Norske Skog ASA

OSE:NSKOG

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q2

[Sven Ombudstvedt, CEO & President]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this short presentation of Norske Skog's Second Quarter Results 2021. As we have discussed many times in the past, Norske Skog is on a transformation journey from our traditional publication paper, here illustrated at the bottom line with our traditional paper ranges into sustainable energy, renewable packaging and chemicals and other biomaterials. You can see some of the brand names that we have introduced over the last few years here on the energy side and not least, on the renewable packaging side with Strato and interliner, our 2 new products introduced with brand names this year. In addition, you are also familiar with the Circa company, one of our exciting joint venture companies, and the CEBINA, CEBICO initiatives, which we've also discussed before, and which I'm pleased to say has significant progress also in the second quarter. Before we go a little bit more into these initiatives, again, just a few highlights from the quarter. Our Board of Directors have done the final investment decisions for both the Bruck and the Golbey conversion projects. Large-scale investments on track, both in terms of the budgets and in terms of time. The time means that we can start up production in the fourth quarter of 2023 in France and in the fourth quarter of 2022 in Bruck, enabling a natural introduction into the marketplace of relatively significant renewable packaging materials. Also on the financing side, the highlight is that we are on track with the financing as described before, and we are also here in time on budget. The quarter itself had an EBITDA of NOK 17 million, which is the low point of the cycle, weaker than the first quarter. However, the second quarter will indeed be better as price improvements have now been negotiated. The cost increases that we saw in the quarter have been quite well publicized. And the main factor is recovered paper, but also energy costs increased in the second quarter. The market itself is tighter. Several capacity announcements have been made by the whole industry in 2020 but also into 2021. So the market bounce is relatively sound going into the second half. In addition, we also witnessed in the second quarter a normalization of volumes into the market. So after June, internally, Norske Skog estimates that the market demand in Western Europe is roughly online with 2020, which was heavily impacted by COVID in parts of that half year. So all in all, we can best describe the market as coming back to a normalized situation. We also did close down the production of Tasman towards the end of the second quarter. That has been a long history for us since 2000, but the Tasman mill has been producing since the mid-'50s. So indeed, in general, a relatively important milestone as New Zealand is also transforming out of traditional industries into new industries, of which we are contributing now. We have booked to NOK 160 million of restructuring costs mainly related to employee liabilities. However, as we have guided before, the net positive cash effect from this should be in the range of NZD 20 million, and everything is finally settled during the second half of this year. An important milestone was also done when we invested into a company called Ocean GeoLoop, which is a new, exciting, innovative solution to capture CO2 and possibly even use CO2 for value-generating opportunities going forward. It's the Skogn mill in Central Norway, who is the location for Ocean GeoLoop's research activities, and we are excited to partner with this company to enable us to further enhance this value chain where we think there are significant opportunities going forward. Very, very briefly on the numbers. As I mentioned, the variable costs have been the main element from the first half to the second half. You can see on the right-hand side of this slide, you can see the traditional EBITDA bridge, minus NOK 121 million, a significant factor. Otherwise, relatively modest movements, however, leading to, as mentioned, a weak quarter. If we look at the 2 segments, Europe and Australasia, you can also see that the quarters have been relatively weak on -- in both regions. You can also see that deliveries in Europe are a little bit more normalized, as I said. Australasia is impacted heavily from low utilization at the Tasman mill. This is deliberate as energy costs have been very high, and we have not been able to produce for the better part of the second quarter at Tasman. As mentioned, the market is now in a reasonably balanced way. We have seen that volumes come back. On the left-hand side, you can see the significant downturns of last year and also a weak start to 2021. However, the second quarter has seen much better volume development. And for the first time, we can see pluses on the relative development, even double digits pluses. On the right-hand side, you can see the capacity closures, and now significant closures have been taking place, almost 4 million tonnes altogether from mid-2020, which brings this market again back to bounce which leads to price increases, which we have seen in our negotiations for the second half. We have also guided on this before that the international prices have moved up. Here, you can see the Hong Kong price, the Asian benchmark price has moved up significantly since the trough of mid-2020. Similarly in North America and also then you would expect that the German benchmark price for the EU is also moving up. And as mentioned, we see that in the negotiation for second half. And we do expect significant improvements, partly because of market balance and partly because of cost pressures. And the costs are moving up. I mentioned energy and recovered paper, also kraft pulp for those segments using that, namely lightweight coated and fine paper in our world. However, this also improves the position vis-à-vis competitors as we are using relatively little kraft pulp. So for us, the main variant is recovered paper, which we have seen, particularly in Continental Europe, a significant increase in. However, we do have good sorting systems and access to recovered paper particularly in France, but also in Austria. CO2 has become a very, very important part of our business, partly because we have, for many years, reduced our CO2 footprint. We will continue to do that also going forward with the waste-to-energy investment in Bruck and also because we are receiving allowances that we can sell here. You can see the price of the European allowances in the middle graph, now reaching almost 60 per tonne. And I have yet to see any report which suggests anything but further increases in this price as Europe is announcing further plans to decarbonize and to be fit for the future, which is becoming decarbonized indeed. On the left-hand side is our own allocated emissions, and the system is meant to tighten, will further tighten through the next decade. But with price improvements, this becomes an even bigger part to our earnings. Moving into renewable packaging, which is an exciting new business, and we have the 2 final investment decisions. We are really now on a highway into renewable packaging to enter this market. NOK 350 million has been approved by the Board as the frame for these investments. That is the budgets we have. We now have contracts for most of the main parts, including turnkey for the actual conversions of the 2 machines in Austria and France. And roughly NOK 250 million of this is debt-financed. Again, the bulk part of that is export credit agency-backed. In other words, this is a relatively cheap source of funding for us. First production in Austria in the fourth quarter of next year and then France is following thereafter. All together, capacity of 760,000 tonnes of recycled containerboard, which will put us into the top tier of this market. As mentioned briefly, we have also introduced the brand name Strato, so there will be Strato liner and Strato fluting will be the sellable products from Golbey and Bruck. And this is also an area where we think we will have quite a competitive advantage as the market is moving towards lighter weights and stronger boards. Again, 100% recyclable, and it will reduce plastic wherever possible. So this indeed is in the middle of Europe's Green Deal. We will enter this market with force, as mentioned, and we will be amongst the 10 larger containerboard players. We will also be independent as we have no corrugating capacity downstream, which means that we will trade with everyone and be an alternative to the established producers. So I think we are certainly looking forward to this, and we think this is an exciting market. The market is growing handsomely at more than 600,000 tonnes per annum in the EU and possibly even higher as we see plastic replacements, as we see more e-commerce after the pandemic. Despite the attractiveness of the marketplace, it's always important to be competitive, and we think that we will be competitive. This is a cost curve illustration made by an independent consultant, which puts both the Golbey conversion and the Bruck conversion into the left-hand side of the lower percentiles. And this is certainly where we want to be. This is based on size. It's based on logistics. But also based on steam supply, which will be supplied by new boilers, both in Bruck and in Golbey. So cost leadership and competitiveness, as always, important in big commodity industries, and this is where we think we will be. The margins are, obviously, the difference between the main raw material and the selling price. Here we have charted for more than a decade, the selling price at the top and the main input, which is old corrugated containers recycled containerboard. And you can see that the margin has expanded over the last years. The recovered paper has increased because of the rapid recovery after the pandemic, but so has the sales price and even more than compensated for the higher raw material prices. So this is possibly an even more attractive market than we thought when we announced this to the market in the middle of June last year. If we then move into some of our other diversification projects in the energy, chemicals and materials space. We first come to Austria, where our 400 gigawatt, our energy production with a new boiler is on track. A NOK 200 million EBITDA contribution is expected from this, starting from April of next year. Good news is that despite COVID, despite all travel restrictions and other challenges to construct large-scale industrial plants in Europe in 2020 and 2021, this project is on time. Also importantly, it's on budget, and we have already started to source the material, which is rejects from traders and municipalities. And logistics is always important here. So we will obviously try to optimize that in the vicinity of the Bruck mill. Also, technically, since this is turnkey installation from Valmet, there should be a limited risk, technically speaking, but this is working. And again, as mentioned, this will reduce our CO2 footprint by around 150,000 tonnes per annum. Very exciting project, and we are very happy to report on this progress on time and on cost budgets. I also mentioned briefly the partnership with Ocean GeoLoop, and we are here in the territory of carbon capture and utilization, carbon capture storage. And this is a technology that is being tested at our Skogn mill together with research labs in the Central Norway area. Ocean GeoLoop is a company that has a long -- a very long research history with the lab testing and prototypes and has now come to the table at Skogn in order to test this on an industrial scale, also enabling the proximity of the water with a fjord just outside and with a significant harbor, which can then test this also in the water. I'm not going to go into the details of this, but we are very excited also to be an owner of this with around 2% of the share capital. And we will also have a board seat in this company where we think it may be on the edge of a breakthrough in terms of how carbon and the carbon value chain will develop going forward. Very excited to be partners to Ocean GeoLoop. At the same time, at the other end of the world, we -- as we are closing the Tasman mill after many years of newsprint production, we are also looking at an expansion of the pellets production. We have, as most of you probably are familiar with, expanded this from around 35,000, 40,000 tonnes to 90,000 tonnes now of production, which is the current annual production rate. And we will also then look into further 30,000 tonnes of expansion, which we now think is feasible as the run rate of 90,000 has stabilized and has proven to be possible with the present infrastructure. This is also meant to be a light investment and add-on investment with relatively limited CapEx. Also, again, quite an exciting future-oriented energy and fiber project. Obviously, as mentioned several times during this presentation, Norske Skog has taken CO2 initiatives for many, many years. Everything we have done for the last few decades have been aimed at doing as little harmful activity as possible. I think we're now moving into a phase where CO2 and the environmental protection can be also a business in of itself as the CO2 trading and the CO2 compensation schemes have shown over the last few years. Our target has been to reduce by 40% from 2015 to 2020. That has been achieved. Then in line with EU's Fit for the Future Green Deal, we have further reduced the footprint with 55% as a target. We are convinced that we're going to do it. We're probably going to do more than that. And as I said, I think we are moving into a net carbon area where some people will have to be positive in terms of carbon emissions. And with our biogenic CO2, I think we are well placed to be one of those companies. So -- and also this is underpinned by reporting, detailed reporting, which is available for everyone to see. And we are, as always, transparent and open in this regard. Just to round this short presentation of a few outlook comments. Publication paper markets, as mentioned, improving operating rates in the industry is underpinning significantly higher prices in the second half of this year. This will depend a little bit on product and geography, but we are talking about significant higher prices. And this is also needed as we see higher prices for recycled fiber and other input factors, predominantly energy in the second half compared to the first half of this year. We don't necessarily see that much of an increase in recovered fiber prices from the second quarter to the third quarter. But on average, it will be higher in the second half than in the first half. And obviously, as always, we will be a reliable supplier of all publication paper grades to our long-standing customers. At the same time, the strategic shift is happening. For CEBINA, our micro fibrils cellulose product which can then go into several exciting applications like glue, like epoxy floorings, like oilfield chemicals, we have still an aim to enter an international sales agreement in the second half. We're well on the way to that. We have done a significant amount of testing in the first half. So we are still quite excited about CEBINA's prospect. Similarly with CEBICO, where we have a pilot plant, which will start up in the fourth quarter of 2021. And if you can see anything now which is different from the past is that CEBICO fits probably more applications. CEBICO is the composites where you mix with fibers with plastics, aiming to reduce both overall plastics demand and also runoffs from product applications. The Bruck border will start up in the second quarter of next year in April, with an expected EBITDA of NOK 200 million run rate per annum. And then finally towards year-end, first containerboard production will start in 2022 in the fourth quarter. Again, exciting strategic shift. We are very, very excited about the future. We think that there's an enormous amount of opportunity for a company like Norske Skog in the green shift and being fit for the future. On that note, I thank you all for your attention this morning. Thank you very much.