Norske Skog ASA

OSE:NSKOG

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q3

[Sven Ombudstvedt, CEO & President]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this webcast in connection with Norske Skog's Third Quarter 2021 Financial Reporting. I'd like to start also this presentation with this short overview of our strategic direction. At the bottom of this chart, you can see our publication paper range, which has been in high demand during the third quarter as the market is tightening. The next level, which is also quite an exciting element is sustainable energy, where the waste-to-energy plant at Bruck is progressing well in the quarter, and we are now in the main investment phase as we're approaching startup and commissioning of that in the second quarter of 2022. On renewable packaging, also a lot of activity has taken place, most significantly the financial commitments from banks to finance 3/4 of the total investment of the Strato project into 760,000 tonnes of containerboard, where we are now just a year away from first paper on [ READ ] in Austria. And finally, at the top Cebina, Cebico and Circa, which is the main brand names in our biochemical and materials family, have also made significant strides towards commercial production in the quarter. Briefly, the quarter has seen price improvements as we announced from the 1st of July, most grades, if not all, in Europe, at least, has seen significant price increases following capacity closures in the industry. However, we see strong increases in energy. There should be no surprise to anyone that European energy market is under pressure. In other words, we see high prices. And at the same time, also other raw materials like recovered paper remain elevated. So yes, we have had an improvement in margins, but a lot of that has been absolutely necessary to compensate for higher raw material prices. The EBITDA ended at NOK 111 million in the quarter, which is a significant improvement from the NOK 17 million in the second quarter, but it's still at too low and unsustainably low level following the COVID period. In New Zealand, our process to cease paper production at the Tasman site has now been completed. Most of the redundancies have been done and paid, and we can report a net positive cash impact in the quarter of NOK 70 million. And finally, as mentioned, we did, just after the quarter, enter into the final debt financing documentation with significant banks from France, Norway and Austria and Germany, where now a better part of this financing costs has been taken care of. Looking a little bit at the market. And in particularly, the European market, you can see in the EBITDA bridge to the right on this slide that while price improvements have been significant with almost NOK 200 million positive increases in energy cost and elevated recycled paper costs have negatively contributed with NOK 163 million. All in all, slight positive from other elements, meaning that we report, as stated, an EBITDA of NOK 111 million. If we look very, very briefly at the segment, the European segment is in practice running full at 96% capacity utilization, that is basically all tonnes that we are able to get out of the machines are now being produced. Price is up about, on average, 15%. However, as we will come back to shortly, energy and recovered paper remains a significant increase in our cost base. If we go to the Australasian segment, utilization is higher, up from 69% to 87% in the quarter as Tasman ceased production at the end of the second quarter. So Boyer is now the only domestic supplier, and Boyer is also running as much as it can to supply domestic demand in Australia and New Zealand. The tightness of the market is, to a large extent, due to the closure of capacity we have reported before, significant capacity closures that has been announced. Most of them has now been done inside the small square box on the chart to the right-hand side. Here, you can see the capacity that came out in the third quarter. And you can also see that there has been further announcements of conversion projects that will come in the next 2 years. All in all, we believe that the market will remain in bounce also as demand is stabilizing and even for certain grades, slightly increasing post COVID lockdown periods. So as mentioned pricing has come up, you can see the significant price increases that we had already witnessed in Asia and Hong Kong here and in the U.S., and that followed in Europe from the second quarter -- and second quarter onwards with newsprint, lightweight coated and SC improvements. There is also further announcements from the 1st of October on certain grades, particularly for lightweight coated. So all in all, significant price increases. Several industrial players, including Norske Skog, has also announced energy surcharges applicable from October and November onwards to year-end and also announced an intention to increase prices significantly for 2022. This is white line absolutely needed as we see the raw material costs have increased significantly. On the left-hand side, recovered paper, which was also quite a lot in focus in the second quarter. And now the general energy crisis that as in golf to European Union, including the Nordics, where we see that prices has increased by between 4 and 8x for electricity and 5x for gas. Norske Skog bought a significant amount of gas still in Bruck for its combined heat and power plants there for production of electricity, which will be gradually reduced and almost phased out with the startup of our boiler in April next year. The boiler is well underway. We have reported before that we are both on time and on budget, which we're happy to confirm at this stage. And to date, we have invested EUR 55 million out of the total EUR 72 million with the loan facility has been drawn to NOK 38 million as of date. So as mentioned, we are in the heavy investment phase now in the third and the fourth quarter before commissioning and start-up in the second quarter next year. CO2 is one reason why the European energy markets are in the state of almost panic as they are now. And CO2 prices has improved significantly throughout 2021, reaching a high above EUR 60 per tonne recently. In Norske Skog's case, we have reported before that the system from 2013 to 2020 is designed to tighten, which you can see on the left-hand graph here. And the net surplus sellable quotas that we have is represented by the black line. Now for the next stage of the European emission trading system, you can see that the allocations we have, have then charted from '21 to '25, just above 400,000 tonnes. And as we've also mentioned before, Bruck today has to buy quotas that will be a different situation following on the startup of the new boiler. Conversion to containerboard is obviously an exciting project for us. Again, here, we are also reporting progress, satisfactory progress, both in terms of timing and budgets. We have invested so far about EUR 20 million. So we're not in the most heavy of investment period thus far, but it's important to note that we have already spent -- started to spend money on these projects. Total investments, we confirm at EUR 350 million, and a large share of this has been contracted with the main suppliers. As we also indicated before, Voith is the main supplier for Golbey and Bellmer is the main supplier for Austria. 75% roughly of the investment is now backed by debt financing. And again, a large part of that is then export credit agency backed by German [ Elder Hernetz ]. Again, fourth quarter 2022 first production in Bruck here later in Golbey. And when all was ramped up, 760,000 tonnes of finished capacity. We have, in the past, also stated that we will become one of the leading players in this market. You can see here the position we will have pro forma on the right-hand side of 760,000 tonnes. This is a market which is evolving as we speak, and there are also M&A activity in the sector as Norske Skog has bought [ Burgos Converter ] plant in Italy. And this is, again, a market where a lot of things is indeed happening, but we will establish ourselves as one of the leading players in this market with 2 future possibilities to convert in France and Austria further. This graph is basically showing that we have the liquidity and the financing to do these projects. There is even a liquidity buffer, as you can see. And with cash on the balance sheet and expected cash flow, we are now in a position where we can say we're confident about the financing of these projects. The market has evolved probably better than we thought when this was announced in June of last year. And these products, the so-called Strato Group of Products, which will be the brand names, will then fit very well with all main trend lines in this industry. They are light, and they are strong, and they're 100% recyclable. So these are the main trends in this market, and this market is growing faster than many other markets, a little bit on the back of the e-commerce boom following the COVID lockdowns. Yet despite favorable market dynamics, this is still a commodity market where a cost leadership position is important. And pro forma, our machines will be in the lower left-hand corner of the cost curve. We have an advantage in terms of where these are located, in other words, transportation costs will be relatively low. They are big and have scale advantage, and they will benefit from competitive and green steam supply from the boiler we are building in Austria and the boiler, which will be built by external parties at Golbey site. The market has absorbed quite well the capacity improvements that came in this industry in 2020, in particular. You can see the price and main raw material graph on the right-hand side, and the difference is obviously the margin that the price improvements have now gone to prices above EUR 700 delivered and a very, very strong demand underpinning this. I should also note that corrugating capacity, our customers, future customers have increased even further. So in order for our customers to run their operations, we -- this capacity that is coming on stream, including ours, is also needed to balance the market. Circa is one of the 3 pillars of our biochemical strategy, the 26% ownership we have. We will keep, and we will remain a long-term partner to Circa. However, given the independence of Circa and the listed nature of the company, they will do their own communication. And one of these communications recently was that the resolute plant in France will be more expensive than previously thought. This is maybe not too surprising given general cost increases in steel and in terms of transportation and the general inflation in the market, and we are quite confident that Circa will find good solutions both to find the best technical solution, but also to be in line with their current balancing, and we do not see Norske Skog as a lender of last resource to Circa, and we also are confident that Circa does not need to tap the market in order to realize the first step in what we still believe will be a very, very exciting road ahead. Cebina, as we mentioned in the fourth quarter of last year, on its first commercial sales into a proxy for floors. This quarter, we have also mentioned to the market that Cebina has been proven into paints, which is an interesting segment. And also here, there's the first sort of repeat commercial sale. So we remain optimistic and quite bullish on Cebina's potential in these and other applications. In terms of the CO2 reporting, as mentioned, the quotas have now been set for the next period. So that is important for us. In addition, also the CO2 pricing is important for the compensation we receive in Norway and in France. But also in general, as both responsible citizens, and that's a heavy industry, which has had focus on environmental emissions for decades. We take this very seriously, and we have put targets on our emission cuts, and at the present target is 55% down from 2020 to 2030. And with the Bruck investments and other investments and improvements that we are doing, we are quite convinced that we will reach this target. In addition, we are committed to transparency and openness and our CSR reporting on the scores then. If we look ahead a little bit, the publication paper market, our heritage business is operating with high operating rates. This should give impetus for price improvements, both further on in the second half, as mentioned, with energy surcharges in Europe and in other parts of the world and also into 2022. So we expect significant price increases from the 1st of January in addition to the present pricing. This is absolutely needed as we see that the prices for energy in the fourth quarter, in the first quarter and, in general, has increased significantly and have reached volatility and levels, which we have not really seen in at least not in the recent past and probably never seen at all. Recycled fiber and other derivatives of energy also see high levels and increases. And also finally, logistics put pressure on not only our own delivered cost, but also input costs into the factories. Despite this, we still will remain a reliable supplier of publication paper grades. And I think we have also shown in the third quarter that we have delivered customers when maybe other suppliers have failed. Just as here the shift is evident, I've talked about Cebina and Cebico. We will continue that journey with Cebina and international sales agreement. We aim to have that in place in the fourth quarter. And the pilot plant in [ Holden ], the extruder of 300 tonnes, we will start up for Cebico also in the fourth quarter. Waste-to-energy is then the second quarter next year and first containerboard, as mentioned in the fourth quarter of 2022. So I will end this morning's short presentation with an invitation to a Capital Markets Day. This will be our first Capital Markets Day since the listing in 2019 on the 25th of October. We will host this from 9:00 in the morning, where you will see not only me, but also all the members of Norske Skog's management presenting the company in more detail. So we hope to see as many of you as possible in person or online. On that note, I will thank you all for your attention this morning. Thank you, and have a good day.