes, followed by a Q&A session where the audience here in Oslo and the people participating online will be able to ask questions.

So with that, I would hand over to our CEO, Thomas Kormendi.

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

Thank you, Christian, and a warm welcome to all of you here in Oslo and for all of you who will be following us right now on the web. Today is all about Q3. And we are actually very happy to report yet another strong result, overall strong performance in a quite challenging market. So let's get into it.

As always, 2 words about who we are. And we are, for those of you who do not know us, the largest -- the world's largest, in fact, fresh liquid carton packaging company. We sell around 14 billion cartons worldwide in around 70 different markets. And we split our business in both a chilled fresh business, which is the majority of what we do, an aseptic long-life business and also what you see here as other.

From a geographical point of view, we split the world into 2 areas, what we call EMEA, which, in our case, also includes India, and Americas, which in our case does not include South America. And what is it we do in all these markets? Well, we are in what we would like to say, sustainable packaging. And this is the core of what we do. And for those of you who followed us on the Capital Markets Day, you saw all the many activities and initiatives we have in this direction. But what we do is we protect commodities. That could be milk, and it is typically milk, but it's foods. And with this, we, of course, also enable world nutrition in the many, many markets we are active, all the while and very, very importantly, with the drive to reduce plastics.

So let's get into the quarter and our results. And first of all, I think we are extremely happy to report that we have had an all-time high revenue from a quarterly point of view. Growth in the range of 3.5% and really driven -- a revenue that is driven by organic growth rather than what we have had in many previous years, pricing.

We also see that our Pure-Pak, the core business, the Pure-Pak carton as well as the closure business we have sees solid growth, particularly in Northern Central Europe, again, core markets to us, and also in Americas, where we have the big initiatives that we've been describing.

We come out with an EBITDA of EUR 45 million, which is -- gives us a run rate in line with what we present here, 15.5% margin level. This quarter, we are presenting a new metric, and that is the return on capital employed, the ROCE. We did that for those of you who saw it during the Capital Markets Day, but we've not been doing it during the quarters yet. And here, we also report a strong report on ROCE, even with the investments that we are currently making in primarily Americas right now.

In fact, on that note, we have invested in the quarter another 25 -- sorry, we have approved an investment of another $25 million in the second line in our plant in Americas that we are currently building in Arkansas, Little Rock. With that capacity increase, we are actually starting up the plant or rather adding additional capacity to more than -- to double the capacity of the plant that we are currently building.

And finally, as a highlight for us in the company, we did have the first Capital Markets Day in September -- 4th of September and had the chance then to present our new Repackaging tomorrow strategy.

So what does it look like? Well, we are up by roughly 3%, as I said, 3.5% -- sorry, 3.3% to be exact, to almost EUR 300 million in the quarter. And that is really driven by Pure-Pak sales, Pure-Pak growth, market share growth in Europe, filling machines and closures, as I mentioned before. We had a rather smaller impact when it comes to IFRS 15 in the quarter. But in actual terms, the -- if you disregard the IFRS 15, we have a slightly higher growth than what we're looking at here, close to 4%.

From an EBITDA level, you can see that we are slightly down from Q3 of last year, which was, by the way, all-time high level for us. Now the background for this is very simple in as much as EUR 2 million of the EUR 3 million we have in difference relates to a one-off we had last year, and the difference in EUR 1 million relates partly to an -- again, IFRS 15 accounting rule really.

What we can see is that the contribution is pretty much stable between the quarters. And remember, we come from the all-time high quarter we have in Q3 with good results driven by closures, Pure-Pak and more challenging development on our Roll Fed business and definitely also more challenging in some parts of the world. I'll come into that in a second.

Right. So what does it mean from a geographical perspective? Like thinking of EMEA, EMEA is, as you saw in the previous -- in the one of the first charts, a big, big part of our business. It's the core business. It's where we have a significant market share. It's also a business where we have very, very long customer tenures, solid customers with whom we have grown internationally.

And what we see here is that in this context, we see a solid growth in the upper part, we can call like that Northern and Central parts of EMEA, but the Southern parts and MENA have seen some challenges in market, primarily driven by softer demand, driven by consumer spending being somewhat strained and that impacts the volume. We have an impact here of around EUR 2 million on IFRS 15 versus last year and around EUR 9 million versus last year on a year-to-date basis, i.e., again, disregarding this, our growth in this area would be -- is around EUR 9 million higher than what you see here.

Americas, and this has been a story for us for a while. And here, we continue on the path we've had. We continue selling filling machines. We continue with the strategy of becoming a bigger supplier with a bigger portfolio. We also invested in closure sales or closure capacity during last year. We are now seeing the sales of that capacity coming in, showing positive results.

And here, we have a slight negative impact on IFRS 15 of only EUR 1.2 million. Year-to-date, it's really pretty much the same as in the quarter. We have a growth in filling machines, Pure-Pak, closures, but we are, as we have said before, at a capacity level. So there's a limit as to how much we can grow when it comes to the carton sales, hence the investment we have made and are making in the additional capacity.

We have had a very challenging supply chain situation that we reported even in Q2. This relates to a supplier of ours who had problems when starting up after a maintenance situation that resulted in disruption in supply chain. And given our full capacity in the plant in Montreal, it's very, very difficult for us to actually catch up on a backlog like that. However, we are doing well. We are pushing on all the buttons we can in Americas, and we are getting as many cartons we can out of the system. And we see that -- we generate growth despite this. But this has been a very challenging situation for our customers, and they have been very patient with us in the understanding of this very, very extraordinary situation from a supply point of view.

As you know, we've invested in Arkansas in a plant, and now we are happy to say that we are moving along as we should, in line with plan, both in line with plan when it comes to time, which is very, very important, but equally important, of course, in line with costs. And with the line 2 approved in September, we are looking very much forward to be able to supply even more customers from this plant in Arkansas in the heartland of America.

So far, we've spent USD 40 million on it out of the total USD 95 million, and we will come back on Bent's time -- Bent's part on how much we intend to spend for the rest of the year. But this is how it looks. It actually looks very much like a factory. You can see this is truly greenfield activity. We are placing the plant there, and it's going to be a plant really at -- with the most modern gable top plant in the world.

So we're looking very much forward to that and looking forward to how this will support actually this strategy, namely the Repackaging tomorrow strategy. And as you remember, for those of you who saw the Capital Markets Day, we launched this in September. And this is a strategy that is made on the back of the fact that we delivered on all of the IPO targets we set in '21, which were 3 to 5 years. We delivered on all of these by the end of last year.

So this strategy really is to say then what happens now. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it. But given that we will be following up on this in quarterly reports as of now, just a couple of comments on this. Number one is we are already, we believe, the #1 player when it comes to sustainable carton packaging. But what we aim to do in this strategy is to increase this leadership and drive developments related specifically to -- on the notion of sustainability and fiber cartons. We have regulations coming, and we have a lot of interest from both stakeholders, politicians, customers, partners in the development, and this is a big, big focus for us.

Number two is we are saying we are going to become a EUR 2 billion company. And I think we are well on our way. We have record high quarter. But in that respect as well, we are also saying here that we will be targeting a 15% to 17% margin level in the business. Again, we are well on our way. We are presenting here 15.5% during this quarter.

And for what we're going to follow in the period to come, we have 3 elements that shape the strategy. Number one is to realize the global growth. That, in our case, means we are building a plant in Arkansas. We are putting in 2 lines. There is room for more. We're going to leverage the investment and drive our business in that area based on the investments we made in Americas, but also in MENA and also in India that we've been presenting. So very much use, leverage the investments we made.

Secondly, and this relates to the sustainability, strengthen the core leadership, the leadership we have in our core markets. I'm coming back to a point on that just in a second. And then thirdly, the overall and massive plastic replacement shift. Consumers, customers, retailers, politicians want to move away from plastic, want to have alternatives to reduce plastic littering, CO2 emissions, et cetera. We are committed to provide that alternative with our solutions.

And I'd like just to give a little flavor of some ideas what has -- what is happening in our world. So in some of the latest quarters, we presented some of the fantastic developments on plastic to carton shift. We have also seen in a previous quarterly presentation how we're building market share in core markets. And this time, we've just taken a couple of examples of some of our core, how we are -- our large customers, and I'd like to say, long-tenured core customers, how they are building their business and using the Pure-Pak system to drive that.

And one very good example for this is Arla. Everyone knows Arla. I think everyone knows Arla. Arla is an international dairy company, owned by farmers in Denmark, Sweden and around the world in Holland. They are active in Europe. They're active in Middle East. It's a company -- one of the leading dairy companies, in fact, in the world. They have great iconic brand names like Lurpak, the butter, and of course, also the name itself, Arla.

So what they have done, they have taken another iconic brand name, namely Milka, which is the Mondelez-owned chocolate milk known from -- all of you who travel in airports will see the Milka brand everywhere. And they are now moving that into a drinkable format. And for that purpose, they chose the iconic Pure-Pak to suit the iconic Milka brand. This is going to be launched. It's a very exciting launch. It's going to be launched across a number of countries in Europe and beyond.

Another example of also one of these big dairy companies who have a global reach and work across many, many countries, of course, for us is Friesland Campina. And Friesland Campina is Dutch. It's also cooperative owned by the farmers in Holland, have a long global reach, significant presence in Asia and also in parts -- in bigger parts of Europe, including Eastern Europe.

And in this case, what they have done is they have taken one of the best-known brands in Romania. It is called Napolact. And this brand, they have now moved from another packaging system, let me put it like that, into the Pure-Pak system in order to -- because simply for 2 reasons: high consumer preference, number one; secondly, in terms of the performance that the system -- the filling machine can offer the customers.

In this case, they can move the shelf life of the product up to 33 days, simply in a fresh milk, changing the filling equipment, using the state-of-the-art Shikoku technology with our packaging material in Pure-Pak and then get this kind of shelf life. Significant improvement on TCO, total cost of ownership, while maintaining a very, very high consumer preference.

Two examples of how customers are thinking about this and part of why we are seeing the growth that I mentioned before in Northern and Central Europe because we have initiatives like these, but not only these, of course.

So time is flying. And with this, I will hand over to Bent, please.

B
Bent K. Axelsen
executive

Thank you, Thomas. So before I go through the financials, I would just like to notify that we have changed the definition of EBITDA. So now we include the share of net profit in our EBITDA metric. And that means that the only difference between EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA are those adjustments we make related to special items. I think that will simplify the communication, and I will talk about EBITDA in this presentation. For the sake of good order, I would also like to inform that there are no adjustments year-to-date '24, nor in '23. So it's the same.

So a good quarter in a dark time of the year from a weather perspective. So before I go through the bridge, a few things around IFRS 15 because I think there are some confusions. So let me just repeat what is it. So when we produce finished goods, there's a customer logo on that carton. They've already ordered it. They have to take it. They have to pay for it. We have an enforceable right to payments. So that finished goods becomes revenues. That is the IFRS 15 adjustment.

So for the group, we have an adjustment of EUR 100,000 plus. So if wouldn't been for this adjustment, it would have been 48 -- sorry, go to this slide. It would have been 45.3 million. The adjustment last year was also positive, but it was -- it would have been EUR 700,000 lower. So when we talk about the effect year-over-year, we have to compare this adjustment to that adjustment, and that's why there is some confusion sometimes.

So when you look at the change from last year to this year, sorry, that effect is EUR 600,000. Positive here, EUR 100,000 here, positive EUR 700,000 here. Why is that? We have produced finished goods. We haven't invoiced it yet, but we have an enforceable right to payment. We're going to make a booklet about this. So we don't have to refer to this every single quarter, so it becomes too technical. But since there was some confusion in analyst reports, I would just like to clarify it.

Okay. Good. The bridge. So we go from EUR 48 million to EUR 45 million this year. So let me just start off the one-off effect that we had last year. So we had a positive one-off effect last year because of a reversal on an accrual in Europe. So that happened last year. So that is a big part of the explanation.

The next bridge element is what we call net revenue mix. It's rather stable, and I will explain on the next slide what can explain that. Further to the raw materials, we have a raw material cost reduction of around EUR 3 million. That is a result of a softening of PE, [ alu ] and energy. We still have an increased board cost year-over-year, and that is very much linked to shortage of wood in the Nordics.

If we move to the operating costs, this has increased EUR 3.7 million. And it's important to explain that a very big part of that is actually inflation that we still have in our books. So that is estimated to be EUR 1.7 million. And the remainder is our FTE ramp-up linked to our strategic initiatives, plus increased R&D efforts.

In these numbers in Q3, we also have project costs related to ERP implementation in Americas. That takes us to EUR 45 million. And if we look at this in context, it demonstrates a continued good run rate. So the run rate that we had in Q1 and Q2 continues into Q3.

Now to the segments, EMEA and Americas. If we start with EMEA, we -- as Thomas explained, we have a positive development in the chilled segment in the northern part of Europe, both on blanks and on closures. On the other hand, we see a negative development on Roll Fed because there is more competition on that format, but that is mitigated by good growth in the same format Roll Fed in India.

Thomas referred to the down trading in South. That is very much linked to the macroeconomic environment in Europe, and that seems to affect the southern part of EMEA more than the northern part. In MENA, we see some consumption decline, but there are also timing effects in the way customers doing their purchases. So we expect a normalization into Q4 in MENA.

I already mentioned, if you go -- if you look at the EMEA figures here, the onetime effect, that was actually in EMEA. And this EUR 1 million is then the year-over-year delta, which means positive effect, EUR 500,000 last year, negative effect, EUR 500,000 this year, year-over-year, EUR 1 million impact. That's the way to think about it. And Christian is happy to take all the questions about IFRS 15 any day.

If we move to Americas, we have a strong quarter from a filling machine perspective. It's interesting from 2 perspectives. It also is an indication of future blanks growth in America, but also for the quarter, it explains part of the profit. Despite the supply chain challenges in America with the board shortage that we talked about in the second quarter, we are still growing the volumes, which I think is a huge achievement and a big thank you to the team in Americas. So that is job very well done in America.

The issue now is not lack of boards. It's basically that when the board shortage hit us, we were already close to full capacity utilization. So it's quite difficult to catch up when you already run full steam in the plant. The last point on Americas is that we still have a strong performance in our joint ventures, very much linked to the school milk deliveries into U.S.

So let's take a look at the cash flow. We have a strong -- still strong cash flow from operation of EUR 94 million. The working capital is increasing by EUR 11 million from year-end, and it follows the top line growth, but it also includes -- you can call it like timing effects because we are settling accounts payables to our supplier at different time of the year. And sometimes that is positive, sometimes that's negative. So that's natural one-off or call it timing effects. And also, it's also linked to timing of transactions related to filling machines.

I think what is underlying here is that, one, we are building up stock in Europe for a scheduled maintenance stop in Europe, and we also have higher board than normal actually in Montreal, given this supply chain disruption. So coming back to the point that it's the production bottleneck that is the issue, not the raw material part.

Taxes paid, EUR 22 million, one from more profit, two is also a slightly higher tax payment than normal due to the catch-up effect of earnings in Canada. That happened in Q1, so nothing special about this quarter. EUR 8 million is basically a reversal of noncash earnings from our joint ventures, so that's easy.

Moving to cash flow from investments. That is EUR 63 million. So what is that? The biggest chunk here is the EUR 36 million related to the U.S. plant. We have the normal investments in maintenance, in filling machines of around EUR 26 million. So that's pretty normal, and we have some other bibs and bobs of projects. Other, we got the cash, EUR 2 million from Russia. That was an earning recognition in the second quarter, but now we got it, EUR 2 million there. And we also have dividends from one of our joint ventures.

Dividends paid -- sorry, cash flow from financing, minus EUR 23 million. We paid record high dividends, [ EUR 34 million ]. Lease payments is -- the lease liabilities, slightly up because of our tethered cap contracts. Other is interest payments, mainly that is EUR 11 million. So that's up a couple of millions compared to last year because our net interest-bearing debt is increasing due to the investment program in America.

So we increased the loans by EUR 41 million to finance that investment, but we also raised the cash from EUR 13 million to EUR 21 million. So that's important to remember when you look at the EUR 41 million number.

Let's move to our balance sheet. So actually happy to report -- so there's -- I see something here, and I see something else here. So I will talk about what I see on my screen, which is the balance sheet. There we go. Here, we have the leverage ratio and the net debt.

So what I'm happy to report is that we are at the midterm target for leverage ratio and it's after paying EUR 34 million in dividends and after paying -- investing all that money into the U.S. plant. So that is great. If you look at the return on capital employed, 16.8% is a robust return. And you can see that it is quite above same period last year, and it's slightly down compared to Q2. That is mainly due to investment program increasing the capital employed. This is LTM, that means last 12 months. So that is the way we will present our ROCE. So we will not do the quarterly ROCEs. We will do the last 12 months. That is probably good to remember.

So conclusion, balance sheet remains solid, and we have improved the profitability that really offsets the investment levels.

So that's all I wanted to share today, Thomas. So I give the word back to you.

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

Thank you, Bent, for this update. And just a few words on our summary as well as outlook. So first of all, and very happily we say, well, the business overall remains solid. We're seeing the growth in the areas where we try to secure growth. We're happy to report market share even in areas where we have a solid market share and where there is a very tight competition.

The filling machine sales, to Bent's point, are fundamentally critical for us to drive the business moving forward. So the fact that we see strong filling machine sales now is a very, very good indicator of how we're going to see the business moving forward. This is true in Americas, where we've spent quite some energy on that strategy, but it's also true in North Europe. It's even true in South Europe, where the situation a little bit more constrained right now with consumer spending, and it's very much true in the Middle East as well in MENA.

So the financials year-to-date remain strong, and we, hence, record an all-time -- a strong -- sorry, an all-time high quarterly revenue this quarter. Looking at the full year, we expect this to continue in line with the current run rate on the revenue side and also expect that we will be above the 15% mark that we have in our midterm target.

And with this, I will hand over to Christian, if there's anything on the financial calendar you want to add.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

No, I think we can move straight to Q&A. So we will start with the people here in the audience. So I would please ask that you use the microphone and state your full name and the company that you represent. And then following the questions from the audience here, we will move to the people joining online. So if you raise your hand, then I will come around with a mic to take your questions.

U
Unknown Analyst

Arctic Securities. You're mentioning that you're gaining market share in core in Europe. Can you tell us in terms of growth, how much is price and how much is volume and also compare it to the market growth?

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

Yes, I can do that. So all the growth essentially we are seeing in the quarter is volume growth. We did not have -- we have not been increasing prices in '24 as we reported early on. So this is essentially a growth in volume. And when we see market growth, the examples I showed on Arla and Campina, it's very much driven by technology. It's offering, which is different, offering, which is preferred, much more so than a money growth.

But from a -- clearly, we have to and we are competitive in the markets where we are growing, obviously. And that competition you can gain not necessarily by pricing, but by offering equipment that, in this case I showed, gives you a higher shelf -- longer shelf life, reduces costs like that. It's all part of the total cost, overall cost.

The second part of your question was -- could you just take it again, sorry?

U
Unknown Analyst

We can take the volume growth versus the market volume growth...

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

So if you look at the volume, the market in Europe and frankly also in Americas, market is not growing. The market of chilled, the milk consumption has been declining for many, many, many years. That hasn't changed in 1 quarter. What we have seen actually is that the consumption of juices has, if anyone, anything, probably declined somewhat more driven by not the least, very, very high concentrate costs on orange related to Brazil and Florida and [ diseases ], et cetera, and also apple concentrate has gone up significantly. So that business is somewhat under pressure right now.

U
Unknown Analyst

And one final question for me. You have a raw board contract negotiation coming up. Can you tell us how the discussions are going?

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

Not really, to be honest, because it's an ongoing discussion we have. But you're right. In this industry, as in anywhere else, you renew contracts and there's a certain negotiation ongoing, but that's where we are.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

I guess then if there are no further questions from the audience, then we will move to the questions that we received online. And we'll start with 2 questions from Hakon Fuglu and SEB. And I'll do them one by one. And the first one, why did margins in America come down in the quarter despite the high share of filling machine deliverables?

B
Bent K. Axelsen
executive

I can take that. So if you compare the margin on filling machine compared to blanks, they are -- the margins are great to be, given that they're filling machines, but they're still lower than the margins on blanks. So that is the main explanation on that, and we don't report the margin on consumables versus blanks externally. So it's a mix basically between those 2.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you, Bent. And then the second question from Hakon. Are you able to push increased liquid board cost over to your customers in EMEA given the current weakness in consumer demand in South Europe and MENA?

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

So I think the answer is you have to look at what has happened in recent years in that respect. We, recall, in '22 faced significant raw material increases, which led us to had the impact that we needed to improve on our pricing, which is what we did. So I think the point being I'm trying to make is we know and we have shown that we can improve pricing when needed. And to the question I had before on the board cost, evidently, we need to reflect the board cost in our final customer price as well.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you, Thomas. And then following up again with Hakon, are you taking market share in EMEA despite the weaker volumes in some regions?

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

And the short answer is, yes in parts of EMEA and no in other parts, we're not -- but we're not losing market share either. It's just soft. If you look at it in the northern part, why are we taking market share? Part of that relates to plastic to carton conversion, very important. Second relates to the technology offering we have, very important, I mentioned before. And thirdly, I'd like to think that our teams are doing a great job, frankly, both in North and South and Americas, et cetera.

So we are in the areas where consumer spending is tight. We can lose market share, of course, because they can move from -- into lower-cost products, which have a different kind of packaging format than we have. That may happen in some cases for sure. When you look at the Roll Fed business, which is, for us, an additional business, you could say, clearly, we are seeing very, very high competition in North, South, Middle East, everywhere really.

And in some cases, we will -- you could say, yes, we are losing market share in that case. That's clear. We see that in our Roll Fed business.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you. And then the last question from Hakon. Are you hedging input costs into 2025 for other than raw board materials?

B
Bent K. Axelsen
executive

Okay. So we are not hedging raw boards in Europe. So there's no financial instruments, but that is why we typically sign longer-term contracts for more stability in the pricing. So when you do a board contract, typically, there is some kind of a CPI link, but it's not a spot price. So the protection on raw boards is through the commercial contract in itself. So you will not expect volatility during the year on row boards. And then as we have explained before, on plastic, on aluminum, we do our financial hedging, and we do the hedging program to mirror the progress of the commercial negotiations. We always try to balance off both sides as we progress during the autumn. America is, as you know, a different business with pass-through clauses.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you, Bent. Then we have some questions from Charlie Muir-Sands from BNP Exane. What was the nature and quantum of the MENA timing effect year-on-year, which impacted Q3 and you have flagged benefits in Q4?

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

Yes. So we are not going to quantify it exactly. But what I can say is when you look at some of the contracts you have in MENA and bigger contracts, there can be movements between quarters. They order more in one period, and that impacts the next quarter. So -- and we have talked about it before when you have Ramadan, for instance, there's a lot of ordering because there's a high consumption. So you have these movements.

What we are seeing and which, frankly, is the most encouraging for us is that the business in MENA is picking up in Q4 for all we can see now. We see good order income from that part of the world. And inherently -- and we talk -- inherently, we're in a good position in MENA.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you, Thomas. Continuing with questions from Charlie. What level of liquid packaging board cost inflation do you anticipate in 2025?

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

So I can take it first, and you can add if you want to add. So we're not disclosing it. That's the short answer. Maybe you want to add something. But look, we have negotiations ongoing. That will eventually, of course, also mean customer negotiations. This is a commercial topic for us. It's very, very much something that is going on right now, and we're not going to disclose further than that. Do you want to add?

B
Bent K. Axelsen
executive

I think like you said in the previous -- earlier question is 2022 were really extraordinary. 2023 were really extraordinary from a market perspective. 2024, 2025, this is the way we run business. It will always be challenging to negotiate, but I don't think we can say that we are in any extraordinary situation. This is how Elopak runs this business.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

And then last question from Charlie. How much price contribution will there be to revenue growth in 2025?

B
Bent K. Axelsen
executive

I think you can replay the last answer.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Okay. So I guess we'll then move on to next question from Robin Santavirta, Carnegie. What is the outlook? Let me see -- sorry. Can you also update us on how you have hedged aluminum and PE purchases?

B
Bent K. Axelsen
executive

Yes. So I don't have an exact percentage, but we are during our way and the aim to be at the similar level as we have communicated for '24, typically on P&L, that is typically between 70% and 80% of our total exposure, combination of commercial clauses and financial instruments, and that's the same thinking we have for 2025 and then the progress of the hedging program will follow the progress of the negotiations. So we don't speculate.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you, Bent. One more question from Robin. When will we start production on the first line in Arkansas? Should we expect extra costs related to the startup? If so, what magnitude?

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

So we will start -- we have said first half of next year. We hope to start in the earlier phase of that first half of next year. We have customers waiting for this. So this is, as you can understand, very fundamental that we get this up and running. In our plan, of course, we have planned a ramp-up of the factory in that ramp, but also there is the estimated cost to handle that ramp-up. So at this moment, we don't have anything extraordinary to report.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you, Thomas. Then we have some questions from Fredrik Windrup, Boldhaven. I will also do questions one by one. On EMEA, it sounds like MENA and EU Roll Fed were both negative. Is it therefore correct that in the EMEA segment, 100% of the total segment growth is from GLS in India?

B
Bent K. Axelsen
executive

For the whole EMEA? That...

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

On Roll Fed.

B
Bent K. Axelsen
executive

On Roll Fed. Do you want to answer that? Or do you want me to answer that?

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

I think you should answer this.

B
Bent K. Axelsen
executive

Okay. No. So the volume growth in India is more than compensating for the volume decline in Europe. If you count the volumes of revenue, it's slightly different because of sizes and different absolute pricing points.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you, Bent. Second question from Fredrik. What is your expectation for potential capacity expansion projects in India?

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

So we have planned. We have also announced it during the establishment of our joint venture that we would be moving into Pure-Pak. That is actually, given the size of the Indian milk market, a priority for us in that -- and currently, we are increasing the capacity in the plant in India. We are pretty full and are, as we speak, installing capacity.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you, Thomas. Then following up with a few more questions from Fredrik. What impact do you expect the first production line in the U.S. to have on 2025 results?

B
Bent K. Axelsen
executive

Yes. So that is something we have not disclosed. I think what we're saying is the timing of the opening is what Thomas says, and then it will be a ramp up. So it's a little bit difficult at this stage to say exactly what is the fiscal effect of line 1. I think we would like to complete our own business plan to fine-tune that timing based on the latest. But I think what we said in the Capital Markets Day is one line is around $100 million. And then if they open -- if the start-up is second half and if there is -- or during first half and if there is a ramp-up, at least is less than half of that number. And then we will come back when we have more clarity from the latest one in the business plan.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you, Bent. And then one final one from Fredrik. Full year outlook. So full year revenues in line with current run rate. What does that mean? Q3 revenues -- sorry, Q4 revenues in line with Q3?

B
Bent K. Axelsen
executive

Yes. So I think when we are thinking run rate, we are -- I think a good starting point is start with the LTM revenues. That is EUR 1,160 million. If you take our [ Q4 ] revenues, that is EUR 293 million, if I don't remember correctly. And then the reality is somewhere in that terrain between LTM and looking at the Q3 revenues. And then if you combine that with above 15%, I think with the calculator, you will be able to find a decent EBITDA outlook.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you, Bent. And then we have a couple of questions from Carl Hawthorn. Are you seeing promotion activity from your customers to support volume? And is there a difference in this activity or promotional push by region?

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

You see constant promotions from our customers. It can be new products that are being launched. It can be -- there are some promotions around holidays, et cetera. I don't think -- to my -- I'm frankly not aware that there would be big differences between whether it's one or the other regions. What you do see, of course, is in some parts of our business, it's dominated by private label. And in other parts, you have a more branded product business. And -- but even private label have promotions, right? So I -- it's an ever ongoing thing.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you, Thomas. And then we have one final question again from Carl Hawthorn. Suzano with Pactiv acquisition have been mentioned. How do you think about your supplier sourcing for liquid packaging boards in the Americas to ensure security and supply and the right inventory levels given the incident that we had in the second quarter?

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

So the way we look at it is that there has been quite a while with uncertainty on what happens with Evergreen. We know that the mills were for sale. It took a while. Now there is clarity and Suzano is a huge, huge board manufacturer out of Brazil. And for them to invest in Americas is -- you can all imagine, is part of that strategy. And we have all the reason to think that they're going to build the business and invest and improve in the various ways you can.

So overall, I think this is good for the business. It's good with clarity, and it's good that we can now work with them and plan ahead. So -- when it comes to the supply situation in Americas, we are working very close also with Nippon, of course, Nippon Dynawave. We do also have other ways of looking at more supply than that we're currently working on, be it other suppliers, but also be it new suppliers that are looking at coming into a market that clearly has attracted more and new players.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Perfect. Thank you, Thomas, for that. I think that concludes the questions that we have received online. So unless there are any further questions here from the audience, I think we conclude today's results presentation, and thank you, everyone, for participating, both here in Oslo as well as online.

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

Thank you very much.

C
Christian Gjerde
executive

Thank you.

T
Thomas Kormendi
executive

Thank you.